The Rest of the Story

When we had our engine problem in Millington Tennessee near Memphis and ended up in the third auto parts store we finally came up with a name of a local mechanic who took our call on a Sunday late afternoon.  His name is Keith Taylor who has a one man shop called Accurate Auto Repair.  Keith talked with me on the phone and quizzed me on what we had already checked and mentioned other items to check.  After we finished the call and went back to working at the car, the counterman came out to the parking lot and said Keith called back and to send us out to his shop.  He had been there all day helping a friend work on his own car.

We followed the directions and found his shop.  As we were pulling up outside the garage he motioned us to pull right inside.  We got out of the car to meet Keith and he said let the car sit and come on back and have dinner with him and his wife before we got started. 

After eating we started on trying to diagnose our miss.  After checking a few items Keith was able to determine we had two dead cylinders and found two broken valve springs and a bent valve.  Knowing the cylinder head had to come off, it was time to call it a night and attack the job in the morning.  Keith's wife took us up to the nearby motel and Keith said he would pick us up in the morning.   The next morning after pulling the head off and confirming the problem we headed off to nearby Memphis to Comp Cams to get the valve springs and valve that we needed.  Off to the Chevy dealer for a head gasket.  After that we next visited a friend of Keith's at the local machine shop to fit the valve and install the valve and springs.  With all that we headed back to the shop to start reassembling everything.

Thanks to Keith we got everything back together, did a test drive and were able to head on down the road 450 miles to Atlanta Motorsports Park near Dawsonville, Georgia.  Actually we were headed to a motel near the track to get a little sleep, very little sleep since we didn't arrive at the motel until after 2 am.

Keith really went above and beyond in helping us get back on the road with One Lap of America.  Kudos also to my Transit Driver Shane for helping work on the car.  At one time Keith, Shane and I were all under the car muscling the exhaust back into place.  As it turned out we only lost one day of competition but it added up to four events and put us way behind our goal of a top 20 finish.