It’s All in the Prep

Last Friday night seems like a week ago already; so much has happened since then. I’ll put off my write-up on yesterday’s track event for a second blog post.

Friday evening I had some driveway time available to me, so I took on the task of giving Glinda a tune-up. I’d sprung for the good stuff when I placed my order with Clark’s so I was optimistic that, once done, she’d run smoothly up into the higher revs. The job went surprisingly well. I got the new points and condenser installed without dropping any of the tiny screws – TYL. I got the plugs changed without stripping out any threads - TYL. I got the rotor and cap changed without crossing any wires. With all the new parts in, I adjusted the point gap to an indicated 34 degrees on the dwell-meter and the distributor twisted to an indicated 12 degrees BTDC (before top dead center) on the timing mark. With that done, I cut down and installed the two-and-a-quarter inch tailpipe I’d recently bought. This would ensure that the hot exhaust gasses would exit aft of the car’s body. While I was fitting the pipe, I discovered the bracket I’d clamped to had broken, so I needed to re-clamp – this time grabbing more metal under the clamp.

Saturday, the lovely Loriann posited, “Wider tires means a safer car, right. Well, put the longer studs on.” With that encouragement I dove into the stud replacement project. Starting at Glinda’s right front, I jacked up the right side of the car, supported it on a jackstand, removed the front wheel, followed by the drum, and finally the hub. With a lugnut in place over the end of each stud, I whacked them all out with a hammer and then, using a washer-backed lugnut and my ½ inch impact wrench I pulled each new stud until the knurl was fully seated in the hole. The other front hub went the same way, while the rears had to be done with the hubs still in place.

Once all the studs were in place and the hubs and drums reinstalled, I mounted the IROC wheels and lowered the car back onto the driveway. With some driveway-time still available, I proceeded to install the new throttle linkage kit I bought with THRaF money. It was more of a challenge than I’d anticipated and the end of driveway-time came before it was completely installed. I set the alarm clock for early Sunday morning, and finished the job before the lovely Loriann left the bed.

It took another hour or so that evening to pack parts and supplies in the back of the truck, drive Glinda to the gas station to put fuel in her tank as well as fill two five gallon jugs with hi-test, and, finally, hitch her up to the truck.

Empty Handed

Since the THRaF is still flush with funds, I headed over to Crazy Ray’s to see if I could find a pair of bucket seats to bolt into Glinda. I wove my way around the lines of both imports and domestics for about forty minutes. Since access to the back seat is still required, I was able to walk by more than eighty percent of the candidate cars - seatbacks of four-doors don’t tilt far enough forward. While I found a pair of light gray seats in a Cobalt that I came close to getting, all the other coupe and convertible seats were too beat, worn, and nasty to even be considered. One of the Cobalt seats had a small hole in the fabric of one bolster. Since they were actually clean enough to sit in, I tried it out to verify it’s acceptable. While it’s not nearly as effective as my racing seat at restraining side-to-side movement, I’ll remember it’s there in case all other avenues are exhausted. It appears what I really want are the Cobalt SS seats in black (see below photo). Now I’ll just have to find them. Could be tough – and pricey.

A Lot and a Little

There’s been a lot going on fleet-wise, but only a little to show for it. The “lot” that’s been going on includes a couple of just-say-no’s, a that’s-so-awesome, and one thank-you-very-much that’s led to quite a bit of shopping and dreaming.



The first just-say-no was my passing on the V8 ‘vair. While the seller is offering an exciting beast of a Corvair for a VERY fair forty-nine hundred dollars, the situation just isn’t right for me to pull the trigger. Even though replacing the built 302 Chevy smallblock that currently resides in its back seat for something tamer would net me a couple grand and selling Glinda should get me a couple more, there’s just too much time and money that would be tied up in the deal – there’s that two parts of that dreaded TTT again. This car, by the way, is still available. In addition to the JPEG, you can click here to see a bunch of photos that were taken a couple years back by the car's builder before Earl (the seller) purchased the car and did a lot of finishing work. Earl can be reached at 410-705-8823 or earlbirdman@yahoo.com.

I still struggle with all the time and money I’m putting into Glinda, a car that I’ll always have to be doing rust repair on. It would be such a time-saver to have a solid, rust-free LM coupe as my track car/street car. That brings me to my second just-say-no. I was using the SearchTempest website to torment myself this morning and came across a listing for a 65 corvair 140 prodject(sic) with no price. Not one to ever pass on a misspelled Corvair ad, I clicked on the link and was rewarded with a number of photos of a very solid-looking primer gray coupe with its rear-end sitting high in its drivetrain-less-ness.

I shot the seller an e-mail asking about the condition and what he (or she) was asking for this prospective replacement to the rusty Glinda. I received a reply rather quickly telling me the car’s as solid as the jpegs show. The seller told me to, “Give offer if u want to come see it.” The response is still in my inbox, but even if I could get the car for a few hundred dollars (seller says, “need to get this car gone”), and even though I could easily borrow a trailer and make the roundtrip to Youngstown, OH for about $150, and even though this car’s already got all the manual shift and clutch parts in place, and even though I’ve though I’ve got a tranny and diff that’ll bolt right in, I don’t have a running engine. Because of that I haven’t really given it much more thought (yeah, right). Here are the photos that were in the ad.



The that’s-so-awesome occurred last evening when I received a photo-text from the guy that bought Rich’s Corsa. He’s in the final stages of reassembling the car after its new paintjob is finally finished. It is one really cool car now. It’s wonderful to see that he’s gotten so excited about it, and I really appreciate the frequent updates he sends me.

That brings me to my thank-you-very-much. The other day I got a phone call from my folks. My generous dad started the conversation by telling me he’d just sent a donation to the Tom Hughes Racing Fund (I’m calling it THRaF). He’d been reading between the lines of one of my Facebook postings, and decided I needed a fund and he needed to be the first contributor. Since finding his $500 check in my mail a couple days later, I’ve made a list of luxuries I’m going to get with the fund:
- Flamethrower Coil - Mufflers - Shifter Boot - Bucket Seats - Throttle Linkage Kit - Tunnel Pivot