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.
I attended the Bowling Green Assembly Plant tour today. It was really!!!!! awesome!!!!!
Corvette Assembly Plant Bowling Green, KY
The walk from the parking lot to the plant was filled with the smell of new car. They must pour it out of every chimney and window.
They were building the Z06’s, ZR1 and Grand Sports…a lot of Grand Sports!!! (that is a damn nice car!!!) Amazing!!!! Sorry no pictures were allowed.
Seeing all the parts everywhere and the hanging panels and frames…was a sight to be hold.
The tour was pretty quick..well maybe an hour…but I could have hung there all day!!! I lagged behind the tour group and spoke with a couple of the workers.
At one stop, where they fill the newly married body, chassy and engine with fluid, the tour guide was going blah, blah, blah and I was looking over the cars and one of the guys walked over asked me if I had one picked out yet. He said they seemed to be selling a lot of GS’s. I asked him about the fender stripes and he said they normally just get tossed in the back and the dealership installs them. He asked me if I liked the wider body and I said what’s not to like!!!!
We watched them marry up a Zo6’s mufflers, while another guy stuck in the tail lights and then on to the chassy. Tire position was at a stop.
Actually got to watch a new Grand Sport come off the line and run over the ‘suspension’ activation section (floor) and then into the section where they align the headlights.
We got to see a Z06 enter the final test chamber where they run 200 + tests in two minutes. This one passed.
It was MOST EXCELLENT!!!! (Wayne’s World).
The NCM was good, but the plant tour overshadowed it…by far. I’ll post up pics from the NCM in the next post.
Brooklyn bridge opened for traffic on 5/24 1883 and the Golden opened 5/27 in 1937.
Race car driver Mauri Rose was born 5/26/1906 currently in the racing hall of fame, placed second in the 1927 Indy 500. Actually won the Indy in 1941, but that was a tough victory, spanning two Maserati-powered Elgin Piston Pin Specials cars, after the first one had mechanical issues. He tossed a fit and the car owners pulled one of the other drivers on the time from the race and give Rose that car.
The Pin
Elgin Pin
What powered that thing?
Power Plant
The first Kaiser-Frazer was produced 5/28/1946 – cars weren’t sold until 1947.
I was about to start the pillar moldings mini project when I ran into a couple mechanical issues.
About a week ago the Mustang began squealing when pushed to high revs. That normally indicates one of several problems.
1. It could be a water pump
2. It could be the power steering pump
3. It could be a pulley
4. It could be a bolt that was holding the alternator bracket to the engine worked itself out and was in contact with the fan belt.
5. It could be a combination of the any of these.
Now the Mustang did, every once in a while, drip some fluid from the power steering control value but it wasn’t a huge deal.
Well, Saturday I went to start her and the battery was dead. It’s over 3 years old and I had left the lights on the day before and had to have it jump started. So off to the auto parts store I went and pick up a new 3 year battery and stuck it. When I started the engine up, it made the squeal and I decided I needed to fix this, before the pillar molding.
So with a neighbor revving the engine I noticed the bolt protruding from the water pump/block ( it passes through left side water pump housing in to the block). With the revs the fan belt would flex and briefly hit the bolt. This bolt was “custom” made when we were fitting everything up to reman’ed long block and was about 7 or 8 inches long.
It took a bit to get that back in place, had to loosen up the alternator’s other two supports and toss a little loctite on the threads and she was good to go…..almost…..
Yeah….option #5 above was the correct answer BTW.
Started it up and there was still a squeal – not the same squeal but clearly an ‘accompaning’ squeal. Shortly after that a power steering hose let go and well liquid does what gravity make it do and I spent the afternoon cleaning the driveway. So there went my allotted time for Saturday. So replacing both hoses seem the best way to go and they’ll be in today. Right now it’s at the shop down the street, I had no time to undertake this task at the moment, will be traveling the next couple weeks.
One of my travels takes me to the National Corvette Museum. I’ll spend an entire day there which include the assembly plant tour.
I grab every book I think is useful in any of my hobbies. I happened to be at the mall the other day and had some time kill and wonder down to Borders books store. Pick up a book entitled “Ultimate American V-8 Engine Data Book” 2 Edition by Peter Sessler, published MotorBooks.
This book has engine identification codes, component casting codes, internal dimensions and specs, and power and torque ratings.
It goes back as far as 1952 and covers Fords, GM, Mopar, and AMC, Packard and Studebaker. It includes big blocks and small blocks. There is a lot of information.
I learned from this book that all of the engines possible for the Corvette in 1984 were rated @ 205 hp. The CFI was the main power supplier, but it also had listed a couple TPI’s (engine suffix code ZFC), TBI (engine suffix code ZFJ – supposedly for export only) and a 4v for California (engine suffix code ZFF).
They also inform you of the transmissions that go with the engines.
There are listings for cylinder heads parts or casting # as well as intake and exhaust manifolds as well.
I think this one is worth the $30.00.
This is a great transition to introduce an up and coming feature for this blog.
I love engines…(duh). To me the history of development, what was used when and where and maybe even why can be fascinating. I’ll be tossing out specs and the like and hopefully some, ” I would have never guessed that” information. Now, I don’t have this all in my head, it will be researched stuff or some experiences. (My 1974 Torino was a good case study..tell you the story soon).
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 the other cost I mentioned will be in the area of tires.
In this event I just ran with my street tires 255/50 ZR 16 BFG GForce Sport and stock rims (only chrome). There was a lot of tire spinning and some smoking. The surface of the track was…well lets just say less the optimun..ok…fine…it was horrible. (You could toss in a few cuss words in front of horrible and you wouldn’t be over dramatizing.) It was black top, cracked, uneven and there was grass and weeds growing on the far end. The tires looked rough when I finished the 10 runs. Too many more events (this was the second auto cross on these tires) and I think I’d have to replace them.
So that really means that to protect the street tires and the chrome rims, I really ought to have an other set of tires and rims. Now you are talking money that many of us average guys aren’t going to spring for. This is true for vette owners..tires are not cheap for the older vettes. Not so for my co-worker running his Civic, they are reasonable.
Take my C4 the tires and the Wheels are uni-directional. Not unusual for tires, but my 1984 C4 rims only go one way and are labeled left front, right front and the same for the rear. I do have the original set of rims that I will eventually restore to the factory aluminum and clear coat, but right now they would for auto crossing. But the rubber can run upwards of $700.00 and if I put racing rubber on it, according to SCCA rules it will change my class.
The last cost is the “I broke it cost.” They could be just about anything on a car that’s racing. Anything mechanical, brakes (oh..they will wear out a lot faster in auto cross…or at least the way I do it!!!!), undercarriage, right down to the dreaded “cone damage”. (yeah…yeah….I know you aren’t suppose to hit them…I know the object of the race..but man did I kill some of them ‘good’..no doubt!!!) I did no damage to the vette but I did see a Evo that took out a portion of his front air dam.
In fact the vette performed flawlessly, only problem was the driver. I’ll get to that next blog. You’ll laugh and I’ll give you my times and points and we’ll talk about PAX times and classes.
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.
