Detroit: Summer Blue--(Reality in The D)

(NOTE: Detroit is the most violent metro area in the country. 'Be Prepared' is not just a Boy Scout motto---it's a necessary mindset if you choose to roam the area. Although I state, for legal reasons, that this is a work of imagination, use your intellect. And it may well be worthwhile to read the disclaimer that's to be found at the beginning of the first work, Detroit: Spring Gold)





TWENTY FIVE





Wayne Kuchtyn is an engine-builder and cylinder head specialist who works out of a shop connected to his house in Westland. He calls it ‘Headwinds’. There are many things about engine building that any careful craftsman can easily master. In fact, there are a great many engines running in various venues all over the world that have been put together by such people.

On the other hand, some aspects of  parts development are almost an art-form. Altering the shape of intake and exhaust port runners for greater flow is one of those areas.

Cut-and-try will almost always get one fairly close, but the intuitive leap that results practically immediately in the best shape and size for a given combination is very like the processes that carry humans to extra heights in many scientific areas---it just seems to them to be right, and in fact, turns out to be so.

I’m told that some surgeons make a scalpel cut and the area almost instantly fills with blood. Another, more gifted man, makes what seems like the same stroke and the operating area is almost dry. Ask him why and he may well not be able to tell you---it just is.

Wayne uses just such intuition in his surgical work---except he works on iron and aluminum engine parts. Now he was bringing me a street racer.



Some explanation is in order. Kids back in the late ’forties and early ’fifties developed the practice of driving around in the evening, often several to a car, and occasionally ‘catching a light’---being first in line at a red traffic signal---with another car full of kids in the other lane. When the light turned green the race was on.

Such chance encounters ultimately developed into the organized ‘drag racing’ available for view on TV many Sunday afternoons. These activities have also resulted in the annual ‘Woodward Dream Cruise’ here in the Detroit Metro Area; the largest one-day automotive event in the world. ‘The Cruise’ re-creates, in some small measure, those long-ago summer evening ‘affaires d’honneur’. In an original location.

Without doubt, as cars became more powerful and streets became more congested with traffic, the potential danger of racing on the street rose almost exponentially. There have been a variety of measures tried in attempts to race on the street while minimizing the risk as much as possible. You understand that what I mean when I say ‘risk’ is some happening such as an unsuspecting soul pulling out in front of the drivers when they’re going a hundred miles an hour---or more.

The risk of intervention by Authorities is not usually looked on as a risk, but as one of the attractions---there is simply a bigger ‘rush’ produced. Except for total flexibility of arrangements, any racing done on the street could easily enough be done at a sanctioned drag strip; many are open at least one night a week for ‘test-and-tune’ and the open-ness of the format would make ‘grudge-matches’ easily attained. 

But that would obviate any necessity for keeping an eye out for police cars and the very real possibility of having to choose to deal with the Minions of the Law or to run away---with the chances for real trouble that this entails.

Gambling is also a big part of the attraction of street racing. It isn’t at all uncommon to see five-figure wagers, and the other sort of gamble is that being caught by the rozzers will result, at least, in the impounding of the car in question. Fines and fees may cost several thousand dollars. Jail time is a real possibility, as is the loss of the vehicle. Still the activity flourishes.     

The car that Wayne had called me about, and now brought to my shop an hour later, is a classic example of a serious street-racer. Ostensibly a late Mustang, I found it to be a facsimile ‘fibreglas’ body mounted on a fabricated tube frame. The general lay-out was a duplicate of that to be found in the’Pro-5.0’ ranks. The suspension was designed for just one purpose---to enable the rear tyres to get all possible power to the tarmac.

It’s only secondarily necessary to steer because under power, the front wheels and tyres are at least a few inches off the street; raised by the overwhelming torque emanating from the powerplant. With the front tyres slightly out of contact, the entire weight of the car is being carried by the rears and thus that entire weight is available to aid traction by ‘pushing down’ on the more-than-a-foot-wide no-tread rear rubber.

