Here's some pics showing my trip to Vegas and back (Thursday to Tuesday) . I'll post vids later.
The cruise to Vegas started at 4:45 am Thursday morning for me. Here's the Tucson group on I-10 heading to Phoenix. I was following a mod top Roadrunner driven by Rhonda who was the AZ cruise coordinator and really does a great job setting it all up.
This is the scene at Earnhardt Dodge in Gilbert AZ. They really treated us well including an all you can eat hot breakfast and a free cruise T-shirt for everyone.
This is where I first met 360FISH and I knew the car instantly. It looks mean!
Then the cruise to Vegas began from Phoenix. In the Phoenix traffic its impossible to stay together, but I finally caught 360FISH at a stop sign and quickly snapped this pic:
Then I got to cruise behind him for a while which is great since I love the round tail lights!
Here's what a crazy fuel stop in Wickenberg, AZ looks like. Note the wide selection of Mopars.
After that was another fuel stop outside of Kingman AZ. This is the first time I've seen anybody tow with a SRT-10 quad cab truck. Pretty cool setup.
Before another quick show at a Dodge dealership in Kingman
This Superbird race car was so cool!
Then finally on to Vegas and the actual event. This is a view of the autocross from the drag racing stands. It was a very tight course:
Here's some good shots of the Cuda on the track:
Amazing looking Charger ("Biohazard") that was basically drifting the autocross course. He had way too much power for that small of a course.
Since I decided to go to the event so late, the Cannery hotel was sold out. So my wife and I decided to spend some extra money and get a vacation rental house that had a two car garage. My wife drove herself in her Jeep and carried all of the tools, spare tire, tent, etc. I felt better being able to put the Cuda in a garage at night versus a hotel parking lot.
Here we were set up in the drag racing pits:
My day was not without incident..... In the pic above see the towels on the ground? I'm trying to dry them out. On my first pass down the drag strip when I shifted in to second gear the heater hose attached to the Vintage Air box inside the car blew off, which dumped the entire contents of the radiator on the passenger side floorboard. What a mess. I was able to make it back to the pits without overheating and spent the next two days trying to dry out the carpet. That night I went to an auto parts store and bought some of the oil absorbent mat and would keep my heavy tool bag on that as a way to pull the antifreeze out of the carpet. In the pic above I pulled the heater hoses off the firewall bulkhead and just ran a short hose looping the two heater hose outlets together.
Here's ntstlgl1970 awesome Cuda.
On Sunday we were parked next to each other.
The other cool thing that happened was the Popular Hot Rodding magazine editor liked my car and he asked me to stay until Monday for a photoshoot. The photo shoot itself was a lot of work but it was interesting and fun at the same time. He took some really cool photos at sunset. I'm hoping he will email me some.
http://www.popularhotrodding.com/events/1408_2014_moparty_at_the_strip_mopar_car_show_top_10/It was an amazing trip and I'm really glad I trashed on the car in the weeks before the event (for example, I put the door panels on the day before I started driving). Trying to jump back and forth between the autocross and drag racing tired me out as well. I'm exhausted at this point. We did half the drive home last night before getting to a hotel at 1 am. Then got 5 hours of sleep to finish the drive this morning. I'm glad to be home.
I have some GoPro video and some video from outside the car that I will post later.
Travis
72 Cuda
