The Last Ride of

"Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up!"
� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �- Ash, Army of Darkness

Make: Oldsmobile

Model: Regency 98

Year: 1978

Engine: 403 w/4bbl

I was back with a vengeance during the season of '98. This was another special year, with special cars and special circumstances. I had two cars this year and they were both special to me. I had the ever-never-killable Oldsmobile and later in the season my rusty, trusty Caddy would be volunteered to die. The Olds is a storied car. It was my everyday driver for close to three years. It was giving to me by my brother-in-law Tim, when when my car issues became unbearable (i.e. I had no running car!!) and he had just bought a new car. The big Olds needed some engine work and a new exhaust to be brought back as good as new. Tim is driver's driver. He drives everywhere. He and that car had seen more of the country than Lewis and Clark. It was he who first dubbed the Olds Route 98. Folks would ask him how he was getting from point A to point B and he would say 'Route 98'. Even I had taken the car all about New England. I had brought my first baby home in that car. The car was a tiger under the guise of a frumpy, ugly family sedan. The 403 small block was tuned to perfection and I routinely beat Porsches and Corvettes in road races. There was a lot of memories in that car, almost as many as in Betsy. I loved that car. It was extremely reliable under any and all weather conditions. The end came slowly for the big Regency though. My wife had driven it to the north shore to visit a friend and on the way home, the bearings in the water pump let go and she was forced to drive the car another ten miles so that she was at a pay phone. Though the car did overheat massively, as it had lost all of it's water long ago, it did keep my wife and my baby safe long enough for her to contact some help. After the car was towed home, I did replace the shredded pump, but the car never really ran the same again. About the same time, I had began to notice that the front suspension was very loose. So loose, in fact, that on a moderate left hand turn one could hear something popping in and out of joint. I never was able to ascertain what excact made that sound. The car in general was getting tired. With over 170,000 miles clocked so far, it was obvious that her time was almost over. We weren't even driving it on a reguler basis anymore. We were bouncing between my '80 Caddy DeVille and a minivan that I bought. So, after a lengthy evaluation, it was decided that ol' Route 98 (as it was still called) would go out in a similiar fashion as the last great car.

Building this car was an easy task as I already knew just about every inch of her. The rug was so messed up, that we ended up pulling it up in clumps rather than cutting it out. We also discovered that the quarter panels were VERY rusted under the chrome trim. The bottoms of all the doors and fenders were literally gone. This would weaken the sides considerabley down the line. One interesting and morbid and very questionable find was the in the rear seat. I ripped out the back seat cushions and proceeded to cut the seat covers off of them so that I could use the foam elsewhere and I discovered that both cushions had a massive blood stain on the inside! It was as if someone had bled quite a bit back there at some point in the car's long history. The stain was were the small of your back would be and flowed down. It was pretty freaky! Tim had no idea where it came from either! Something negative happened in that old car. It's funny. You own a car for X amount of years (Tim owed it since '90 or '92) and no one ever had any ideas what secrets it still held. I built the car utilizing some new ideas, such as hammering the trunk and quarters, and I had a new way to chain the tank on. I started smashing a grip into the hood to open it (I had neglected to do this over the years and ended up slicing my hands up every time I went to open the hood). I reinforced the seat as the seat was in pretty sad shape. The car was brutal. With a small tap on the gas pedal, I easily left 20 feet of rubber.

I had plenty of time to build this car. I actually had come to a point where the Caddy that I was driving would never pass inspection due to massive frame rot, so the after trying to sell it, we decided to derby that too. So I started building that as well, but I ended up offering the car to my brother Jim. I had much fun build this car. We had a lot of laughs and we had faith that the car would do well.

Route 98 on race day. Looks like your typical Olds doesn't it? She had a lot of power hidden under that hood.

Route 98's business end. The bumper was a battering ram, but in light of everything stuck too far out.

You can really see the rot on the bottom of everything. Even so, she was a strong car.