Steering is only possible after the car sets down in front, and this takes place perhaps fifty feet or more after the start of the race. If the suspension were not properly designed, this sort of car is capable of rising in the front until it flips over backward---it’s happened!

The engine in this example was in some respects very like the ones used in NASCAR racing. The greatest difference is that, for this car, since the race is usually no longer than a quarter mile or so---from a given starting point to some several-blocks-away cross street for example---and the engine componentry is not circumscribed by NASCAR rules, or any other rules for that matter, the output power can be made to be several times what’s available for races that go for as much as six hundred miles. (The utmost class in organized drag racing, called ‘Double A’ or ‘Top Fuel’, makes perhaps as much as eight thousand  horsepower, but the engine is ‘used-up’ and requires re-building after only a few seconds of running.)

Wayne called me from a few blocks up the street and I had the door rolled-up when the truck carrying the Mustang arrived. We backed the car off the roll-back flat-bed and pushed it into the shop, leaving the truck parked in my side-lot to the west.

The south-east corner of my building is occupied by a chassis dynamometer configured so as to be usable both by two-wheel and four-wheel drive vehicles. This is the general area of the building where I do all sorts of work on complete vehicles---the bay next to the dyno, to the north, has a four-point lift so that the underside of a car is readily accessible, and the next space after that is laid-out for engine-in-the-car puttering; bench area and tool roller-boxes optimized for this purpose.

One of the most important items to have around a work-shop is a place to sit down; more accurately several places to sit down. I have sundry stools the right height to sit and work at the benches and I have a couple with rollers that are just right to be comfortable while working at wheel-well height such as on brakes.

I also have a pile of the stacking sort of plastic armchairs like those often found on a deck behind a house, close by a barbecue grille. These last are specifically for getting a small group to gather and look at a project. Whether we’re ‘brain storming’ or just lazily ‘bench racing’, a place to relax is an important tool to use in getting things just right.

I invited Wayne and the owner of the car to sit down and tell me what seemed to be going on. The complaint went this way: When Wayne had the engine completely assembled, it had been set up and run-in on a dynamometer at Roush’s facility. It had been well tested for output. Then it was placed into the chassis and all the powertrain assembled as well. 

When the car was test-run at Milan Dragway, the numbers suggested that it had somehow lost a very substantial amount of horsepower. Elapsed times---the time from start-to-finish-line of the dragstrip---are subject to such variables as air temperature and humidity as well as traction, but the miles-per-hour figures will quite reliably tell you how much power you’re making. A bunch had gone somewhere.

Please understand that there will always be a certain amount of loss through a powertrain. Each of the mechanisms---the transmission, (five-speed Lenco), the differential, (Mark Williams Ford nine-inch), axle bearings, etc,---each shows an increment of loss. Friction, if nothing else, will take a toll. But by any realistic evaluation, something beyond the powertrain had stolen power.

The configuration of this engine was such that it relied on a combination of centrifugal supercharging and electronic fuel injection in order to make power. At 408 cubic inches, it was not overwhelmingly large in terms of displacement. But with more than thirty pounds of boost available, and all other components optimized for making use of this forced induction, on a drag-race basis, this powerplant should---and did, on the engine dyno---make well into four digits, horsepower-wise. The combination of the dedicated chassis, low weight (in comparison to a factory-sourced vehicle), and supposedly available horsepower should have had the car running at more than 210 MPH in the quarter mile.

In fact, the best it could muster was a little better than 190. Since the speeds were consistent, it was fair to assume that the power was actually down and not somehow fluctuating.

I could detail all the diagnostic tests we performed over the next several hours, but the details would just bore you. (I once, many years ago, spent almost an hour fiddling around before I discovered that the throttle linkage was bent and not pulling the induction butterflies fully open. Now that’s one of the first things I check!) A dedicated computer with the proper diagnostic and tuning software is a marvelous instrument for working on a modern electronically-controlled engine. But there’s just no substitute for observation.

After we’d exhausted all the plethora of possibilities in the way of a mis-step in the programming of the injector fuel curve, and its interrelationship with the ignition timing and supercharger boost, the little light finally came on.

