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It was dark, early in the morning, i hadn't slept in days and i was too tired to find out why the taillights wouldn't work. I loaded up the truck onto a trailer and went home to sleep for a few hours. It was going to be a long day. Once i was back at the shop i adjusted the carburetor to get the engine idling properly and then hooked up my laptop to the transmission computer to see if i could figure out what was wrong. The instructions for the GM Performance Parts were skimpy at best. There were some decent notes on how to wire the trans but nothing telling me what to do when the *** thing didn't shift gears. I did notice that the software id had the same suffix as software I had seen before from TCI so that gave me hope that the folks at TCI had designed the programming. No matter, it was six am the day of the show and I had plenty of other problems. A trans that only had second gear I could deal with, a truck without brake lights just wouldn't be safe to drive. I spent about 45 more minutes trying to work out the bugs but gave up and went home to sleep for a few hours. I would come back later that morning and tow the truck as close as I could to the show. Mike never did say what time I had to drive my truck into the showgrounds, only that I had to drive it through the gate. At about 8am my wife and I woke up and headed back to the shop to pick up the truck. We loaded it onto a borrowed car hauler and then took the 241 toll road from Mission Viejo the the 91 freeway. In the beginnning the drive was uneventful, except for the helicopter and 9 firetrucks sitting on the southbound side of the toll road. As usual, whenever the weather gets hot in so. cal the hills end up on fire. Luckily I was on the other side of the road and traffic was light. We merged onto the 91 freeway and were cruising along in the right hand lane at 55 mph (nice and legal like) when all of a sudden, the trailer jerked quickly. I looked over my left shoulder just in time to watch in horror as one of the trailer wheels passed by the truck I was driving, across three lanes of traffic and into the carpool lane. Life slowed to a crawl at that moment as I watched the wheel slam right into a newer SUV. I thought it was over. The SUV went up on two wheels and the wheel demolished the front end, hood, windshielf, roof. You name it and that wheel hit it. I slowed down and paced alongside the SUV waiting for it to pull over. It never did. I could see it was full of people and had a flat tire, but the driver sped off into the distance, leaving me sitting on the side of the road-speechless. We called a family friend who worked at a police station to find out what we should do. Did we need a police report? Was I going to jail? In the end, the cops never came because the other driver took off. We ended up limping the trailer off the highway and over to a tire shop that couldn't fix the problem. The wheel studs had sheared right off the trailer hub and that's why the wheel fell off. I unloaded the C-10 right about the time Mike Alexander and friends arrived with another car trailer to help us get to the show. We arrived about four hours late, but we did make it with their help. I did indeed drive my truck into the show and park it in our booth. I'm callin' the trip a success but Mikey's claiming a victory since he helped me get my truck there. Although, he did trailer his truck to the show and drive it in as well so it seems like a tie to me. Then again, after the show I was without a trailer to tow my truck home with so I drove it about 90 miles to my house in Garden Grove, in second gear! I got home from the show at about 930pm and was beat. It was sure nice to walk out of the house to see a body dropped truck in the driveway though. It's been years.
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