I just got back from a week and a half long vacation in Fortine, Montana. Fortine features a population of 197 people (2007) and is about 30 miles south of the border town Eureka. Beautiful is an understatement but the point of this post is to tell you all about Paul, my crazy redneck brother in-law and his automotive passions.

Here's the front of Paul's shop/barn/building/thing. First thing to note are the huge trash heaps of cracked blocks, fried pistons, twisted rods, exploded transmissions, snapped drive shafts and other random shit. The red thing on the lift is his current baby, a mud bogger named "Short Stroke".



Here's a closer shot of the rear paddle tires.



Here is a rear quarter shot of the car.



Here is a shot of the motor. Paul has had the motor estimated at 2500 crank horsepower. The only details he gave me about the motor were that it's a Dart 572ci (9.4L) block, a Top Fuel dragster cam, 11.5:1 compression, a supercharger that looks like it came from an airplane and runs on straight methanol. He likes to run an additive to make the exhaust fumes smell like root beer. It works too and it's really weird. I've been in NASCAR pits before and they have nothing on how loud this fucking thing is. While I was there Paul give it a blip of throttle and with only the front wheels connected to the drivelines it still shot dirt twice as high as the shop.



Here's a recent victim of last race season.



Here's a twisted rod that was wider than the widest part of my cell phone (G1).



Paul lets his mud bogging friends keep their cars on his lot as well. Dunno much about this one other than it's tore up.



They have really shitty gas in Montana.



Here's a Rambler Custom wagon just sitting on his lot. It runs but being Paul means that it wont be restored back to it's original grandeur. Plans include tubbing and one of the massively boosted V8's laying around in his shop.




Some classic Ford sitting in another barn. According to Paul the supercharger is tiny and it's not nearly fast enough.




I've apparently inherited this Ramcharger for the only reason that I acknowledged it's existence in his yard. He says it's "a peice of shit but runs like a bat out of hell". Maybe next summer I'll get it prepped for the drive back to Arizona. The interior is pretty tore up but the only rust damage I could find was limited to exterior panels. I'm still undecided on whether I'll take him up on his offer. I still have to take everything out of it while not getting bit by whatever arachnids have made this thing their home. It might prove to be a fun project seeing that I've about given up on my SRT-4 as a hobby.



Paul's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/shortstrokeracing

You can watch the profile video but I have no idea what he's talking about. It's just funny to hear his red neck accent. All the uploaded videos of Short Stroke are him but all are pretty short.

__________________________________________
~Chris
03 SRT-4