We woke up today to even more rain.  Great.  Cold and rainy, we made our way to Alliant Energy Center and as I mentioned yesterday, the weather did not deter ANYONE from making it out.  Once the rain let up, we walked around and checked out some of the other participants including a gorgeous Buick Riviera, a dialed in Cuda, and ANOTHER Pacer.  That makes three friggen Pacer’s on the Power Tour…but ours became the first to drag race!

We set out single file after the driver’s meeting and it was a parade as we left.  Police blocked off intersections for us and locals parked and waved as we drove by.  Our first stop was at NASCAR’s number 17 Matt Kenseth’s fan showroom just outside of Madison.  Here’s a little view of the traffic:

We set out single file after the driver’s meeting and it was a parade as we left.  Police blocked off intersections for us and locals parked and waved as we drove by.  Our first stop was at NASCAR’s number 17 Matt Kenseth’s fan showroom just outside of Madison.  Here’s a little view of the traffic:

We passed through a little town called Cambridge, WI in which we really felt like celebrities.  People lined the streets hootin’ and hollerin’, all jazzed up the tour.  Shenanigans ensued when by standers through water on the street and “convinced” drivers to “light ‘em up”.  The police put a swift end to that as we got a stern talking to from one of Cambridge’s finest (thank god he let us off with a warning).  The best part was that we didn’t even do a burn out, the Pacer’s just so friggen loud the 5-O just assumed we were up to no good.

The optional stop of the day was in Union Grove at Great Lakes Dragway.  We HAD to run the Pacer to see what she’d pull…however the biggest issue was the it had rained earlier and while they dried the track, nobody could really get their cars to hook up.  My dad’s best time today was a 14 flat, but the tires spun through 3rd, so if he could have gotten any traction it would have been much better.  With a bit more tweaking, mid to low 13’s should be easy.  We look forward to Bristol where more drag strip fun should be plentiful.  I’ll have a video up of today’s 14 run tomorrow.

Due to the popularity of the drag strip, we really got held up and didn’t make it into Racine until 4:30 or so.  By that point, things were so huge that I didn’t stand a prayer of seeing everything.  I walked around a bit, but our stomachs were growling and we had some serious bench racing to do over some steaks.  Ryan, I’m hoping you got some good stuff today, because I had too much fun at the dragstrip to get enough shots of stuff.

Now, here’s where the Power Tour gets fun.  When we parked the car in Racine, we saw that the front camber on the wheels of the Pacer was way off.  We’ve been battling this ever since we lowered the car, and it looks like we’re going to have to do something about it if we want to save the brand new Kumho’s up front.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to skip the driver’s meeting tomorrow to find a suspension shop, but it shouldn’t slow us down too much.

Tags: Car, hot rod, power tour, show