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Just another place to look at car stuff.
Today we drove from Lewiston, Idaho to Helena, Montana, with a lunch stop in Missoula. The day dawned clear and blue in Lewiston. We set up the timelapse rig, even though my computer power adapter had been acting up the day and night before. We managed to capture about 20 minutes again, before it went dead.
Click “more” to read the rest…
I *hope* this will be a tough one, but goodness knows… maybe Roger and Paul have each owned three.
Above: The view from our room’s balcony the morning after the rally completed. Rain. 🙁
They had cold beer waiting at the hotel. After we pulled into the grass and stumbled toward the room (a steep stair climb up the cliff) we stopped for a beer midway. It was nice. Even my dad, who does not drink beer that often, had one.
At dinner we heard the outcome of the TSD segment crash. It was that gorgeous Lancia Aurelia GT:
It slid off the road, into a ditch, and rolled. I do not know what the cause was, nor the final condition of the car. I do know that both driver and navigator came out essentially unharmed. They both attended dinner and the awards brunch the following day. The rallyists awarded the Lancia the “Participant’s Choice” award. The owner got a lot of hugs and sympathy.
At the brunch we listened as they read the results from bottom to top. I fully expected to be right in the middle of the pack. To my surprise the middle came and went, and our name had not been called. We were NOT that close to the top though. In the end we captured 18th Place. Not bad for a VERY competitive rally with 56 entries. We racked up 563 penalty points, 376 on the first day and 187 on the second. It is obvious that my Navigator, Charles Goolsbee did indeed improve dramatically over the course the rally. I can take NO CREDIT whatsoever. I am just the Driver. I do what the Navigator tells me to. 😉
The 1st place car had 186 points, and 2nd & 3rd had 232 & 233 respectively. Twenty one cars had over 1000 points and the last place car had 5400. This was a very tough rally.
Above: The tired rallyists leave on a soggy morning.
We left the Oregon Coast at mid day and toughed out bad traffic, and rain (a low pressure system moved through for ONE day, grrr) all the way home. We even had to get off I-5 at one point midway between Portland and Olympia and take back roads up to Tacoma to avoid stop-and-go traffic… miserable in the rain in the Jaguar with the top up. I dropped off Dad at my little sister’s house in Seattle, and he and mom drove home to Colorado the next day. I brought the Jaguar home and put it back up on the lift. Next weekend I’ll tackle that inner tie rod end.
Thanks for coming along, I hope the story and photos captured the essense of the event for you.
–chuck
If you look at a map of North America or spin your globe to the right from your usual locations of focus and observe our west coast you will note that there is a VAST expanse of water right next to it that literally covers the majority of this big blue planet of ours. In fact I’d wager that it is responsible for the perception of it being blue. We call it, in what can only be ironically amusing to meteorologists, surfers, and the rugged humans who make their living on it, the Pacific Ocean. It is ANYTHING but pacific in its nature. It is a violent, thrashing, deep and cold thing that harbors and takes life in equal measure. While it may be warm and inviting in the middle, it can be cold, distant, and stand-offish around the extreme perimeter. Try dipping your toe into it here in the Pacific Northwest and you will lose all feeling in that toe pretty damn quick. Immerse your self in it and it will kill you even quicker. As malevolent as it seems to be, it also bestows upon this region a generous gift of mild weather… it moderates the natural heat of the continental land mass with cool moist air, which flows in a continuous stream over our region and keeps it within an ideal Goldilocks status… not too cold, not too hot. Now it may be too wet for some, but if you check the relative humidity of say anywhere east of the Mississippi River and that of the pacific Northwest, you will note that we’re quite comfy over here… we just get our sunshine in smaller doses – that is between the clouds. We call them “sun breaks” here. October through May you can bank on a steady drizzle and moderate temps. May through July is on-again, off-again rain and sunshine. July through September is usually a continuous parade of picture postcard blue skies and temps/humidity equivalent to what most HVAC Engineers consider “ideal” for human habitation. An occasional low pressure system moves through to remind us what rain is like, but overall summers here are pleasant beyond description. No sweltering heat, no high humidity… just cool breezes and sunshine. EXCEPT the area right next to the ocean. Right at that edge lies an area subject to fog that will chill you to the bone. The stuff that comes in at night and makes Adrienne Barbeau tell ghost stories on the local radio station.
