My Inline Tube story is not really mine; belongs to a friend of mine named Denny Kloha.
Denny is the original owner of a '67 GTO with the HO engine. He raced the car back in the day until he twisted the driveshaft and it came up through the floor. He was so disgusted that the car sat for 20 or 25 years in his garage.
So - after all these years Denny decided to restore the car. He is super meticulous and he's also normally pretty soft spoken and reserved.
A couple years ago I was at a show and the Kryta brothers were there with their Inline Tube display. As I walked by John hollered out "hey - Keith - I met someone that says he knew your Dad".
I asked who that might be.
"Some guy, has a 67 GTO, twisted the driveshaft and now he's redoing it" John answered.
"Denny Kloha!" I said confidently.
John then starts telling me about how Denny had called and said Inline Tube gave him a wrong part. The front brake line they sent didn't match the one Denny pulled off the car.
John told Denny that they had used an original owner unrestored car to make the line from and that he was sure it was right. Denny wasn't convinced.
The argument escalated to the point where if they could punch each other out over the phone they would have. They must have agreed to disagree and left it at that.
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A couple months later I was at the races with my friend Gary Beemer, who is also friends with Denny and his wife Pat.
Over supper that night we were sitting around telling stories (as is our custom) and Gary starts to tell me this same story.
He said he (Gary) and his wife were out to dinner with Denny and his wife when Denny started telling Gary and Carla about this phone call. Denny started getting more and more agitated, and more and more animated, to the point that Gary said other patrons were starting to look over to see what was going on. Gary finally had to get Denny settled down before he had a stroke or heart attack or something.
I thought, at the time, it was pretty funny to hear the same story from two different sources.
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A couple months after that I was at the Sloan Summer Fair in Flint, and Denny was there with his GTO. It was probably the first time I had seen him since I was a child and certainly the first time I had seen the car since it was restored.
We had a nice visit, updating each other on how our families were doing when (as you might guess) he started to tell me this same story about his phone conversation with Inline Tube. I couldn't believe it! I let him roll a bit and then finally shared that I had heard it a couple times before.
The only thing I can figure is that maybe Denny's car, built in Pontiac, was misbuilt. It sounds like his front brake line was too long; perhaps the assembler grabbed the wrong line and rather than going back for a different one he simply made it work. I gotta go with Inline Tube on this one.
At any rate, I still think it is hilarious to have heard this same story from three different perspectives.
And Denny now has a perfectly restored '67 Ram Air car with about 10,000 original miles on it.
K
