Coming to you live from The Witt in downtown Chicago, it’s me typing on my laptop. Three more days to enjoy relaxing and seeing the sights.
Speaking of sights..what I don’t see is a lot of muscle cars now or old…errrk… let me explain “lot” in this context it means…. “almost none”. I’ve actual only seen one newish corvette (C6 – convertible) and a 1968 Mustang. The Vette was on the street and the Mustang was parked in an alley. That’s it!!!.
Muscle Car Drought..the only Vette I've seen!!
Ok…hang on, if you think I just sit and type uninterrupted..nope…not much chance of that.
My better half is here in the Windy City, at an international interior design event, where she’ll be giving a talk on….um…some interior design subject….um….yeah…I pretty sure that’s right and I tagged along. Nice little vacation where I can tool around a big city, which I enjoy doing from time to time. What’s my point…umm…oh yeah….so I just ran out to get pick her up a couple of items while she is practicing her presentation. On my return trip back to our hotel I spied a beautiful custom 2010 Mustang..so..that makes three!!!
Would you drive your vintage or newish muscle car around a large city? Let me say that I’ve been walking and taking cabs and even ridding on top of the double-decker tour bus and I’ve seen how these Windy City dwellers drive….I’d have to day…..I don’t think I would. These folks drive 50 miles an hour between stop lights…but..still I might consider it early on a Sunday morning!!!
Oh…bTW…I know these guys!!!
My Parts Guy.
Oh and in the category of hanging 1930 Chevy’s….here ya go…a 4 door sedan at Portillo’s.
7/7/1928 First Plymouth is made, some research suggest that it was actually built on June 11, 1928. It had engineering code (or model) Q and had a 4 cylinder engine. Check out the video on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGfwjTI1ahA
6/10/1951 A Jaguar wins the 24 hours Le Mans – it was a C-type version of XK120. Here are a couple pics:
Jaguar at a race
XK 120 C
C Type
6/10/1927 – The Graham boys purchased what was Paige_Detroit Motor Cars. The Grahams started out as farmers and glass bottle makers. One of the brothers invented a rear axle that would allow converting Ford car platforms in to light duty trucks. Oh they are still in business – owning/running Madison Square Gardens and hosting sporting events.
Graham-Paige auto
6/11/1955 Horrific crash at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Here are the details from History.com
Prior to the race, Levegh complained that the course was too narrow near the pit-stop area and the grandstand. This observation proved prescient. As Levegh was racing for the lead near the pit-stop area, he swerved to avoid fellow racer Mike Hawthorn s Jaguar as it moved toward the pits. Levegh s car, going about 150 miles per hour, came up too fast on Lance Macklin s Austin-Healey and was catapulted upward. The car crashed into the grandstand and its exploding parts went straight into the crowd. Levegh and more than 80 spectators, packed into the grandstand, lost their lives in the fiery crash.
6/12/1954 – Packard offers the first tubeless tires.
Steve Sears is one of the readers of this blog and owner of a 1982 Mercury Cougar Station Wagon (again..I love this car).
But that’s not all, Steve does a lot of his own work, including this unique paint job on his 1992 Ranger.
Here is his recent project.
The before:
1992 Ford Ranger XLT
Tim,
I completed my project last week and thought you’d like to see it.I painted my Ranger with a roller.I only did six coats of each color, usually 8 – 10 coats are required.I like to call the color Haze gray underway and white.I spent 26 years in the Navy so I thought the gray was appropriate for me. Ha Ha.It’s painted with rustoleum mixed with mineral spirits in a 1:1 ratio thus the many coats required.The body prep is the same as any other type paint job except that a primer is not used over the whole truck.I only spot primed the bare metal and over the bondo used to fix parking lot dings.It took a full 8 days to complete the project including the paint on the topper.I have to wait a few weeks before buffing out for a full gloss.For that I’ll just remove the mirrors and the bug shield on the front.The process is well documented on the web over the last 10 years or so so I won’t repeat the process.
I thought your readers would be interested. Finally I have the truck looking like new again.It’s a 1992 Ranger XLT that I had bought new on April 24, 1992.It has the 2.3 liter four and a five speed tranny.The picture labeled 019.JPG is the before shot is attached.
And the after photos:
After Pic 1
After Pic 2
After Pic 3
Thanks very much for sharing it Steve. (A roller? Wow!!!!)
6/2/1899 – Locomobile Co. Founded – they were in business until 1929. They made a lot of cars, I hadn’t realized that. Here are a couple.
1901 Locomobille - Cool..wonder what the 1/4 mile time were??
Love this one..Steam powered????
1923 48 Series Sport
6/3/1864 Ransom Olds was born in Ohio. He developed and build cars named after him, Oldsmobile and REO (his middle name was Eli, hence REO, hey that was a band name REO Speedwagon.
An Reo Speedwagon
I’ve never heard of the next guy, until now and did a little reading.