The day of the race proved different however. There was trouble in paradice so to speak. I had already made an appointment to get the car picked up by the tow guys and I was making some last minute adjustments. I had to move the car, so I jumped it and tried to start it and NOTHING HAPPENED! I heard the ominous tick of the starter doing jack. The truck was due in less than an hour! I immediately jacked it up and pounded the crap out of the starter with a hammer and the car turned right over. Ok, no problem, the starter was just stuck in the teeth of the flywheel. We painted the car and drained the radiator. I moved the car into the drivewy and we waited for the tow guy to show up.

Weasel snout and myself. Yes, he helped me build this car.

The tow arrived and I jumped in the car to start it up so that I could move it into place and it froze up again!! This time, it really gave me a tough time coming back. The deep sinking dread started creeping in. Up until now, I have never had a car give me problems on race day. I always got myself torched legitimately. It appeared to be a loose wire on the battery (funny, it hadn't been loose before), and after we tightened it, the Route 98 roared to life.

The car was towed there and passed inspection and it refused to fire again. This was quickly becoming a disaster. My dad crewed with me and we checked everything over. A quick pound on the started fired it right up. I was suspecting that the starter may be going. Dad didn't think so. I drew the 2nd heat, so I was able to observe. The track was a swamp. The cars were getting stuck on there own, more cars were DQ'd for getting stuck than actually damage. The top of the track had maybe an inch of dry top soil, but under that it was a quagmire. It reminded me of polder.

My dad figured I was ok from here on out and his back was hurting so he left me to go sit in the grand stand. The 2nd heat came and I jumped in my car and tried starting it and the stupid thing wouldn't start AGAIN! To make it worse, I couldn't get it refired. I started jumping up and down lika an iiot, trtying to flag the mechanical Dad down so we could try too get it fired. By the time he came back down, my heat was already underway without me. Ron, the head official said that if I could get it fired up, I could join in a later heat. So, we worked on the car throughout the heat. My wife took photos of the heat I was suppose to be in.

The waiting line. Route 98 is in front.

2nd heat is setting up while dad and I was trying figure out what in hell was wrong with Route 98.

2nd heat. What should have been.

2nd heat. It was a lot less violent than the 3rd heat.

Dad finally figured it out. It appeared to be the starter cable was very loose. So, we were able to refire it up. I decided not to turn it off, even at the risk of overheating the car. I knew that it would run well when hot. We gassed it up before I was to go, just to make sure it wouldn't run out. So, I penciled myself in for the 3rd heat and promised to give 'em hell.

3rd heat lining up.

There's Route 98 backing up into place. The car was running strong.

There's the contenders all matched up.

The heat was short and extremely violent for me. Because of the muck, it seemed like Route 98 was in slow motion, despite all that awesome power. I was immediately tackled by the two other 'big cars' in the heat. I didn't see the first blast coming; a big mid-70's Monte Carlo came smashing into my front corner, which left crippling damage. Four other hits came in quick succession in the space of ten seconds in the same general area. I take full responsibility for the disaster. Where as the previous years, I could account my losses due to bad luck, inferior car, whatever. This was plain old human error on my behalf. I didn't pull up far enough after the first hit and I was paying attention and ol' Route 98 payed the price. I felt like the U.S.S. Enterprise after she'd just been crippled: drifting and without impulse power. Actually, the car never thought of stalling. Each successive hit pushed me into some poor dude, whose battery took a header. Pushed me so flat actually, that the driver side of the car started flattening out.

And they're off!

Mistake #1. I didn't pull far enough ahead.

BLAM! Route 98 takes it on the chin. Several more would soon follow.

I'm up front, wedged against the yellow Cordoba (#51). The hood has started to bend into a C, otherwise I look ok, but you haven't seen the other side.

Route 98 is getting hot as she tries to valiently free herself from the muck.

