Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

July 13, 1999

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Since the last update,we've have been pretty busy with a lot of details.  Keith and I made a trip to Velencia, California, to meet with Dennis and  Lance Junker, owners of AERO Engineering. They have some of the parts we  need to get the F-104 cleaned up and ready for inspection. You can view  information about their company on our sponsor page. They provide aircraft   components for Lockheed, Boeing and several other companies. The three days prior to our trip to Aero Engineering put us at Muroc,  Edwards AFB. I had the pleasure of meeting Major General Reynolds, the Commander of Edwards. We had a very pleasant and lucrative weekend at Edwards AFB with one exception and I'll go into that next. I had planned to build a small 258" chevy to run in the Lakester this year. Unfortunately my pistons never got built so I had to relay on the flathead Ford engine Dave Tatum had built for me last year. Well, that was a bad choice. On Sunday morning, about at the 1 mile, just pulling past 5000 rpm, the engine let go. One of those trick ARP rod bolts broke on the number 4 hole and that started a cascade of things that broke within one second. It filled the pan with parts and what wouldn't fit in the pan made its way out various holes in the side of the block and pan. I was able to save the injection, both heads and the ignition, maybe the oil pump but the pickup is shot and three pistons are useable but all the rods were either bent or broken. The crank is missing a counterweight and the cam is in about 50 pieces. The cylinder walls on four holes exploded so the sleeves aren't even salvageable. Now I'm sitting here without a flathead or a small block chev and Bonneville is creeping up quickly. So who comes along to save the day? Steve Green and his partners, brother Dave and cousin Alex. They have a 355 chev they ran two years ago at Bville and turned 220 in a Vaga. They're going to loan it to me for this year and all it needs is a little freshening up. The record in the C Gas Lakester class is 259 and is held by (go figure!) No Nitro Seth Hammond. Well it all looks good on paper!!!

Back to the F-104. We're still looking for a shop or at least a 60 foot long shelter to put up on my property or at Spanaway Airport. Keith had  purchased 5 acres to put up a shop and build a house but suddenly, 6 months after he purchased the property, the county decided to declare it "wetlands". Now we can't build the shop there so we're back to searching for a place that isn't expensive or so far away as to be impractical. Meanwhile, we're still working on the project with it sitting on the back of a flatbed trailer.

That's it for this edition. Stay tuned for more.

Ed Shadle, Co-owner, Driver, Contemplator

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