Barney Oldfield was born 6/3/1878. He was a race car drive, but started out racing bike and wining silver medals in the process. Here are a couple pics:
Early 1900's
Oh Yeah..that Henry Ford standing next to his car.
One of my favorite things are abandoned cars. Every year I get the Hemming calendar of abandoned vehicles and look forward to various car publications that have a section where they highlight these photos.
One of my fondest memories growing up was playing across the road from where we lived with an old Plymouth, 1950’s vintage that was left in the field. I remember my dad saying after I asked him if it would run, that it needed a carburetor. My brother and I tried to fashion one out of can and some metal fins from an old ice tray. This was back in the late 60’s, we were pretty young.
Out here in the southwest you use to be able to see them all the time. The desert really knew how to tear down a car. As late as the mid 90’s you could still find them along the side of the road of major highways and if you dared to head out in to the mountains of southern Arizona, trek up the nearly impassable mining roads you’d find them. There would be anything from the 1930 to late 1950. Some would be sitting right beside the road or a mine and many could be down the mountain a ways, not a road in sight. When they died the owners left ’em where they fell. But often, since the road was so narrow, they would push them off the side and down the mountain.
During the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s I spend some time in the mountain, looking for ghost mining towns and generally in join the trips with relatives. You would find abandoned car dotting the dirt roads that wound up and down the canyons. Somewhere in the mid 1990’s the Forestry Department started fencing off the old abandoned mines and as part of a plan to allow the areas to return to their natural state, blocking off the mountain roads to make impassible to all but the most daring 4 wheelers. eeeerrrkkkkk….I’ve been places in a 1970 Monte Carlo that some folks with 4 wheel drive won’t go. Part of that initiative was to haul out the old wrecks that had been there for decades. So a lot of them are gone.
I recently began look for abandoned cars as a hobby and photograph them. So I thought maybe some of my readers might what to join in and catalog the wrecks and their locations and well as photographs.
Then I thought, maybe a contest would be fun. So I’m looking for the readership to email me photos of abandoned car that you run across. Of course there are some rules.
What qualifies as an abandoned car? I’m going to be pretty liberal here and we’ll extend the criteria to include neglected backyard finds as well. It has to appear to be pretty much untouched and neglected.
Two more rules:
You have to provide a general location and it has to be an original photo, not snagged from the internet.
Here is one example.
The house in the photo had been empty for some time according to the locals in Tombstone, Az. These three cars were in the back yard covered with weeds, trees and debris.
This a 1950's Chevy pick up. I wasn't allowed to get any closer.
Next in the same yard was this:
Chevy Monte Carlo
And this Ford coupe:
Ford Coupe
I’ve one more good one..but I’ll save that for later.
For the first two individuals writing in with a good photo of an abandoned or neglected car, I have a DVD from the Hot Rod Magazine Library “Dream-Build-Drive” collection.
You can email it to me (timsweet@cox.net) or post to my Facebook page (look me up: Tim Sweet).
So let’s get to my runs. As I mentioned, there were 2 sets of runs, one for time and points and one for just time. Each was five trips on the course.
One thing they have you do is of course walk the track which is to get you someone familiar with the corners. I walked it twice. Once on my own and once with the novice “coach”.
This is my second auto cross. If you’ve been a constant reader you might recall that was on Jan 25 2010 and it was mainly corvettes. We rented the area and set up our course. I did fairly well there for my first time. But this course was different. A lot tighter corners in a row and two sets of very tight slalom. Nothing a vette couldn’t handle with the proper speed and a good surface..this was not a good surface, however.
My first run was a darn right awful. I look like some crazed speed demon with a severe hatred for orange cones. I over drove every tight corner. My second run wasn’t much better, I didn’t even hit the first corner and then a took a cone for a ride under the vette.
So now I feeling like a knucklehead. I had the oldest car there and maybe the one with the most torque, but certainly not the most horse power. My third run was better and I took along one of the novice coaches but I still had a CD (course deviation) on the backside by missing the second slalom set of cones. I dropped off the novice coach and my 4th and fifth runs were clean as far as CD’s go but I still got a cone on each run.
So here is how it end up in the first set of 5 runs.
My next runs were much better. I did have on CD and I did get a cone, but the times were getting better. The 5th run below I took a cone and spun on the back side of the course.
1. 51.643
2. 53.146
3. 52.622
4. 51.645
5. 54.188
So I ended the day with the following times and points.
PAX Time Points
46.260 753
43.575 796
PAX time is like a handicap in golf, it takes the class of your car and the skill level reduces your time to keep you somewhat competitive.
Not bad for my first real “formal” event.
By the end of the I was worn out. That is a lot of driving, in the heat (ok..only 88 degree..little hotter on the course).
The vette performed perfectly, no over heating issues (one of my biggest fears) and nothing broken, did have to rub out a few cone marks….but I showed them whose boss!!!!
You’ll notice a lack of pic or vids on this one, didn’t have my son along as a camera man, and when I wasn’t running they put you to work resetting cones.
