Hi all,
Sunday, AUgust 12, 1990 was the car show portion of the
Roadster Factorie's 1990 Summer Party. Bill Sohl will be writing
a more detailed description of the event for the British Cars
mailing list, so I'll concentrate on the aotoX primarily.
They started the party with drag racing at the local strip
(Keystone Raceway) on Friday, but I skipped this as I was tired
and didn't really want to tear up my tires. So, I simply hung out
at TRF, and eyed the TRS LeMans car and a hardtop Spitfire (a
vintage racer, SVRA - it looks like a GT-6, but is really a Spit
with coupe-type top). I understand most people skipped the drag
racing, and you could take as many runs at it as you wanted.
Saturday morning at 0-dark-thirty, I ran by the car wash
and removed most of the road grime from the drive out from
Boulder, CO and then went on over to tech. I ended up being
first in line at tech, and got a late number since I like to watch
other's mistakes before I drive. I met Richard and Vickie Schlierer
from the Albany area, who several Team.Netters know. Nice folks,
I ended up hanging out with them quite a bit. Anyway, after
tech, I drove over to the Indiana, PA airstrip where the autoX
was to be held and began to unload the car from the trailer.
At this time, I discovered that all the bouncing on the trailer
had broken the end link for my rear sway bar. Luckily, one
of the aircraft mechanics was around and had a used propeller
bolt that turned out to be the right size. So, after a quick
repair, I got a chance to walk the course.
The course was short, shorter than it needed to be since
they had access to the whole taxiway, and narrow; the taxiway
was about the width of a two lane road. The start was at 90
degrees to the taxiway, and immediately led to a skid pad; about
12 feet ID and about 35 feeet OD. After 270 degrees of this, we
went out onto the taxiway onto about an 1/8 mile straight. At the
end of the straight came a narrow 12-15 foot wide, alley leading
to a pivot cone. Coming out of the pivot cone/alley, we were
funneled into a set of offset gates which were really the first
several cones of a seven cone decreasing spacing slalom, leading
to the finish. Most cars in the morning run group
were in the 35-45 second range. The Schleirers (Spitfire 1500)
were at about 30.1 and 29.9 for Richard and Vickie respectively;
however, another Spitfire managed to get a 29.740 for FTD at
that time.
I was the last car in the afternoon run group, and got
a 29.70? on my first run. I dropped this to 29.5?? on my second
run, but overcooked the slalom on my third run and ran over the
last two cones. So, I got FTD (my first ever) which was fun.
The TV show, Evening Magazine, was out doing a feature on the
Roadster Factory, so they interviewed me. If anyone watches
that show, and I get on I'd be interested in a tape of it; I don't
think its shown here in St. Louis or I'd tape it myself.
After the autoX, was the banquet Saturday night. They
roasted a couple of pigs, provided corn from Charles Runyon's
farm, had a live band and free beer; also a large squirt gun battle,
which was joined by a group with a water pump in the back of a
TR-3 pickup truck (pretty tacky, actually). But the food and
band were excellent, and at about 10 PM they shot off a load of
fireworks. The drive back to the hotel was pretty scary as
it got very foggy.
Sunday was the car show in Indiana where Kirk saw my
car with the stickers on it, sorry I missed you. They had
a really nice turnout with about 200 cars of various makes
there, although the emphasis was heavily on TRs and MGBs;
I'll let Bill Sohl finish that part as this is already too long.
Anyway, another successful race for Team.Net.
Cheeres,
John
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