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Fact is, and here is a tip for you novice dragster owners, Fran went down to the local Home Depot and bought a dozen spray cans of gray metalflake paint, and we're now spraying the whole frame gray. The tip is this: old timers like myself learned to paint the frame of a dragster in spray paint, because that way, if the paint gets chipped off during some mad thrash at the track, you can easily touch it up with another can of (cheap) said paint easily, and not have to take the car down to your local painter for the touch-up. Make sense?

We'll have to "de-Hobbs" the dragster further, with new wiring, a new shifter and a recertification of the roll cage, since the previous owner chopped off the old cage and welded on a newer, wider one. We learned that Hobbs ran some 6.80s at Putt Putt Bush in the 2,800-pound Nova, compared to some 6.60s with Fran behind the wheel and our trusty 355 under the Harwood fiberglass hood. You figure it out yourself -- if the old bracket racing equation is true, that 100 pounds of car weight equals a tenth, the 1,400-pound dragster should be running 5.60s by the time summer rolls around and the Suncoast car is ready for competition. Not bad for a small small-block Chevy on 114-octane gas, with a stock crank and "good" factory rods.

Alcohol is down the road.

We're now left with one problem -- where to put my front-engine dragster AND Fran's Suncoast and how to get both to the race track at the same time.

That problem leads to others. For one, my front-engine dragster is not built yet. We have all the pieces necessary -- Mickey Thompson slicks, Dedenbear electronics, B&M blower, shifter and trans cooler, a complete Barry Grant alcohol system, complete Auto Meter monitoring gauges, MSD 7 AL 2 ignition, Wilwood two-disc brakes, Strange rear end, and other items -- but as of early June, not a piece of tubing has been bent. We're looking at a late summer eighth-mile debut.

The car will be 200 inches long and will copy the designs of an NHRA A/Nostalgia Dragster, except it will be Barry Grand carbureted, B&M-blown and will carry a Dedenbear delay box and electric-driven B&M Pro Bandit shifter. Slicks are Mickey Thompson 11.5x29.5x15s, the same as what I ran on my first front- engine dragster 20-something years ago. Tommy Harris of Fabrication Concepts near Douglasville, Georgia will do the building.

The problem comes in when we try to fit two dragsters into one 24-foot trailer. I don't think it can be done. That may mean another trailer (Sigh! -- more $$$!). Oh, and I forgot one thing: your DragRacingOnline.com editor, Jeff Burk, has promised me use of his '49 Crosley body for the dragster. Remember those old AA/Competition, A/ and B/Competition coupes and sedans, those dragsters with bodies, from the 1960s? That's the look I'll be following. A friend of mine in St. Petersburg also has a Bantam coupe body that we may use, and good friend Richard Earle may do the fiberglass work.

But all that's all right. Problems are meant to be worked out. Just look at what motorcycle builder Jesse James does every week on the "Monster Garage" TV show. If he can mount a hot dog cart behind a front- motored dragster,as he did recently, I'm sure we can figure out how to stick a Crosley body on a 200-inch FED and shove both it and a 210-inch Suncoast rear-engine dragster in a trailer.

The U.S. Marines say it best -- "Overcome, adapt, improvise." Take that to the track the next time you go racing.