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out to Vietnam in 1967, he bought a
brand new ‘67 GT350. His logic was
that if he never made it home from the
war, at least he would have enjoyed his
dream car. Well, he did make it home
and still drives his GT350 today!
Woody and I have done a number
of road trips together, so when I real-
ized I’d have an empty passenger seat
after Fairbanks it was a no-brainer on
who I’d call. Woody flew into the Fair-
banks Airport with his duffle bag and
a package of Fig Newtons, our favorite
road trip food. More on that later.
While in Fairbanks, we were
treated like stars by the antique car
gang. David and Katy had lived in
Fairbanks before moving to Kenai,
and had lots of friends in the old car
community. We were invited to drive
our Cobras in the Gold Rush Days pa-
rade and invited to participate in the
Fairbanks Chapter of the Antique Au-
tomobile Club of America cookout.
There are
LOTS
of old cars and
enthusiasts in Fairbanks and a world-
class antique auto museum, the Foun-
tainhead Auto Museum. Willy Vinton,
the museum’s manager, gave us the
grand tour and allowed me to bring
my Cobra into the museum’s shop to
check on its clutch hydraulics. The
clutch was not operating correctly, but
nothing seemed wrong. I brought
three spare parts with me: spare
clutch master and slave cylinders and
a spare fuel pump; all stowed in the
trunk, just in case.
While in town we went to a Cars
& Coffee event in a Ford dealer’s park-
ing lot. We met an interesting fellow
who drove a 1931 Plymouth rat rod
with an unmuffled V-8. He loved burn-
ing rubber and doing donuts, and later
told us he called it “ripping shitties.”
Interesting new addition to our vocab-
ulary.
My odometer now read 74,048,
meaning we’d driven 763 miles so far.
Driving south from Fairbanks, first on
the Alaska Highway, then on the
Richardson Highway, turned out to be
the most beautiful section of our trip.
It is the more deserted side of the
state, and the scenery is breathtaking.
The roads are also less maintained
than on the Denali Park side of the
state. We saw amazing snow-covered
mountain ranges and glaciers. It was
as though we were able to drive onto
the pages of a
National Geographic
magazine. We stopped often to take
photos of our cars with mountain
ranges in the background.
This was the night a couple of us
stayed in a tent. You see, when I con-
tacted the Denali Highway Cabins
months earlier, they told me only two
cabins were available, but they had
two “glamping” tents we could rent as
well. Since we had two married cou-
ples – Lee and Felicia, and David and
Katy, I made the decision to give each
of them cabins. Dave Wagner got one
tent and Woody and I would share the
second one. It was a chilly evening, in
the 40°s, but the tents were elevated
on wooden platforms and had carpets,
real beds with heavy, wool blankets,
and actual furniture. It was quite com-
fortable and one of the most memo-
rable nights of the trip.
Halfway between the Denali Cab-
ins and Whittier, a very acrid smell
surrounded the car. It didn’t smell like
the chili Woody had last night. It
smelled very electrical, like the trans-
former of a Lionel train set, only on
steroids. There was no industry
nearby and my amp gauge read per-
fectly. Hmmm, wonder what’s going
on? It wouldn’t be long before I would
find out.
Another mile or so, and my car
came to a halt. All four of us pulled
into a handy gravel parking lot and
began to diagnose. Dave Wagner
pulled off the distributor cap and it
was getting plenty of spark to the
points and out of the coil. He removed
the air cleaner. Ah-ha, no fuel. A quick
check of the fuel line revealed that the
fuel pump wasn’t pumping.
As opposed to most Cobras, mine
had an electric fuel pump that was in-
stalled in the trunk, probably fifty
years ago. Dave took out his tool bag
and went to work like a NASCAR crew
member. He removed the pump and
installed the spare I had recently pur-
chased. Good thing, because there was
probably not an auto parts store for
100 miles. After the repair was made,
I noticed the odometer reading was
The SHELBY AMERICAN
This was the only area we encountered mosquitos. On this night the Rice/Karpik family
and the Crosses stayed in cabins, but Woody Woodruff and I stayed in this tent. Dave
Wagner stayed in a similar tent next to a stream 200-feet away. This is called “glamping”
because the tents are set on wooden platforms with traditional beds, dressers and fur-
niture. The evening was very cold but we had many wool blankets that kept us warm.
(
Lee Cross photo
)
Spring 2019 68