Category: Cars

Have a look and see for yourself. I’m off to buy some white patent leather shoes and a cheap suit. 😉

I’m sitting here at home, sucking down the final remnants of a “Top-Shelf” Margarita (made with some of the wife’s Cabo Wabo).. a fitting end to a fine day out. My son Nicholas & I just got back from a trip to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia for a JCNA Slalom event in Vancouver.

I haven’t slalomed since July of 2004. I of course took a year off from it due to the “Great Collapsing XK Engine Incident of 2005“… which ruined my year, and doomed my children to community college. I had a dim recollection of how fun it was, but today brought it all back. It is more than fun… it is a blast! I strongly suggest getting out and doing it yourselves. Ton of fun.

JCNA runs a standard course and timing gear, so you can compare your performance against other people in the US & Canada. Honestly, I’m not really looking for any sort of award, or national standing… to me this is just too much fun to NOT participate. I have an excellent car and feel that as a DRIVER I could stand a lot of improvement, so I really only care about how I do “against myself.”

It is about a 70-90 minute drive to Vancouver from my house depending on conditions at the border. Nick & I left around 8, and arrived at the 49th Parallel around 9-ish, only to be met with a snarled border crossing. They only had two lanes open, which is odd for a weekend (there are something like 8 lanes available) so people were queue jumping like mad in the outside lanes. I’m surprised there wasn’t any fisticuffs. I would have been there right on time, but I missed a turn on highway 1A, and ended up doing a big lazy “S” through Surrey, and finally dead-reckoned my way to the Scott Road Skytrain station parking lot (after a stop for some $CDN out of an ATM) where one of the BC MG/Jaguar clubs was holding the event.

Nick & I signed in, paid our fee, went through tech inspection, and prepped the 65E for it’s runs (this involves the giant “reverse Tetris game” of unloading all the spares, rags, tools, garbage, flotsam, etc from the Jaguar cockpit and boot. Once excavated, my pile was quite impressive. People were shocked at how much crap I had stowed away in such a small space! I am a master at Tetris! (and I wasn’t even carrying all my spares!)

I grabbed my camera and shot some stills of the folks who were making their runs. These included Bruce Cox, the fellow E-type owner from Burnaby whose new Pirelli tires I had smuggle^X^X^X^X brought over the border earlier this year. Bruce drives a very nice maroonish red Series 2 OTS. He & his better half Jayne have owned it since the late 60s. Good to see a “survivor” on the cones course!

Our turn came very swiftly, and Nick & I headed out onto the course after I’d handed my camera to Bruce to get some shots of us. Like I said, it has been two years since I last did this, and I was chanting out the mantra: “hourglass, figure 8, oval… hourglass, figure 8, oval… hourglass, figure 8, oval…” in my head, but of course it all fell apart once on course… somewhere I lost concentration and mistook one cone for another… here I’m thinking that I’m swinging wide at the bottom of my second lap when all of a sudden A CONE JUMPS RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR!

I’m amazed at how quickly I stopped. I didn’t actually hit the cone, but I’m sure I scared it enough to give it second thoughts about jumping in front of me like that again! Of course, I had to reverse to get away from the wayward, evil, scheming cone, so I DNF’ed that run. (Kudos to Bruce for managing to capture that critical moment!)

We queued up to run again, and got some advice from one of the organizers. He refreshed my memory as to how to run the course, and told Nick to hold on to the grab handle. He got tossed around a bit, and in fact his helmet banged my right arm at one point, which is still sore as I type this nine+ hours later. We managed to complete our second run without mishap, and turned a respectable 00:49.291. We queued again and this time I concentrated on being smooth, and Nicholas did an excellent job of calling out lap sequence for me as we ran the course. This time we ran it in 00:47.560.

Given that my best time from 2004 was 48.6 this was my new “Personal Best”.

I still felt like I over-braked in the far opposite corner during the “figure-8” lap, so next time I concentrated on improving that. Result: 00:47.400.

Whoo hoo!

The last run, I figured I’d push it a bit more, and ended up getting some messy oversteer midway through the figure-8 lap that robbed me of a bit of time. Pushing that envelope! Final run clocked in at 00:48.140. Not bad actually.

