(Words and Photos by Matt Graves/American Powertrain) – First a little apology to some Bangshifters that came by our booth today and our man Josh didn’t know about the password. I guess he thought some of you where crazy telling him he looked shifty. I had walked away to work the stage for awhile and never mentioned to him what was going on. So it’s my fault! But man I would have loved to have secretly videoed the reaction of both parties during the password exchange. On to the update.

The Edsel wagon is running so smooth that now we are trying to find something wrong with it. So we did. The stupid suspension is making us drift all over the road to the point of extreme fatigue trying to hold it in the road. We are going to leave early for Stillwater in the morning and it’s off to an alignment shop. No way I am driving this beast home to Tennessee 1000 more miles with trying to act like a dirt track car turning itself into a turn. Other than that the TREMEC T5 and 302 are humming right along. No over heating or leaks of any kind KNOCK ON WOOD…

The state of Missouri rules. It’s the gateway to the west and has some of the coolest Route 66 country side you will ever see. It’s a perfect state to have a Powertour route. Just enough southern roots (yes we southerners consider Missouri a southern state) to still land you some descent sweet tea and BBQ. It also has some downright buried car treasure out there. We found it today. While we are blasting through the country side in the Edsel I hear “STOP THE CAR IT’S A FIELD FULL OF MOPARS!!!” from Josh our resident Mopar freak. Gray who is also a Mopar freak yells “GO BACK “at me. So I turn us around and as we pull up I see that while there are just a couple of Dodges in the front it’s not really a field full of Mopars but a field full of oddities.  Bring in Bill’s Garage. Bill is a country side collector of all types of cars and trucks. Him and his gang of pals sit around all day and tinker on their rust heaps. All while we gasped in awe in the treasures they had. We pull up and ask them politely if we could mill around in their field and they were more than happy to oblige. Especially after I donated a few American Powertrain hats. He had tons of heavy duty truck cabs, old Suburbans, Chevy wagons and Jeep trucks. I would have to drag Brian Lohnes out of here kicking and screaming if he seen this place. He even had some homemade roadster contraption. Apparently some project that washed out and never moved from the day it was parked some 30 years ago or more.

After finally leaving Bill’s joint we join back up with the boys at TREMEC to get some more people entered into our contest. Make sure to come by the TREMEC and American Powertrain booth and enter to win our transmission contest. On Friday in Arlington we will be giving somebody a 5 or 6-speed of your choice with all the parts from American Powertrain to help you install it in whatever you have.

Don’t forget the password people…”You guys look shifty” see you there….enjoy the pics. Mad Matt