Hot Rod Power Tour 2021 Coverage Brought To You By American Powertrain and Baer Brakes

What a whirlwind of a week! We started the 2021 Hot Rod Power Tour in Fort Worth, Texas, making the 1,200 mile trip just to get to the start of it! We’ve been on Power Tour before and just like back then we have to say a more fitting name might be the “Power Tour Challenge.” In previous years things went pretty smoothly overall. This year was not the case and honestly, it almost made it better and more rewarding to complete.

We wanted to take a minute to thank American Powertrain and Baer Brakes for helping to bring you this coverage!

Photo by Jeanette DesJardins

1962 Caddy Bo-Baddy

This year instead of taking our ’66 Chevelle Project No Name, we decided to take something totally different – our 1962 Cadillac Limo. We’ve LS swapped this car, put a full Ridetech air ride on it, CPP disc brakes, and rebuilt all the suspension with RareParts over the years. We thought that since this car had been built for awhile we wouldn’t have any issues. One major thing we did right before the trip was to install a complete Restomod Air A/C system to keep this car cool – which performed flawlessly.

Leaving Ft Worth around 5AM on Saturday, we hit our first snag a few hours into the drive. Some wires were chaffing causing a fuse to blow which powered the engine computer. A quick fix and we were back on the road, cruising at 75MPH getting 17MPG in this tank of a car. Then we reached Memphis and stopped at the Cozy Corner Restaurant for some of the best BBQ in the Nation. We got to talking cars with the owner and he noticed we had a flat tire. After several hours we had a new tire and hit the road making it into Bowling Green, KY at about 10:30PM, 5 hours later than we planned.

The next day we got up early, eager to finish the drive to Norwalk. That’s when we started to have fuel issues. We cleaned out a very dirty fuel filter in a parking lot, hoping that was our issue. Turns out we were experiencing vapor lock, but it was happening before the pump, not under the hood. Mind you, this Caddy has an in-line pump that’s gravity fed and mounted directly by the tank. 95+ degree day, traffic, and it all added up to cavitation. We ended up calling it quits in Dayton, OH.

Monday morning we decided to test the theory that it was vapor lock and hit the roads. The three hour drive to Norwalk went without a hitch! We actually never had a fuel issue the rest of Power Tour as we always left early in the cool morning before getting to the venue. The only other issue we had was when we installed the Ridetech Shockwaves, we didn’t get enough clearance in the spring pocket which rubbed a hole in an air bag. This was definitely user installation error, nothing that Ridetech did. We ended up buying a poly urethane TH350 mount, stuffing it between the control arm and frame, then hit the road for another 1,000 bouncy miles.

Miles of Smiles

Being later in the year, Power Tour was a little light on cars but there still had to be about 3,000 cars cruising on the tour. We had an absolute blast hanging all week with car folk, wrenching on a few to help others make it down the road. Every night at the hotel was a mini car show with people hanging out, bench racing and just enjoying the tour.

Every day we walked the show grounds and seemingly never saw the same car twice. We love the camaraderie you see on this tour as well – if a car is on the side of the road with its hood up, then there’s usually 3-4 cars parked by it helping them out. Like we said this is a challenge, and everybody wants to see everybody succeed.

Since we were limping and bouncing along, we decided to tap out a day early. We stopped in St. Louis and that afternoon started our trek back home to Texas. At this point we had driven the car, seen our friends, and had a lifetime of memories. The rest of the way went without a hitch, just a bit of a bumpy ride.