Life Wheels By

It was my first year of teaching in Ann Arbor, in 1988. I taught an electronics class for a year, and “Know Your Auto” for a semester. It was a given that if any of the old school staff wanted their car serviced, oil changed, etc., I was the new shade tree mechanic. So, I spent some hours after school being just that.

The car bays had these really dangerous lifts. To operate them, you had to work two levers on the floor in order to raise and lower the front and back independently of each other. I was terrified a careless student might cause a car to fall off the lift. It was an accident waiting to happen, so I watched them like a hawk.

There was a very talented young staff member in the auto shop who begged me to put a V8 in my six-cylinder 1969 Mustang. He said it was justified and needed for his engine building/rebuilding class. Me being new, and wanting to please, agreed. I recall walking in the snow at Town & Country wreckers with him, searching until we found an engine block that would work. When the motor rebuild was completed, the bored out 302 Cleveland V8 was installed in my Mustang.

He wanted to take it out for a test drive, with me riding shotgun during school hours. The car had NO exhaust system, just headers. It was LOUD. It was the roar of pure power and could be heard a half a mile away.  I protested, but he insisted I come along, and soon found out why. At the corner of Fuller and Huron Parkway, he gunned it, then floored it north on the parkway till the East entrance to the high school. He says, “Sounds and runs great! Is the entrance coming up?”

We turned onto the school property and proceeded under the arch, which magnified the sound even further. The Mustang was so loud, students started looking out windows, and turning around to see what was coming under the arch. I was in fear the principal would find out, and it would be the end of me and my teaching career. Taken for a ride, yes! BTW, the driver/teacher was legally blind.

I hid my head as we passed under the arch and the school admin area. We looped around the buildings to the back of the gym area, where the auto shop was located. Then I was instructed to go to a muffler shop on Jackson Road where a former student works now, and have a two-inch diameter exhaust installed.

At the end of the school day, I drove out of the high school parking lot on idle, took a right on Fuller, and just over the rise in the road were two of the city’s finest, one on each side of the road. TRAPPED! I got pulled over and issued a ticket for excessive noise. I finally made it to the muffler shop, and that whole escapade ended. Luckily, I never heard a peep about the incident and managed to hold on to my job.