The end was slow and painful. The car was jammed against a disabled car and it wasn't moving. I could rock it back ad forth somewhat, but could not get enough movement to get away from whatever I was stuck on. The wheel was very difficult to steer as well. I thought that I had lost at least two tires, the linkage may have been goen as well. I actually got a bit nervous for a second. This big ol' car slammed into my passenger door and his bumper proceeded to climb up the door as it stoved it in. He almost came inside my car! My thoughts were 'Damn! I'm a target out here!' They gave me forever to get unhung. They knew I was trying like hell to get loose, as I was almost getting it, but never quite enough. I was getting pissed! I actually tore a peice of my dash board off with my bare hands, I was so mad. My wife said I looked like a dope. The top coolant hose finally let go in a huge cloud of white smoke that doused me and the guy next to me with hot steam. My wife thoutght I was dead at that point, silly lil' critter. After that, they told me to shut it down. Route 98 was done for that day.

That's the front passenger quarter. It was absolutley mangled. Further back, the door was pushed in about 2 feet. Notice the fender is sitting BEHIND the tire. No wonder I couldn't turn the wheel.

This is what a QP is supposed to look like. This QP actually was flattening against a disabled car.

The rear end held up real well, accept for the bumper of course. The mounts tore easily and the bumper was too far from the body.

Post race inspection showed us how messed up the car really was. The whole passenger side looked a moonscape. It turns out that I lost only one tire up front. The rest of the car had buried itself up to the floorboards in mud. This was why I was stuck. The front fender actually bent in behind the tire and that was why I had resistance steering. As is plainly visible, the rear bumper was pretty much shot as well. The mounts were made of this cheesy steel and tore. The car still ran strong and, althought the damage was extensive, my crew and I were confident we could patch her together. So, I re-entered the car for the following night and I was allowed to keep the car there, so I didn't have to cuff up for another set of tows. We would be able to return to the fairgrounds in the morning and do our repairs.

The next morning, there were about half a dozen crews out there performing various repairs to their cars. My dad, Tim, Jim, and myself loaded my tools up and we trekked down there to peice the battered Olds together. I actually stole a tire from Jim's derby car to replace the blown one on mine. We tore the rest of the bumper off and found that the bumper pistons made rather nice spears. We discarded the wrecked tire and cut away a large section of the fender, enough to allow free movement of the new tire. Unbelievably, none of the steering linkage was touched by the massive onslaught of blows. We replaced the top hose and refilled the radiator as well as replaced a busted belt. We cut away a lot of the inner wheel well as most of it was on the carb and we discovered that the exaust header on that side was broken off. That gave the car a most hellacious roar. The final step was to remove the fiberglass nose. When we were done, the car looked and sounded evil. I wish we could have gotten some shots of it and recorded the engine sound.

That night, there were many, many cars. This had been the way it was, where cars were running night after night, because they were getting stuck, but not taking an extreme amount of damage. Route 98 by comparision looked as though it had emerged from the scrap yard with a vengeance. The car was a spitting, snarling, ugly creature.

Route 98's revenge would never really be, however. As I was pulling the car into the inspection line, I suddenly lost all my forward gears. We pushed the car back out to the infield and hurridly checked the tranny. The tranny linkage had falling apart (damn GM linkage!!?!). Tim, showing much skill, quickly leaped into action. We pulled the oil dipstick and tossed it. We then pulled the dipstick tube off and crimped the end. Tim jammed the dipstick tube into the tranny lever and we wired it all together with bailing wire. It took every bit of strength I had to put it into gear, but I had 1st gear back. This took all of twenty minutes. But, more problems arose. The starter let go. The pinion sounded like it was grinding pretty bad. And even worse, in trying to get the thing started we killed the battery. By this time it was too late. I was flat busted at this point, so we stripped the car and left it. I shouldn't have done this, but I had no way of retrieving the car to run it the following week. It needed at least a starter and the the gear shifter needed work.

We still had one car left to run. This would be Jim's first derby and I was determined to give him his best chance. As for me, the season was a fun one over all. The car was tough, I was dumb, but hey, these things happen. Soon after the season was over, my dad presented me with a big Buick wagon for which I could run next year. I only wish I had the trailer a year early as I would have made a mean return with Route 98 had I been giving a third chance.