If it was Saturday, chances are extremely good that the person driving in that photo is me.
We had an AWFUL weekend. 110th place at best, something like 27 laps overall.
That said, I LOVE the Galaxie. It's the best thing I've ever driven. It creaks and pops and groans and crackles and makes all sorts of disconcerting noises. It leans like a capsizing battleship through corners. It isn't terribly fast. But it is VERY shouty. It doesn't have an exhaust, it has Thor. It stops credibly for a 3800lb beast. It steers totally unlike a 3800lb beast. The way it holds the track is unreal. It's a living, breathing character with a rollcage. The Galaxie, however, does not love me.
Here's part 1 of the summary:
First driver gets in for the green flag. We notice a massive power steering leak. A bad fitting. We replace it and run.
We hear from another car on the team (I was with the Speedycop clan, which meant we had 7 cars) that they'd passed the Galaxie and it was billowing smoke.
Back a few minutes later on the tow truck, expecting catastrophic engine failure or something. Fortunately, it's just that the replacement P/S fitting hadn't been suitable and had disconnected entirely and puked all the P/S fluid rather quickly across the entire engine bay. A different replacement goes on.
I go in. Car runs great. I get acquainted with the car and refresh the track in my mind for about 3 laps. I see a black flag with a number, pointed in my general direction. I have no idea what the hell the car's number is, so I pit and ask. "115... And you've got a leak!"). Turns out the radiator isn't secured and leaned backwards, shoving the upper radiator hose directly into the alternator pulley... Which features a fan blade. A new upper radiator hose is fashioned using two unrelated radiator hoses and a plastic coupling.
I go back out. This is awesome" I think to myself as I round the Big Bend before the front straight with the pedal smashed firmly against the stop, "I should switch to race mode and see what I can really do"
I approach the braking zone for the 180 degree left hander at the end of the straight doing god-knows-how-fast (the speedometer was rather thoroughly buried, but I don't trust it anyway) and get on the brakes... There's probably (I don't remember it) a thud and the pedal goes to the floor. "It's an old car. They do that. Pump the brakes," I think. But I know I'm lying to myself - the car has a completely refreshed, modern two-circuit braking system with bloody Wilwood 4-pistons on the front and discs in back. I pump anyway. Nothing. "Fuck it, I can't screw this up any worse", I think, and jam the automatic trans into 1st gear, slam the visor on my helmet, steer in and mash the loud pedal.
As an inexperienced, untrained drift driver, faced with a serious attempt at drifting with very big consequences for failure, and doing it all in a '67 Ford Galaxie, I think I did pretty damned good. I dropped the front inside corner over the apex curbing (!) and slid the entire rest of the way out across the track and smacked outside front hard into its curbing before sliding off into the grass. For several seconds, I couldn't believe what the fuck I'd just done and couldn't think what to do next, and the car just idled along in the grass in 1st gear. Then I remembered that I was off the track and that I should stop, and tried the brake pedal. Nothing. Then I remembered what the hell was going on and smacked the kill switch.
While I waited for the tow truck, I kept pumping the brakes just to occupy my time and lo and behold, they came back. There was nothing immediately apparently wrong, except the master cylinder was low. The assumption was just that I'd been driving wrong and managed to boil DOT4 brake fluid.
We stuck the next driver in while I changed my pants. It wasn't long before he was back. I don't know if he even made it to the track it was so quick, but the brakes sounded like terrible metal-on-metal and the alignment was visibly off. Severe toe-out and positive camber on the left front. The reason for the brakes became readily apparent, and the brake failure diagnosis quickly changed from "EyeMWing driving like an idiot" to "Oh, shit."
The Wilwood front brakes use a hot-swappable pad design - you don't have to take the caliper off to replace the pads. Instead of being held in place by the caliper, the pads are held in by a safety pin. This pin was nowhere to be found on the front left, and neither was one of the pads.
That was a quick fix. Then we adjusted the alignment all the way to the stops... And didn't even make a dent in it. Something must have bent, but we couldn't find it. We had an independent set of eyes come look, and they quickly spotted that the right lower control arm was bent fairly substantially, probably when I went sideways across the curb. Being a 1967 Ford Galaxie, this meant we were out for the day to think of the best approach to solving the problem.
Late that evening, a verdict was reached and a plan formulated. Heat it, bend it, and weld reinforcement plates to it. Here was the setup:
Control arm sandwiched between a 6x6 wood block and the lifter arm on the back of a rollback tow truck. The rear of the tow truck was entirely supported by the control arm, so it wasn't going ANYWHERE.
Liberal application of oxygen and acetylene ensued, followed by some strikes with a small sledgehammer.
Fortunately, nobody died inhaling the half inch thick layer of oily crust that burned off.
Reinforcement plates were welded on and beer quenched, but reinstallation of the control arm was delayed until morning due to the onset of Saturday Night Partytime. Ever seen a boat do a burnout? Ever seen a boat do a burnout into a parked car? I have.
I'll be back later with the Sunday recap.