I asked ‘Bill Jones’ (the owner, who for obvious reasons doesn’t want his real name in print) how the electronic control unit---the ‘black box’ that directs all the electronics, and into which the tuning computer-cable is plugged ---was mounted when the engine was on the dyno at Roush’s. He explained that an aluminum plate had been mounted to the dyno frame above the bell-housing, with short runs of wiring hooked to all the appropriate places.

When the engine was placed in the car, the ECU was mounted in the passenger footwell. Rubber shock mounts on the side of the transmission tunnel supported the plate which carried all the electronic equipment including the ECU and the ignition components.

I had been observing the readouts on the plug-in computer all afternoon while trying this adjustment and that. It finally dawned on me that the amplitude of the trace I was looking at could be interpreted as indicating a lack of sufficient ‘grounding’ or making sure that the entirety of the electric circuits were completely unimpeded.

Just on the off chance that I’d found something, I got out a piece of  ‘double aught’ welding cable and turned it into several individual lengths with copper lugs soldered to each end of each portion. Shrink-tube finished the ends neatly.

Then I used one of these connectors to tie each component to each other component and the whole system to the engine block and to the frame of the car. Rubber shock-mounts are great for protecting delicate electric components from vibration---they are lousy for grounding. Re-starting the engine showed what seemed to be a much better ‘trace’, and the engine even sounded more authoritative---though that could come from an active imagination. Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to find!

We fastened the car back onto the chassis dyno and did a quick check. Now the power showed as about what you’d expect from the readings at Roush’s, after the power’d gone through a complete drivetrain.



The reason for the flurry of activity that had resulted in coming to me for assistance was that there was a big-money match scheduled for that evening. In the complex world of street-racing, it would almost have been better to go out and lose than to make excuses that things weren’t working correctly. Now, if I had accurately isolated the problem and solved it, there would be a much better chance of prevailing.

 

High dollar street-racing in Detroit owes its present configuration to the availability of the cell ’phone. There are literally dozens of places in the Detroit Metro area where there is enough room for two serious cars to run off side-by-side. The service drive at Clay Street, once a hotbed, seems to have been taken over by motorcycles, but there are certainly many others. On the West Side, ‘College Road’ comes to mind. Another place is the section of Plymouth Road a few blocks east of Telegraph. McNichols, also going east. The industrial park in Westland. There are others, particularly on the east side.

But trying to find one that is not only long enough for the acceleration phase, but also has enough room to ‘shut down’, and where there is also as little likelihood as possible of someone getting in the way inadvertently, does limit the choices. A half mile, total, is the minimum length and more is better. And the more uninhabited and quiet, the better it gets, making the intended spot one of the best.

If the participants make final plans very much ahead of time, the word goes out in such a way as to produce dozens if not hundreds of spectators. This, of course, will quickly bring the bluebottles. And cars of this ilk are not often driven to the race scene. The suspensions are so specialized for drag racing that they don’t lend themselves easily to ordinary street driving; not least the lack of clearance between the underside components and the pavement being a most significant deterrent.  So they are usually brought to the scene by flatbed truck such as was used to get this car to my shop, or in many cases, in enclosed trailers. All of this makes it awkward in the extreme to try to effect a speedy escape if such were to prove desirable.

Therefore, ‘scouts’ are sent out to look over possible localities---with communication by cell ’phone at the last possible minute---and when a place is chosen, the whole thing can happen with a good deal of dispatch. Wayne uses an unobtrusive brown Ranger pick-up truck to take the few necessary items when he goes, in his role as engine builder/tuner, to one of these events.

It was decided that since I had been involved in the final trouble-shooting and tuning session, I’d ride with Wayne. We should expect a call soon after one o’clock in the morning.







TWENTY SIX





Wayne and I were sitting in my upstairs lounge when the ’phone rang. It was ten minutes to one. I halfway expected it to be the ‘call-to-action’ but it was Annie who, accompanied by Brit, had gone back to the Canton condo. We said “Good Night” and mutual “I Love You”s before we hung up. They were in an unlikely-to-be-known-of place while I paid attention to business.

