Category: Cars

I am a “car guy”… I love old cars.

Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally: Day Zero

I left Arlington around 9 am and drove south to Seattle, stopped at my sister’s house and picked up my Dad, and we drove down to Portland, Oregon for the start of the 20th annual Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally. This evening was just a reception, driver’s meeting, and tech inspection.

We passed tech (because I thought fast and bought an air horn at the hardware store last weekend. When my intermittent horn failed to blow when I pressed the horn button, I just hit the air horn and “presto!” I pass. 😉 )

I grabbed a few photos to capture the scene at the tech inspection/reception, and whet your appetites for mechanical wonder over the next two days:

street scene
Above: The scene looking east along Alder.

Lancia

300 sl

BMW

huh?
Above: Can you name that car?

Gorgeous XK 140 Jaguar
Above: Love the paint on this Jaguar XK 140.

Inline 12?
Above: While I was looking at this a bystander asked “Is this a 12 cylinder engine?” I let him know exactly what it is. Do you know?

Afterwards we went back to our hotel across the Columbia in Vancouver WA, after filling up the Jaguar. 21 MPG on the trip down(!)

See you tomorrow (provided I can get online at our next hotel, which is in the boonies.

Consolation Prizes

I was supposed to go on the Seattle Jaguar Club’s tour to Mt. Rainier today. Unfortunately a household emergency kept me here, and the car in the barn.

So instead I’ll show you some photos from another Consolation Prize trip. A few weeks ago I went up to the Vancouver area to participate in a JCNA slalom event. Unfortunately I never found it, despite driving around the Pitt Meadows and Coquitlam area for quite a while. Oh well. Instead I turned back south and since I had heard they’ve opened the road up to Artist’s Point between Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan I figured I’d drive up there. Gorgeous spot.

I crossed the border at Lynden and then pointed the car east towards the mountains. The road up to the Mt. Baker ski area was relatively clear of traffic and most folks pulled over to allow me to pass when they saw and heard the growling cat in their mirrors. What fun! The final bit is a hard, switch-backed hill climb up a very steep incline. I had the car really flying and having a ton of fun. It performed flawlessly, with no drama or even much tire squeal. It just held on and ran like it was on rails. Awesome.

At the top I opened the bonnet and let it cool down from the hard run. The Artist Point parking area was surrounded by a huge wall of snow, completely obliterating the views.

Above: Over there behind the snowbank is Mt. Baker… I think.

After the car cooled down I wandered down the road to about 750′ lower in altitude to soak in the views just a bit more as the snow was much less deep.

I dropped back down to the foothills, driving almost as hard down as I did up. That fun ended when I came up upon a slow moving Subaru, who just would not use a pull-out and allow me to pass… I resorted to pulling over myself and letting him get ahead, then roaring along until I came up to his lazy slow self again. Finally near the bottom of the hill where the road meets the river i was able to get around him. From there I wandered south on SR 9, home to a zillion motorcyclists every weekend for the run home. Nice day.

No such fun today though… I’m fixing a deck which is falling apart. =\

Car Photo of the Day: Race Cars!

D-type & Maser

OK, enough whining about work! I’ve posted this pic before, but it is a great kickoff to my next CPotD theme: “Race Cars!”

This is Briggs Cunningham’s D-type Jaguar with a Maser ‘Birdcage’ behind it. Off in the distance on the left is a Jaguar XK motor cutaway. Very cool!

In the coming days I’ll post a race car or two here… most of them I won’t know, so perhaps you can help identify them… just don’t expect me to know. 😉

Not Really the Car Photo of the Day: Check out that exhaust!

This photo was taken during the “KZOK Classic Car Calendar” photo shoot several years back. I picked it because it shows my exhaust pre-replacement.

Last weekend it rained here in the Pacific Northwest, which shouldn’t be shocking to those that know the geography, but this is our DRY season (July-September) when rain is rare. It hasn’t rained here since the 4th of July. I flipped my scissor lift around in the barn and was able to expose the back half of the car’s underside and start wrestling with the stainless steel. It took me a few hours, but I finally got the pipes reasonably straight. Tightened up all the bolts and I’m calling it good (enough).

Before and After pictures coming soon.

Speaking of pictures. I’m depositing a check from Porsche USA today… they paid me for a photo I took on the NE 1000 back in May. It will be published in their magazine ‘Christophorus’ or something like that. Ah yes… here it is. If any of you get it, please let me know when the issue shows up. Here is the photo so you can recognize it.

Speaking again of photos… I have a “secret stash” of photos that I’ve been using to populate the “Car Photo of the Day” theme… and it is running a tad dry, at least thematically. I thought about the “name that part” idea, but that is stupid as most are parts off my car. Eventually (or perhaps immediately) that would get dull. I do have a series of photos I have taken of old race cars at a few different high-end concours: Amelia, Kirkland, etc as well as a few museums, such as the Porsche from earlier this week shot at the Collier Museum. My problem is that I don’t know the ID of the car in most of them. It could not really be a Guessing Game if I don’t know the answer. 😉 I think I’ll start posting them with the goal of getting them identified… any objections?