As lots of you already know, the Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour will be kicking off in less than a week and the Roadkill guys have been literally working 20 hours a day to build the 1955 Chevy of Mike Finnegan’s dreams. The gasser style car is powered by a 530 (or so) cubic inch Hemi that makes 700hp and is hooked to a six speed manual transmission. It wears a flat black vinyl wrap and the name Blasphemi down the rear quarter panels. By all accounts the car is sweet, but the guys spend a week on it at 20 hours a day to get the thing done, so a cross country trip when it wasn’t even running a couple days ago is a dicey proposition for us mere mortals but for the Roakill crew, it was like they were going to do their job.
The Roadkill Facebook page is one of the central hubs of contact with the boys but they also have a cool Glympse going where you can look in on them live to see their location, current speed, and whether or not buzzards are plucking their bleached bones in the desert. You know, fun stuff! As we type this, the pair is making some 85-MPH through the Kingman, Arizona area on US 40. The plan appears to be that the guys will take 40 clear across the country. If you live along the route, they’d love to meet up and say hello so pay attention to glymspe and Facebook.
One interesting thing is that the car will only be at the Painless Performance kickoff party as Finnegan has a family commitment that will take him from the tour after that. So if you want to see this puppy in person, you’ll need to get yourself over to US 40 and pay attention to the Glympse site that you stuck us on this year.
CLICK THE IMAGE BLOW TO VISIT GLYMPSE AND SEE THE ROADKILL GUYS MAKING TRACKS ACROSS AMERICA –
As much as the speed is varying, they must be using the old “Pizza Pocket Cruise Control” (developed by Chuck Hansen and Jeff Smith (if memory serves) in the old Car Craft “Americruise” Camaro . . . .)
Or maybe the “Roadkill Dog” (can’t remember its name) doesn’t lay across the “foot feed” consistently enough.
Care to elaborate on this? Or should I not even ask…
Back in the Petersen publishing days (when ad sales made budgets bigger), Car Craft magazine built a screamin’ yellow Gen II Camaro, powered by an SBC with a B&M mini-Roots blower. It had a Porsche-style “whaletail” spoiler . . . but no cruise control.
In 1986, CC ran a long series of stories about various CC staffers cruising the Camaro around the USA, relay-style, called “Americruise” (that was before Rod & Custom stole the name for their own purposes).
A sidebar to one of the Americruise installments detailed the invention of the “Pizza Pocket Cruise Control” . . .
Somewhere in the desolate high plains, the CC “drifters” discovered a truck-stop “pizza pocket” that was so cardboard-bad and inedible that the only use for it was to wedge it on top of the accelerator as a makeshift “cruise control.”
Of course such a device would not compensate for speed variations on hills as a real electronic cruise control (or a conscious, sober driver) would . . . Hence the joke about DF and Finn’s speed inconsistency.
And now kids, you know the “rest of the story.”
Roadkill Dog is just “Dog” IIRC
I can’t believe the little webcast is so sleep-inducing that I apparently forgot their dog’s name is “Dog!”
Why are the boys at Westside Lilo’s Café ,when the Roadkill is right across the street?
Is dog playing the part of “The Girl” in this show?
“The Driver”? “The Mechanic”?
Oh I hope not, I read the screen play and saw the movie…..
YIKES!
Maybe “Roadkill Dog” has one of those traditional St. Bernard barrels around his neck . . . filled with spare coolant for the inevitable overheating scene . . . .
The Mechanic and The Driver really appear to be just Finnegan. He seems to wrench and race the most. Freiburger is kind of The Mastermind.
Freiburger may play the role of instigator more than mastermind…
Driving through Arizona and Oklahoma with open stacks? The hemi will be broken in reeeaaal fast!