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On the starting line of the Nascar track at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Yes that is a Cop behind me. We were getting ready for a photoshoot and I guess they wanted to make sure we weren't going to take a "Lap" around the track.
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2100 MILES....Our Journey begins..NOW!
Javier and I knew a month in advance my Skyline was accepted as an "extra" in an upcoming movie to be filmed in L.A., so we frantically worked on all the bugs my car had not to mention my engine was freshly rebuilt and had not been test run yet. To add to my stress Javier had a vacation scheduled for 8 days before we are supposed to leave. My car still needed the MSD 6AL installed and other minor things I completed while he was gone. Poor Javier and his girlfriend heard from me 2 or 3 times a day for advice. Well, two days before departure day he returned and he began his magic and within hours the car was ready for the trip.
9PM October 9th we began our trip and boy were we excited. I drove straight thru to ElPaso, I think around 24 hours then got a room. All went well so far.
The next morning we noticed we had a low trailer tire. We found a local tire shop and had the tire repaired and
bought a used rim and tire as backup. Yes, call me stupid, I forgot to pack a spare. I had three spares for my truck but forgot the trailer. DUH! With a loss of about two hours we were finally on the road again. We were in the mountains in New Mexico and the low tire on the trailer let go so violently it shook the Dually too. There was nothing left of the tire. In less than 20 minutes we had the spare on and now looking for another shop to buy another tire. The shop we found just gave us a tire which looked like new at no cost. WOW! Thanks! The rest of our trip was uneventfull and made it in to SanDiego about 9PM that night. 48 hours pulling a trailer isn't bad, I guess. We stayed for two days at a friends house doing final prep and engine tuning before taking my car to L.A. and turning it over to Universal Studios. The trip from San Diego to L.A. took about hour and a half I think, and we got many thumbs up from people going to work. One guy, whom looks Chinese was real excited and gave us his number while driving and told us to call him because he had the same car....well that didn't go over very well, ends up he had a 74/75 right hand drive celica with no motor??? Anyway..we arived at the set and off loaded the car and started to detail it. Many other cars already showed up and was beginning the in-processing. It was a pretty long process. We were givin a number and had to line up for paperwork and a photoshoot, for insurance reasons. It was my turn to drive up to the line and my clutch went out. DAMN! The movie consultant ran over and saw that I was stressing and beginning to panic and re-assured me that my car was here to stay, even if they had to push it in place. The stress was instantly gone. The problem was the clutch fluid was so dirty that it clogged up the mastercylinder. Javier did a fluid "transfusion" and it cured the problem, well 60%. The mastercylinder is most likely original and is beginning to fail. You have to pump the clutch pedal two or three times then you can throw it in gear. After the pics were taken and paperwork signed I had to give it to a guy at a table in which was the "Movie Car Producer". When he saw the word "Pensacola" he stood up and asked me if I was the one who trailered his car from Florida. When I said yes he shook mine and Javiers hand then asked us to come back later to hang out with him. Well, we actually got to hang out with him for the next week. It was awesome. We got to hang at the 100' X 200' shop where they put together the cars for the movies. If I could legally tell you all the things we saw there you'd be amazed. Every time we took pictures we were approached by someone telling us we weren't allowed to. The producer backed them off. I will post more later.
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Hotel we stayed at in ElPaso
Javier doing some fine tuning with the wiring harness.
Signal Auto is just one of many performance shops we visited during our stay. I must say I was expecting a much larger shop. Notice the R32 in the bay.