It’s nice when business is also fun, and as further insurance regarding non-interference, a call to the hospital had told me that Blake was still sedated because of the aftereffects of the broken bones. (I had become, supposedly, his younger brother, calling to check up on him.) Another call informed me that Tom’s computer activities, while proceeding, had not yet produced the proper combination.

Then the ’phone rang again, and this time it was to tell us that we had a half-hour to get to the corner of Outer Drive and Dix Road, close to the Lincoln Park-Melvindale border; a couple miles from The Rouge. The intent was to run on Dix from just north of Outer Drive, at the traffic light at Grace Street, to Wabash Street, which cuts off to the right.

This had been measured to be just more than a quarter mile. Close enough for the intended purpose. This is primarily a residential area, but at that time of night the streets should be very near to deserted for relative safety, and after Wabash the area becomes light industrial/commercial as it goes under the train tracks, and there are no cross streets close by.

The favored place in the area for this sort of business has been, until fairly recently, to stay on Outer Drive and go past the expressway to Fort Street. If you go just northeast of Outer Drive on Fort, you’re going into Detroit, and Fort is wide and mostly deserted in the early morning hours. However, there was an unfortunate incident there, not too long ago, when a race car got away from the driver, and not only hit a parked car but a woman out walking down the sidewalk as well. I don’t know what she was doing out at that time of night, but it cost her life. It was reported in the newspapers that it also negatively impacted the careers of two local police officers who were in their cruiser on the other side of the intersection in a party store car park. Their superiors allegedly took it amiss that they were said to be obviously spectating and claimed that they had not made any official objection to the activities. Their supposed answer, that it all took place across the line in Detroit, where they had no official standing, didn’t seem to help much. It all created quite a ‘hoo-ha’ in the newspapers for a while. (Please notice all the ‘weasel-words’ in the foregoing comments. I wasn’t there but I had it described to me by actual observers during lunch the next day.)

Since our answer to any official inquiry as to our activities was to be injured innocence, not flight, it made good sense to take an unobtrusive vehicle. There’s no law against driving on any ordinary, open public street at any time. In addition, a definition of freedom, due to all humans and specifically given voice in the US Constitution, is the ability to come and go as one pleases.

I am perfectly capable of offering any inquisitive cop a polite half-hour sermon on going about one’s business without harassment in the absence of any probable cause to believe that I am breaking a law, and that therefore my activities are, properly speaking, none of his business. Boring, dogged pomposity is a perfectly workable alternative to unobtrusiveness. And in the event of a ticket, the subsequent suit for false arrest helps the word to go out that fucking with citizens in the absence of a serious reason is counter-productive.

Our trip to the chosen site was completely uneventful. We passed the time with casual conversation---chiefly with Wayne filling me in on the known characteristics of the opponent car.

A first design brilliant metallic orange ‘Z-28’ Camaro, it actually started life in a GM assembly plant. Since all such cars have unibody construction, with the Chevrolet product having a bolt-in front stub frame, there had been a good deal of welded-in stiffening---the car had been worked over in the front and then ‘back-halfed’ as they say. ‘Ladder bars’ were the control method of choice for holding the front end down and restraining the rear axle; the ubiquitous Ford nine-inch.

The engine was known to be a ‘rat’, or big-block Chevrolet. It had a 6-71 GMC supercharger carrying two Holley carburetors. Thus, this competition was, in effect, the old against the new. The Camaro was a classic example of the late ’60’s-early ’70’s Gas/Supercharged-type vehicle.

    Since some versions of the rat motor are capable of as much as eight hundred cubic inches, there was no telling what the displacement of this engine might be, and no one was definitively offering the information.

On the other hand, if it were truly a ‘Monster Motor’, the likelihood is that it would be carrying more than a 6-71 supercharger. Properly feeding one of the really large versions would call for a larger capacity blower.

The bright competition-yellow Mustang, as already detailed, had a complete list of the latest in electronics. Although almost surely the engine was smaller in displacement than the rat, a Paxton centrifugal supercharger is much more efficient than a Roots-type blower such as the GMC, and had the additional advantage of an intercooler. The electronic fuel-injection, likewise had the ability to deliver just the right amount of gasoline to each cylinder; something the carbs on top of the blower could only approximate. Again, greater efficiency.

