2025 Great Race Minneapolis, MN to Irmo, SC

We arrived in Minnesota on Tuesday, June 17th, and the festivities began. We met up with our friends JeanAnn and Gary Martin, and did some exploring around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Wednesday we ran the car, affectionately known as Jane (most of you know this already). In early May, Jane’s transmission was replaced after our Spring warm up rally in Owensboro, Kentucky.

We ran two of the three days in Owensboro and noticed her transmission was not quite right. There was just enough time to change the transmission, and put her on McCollisters Transport truck heading to Minneapolis.

Fortunately for us our dear friends JeanAnn and Gary took care of all of Jane’s logistics. They not only picked her up from the Bobby Knipp’s Jefferson City Transmission in Jefferson City, Kentucky, they also drove her to test out the new trans. After a few test drives, they drove her to the transport truck. We are so lucky to have such good friends.

On Wednesday Jane ran great. We practiced for about a half an hour and then headed back to the hotel. All was good!

Wednesday night we met up with our friends Emily and John Brenengen. Emily was part of our team for our first Great Race in 2014. Boy were we rookies!!!

Emily and John also met us in 2016 when we drove from San Rafael, CA to Moline, IL.

Thursday was a little different day. We registered Thursday morning with the 120 or so other entries in the rally. The rally organizers give us a route to calibrate our speedometers. We headed out after registration and tech to calibrate the speedometer. We made it half way through the calibration run, and had a little glitch. Jane was acting as if the fuel was evaporating (also known as vapor lock). She was not hot, so it didn’t make much sense.

We made it back to the hotel where there are 50 to 100 excellent mechanics. We found our friend Roger Shacket who has a brilliant engineering and mechanical mind. Roger thought it was most likely the electrical fuel pump. That made sense as our fuel pressure was low, so we changed the electrical fuel pump. After changing the fuel pump the pressure went up. We were so excited, it was a relatively quick and easy fix.

We went for a test drive and unfortunately, that was not it. We immediately turned around and went back to the hotel. We then spoke to our friends and mechanics at Mustang Country. They are our regular mechanics and prepare Jane for these events. They suggested we empty the gas tank and take the mesh off the fuel sender unit. They said after you get the fuel out it is a pretty quick fix. It was 4 pm and finding a lift in Minneapolis was going to prove impossible.

We did a little backyard mechanic work and drained the fuel and removed the mesh. The fuel pressure looked even better. We put the car back together, and took her for a test drive.

Once again, no luck. This was not the issue. We found another friend who also races cars. He suggested we change the carburetor. Fortunately, we carry an O’Reilly’s auto store and then some in our trunk. We had a spare carburetor. We changed the carburetor, and took it for a spin. Tah Dah!!! Fixed!!!

We went back out and drove the calibration run. On our second run at it, I suggested we stop for gas because it was getting dark and we were just about finished with our route.

We arrived at the gas station pumped gas, and as we were just about to leave Brad looked under the car. It was leaking fuel! Ugh, here we go again.

We drove back to the hotel and drained the fuel from the car once again.

We reopened the fuel sender area where we had worked earlier, it was leaking like crazy. The gasket was broken.

We were not sure what we were going to do. It was 10pm at that point and we didn’t have a gasket. We were also emotionally drained.

Gary walked outside right when we started draining the car again. Brad and I were both thrilled to see him. He came up with the brilliant idea of making a gasket. He had the material, and we worked on the back of his truck to make a gasket (I was more emotional support and safety making sure he didn’t cut himself).

Anyway if it sounds like a long day, it was!

The great news was we fixed the car and we were going to run “The Trophy Run” on Friday.