any midnight thrash story's pre bug-in night

[danny gabbard]

everybody has got to have one

[Rick Meredith]

The auto parts store I worked at took inventory every 6 months. Coincidently it always happened on the Friday before Bug-In. So I put in a 12 hour day on Friday counting auto parts. I came home at about 8:30. The motor was completely dissassembled to the point where the rods weren't on the crank... pistons weren't on the rods.

When I got home, I started working on the car. I worked on it until about 3 am. I got up at 7am Saturday morning and started wrenching. I worked until 7 am Sunday morning, fired up the '67 and drove it the 8 miles to OCIR. I don't know how many DKK members flowed through my garage in the day and a half but it was many. I remember at one point having 4 different things going on at the same time. It was crazy. In a 60 hour period I slept 4 hrs. and did 36 hours with out sleeping. I was a zombie at Bug-In but I had made it. Got home at about 7:00 pm and slept until noon the next day.

The joy of being young and foolish! 

[danny gabbard]

I was puttin notch back together, new motor,tran's alloy's. Some of the boyz from DKK were over helping and maybe drinking, It was kinda funny everybody had there own little job even the wife she was painting the exaust. well any way we were all takeing a brake well into the night, we were standing around shooting the shit and nobody new were randy was, well he had fell a sleep under car detailing part's good time's they all were. shit randy and I still hang out tring to keep each other from buying more vws. the addiction huh...

[Speed-Randy]

i remember that night(most of it anyways). there might have been a few cocktails and party favors to get it done,but it got finished and was definitly worth it. that was a very nice car. hey danny, was that my decklid in the pics of ricks notch. thats definitly the garage floor i was sleeping(past out) on that night. by the way i just found another super clean vw if you're interested. randy
p.s. thanks for turning me on to this site

[Rennsurfer]

Dang, I'm rather impressed that any of you can actually remember that stuff. For me, the only memories were staying up for two days straight, workin' on my car and other peoples'. For one Bug-In, I was working at Steve's Foreign Car Parts (Beck-Arnley store that's now Bill & Steve's VW Parts) and the owner was cool enough to let me drop my engine two days before the show... in his shop! I ordered a stock firewall cover and wanted to clean the undercarriage and engine compartment. That year, I got a lotta work done to the car, 'cause there was no one in the shop but me. He'd let me work there real late, after hours. That was a three day ordeal that's still a blur to me.

I was never a coffee drinker or did drugs... but during those nights, I'd be on a few cups of coffee and a few times, even took No-Doz. Which is SCARY, because I already have in intense energy level and high metabolism. My family cracked up at us for being so passionate about our cars. But they knew I was better off doing that as opposed to doing a lot worse things. Let's hear some more stories. Mine are boring, 'cause all I did was clean my car or McNew's.

[deano]

Remember those nights well. Was working part-time at Fleming & Aronson (on Howell Street) at the time, and when all the Bugs were detailed and ready to roll, the guys all put their car covers over them until the next morning. Looking back, there was Tar Babe, Jim Holmes' car, Dave Patrick's yellow gasser, and Mark Thurber's cars all in the shop at the same time. I also recall some late night dyno sessions with Tar Babe's engine before a big race. Yanking the heads, changing slipper skirt 88s on the dyno, trying different jetting combos... on and on. One night, Greg was making dyno pulls about 11:30pm, and the phone rang. We were affraid that it was the cops telling us to knock it off, but it turned out to be Mark Thurber. He was at home, miles away, and thought he heard the sound of a high-rpm engine, figured it had to be Greg's engine. It was! Back then, we worked towards two big dates a year; April Bug-In and October Bug-In.