Friday, July 27, 2018

Myrtle and the Gambler

       December 27, 2017, I suppose that was when this started. PK (Piston Kristin) sent me a message on Facebook, I immediately agreed to the terms, from that point on we were Gamblin'.
       For the uninitiated, The Gambler 500 is  an off road challenge. The rules, what few there are, are not enforced, because most people who attend this sort of event understand the concept of the honor system. The idea is to race 500 miles in $500 cars. Its called the gambler because its kind of a gamble to take a 500 dollar car to Taco Bell, let alone Parker, AZ. Try to stick to the route that is provided, dont show up in a super expensive car, and make friends and help out your fellow racers. Its a good time. There is no prize. This would be Arizona's first Gambler, and we had 5 months to get ready.
       So step one was to find a car. PK left this pretty heavily in my hands. 500 bucks was the budget and we didn't want a sedan (because nobody wants a sedan, it really is the the embodiment of indecisiveness and boredom). So I looked around for a cheap 4x4 or old pickup, but after searching awhile it became pretty clear that most 500 dollar 4x4's were 500 dollars for a reason. So i kinda went the other direction with it. Figuring if a car cost about 1500 bucks brand new, then a 500 dollar version probably still has a little life left in it. Took afew days on Craigslist, but that line of thinking eventually led us to Myrtle...........






       PK called her Myrtle on the first day, I dont know why, but it stuck, and because she is kinda slow and turtle shaped, it fits. Anyway, Myrtle is a 1990 Geo Metro. Myrtle sports a 1.0L inline 3 cylinder engine. Wikipedia tells me that that is good for about 55 HP and 58 Lbs/Ft of torque. And, honestly, id bet she was making pretty close to that. Clyde, (the old guy we bought it from) assured us the motor and trans only had about 54k on it and honestly, despite looking like shit, she ran really really good. Clyde was some sort of bizarre metro enthusiast, he had several half built metros laying all over the place and could tell you way more about Geo Metros than you ever wanted to know. He was very enthusiastic about the idea of the gambler and had lots of stories about rally racing Nissan's back on the east coast in his younger years. He gave us afew pointers, threw in an extra set of wheels and happily lightened PK's pocket of 500 bucks. We had a race car.

       When we got Myrtle home, I set about the task of removing all unnecessary items. Geo had already done a pretty good job of that back in 1990 but creature comforts such as glass, upholstery, air conditioning, and interior plastics, these are unbecoming a gambler. The end game here was to get it as light as possible while also making room for all the gear we would eventually be carrying. It didnt take all that long to get the thing torn apart. At this point I was kinda thinking that Geo Metro's were not made with durability in mind. I would come to find that I was wrong on that one.






       Over the next couple months we would be getting Myrtle ready for race day. Cutting weight, welding bumpers, adding tow points, bypassing systems and generally making Myrtle function as simply as possible. The A/C was deleted, another cooling fan was added, and artificial grass soon lined the interior. The astroturf was added because it looked cool and I had alot of it laying around, but we would come to find it helped abit with sound dampening. We also added fresh tires and sweet paint job, so by the time race day rolled around, Myrtle was really strutting her stuff. Myrtle also received a 2 inch suspension lift via some junkyard springs from a later model sedan.












April 15th, Race Day. We started off from the house early due to an abundance of caution. As it turns out, this was unfounded. Myrtle carried us dutifully to the start line and we even had time for PK to stop and take abunch of pictures,



    The race got started. We were the second car out of the gate and PK was driving like the embodiment of insanity. Seriously, scared the shit out of me. We did not know what to expect out of the race course, and as we later found out, neither did the race organizers. Apparently they had only really scouted out about 50% of the course, with the other half being comprised of best guesses from google earth. I would complain, but seriously, we be gamblin'. Needless to say, things were not always smooth sailing. There were some pretty washed out sections and most vehicles did not come anywhere close to completing the first day. But with Myrtle's sturdy Korean construction, PK's excellent interpretation of Newtons first law, and alittle help from our new buddies from Utah, we successfully made it to Parker before sunset.











    The next day found us pretty ate up, I dont know how PK slept inside her mansion, that she easily could have parked Myrtle inside of, but I was pretty fuckin sore in the morning. Regardless, Myrtle was ready to roll and we had to get moving before ......i dont know, we figured we would end up walking eventually so an early start seemed advisable. 

    Day two was alittle more sketchy and there are indeed fewer pictures, Myrtle started having some pretty serious issues maintaining speed around noon and we were forced to begin some pretty bizzare routines to keep her running, ill spare you the details, ultimately we nursed her home, but it was pretty marginal for abit. We ended up abandoning the race course about halfway through the second day and making our way back on paved roads. Which was kind of an adventure in itself. 
     In Conclusion, we made it back, Myrtle still lives, we will be using her for next years gambler and it was a complete fucking blast. The End

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