Amateur Hour: Sometimes a Temper Tantrum Solves Everything
I walked halfway down my driveway, then set a modern record for hurling a Ford Motorsports finned aluminum valve cover into Langport Road, where it missed a landscaping truck, bounced twice, then collided with the far gutter. “Had your little fun, did you?” I screamed. “Not so funny now, huh?” At some point, my voice broke and I was croaking a susurrate whizzing hiss mixed with atomized spit.
My girlfriend, Denise Wigor, witnessed this display. “The neighbors,” she said.
I told her what the neighbors could do. I was still conjuring complicated F-bomb gerunds as I addressed the valve cover again: “Have a good life in the Franklin County dump, pal. Hope you enjoy the diarrhea-soaked Pampers.”
I don’t recall Denise saying goodbye.
![Boss 302 Mustang front three quarter color](https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2024/08/phillips0004-scaled-e1724249244605-1024x715.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=447&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640)
That scrap of shamefulness followed my first serious DIY automotive project. I had bent a couple pushrods in a solid-lifter 1970 Mustang Boss 302—missed shifts, I’m assuming, because I’d just detached the Motorcraft rev limiter, which I felt a certain Dearborn engineer had installed to insult my testicles. Then I lashed the valves, following vague instructions in Hot Rod magazine. I slathered Mr. Gasket goop on both sides of the valve-cover gaskets—strings of it drooling onto my new Hooker headers—and wrenched down the bolts with, oh, I don’t know, roughly the same torque specified for the four-bolt mains. I should have witnessed the aluminum flanges cracking. What I witnessed instead, upon start-up, was two quarts of Castrol jetting onto the headers, igniting a blaze that at least carbonized off the scarlet Mr. Gasket stains. There might have been some other issues.
After that? I treated aluminum with the respect I afforded my mother on her 70th birthday. I later unbolted an aluminum cam cover and wrapped it in a feather-plumped Eddie Bauer vest so it would feel good about itself.
This was a half-century ago. There was no Google back then, only Barney Google, who was a cartoon, just like my mechanical skills. And the Chilton books offered nothing useful on Cleveland-head canted-valve small-blocks owned by entitled teenage sons of Midwest defense lawyers.
![302 Boss Mustang racing action black white](https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2024/08/phillips0002-scaled-e1724249187175-1024x819.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=512&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640)
So, I was entirely self-taught, even as I began rebuilding the engine after every race. Seriously, how hard could it be? To which I received the cosmos’s molten reply when I installed—all at the same time—a General Kinetics camshaft with more lift than a Wonderbra; a costly dual-point Mallory distributor; and twin Stewart-Warner electric fuel pumps. When I lit off that deranged Rubik’s Cube of time/space continuum—using a faulty timing light, of course—scientists in Greenwich lost 13 minutes on their atomic clock. It was vivid, especially when the 850-cfm Holley pulled a full Old Faithful, by which I mean individual blazing Walden Ponds of Sunoco 260 atop my prized Shelby intake manifold, which that week I’d polished to Hall of Mirrors sheen but thereafter resembled a festival of black scabs. Plus, another header fire, although by then such nether-region blazes didn’t concern me. My dad glimpsed me holding the garden hose. “Everything OK out there?” he asked, although he knew enough not to await an answer.
In fairness, I was 17. The only actual training I had received on any topic was 20th-century British literature. Nobody I knew owned a full set of Craftsman sockets. Every twiglet of my mechanical knowledge derived from Jegs—the original store in Columbus, Ohio, with redheaded Jeg Coughlin fussing at the flow bench. I’d corner any Jeggy salesman too slow-witted to flee. “How do torque wrenches work?” “How come hex-head bolts can’t be loosened with a flat-blade screwdriver?” “What if I wired a radiator fan atop the carb?”
I warped one of the Boss’ cylinder heads. Well, more than one. “I might need a head job,” I informed my Jegs consultant, having heard customers asking for valve jobs. He stared, lit a cigarette, began to speak, stopped, then said, “I’ll be right back.” But he wasn’t.
See, what happened: First there was that radical cam, then 12:1 Holman & Moody pistons, shaved deck heights, and valve springs so stiff they’d be appropriate on a Caterpillar D9. Did I mention this was all my own top-secret recipe for speed? I actually knew enough to test this pressurized pipe bomb before towing it 400 miles to Mosport. And guess what? The Boss banged off a 13.3 quarter-mile at National Trail Raceway. There’s me, king of the DIYers, hoisting a 3.2 percent Pabst. So how come my chrome-yellow Boss squeezed out a head gasket during practice? Also on lap five?
![302 Boss Mustang racing action color high angle](https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2024/08/phillips0003-scaled-e1724249219419-1024x799.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=499&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640)
Back at Jegs, where I was floating a four-digit debit courtesy of my dad’s possibly expired Diners Club card, the salesman had news: copper head gaskets. Six pairs. “Ain’t meltin’ them bastards,” he assured, blowing a blue plume of Benson & Hedges through my Keith Richards sideburns. The gaskets resembled something Cartier might sell out of a chrome display case.