Continue reading “Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally, Day Two.”
My father and I are heading down to Oregon to run the Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally in the 65E… which of course I am still reassembling. The steering rack arrived Monday. I put it back on the car Monday night, but then issues at work prevented me from finishing the job, which requires a full front end alignment.
I plan to leave for Portland on Thursday morning as the Rally has a Welcome Reception and (more important at the moment) Technical Inspection of the participant’s cars at 6pm Thursday at Monte Shelton Motors in downtown. Thursday morning I bring the car to Les Schwab’s store in Arlington for some time on the alignment rack. The mechanic is half the age of the car, or less! He’s a bit intimidated but with some help and encouragement from me he gets the job done. One issue comes up… my freshly rebuilt steering rack shows some free play on the inner tie rod end on the driver’s side(!) This prevents the toe-in from being set accurately – but the car is as close as it can get.
I drive off towards Seattle to pick up my dad. The car feels great. I can feel the loose left front on occasion, but overall it is in much better shape than before. No more steering wobble at higher speeds. Mom & Dad have been visiting my little sister and her family the past few days. I find their hotel and pick up dad, and we say good bye to my mom, who will be off to my house to visit Sue & the boys. We drive down I-5, stop at my office, then continue on to Portland. The car, which refuses to allow the right turn signal to operate the whole way south to Oregon, comes to its senses and operates perfectly for the Technical Inspectors. Go figure!
The collected cars for the rally are quite nice. LOTS of Alfa Romeos, as would be expected for an Alfa club rally. Several E-type Jaguars too. Three series 1’s, a bunch of 1.5’s and one series 3. The latter has a six-weber carb setup, which I think looks so much better than the original factory quad-Stromberg.
We pass inspection… yeah!
I pass the evening reception looking at, and photographing cars. Enjoy:
The last image above is a poster from the old Can Am series on the wall at Monte Shelton Motors.
The rebuilt steering rack for the Jaguar arrived today!
Of course, I have a vintage rally coming up THIS WEEK… Thursday to be exact. That means I have three days to get the rack back on and align my front end. I drove home … stopped at John’s for more veggie oil… grabbed 55 gallons… enough to fill my newly constructed settling tank that I made Sunday… but I digress.
I immediately went to the barn, reinstalled the tie rod ends as close as I could to where they were before the rack went off to Terry’s Jaguar for rebuilding. Then I started to re-install the rack. Well… I finished reinstalling the rack… 4 hours later. Man… a lot harder to get it back on than take it out!
Getting it aligned and on the pegs was the first challenge. The next one was getting the bolts back in.
The rack is held on by 12 bolts. 6 are built into the mounts. 4 are safety bolts that hold the rack on, even if the mounts break. 2 short bolts run through the rack and mount, without touching the car frame. One of those last two bolts JUST WOULD NOT GO ON. It is still on my workbench. I’m hoping that having 11 of 12 on there will be enough to run for a couple hundred miles. What say you Paul?? Can I drive like this, or so I need to pull the whole damn thing out and do it again?
I plan on doing that anyway before I do the Montana Rally in September, but I really would like to avoid it between now and Thursday!
Anyway, It is back in and down on the ground again. Hopefully I can sneak away from work early one tomorrow or Wednesday and work on aligning the front end toe.
All my (updated) photos are here.
I can’t drive the car and I can’t really work on it either… so I might as well clean it. I had it pretty clean before, but the second day of the Classic Motorcar Rally in June was done on a miserable rainy day (I need to post photos from that at some point!) and the car got filthy. So I spent a rainy weekend a couple of weeks ago scrubbing wheel wells, cleaning wheels, and since I have the bonnet unshackled from the frame, scrubbed areas which are usually impossible to reach. Hard to see in the photos above due to the flash but they are sort of a before and after shot… I scrubbed the area that gets pelted by the debris from the front tires, with brushes and sponges… then rinsed it off with a swipe from the pressure washer.
I also flossed the wire wheels… always a pain in the ass.
Of course the weather has turned wonderful again… all I can do is wait while my steering rack get rebuilt.