The name of my blog includes “racing”. This isn’t meant to be watching on TV and reporting back, it’s meant to be my events. My blog title also includes “Average” and includes budget as well. (You might as well include ‘time’, as in average amount of time to spend on the hobby.)
I just finished running a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) event. It was a blast!! I’ll get to my times in a bit, but first, let’s talk about cost of this particular event.
Straight up to join SCCA there is the yearly fee for the national membership and there is the fee for your regional membership. Total cost here was $80.00. Now the events are not free. In my regional club which run events in the Tucson areas and Phoenix as well, they have to offerings. They have a round for points and time and they have the time only round. There are separate prices for each.
Today when I showed up (you can pre register and save ..I think…$10.00) filled out all the paper work and went to pay. The fellow taking the money asked if I wanted “time only” and I’m thinking…do I only want to be timed…so I said “No.” and he said “That will be $30.00.” So I paid.
Now I have co-worker who talked me into joining SCCA and he attends regular events at the local drag strip – the auto cross is held in the huge drag pit/parking area. He cleared up my misunderstanding and said if I wanted the “full” experience I need to go back and say yes I wanted the ‘time-only’ round as well. That cost me another $10.00.
So putting this together we are at 120 big ones this month to race. Not too bad, I’d have to say.
There are more costs and I’ll get to that in next portion of this subject.
I replaced all the fuel lines and brake lines on my 65 a few years ago, and I used this flaring tool and the thread seal that comes in a tube. I have never had a leak, and I have never used the teflon tape. You don’t need a real expensive flaring tool to work on these old Mustangs.
Finished this up today. Here are some pics. (Yeah..I know..forgot to take them before I put the air cleaner on…but you get the idea.)
Only issue..the thickness of the chrome covers was less than the originals and I had to get a shorter set of chrome bolts. I have got quite a collection for chrome bolts now!!
I’m now at the point where I can re-install the valve covers. I’ve painted them and cleaned up the gromets (for one of my vette buddies who was dismayed when the saw the interim pics).
If you remember I had to remove a few things including vacuum hoses, spark plug wires, a/c parts. In addition the bolts that hold the covers down had spark plug wire holders and other brackets for hold wires.
Brackets that would mount through with the bolt for the covers passing through.
Keep this in mind as I explain what I learned from my decision to use Fel-Pro gaskets.
Ok..fine enough dramma..lets get to the lesson I learned (which is often learned the hard way when you have average skills and less than average experience).
I am not smarter than the engineers at GM. They knew what they were doing when the used permatex…it was all about the bolts. Specifically, the length the engineers decided do use, or maybe it was the budget guys. They knew how to follow the build sheet. Here is the bottom line. The length of the bolts supported the thin layer of the permatex and the brackets shown above and that was it.
They did not support the thickness of the gaskets. They were just under a 1/4 too short. With the brackets and the Fel-Pro gasket in place barely two threads poke out, not enough to catch the thread on the engine. errrk….When did I know this and what got into your head to do it anyway?
Fare enough question. I found out when I queried a couple of Corvette forums about what gaskets to use. I got a lot of responses, everyone has an opinion..ya know!!! But only one had actually done an 84 C4 and he said..if you don’t use permatex you are going to have to get longer bolts and BTW your bracket for the spark holders won’t fit. So I knew this before I picked up the valve covers (but not before I ordered the set from the supplier).
Why I didn’t go with the permatex solution was the amount of space and jostling what I had to do when I took them out. I was pretty sure getting them back in would be worse and the changes of wiping off the some of the permatex and messing up the seal, making the odds of redoing it high.
Finding the longer bolt took some doing. The auto parts store…yes..yes.. the same one that said they didn’t have anything but cork and when querying another employee show me what I and originally asked for..didn’t have the proper bolts. The 84 C4 was all metric, bolts and nuts, you can even switch the digital the dash from US to metric. The heads are 11mm the threads were 6mm and the pitch was 1/4.
I ended up at ACE hardware and the only thing that would work and look good were the chrome. Ok…average guy with average budget…warning..they weren’t cheap…I know that when the manger took me to the back of the store and showed me a stack of boxes that were padlocked shut. They lock them up!!!! They were over $2.00 each, washers were nearly a $1.00.
So I decided on the chrome but they only had 7 bolts..I needed eight with washers as well, they only had 1 washer. When did we as a nation have a shortage chrome??? Any way I went ot another Ace and the guy there didn’t have any, but tried to tell me the ones I purchased at the other ACE wasn’t correct. He had the washers so I picked those up and traveled to the next ACE (they’re a lot like Walgreens..they’re on nearly every corner here in Tucson).
Replacing the covers was about the same as removing them and while doing it I was very glad I didn’t use the permatex, most of it wouldn’t have made it on the covers or the engine. I’m thinking at the GM factory they put the valve covers on before the AC and all the vacuum hoses and alternator…etc.
Tomorrow I’ll finish this up….well maybe…one more lesson was in store.
