Searching for more speed in practice, Dave Dooley had revved the engine past Cliff Gottlob’s self-imposed limit of 6,800 rpm’s. Gottlob’s idea was to go easy on the equipment, outlast the competition and take advantage of Daytona’s vicious attrition rate. Dooley’s idea was to go fast at all costs, and he was remarkably talented at doing so. The car was equipped with a memory tachometer nicknamed “the tattle-taler” by the crew. After each practice session in which Dooley drove the car, the revs were well past 7,000. Blatchford recalled, “Dooley came in and the tattle-taler was way over in the red zone. It finally caught up with us during practice. He couldn’t get it out of first gear.” While Gottlob’s team pondered their unimaginably bad luck, the day’s routine for most other teams was markedly different. Many had semi tractor rigs and special stands from which they could see the entire track. The major teams had sponsors like Sunoco, American Motors, Gulf and Porsche. Gottlob’s arch rival was the 2-car Corvette team sponsored by fiberglass giant Owens-Corning. But they had come this far and the team refused to give up now. “We didn’t have any doubt about fixing it,” Blatchford said, “because Gottlob knows from one end to the other how to build an engine and transmission from every bearing to the tiniest little part.” Blatchford and Wanko went to work as darkness fell, pulling the exhaust headers, linkage, shifter, and finally the transmission itself. It was nearly midnight when they set the transmission on the asphalt along pit road and Gottlob began tearing it down to find first gear welded to the shaft. There was no way to separate and save the parts. They could do no more work at the track. They needed a real mechanical facility. Once again, Gottlob’s connections at Chevrolet came through at the moment of truth. Chevy’s Vince Piggins had a few friends of his own and had no intention of watching Gottlob miss the 24 Hours of Daytona. Four miles down the road from Daytona International Speedway, the phone rang at “Smokey’s Best Damn Garage in Town” on Beach Street in Daytona. The owner – racing legend, two-time NASCAR Mechanic of the Year and veteran of 57 race wins – Smokey Yunick, answered. The conversation was brief. “So we go to downtown Daytona and Yunick lets us come in and work on his bench press and try to get that gear off 32 the shaft,” Blatchford said. Yunick met them and looked over the lame transmission. It was clear that they’d be working for a while. Muttering something about “Anybody that Piggins recommends must be okay,” Yunick handed them the keys to the front door and told them to lock up when they left. “This was probably midnight or two in the morning,” Blatchford continued. “We set it at 40 tons and it wouldn’t press the first gear off the shaft, so we said, ‘Let’s just get all new parts. The bearings, seals, gaskets, new shaft and new first gear.’” But no parts stores were open and the team was out of money. Fortunately, Gottlob’s connections at Chevy came through for them yet again. Every Chevy team at Daytona had been assigned a specific liaison from the manufacturer. In Gottlob’s case, their liaison was Ernie Callard, who had access to Chevy’s private airplane that was stationed near the race track for emergency use. Callard sent word that a Chevy team needed seals, bearings, a new gear and a new shaft for their ‘67 L88 transmission, and the corporate plane was immediately dispatched to bring back the parts in the middle of the night. “You cannot believe the support that Chevy gave me for that race,” Gottlob said. “Ernie Callard had a great attitude and was a very compassionate individual. He saved our bacon.” Thanks to Callard, the team was back at the race track before 5 am with every single new part they needed directly from Chevrolet. It was Saturday morning... race day. Dawn began to break as the first rays of sunlight appeared on the eastern horizon. Maybe the week-long rains would finally stop. While thousands of race fans filed into the track during the morning’s opening festivities, Cliff Gottlob was working frantically to re-assemble his Corvette’s transmission in a race against the clock. Their deadline was 3 pm. That’s when the green flag would fall to start the 24 Hours of Daytona. Their competitors took no notice of them. Few other teams considered them a factor and most had no idea of the superhuman effort Gottlob’s crew had put forth to be there. Tony DeLorenzo, driver of the Owens-Corning #6 entry, said “We were vaguely aware of Cliff and we’d heard about them driving down. But this was 1970 and he’s in a ‘67 car. If he was on the radar, it wasn’t something that we talked about.”
