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Rat Rod Bugeye

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That Bugeye IS amusing. Twisted indeed.
 
Nice tour for a gear head! Thank's

Kurt.
 
Great link!
 
I first drove through there when they were building 44. It was sad how so many old and interesting businesses and landmarks were being torn down and bypassed. Over the years I made many trips through the area. One of the saddest times was when the old hotel on the right when approaching Rolla traveling from St Louis had burned down. I also remember when the bypass around St Louis opened. Never did like having to go through the city. My first trip through there was nearly 50 years ago.
 
tomshobby said:
I first drove through there when they were building 44. It was sad how so many old and interesting businesses and landmarks were being torn down and bypassed. Over the years I made many trips through the area. One of the saddest times was when the old hotel on the right when approaching Rolla traveling from St Louis had burned down. I also remember when the bypass around St Louis opened. Never did like having to go through the city. My first trip through there was nearly 50 years ago.
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My one and only trip on 66 was in the 60's before it was bypassed. Then only from Kansas west. I'm glad i did it then and have no desire to try to follow it again. I do have other old US two lanes on my bucket list though. US 20, US 30, US 12 and US 2. Plus maybe US 61 and a couple other of the vertical ones!
As Charles Karault said, the interstate highway system made it possible to drive from coast to coast and not see anything!
I love two lanes paralleled by interstates if I'm not in a hurry.

Kurt
 
nomad said:
My one and only trip on 66 was in the 60's before it was bypassed. Then only from Kansas west. I'm glad i did it then and have no desire to try to follow it again. I do have other old US two lanes on my bucket list though. US 20, US 30, US 12 and US 2. Plus maybe US 61 and a couple other of the vertical ones!
As Charles Karault said, the interstate highway system made it possible to drive from coast to coast and not see anything!
I love two lanes paralleled by interstates if I'm not in a hurry.

Kurt
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I drove from Detroit to the West Coast (Venice Beach/San Francisco) in 1969. I took 66 from about Joliet and through all the major cities on the route west. I spent about half the summer doing that in my first Bugeye. It was quite the adventure.

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HealeyRick said:
Must have been a great trip, Gerard. Kinda like Tod and Buz taking their Corvette on Rte 66. One of my favorite Sprite stories is the John Christy article in Sports Car Illustrated driving one of the '59 team Sprites from Sebring to the west coast.
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Very much so. I had a lot of eye-opening experiences, met some great people and managed to survive a few harrowing experiences, including a 4 day, survive by my wits, as well as unbelievable luck in getting myself out of some difficult situations.

Can the article you mention be viewed somewhere?
 
I have that article in an old Clymer repair manual.....it is a great read. I imagine someone will link to it. Your BE probably wasn't 10 years old and probably stock engined I imagine. I had some harrowing experiences as well but then most people advised me not to go to Tijuana!

Kurt
 
nomad said:
I have that article in an old Clymer repair manual.....it is a great read. I imagine someone will link to it. Your BE probably wasn't 10 years old and probably stock engined I imagine. I had some harrowing experiences as well but then most people advised me not to go to Tijuana!

Kurt
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I bought the car in March of '68, and it was already quite tired by then. Being a Motor City car, it had some rust issues, the engine was tired, usual chipped and noisy first gear, brakes were shot and I don't think I had it a month when the axle broke starting off gently from a stop light (got that lesson early). Being my first car and not having a lot of tools or experience, I paid a shop to fix the brakes and rear axle, but not having a lot of money meant I was going to have to learn fast. I bought a shop manual (which I still have) from the local BMC dealer (Falvey Motors on Woodward Avenue), and got busy over the next year reconditioning the car. I had to hire out machine work of course, but rebuilt the engine and gearbox myself. It was a stock 948, but I did use some performance parts like flat top pistons, and I'm sure a cam and a high performance oil pump, but I don't remember what else. I had the car repainted, and did some other repair work. I'm proud to say that I drove the car over 8,000 miles by the time I returned to Detroit after my trip without any failures, save an issue of being rear ended in San Francisco's Chinatown right before the last leg of my journey home. The shop that did the R&R in SF to replace the clutch managed to fracture one of the fittings on the oil cooler line, which I did not figure out until I was somewhere in Nebraska. I went from not burning a drop of oil to spraying out copious amounts over the miles until that point. I managed to correct it by luckily finding the right fitting in a truck stop and being able to borrow an EZ-out, but that was my only incident.

That was the first engine and gearbox I ever built, so thinking back, it's pretty amazing I got away with it all.

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My first engine was a small block Chevy warmed up. A friend and I left for our jaunt over route 66 the day we dropped the engine in my 55 Nomad! We did take tools and did work on the way! Gen quit in the middle of the night in New Mexico so we drove most of 100 miles by moon light then as we were coming down the mountain into Flagstaff I smelled brake fluid...no brakes...and as we drove into the Chevy dealers lot the right rear axle slid out to the side of the car!

We were braver than Dick Tracy and lucky besides!

Kurt.
 
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