After everyone’s timed runs were done, the course was open for “fun” runs, so Nick & I went out for three more, but this time we brought the camera in the car and Nick used the “film mode” of my digital camera to capture the event in full motion and sound. Unfortunately Nick is still pretty young, and not tall enough to see over the bonnet. The first time he held the camera up to his eye, and captured an excellent movie of the dashboard and the sky. =)
(BTW that run we turned a 00:47.940)
The next run wasn’t much better camera-wise, but I got my time down to 00:46.800.

Finally, after watching his results while we waited our next turn, I suggested that he hold the camera UP and sight along the bottom of the lens, and angle it as we approach turns.
The result was excellent.

It also turned out to be our best time of the day, and my best time ever:
00:46.105

Too bad I couldn’t pull that off when it counted!

I wanted to try to get a particular style of movie… the traditional “out the side of the car” shot, so I recruited Bruce to drive for me. He grabbed a helmet and climbed into the 65E. I don’t know why he was so nervous, but he started up the car and lurched into 1st gear before I even had my door closed, and promptly killed the engine. Poor Bruce… he probably thought he’d broken my car because it then refused to start. The starter was obviously heat-soaked, either that and/or my battery was so weak from last week’s alternator shenanigans that it just didn’t have the grunt to spin the hot starter… I’ve had the car do this to me before when very hot like this. (Did I mention that it was hot out today? It was!) I hopped out my open door, and rocked the car back and forth while it was in gear, then out of gear and hit the starter, and eventually hit the right spot where it would fire.

That crisis solved, we hit the course
It was fun to run it while not driving. It seems a LOT easier from the navigator’s seat! Bruce ran a respectable 00:52.250 and I had a fun time… capturing it mostly how I wanted.

We then reversed the Tetris game repacking the car, had to push/rock start it again(!) and bid adieu to Bruce & Jayne, and headed for home. We stopped in White Rock at a Baskin Robbins for some ice cream to cool us down (I parked the 65E on a down-slope in case it was still too hot, but after the our cool-down, it was cool too and started on the first try. The border crossing at the Peace Arch was insanely long, so we hopped over to the “Truck Crossing” and found it also backed up… we continued east on ‘0 Avenue’ towards the Lynden/Aldergrove crossing, and found it backed up too, though not as bad. It REALLY sucks to sit out in the open, surrounded by queued cars, baking in the hot sun on the asphalt. It seemed like an eternity before we made the 100m trip to the customs stop. Both us and the car were overheating and tired… thankfully the border guard didn’t ask me to turn off the car. He had searched a few cars ahead of us in the queue, and I really didn’t want to go through with that *and* suffer the indignity of the car requiring a push start! Thankfully he waved us on and we were very happy to be running in the wind again at speed. We angled east towards the mountains and took back roads up into the foothills seeking shade of tall Alders, Douglas Firs, and Western Red Cedars. It felt GREAT to get out of the sun. We eventually found our way onto SR9 and followed it home to Arlington.

Nick & I are tired… the sun just sapped our energy (we are both burned, despite frequent application of sunscreen) but we’re enervated and happy, having spent a great day out together.

Speaking of kids, there was a 16 year old out at the event today driving an MG B. He too looked like he was having a blast:

That is my favorite image of the day.

Here are all of them.

I think it is time for another Margarita.

A little late. I wrote this on Saturday, but have been very busy at work, so now it is late. Better late than never though:

The photo above is me & my father (out rallying in my mother’s Mercedes!) It was taken by the official rally photog for the Colorado Grand. I think I took better photos, but I was never able to capture to two of us. 😉

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Had a great day out dtoday with my youngest son. It was my “father’s day” one day early. Let me tell you about it, and how it came to pass:

About 2 weeks ago I stopped at a NAPA near my office to grab a replacement brake light bulb for my daily driver (VW Jetta TDI… those Audi R10 TDI’s are kicking @$$ at Le Mans right now… Go Diesel!!!) and I noticed a flyer for a father’s day car show on Whidbey Island. I figured it would be a good day out for my son & I.