This was, in street parlance, a ‘haid-up’ race. The start was, therefore, to be dead-even, controlled by the traffic light at Grace Street. There would be a group watching at Wabash Street consisting of representatives from both sides. They’d also be holding the money. Absent any disagreement, the whole affair would be concluded in less than half-an-hour.

The race, itself, including the final positioning of the cars and the return to the starting place afterwards would probably take not much more than five minutes. As a concession to safety, some of the inevitable hangers-on would be detailed to block the entrances from the side streets onto Dix by parking cars across the street mouths. This would ensure that some late-returning drunk didn’t inadvertently become involved in the action. 

When we arrived at Outer Drive and Dix, having followed Outer Drive south from Michigan Avenue, we discovered that, by cutting the chain on the gate, both car-hauling trucks had been tucked into the fence-surrounded drive for what looked to be a defunct gas station on the more-or-less southeast corner. The cars had both then been unloaded onto Dix on the south side of Outer Drive and the last minute discussion and negotiation was going forward. Since the best place to see the important part of a drag race is at the finish line, we ascertained that there was more than ten minutes before the start of festivities and drove down to the corner where Wabash goes east from Dix.

Wabash only goes about fifty feet before the street makes a ninety-degree turn north and for a distance runs parallel to Dix; we parked around this corner and watched the final preparations.

Two guys had the ends of a length of clothesline long enough to go across both lanes of the northbound side. When all agreed that the line was stretched at right angles to the lanes of pavement, it was placed against the tarmac and a third guy carefully walked the distance along the cord, depositing a clear line of white paint on the street from a rattle can. This was the agreed upon means of marking the finish line.

A cell ’phone in the pocket of one of the line-stretchers buzzed; obviously someone at the starting area asking if all was ready at our location. The race cars would have been hand-pushed into their approximate pre-starting positions and the drivers would be ready to go through the last-minute details before the race. The time interval between one green light and the next would have been ascertained so that the very last activities could be carried out expeditiously.

We had been told that impromptu ‘bleach-box’ puddles for both cars would be placed a hundred feet or so behind the starting line. This would enable the drivers to heat their slicks in the water, and leave room for a couple of ‘dry-hops’ before getting to where the starting line had been sprayed on the street. After both cars were ‘staged’ the next green light would start the race.

Both engines fired-up at almost the same instant and the overlapping resonance of a pair of three to five thousand RPM blasts in the water was heard. Then the tyre-drying ‘hops’ noises came in their turn. Following that, the belly-shaking rough sound of the idling engines for a moment as we watched the green-to-yellow-to-red sequence observable from our location.

Next, after a pause, the melody of power straining against rev-limiters, as the interminable seconds of this final red light counted away, and the clamour became the overwhelming, senses-destroying cacophony of thousands of horsepower mechanically ululating as the race cars thrust toward us.



The discussion afterwards, at a Denny’s on Michigan Ave., told us about the activity at the starting line. The owner said, “The ‘leave’ was virtually perfect---both cars moved at the same instant.” He went on to explain that the combination of the greater displacement and the more linear boost from the 6-71 gave the initial advantage to the Camaro. But as the RPM’s climbed, the superior efficiency of the centrifugal supercharger and the flow available through the Roush-sourced NASCAR-type heads gave the upper hand decisively to the Mustang. It was out front before the driver pulled third gear and was a bus-length ahead as he flashed past our position.

Both cars had gathered their ’chutes, turned around and with a single good blast of acceleration had coasted most of the way back to Dix. Willing hands had helped push the cars to where the winches could pull them back onto the trucks. The representatives had completed the money transfer before leaving the finish line area.

As is common in these ‘after-engagement’ sessions, every aspect of the contest was examined at great length. At our table were gathered the owner of the Mustang and the two guys who make up his regular crew, as well as the driver (a friend of the owner), and Wayne and myself.          