Cartier or not, they failed, of course, in a tsunami of steam at the Moss Corner, in what was supposed to be a three-hour race with my best friend Bill Adam co-driving. I drove an extra lap to punish the gaskets, then chiseled them off in the paddock. Which enabled me to insert one arm into gasket cylinder-hole one and the other in cylinder-hole four and stretch the thing into coppery trapezoidal Guggenheim shapes while lacerating and burning both biceps. “You drew a small crowd,” Bill later informed me when my blood pressure had ceased melting its own gaskets. “You said something about Mr. Coughlin.”
![302 Boss Mustang rear three quarter black white](https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2024/08/phillips-scaled-e1724249261368-1024x678.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=424&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640)
I should have quit. Instead, I learned to change head gaskets in 90 minutes, right there in Canada’s dirtiest paddock. Which is how a guy named Brian Burgess found himself grasping the Boss’ high-capacity coil while I bumped the starter to locate top dead center. From all available evidence—I mean, from where Brian landed in the dirt—I killed him. “Oh, grow up, he’s fine,” said Bill. “Just drag him out of that puddle.”
Brian mutely stared at the sun for 10 minutes, then valiantly shuffled off my mortal coil, a comeback line I conjured only a year later because the Mustang had liquefied my brain.
For 54 years, Bill and I have remained close. Yet here’s how he initiates most of our conversations: “Hey, uh, listen, you OK?”
So, by all means, do it yourself. Even better, consider doing it without yourself.
![302 Boss Mustang front cornering action black white](https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2024/08/phillips0001-scaled-e1724249281596-1024x824.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=515&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640)
That body style looked so good in Boss form.
One of the first tasks in my wrenching career was learning to control the temper. The thing you throw in anger is probably something you need, or it’s going to hit something you need… and once you lose composure, it usually takes hours to get it back, and that usually doesn’t fit the project timeline
Yeah, technically speaking, “a temper tantrum” actually solves nothing – but it can sure make for some interesting stories afterward! 😁
They sure do. I had the Bendix on my Ford starter motor go bad once, so I bought another and tried to install it. It wouldn’t fit. I lost my temper and destroyed the starter with a 48 oz ball peen.
Sears auto was a few blocks away and they sold rebuilt starters, so off I went, carrying the pieces of my so-called “core” in a box. The look on the young clerk’s face when she opened the box was priceless! I was out of there before she thought to call a manager.
My very first wrenching job was in a VW shop, being drafted into it by the owner, to whom I owed a favor. 3 months into training something slipped, I hurt my hand. and tossed his new Snap-on ratchet through a closed window. He very calmly handed me a ruler to measure the glass and sent me to the hardware store for glass and putty – using my own money, of course. And of course, he clocked me out for the rest of the day. Lesson learned, never did that again
Dad taught me a lot;
1. sometimes righty tighty and lefty loosey are not correct.
2. Hold this sparkplug and plugwire while your brother Kickstarts the dirt bike. See that’s spark.
3. If I ever see you throw my tools you’ll never see what hits you.
4. Sometimes you have to get mad and call it a son of a bitch and the bolt will come loose.
By the time I was ten I was taught not to throw things in anger. You just do more damage you have to deal with.
The real thing was I learned later on not to kick empty boxes in anger. It may have a control arm and break your toe.
Oof. That’s a hard way to learn a lesson.
They have a term today emotional Intelligence. The sooner you get it the better off you and your wallet become.
Back in the day they just called it putting your big boy pants on
emotional Intelligence. Hyper, Remember the guy that called in claiming it was the company’s fault that he broke the camshaft bolts on his install? He was really off the hook.
This is brilliant, relatable writing and hilarious! More Please!!!
Ahhh, the mindless exuberance of our youths. Thanks John for another gem. Always enjoy your perspective on the automotive world.
So you “did a Basil Fawlty” with the valve cover?
Let’s all remember that the word “Amateur” literally means “do it out of love”.
Really.
John, your story absolutely resonates with me.
I admit significant guilty pleasure from the pain. I blame the writing!
God do I miss reading John’s articles! Every single word along with the humor that reinforces how much this story relates to my early days of car ownership!
So whatever happened to Denise Wigor?
She married a mild mannered dentist that always drove leased Hondas.
John, we were under the impression that you had wondered off the planet to “40 Miles West of Nowhere.” So what brings you back to Grosse Pointe Michigan, did the many ways the wilderness can kill you not work? 😁😁
I’ve always been a yeller-generally laced with profanity-but have never been a thrower.
Decades ago 80s friend could not get his radio to fit into the single din he took a hammer to it. Yup