Then last weekend I had a “smoke escapes” incident that I could not find the source for. Out with the wife in the Jag, riding home from a nice dinner date, flick on the headlights and are confronted with a wildly swinging ammeter and a whiff of Genuine Lucas Smoke. Drove the rest of the way sans lights (by choice) and then could not get the smoke to reappear once back at the garage. Humpf… British cars!

So today my son Nicholas & I rolled out early on a misty day for a drive to Whidbey Island. As we left Arlington, we had another whiff of smoke. This time I was prepared and already had my dash knobs out, so I pulled over and dropped the panel, fully expecting to see The Prince of Darkness himself puffing on a pipe!

Nothing.

I was stumped. Though I noted that my ammeter was lying like a dead thing, and not wiggling when I flicked the turn signals on. =\

I stopped at a gas station to fill up, and pulled the voltmeter out of my boot and checked the battery… it was fine, with around 14V. I fired up the engine and checked again… 12V and dropping/wiggling. Damn. I assumed a had fried yet another alternator. Something about this car – it eats alternators. =\

It was still very early here on the west coast, so I didn’t want to wake Ray, so I called Wiggy to find out the model # of the Hitachi so I could grab another one. I stopped at a NAPA in Mt. Vernon, they didn’t have one, but they called ahead to Oak Harbor, and found one for me. Nick & I hit the road and made our way to over Fidalgo Island, and over the Deception Pass bridge to Whidbey. I picked up the Hitachi alternator and made my way down the island to the show.

The show itself was “OK”… the usual 50’s, 60’s cars & hot rods, with a few oddballs here and there. It was a charity show for the Alzheimer’s Society and a hospice on the island, so I was more than happy to pay my entry fee. They did have more than just cars. They had a contest on PS2’s running Gran Turismo 4, where they put everyone in the same car/course and awarded a trophy for the fastest lap. Nick & I did miserably, but it was fun. They also had a 102 year old (running!) Pope car from the Le May Museum in Tacoma. My favorite car there was a pre-war Lancia. Not a sports car, but very cool nonetheless. In the weird world of small-town car shows without much clue about non-American cars, the 65E was in the same class as this, and virtually every other foreign car there.

Nick was awesome, once again jumping out of the car on arrival and giving it a good cleaning while I went and registered.

Over the course of the day, I swear I meet over half a dozen guys who tell me they have an old E-type in their garage! Virtually all of them on Whidbey Island. One of them was even Roger Los. =) I shared the existence of this group and xkedata, so hopefully we’ll see some new guys and cars here.

Later in the afternoon, Nick went off to the swingset, while I set about replacing my alternator. So I get all the tools out… I know exactly what I need. If anybody needs a pit crew alternator replacer for their E-type Jag, I’m your guy! I’m usually a slow mechanic, but I’ve done this so often that it goes very fast. I remove the top nut and take the tension off the belt and right before my eyes the source of all my problems is revealed:

As I push the alternator toward the engine, the main wire breaks off. It was badly corroded and the crimp on the O-connector was almost burned through. It was ‘barely there’ until I broke it by moving the alterator. Well, this was a lot easier to deal with than a full swap! I jump back to the boot, and pull out a new O-connector and the crimp, snip off the munged end, and put a new end on. Presto!

The only issue I had then was what to do with my new alternator. I figured I’d put the right pulley on it and throw it in the boot. With a replacement on board, I assume the one on the car will last forever, right? 😉

The show came to an end. Nick was very sad that we didn’t win anything… but given that all foreign cars were lumped in one class, and from what I could see the cleanliness of the car was the main criteria. Given that I don’t subject the 65E to any full-body Armor-all dips, and drive it too much (and don’t wash it enough!) so we didn’t win.

What I did win was a great drive home, and that’s fine with me. The weather cleared, and the alternator was working again, so I fired up the Valentine1 and drove it like I stole it. For the first time since the engine rebuild I *really* pushed the car, and it drove like a dream. We took back roads most of the way, and violated the law whenever possible. 😉

The highlight was passing a couple of Navy kids in a rice rocket sport compact car (they never saw me coming) and having them try and keep up with a car more than twice THEIR age. They would catch me in traffic, but as soon as we passed, I would walk away from them every time. What a joy!

Pics from the day here.