In such situations, I commonly sit back and mostly keep my mouth shut. They were all strangers except Wayne, although I’d got to know the owner to a certain extent during the afternoon’s thrash. I found myself, with the part of my brain not following the flow of conversation, mulling over the sociological aspects of our activities as I kept my hands and mouth busy with a ‘Super Bird’ and a Coke. Somehow, these occasions always call for a ‘Super Bird’ and a Coke---it’s either habit or something deeply buried in my psyche. Oh, Well.

One of the things Wayne told me during our discussion on the way from my shop was that the Camaro was a toy for an upper-management doper who goes by the street-name of ‘Chubs’. When the money is coming in as fast as it does with drugs, it’s fairly common locally to have this sort of hobby.

The results of a race are all over the community by the next day and such antics become part of the legend these guys seek to have surrounding themselves. A race car such as the Mustang, or for that matter the Camaro, will cost at least a hundred thousand dollars, and can easily enough go far beyond the hundred thou, particularly if one considers the ancillary expense for the support vehicle and the parts and equipment necessary to do the maintenance.

Please understand, though, that it’s entirely possible to win more than that amount in one season---in fact, although this was a new car in its first trip out into competition, the owner stated that he’d, “Made the racing pay for itself for the last six years.” He said it with the kind of grin on his face that made it a certainty that he was being at least somewhat modest.

On the other hand, because it takes money to begin to compete in this kind of endeavor, if the source isn’t some illicit enterprise it may somehow actually grow out of a full-time business. Therefore I roused myself to ask, “How’d you get started in this stuff?”

He replied, “I first discovered drag racing when I was a kid, and with only a little observation found out that there were, at that time, virtually no ‘persons of color’, like myself, involved. Then I did enough background reading to find out about Stone, Woods, and Cook---the famous ‘gas-class’ drag-race team from back in the ’sixties.

“Since the spectators only saw the driver, Doug ‘Cookie’ Cook, who was white; most never realized that the two guys who built and owned the car were both (here with a grin) ‘Black Like Me’. So I decided that I’d become an owner, and because their best car was a Mustang, that’s what I wanted.

“I own a tree service---we do specialty arboreal work and other landscaping in the warm weather, and snow plowing in the winter. It didn’t take very many years before I had enough money to be able to do what I’d wanted. I got a Mustang and began to make it faster and faster. Finally, I got to the place where I decided to have this car built, and here we are!”

I responded, “Well, if tonight is any indication of what you have in your future, you’re going to be very successful.”

“Thanks, and by the way, here’s a little ‘thank you’ for your efforts this afternoon.” He handed me a fold of hundreds, and I, with the same air of ‘this is an ordinary situation, like paying for lunch’, stuck it, with a nod of acknowledgement, in my pocket without counting.

He continued, “There was twenty thousand on the table tonight, and Jerry, here---(indicating the driver)---says the car felt much more responsive than it did at Milan three days ago.

“You must have found the problem. I had no idea that it took that size of cable to make a good ground.”

I replied, “If you were running a more conventional combination, with the sort of ignition that we used a few years ago, and a pair of carburetors, what you had would undoubtedly have done fine. Most people, even if they sorta understand, don’t really realize that with a negative ground system such as cars use these days, the spark actually travels from the ground to the ‘hot’ side and not the other way around. If you don’t have enough ground capacity, you’re ‘choking’ everything else you’re doing, with all your electrical systems.

What I did this afternoon really just gave the rest of the equipment enough of a beginning electrical ‘path’ to be sure it could do its job.”

“Well, it certainly seemed to have worked. Is everybody done? I got a business to tend to in the morning!” And with that, we departed in several directions. I rode with Wayne, having left Orca at his place.

When I got back to the (undisturbed) shop, I found a message on the box to call Tom in the morning. And another, from Annie, telling me in great detail, what she intended to do to my body---and what she expected in return---when we got back together. She surely is highly inventive.

She must have called right after our conversation on my cell ’phone. She finished by saying “Good night” one more time. So I climbed into an empty bed and tried to put her highly graphic images out of my mind in order to go to sleep. It finally worked.