Tow Mater Chump Car
I have been road racing for 42 years. The last 3 years I have ventured into asphalt oval track racing with very limited success. In 2010 Darrell Peterson, our recruiter at Interstate Truck Driving School, got involved in ChumpCar racing.
ChumpCar is endurance road racing with cars that have a limited value. The races are seven hours long at a minimum and as much as 24 hours straight. Darrell went on and on about how much fun he had and he wanted me to get involved.
If I was to get into another form of racing, it had to be in a truck. ChumpCar also requires a “theme” for each race entry. Thus the idea of “Tow Mater” was born at a late night garage session. The “Mater” is a 1991 Dodge Dakota with a gutless V6 motor. Team mates Greg Wold and John Hogdahl were recruited to complete the required 4 driver team.
We raced “Tow Mater” at Iowa Speedway in a 24 hour event the first of May 2011. The truck was slow, slow, slow and on top of that we broke the transmission after six hours on the truck. A used transmission was procured in Des Moines and we got back on the track for another 14 hours. Finishing a 24 hour race was viewed as a success.
The 2nd race of the year was at Brainerd for a pair of seven hour races in early June. We had purchased better wheels and tires along with a few modifications to the motor to get more power. We were hoping the truck would handle better and move up on the performance chart. The motor, however, ran like crap. Thankfully it blew up after just 10 laps so we did not have to embarrass ourselves with a moving roadblock.
Dodge Dakota’s also came with 318 V8 motors. Fed up with the V6 a 318 has been procured and Pat “Trick” Stair has made the necessary modifications to squeeze the V8 into the Dakota. We are excited to go back to Brainerd on July 16th to try our luck with some power under the hood.
Brainerd July 16th started out with high hopes. The installation of the 318 motor was completed just in time. Last minute adjustments at the track and I started the race at 9:00 in a light rain. The tires we have on Tow Mater are not well suited to rain and with all the power the rear end wanted to step out with any application of throttle.
I danced around for about 30 minutes keeping up with all the faster cars. The motor would only pull about 4500 rpm but it had a lot of torque. Just about the time the trace started to dry out I got a progressive miss in the motor. Then the exhaust fell off. So I darted to the pits for repairs.
Turned out a couple of plug wires were laying on the headers and shorting out. Trick fixed the wires, we did a driver change with Darrell Peterson now taking over, and Bill Peters did a fuel fill.
The motor seemed to be running well with Darrell at the wheel so I took off to the gas station for a fuel run. Just as I got back, Darrell was telling Trick over the radio he had been punted off the track and crashed big time. Good news, Darrell was OKAY! Tow Mater was toast.
Trick inspects the broken rear axle. 
The front end hit pretty hard and broke the motor mount.
Darrell takes a closer look. He was really bummed. We all tried to cheer him up since accidents like this are just a part of racing. As long as he was OKAY who cares about the truck. It can be fixed.
With the broken axle it looked like Tow Mater was taking a leak.
Darrell got checked out by the medical crew and deemed to be physically sound.
With the axle busted we had to improvise in order to get the truck in the trailer.
Plans are already begun to get Tow Mater fixed up for Iowa Labor Day weekend. The truck was definitely more competitive so we are all enthused to keep up the development.
We have put the truck in a parade (South St. Paul Kaposia Days) and on display at an event with the West St. Paul School District and at a movie theater in Rogers, MN. The kids love “Tow Mater”. It is a really fun way to promote Interstate Truck Driving School.
Rachael and Jamie helped us out at the Parade.