Thanks to Team Unlimited Class:
Kevin, Tim and me piled back into our cars after a light sleep in Dunkirk, NY.
The great thing about having a race Studebaker is the coincidentally anti-theft steering wheel. Put it on the nightstand, and you can sleep easy!
We were in no rush to meet the Bullrunners, as they were still in Canada, so we drove for an hour or so and then found a breakfast place (Beechwood Restaurant) at a golf course in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Tim hopped in the Stude with Kevin and I drove his Porsche for a while. Oddly enough, I have to say that the Stude has seats that are more comfortable than the Porsche. Part of that may have been that the Porsche had low profile tires, and the Stude was running some really comfortable Maxxis road tires.
Before the trip, we were in a panic as no tire manufacture that we could find presently makes a Z rated 255-60-15 tire, which is what the Stude was set up for. We were thinking about changing rims and all of that … but the look of the car is pretty much something we didn’t want to screw with. A few short calls later, and we had the boys at Maxxis on the phone. Kevin has had great luck with Maxxis before, running their rear tire in the Baja 1000 when he won it over all on his motorcycle in 2002 (pro class 30). Lucky for us, when we got the Maxxis tires on the Stude, it became a really comfortable ride. I’m due for a set of tires on my Land Rover, and I think I’ll be buying Maxxis for it if they make them.
After another quick changeover to let Tim back into his Porsche, Kevin and I started down the highway and were again met by the engine gremlins. As soon as we had gotten in the car in Dunkirk, Kevin and I had both been working our phones trying to line up parts for the Studebaker. Kevin had spoken to someone at Crower Cam, and had deduced that the needle bearings on the cam followers were exploding one by one. We now had 4 cylinders and were looking at 2,500 miles or so remaining ahead of us. Having run several hundred miles in this condition we had most likely trashed the cam, and the motor was going to need much more than an “overnight thrash
