CARRERA CORRAL -- DREAM MACHINES -- HALF MOON BAY -- APRIL 26

Hola!

How about a "Carrera Corral" at Dream Machines in Half Moon Bay airport on Sunday, April 26?

Here is the web site for the event: http://www.miramarevents.com/dreammachines/

As most of you from the Bay Area know, this is probably the largest show in the country of any machine that can drive, fly, plow, or saw wood.

One year they had a flight of P-51 Mustangs that strafed the airport, plus B-17 rides.



It would be great to put our Carrera cars or other machines together under the Carrera banner, catch up, and see some of the fine machinery that comes to this show. It is all very informal. There is no judging, and food is available, of course.



For those of you who do not know the Half Moon Bay area, it is a wonderful stretch of California coastline, which includes long sandy beaches and rocky cliffs. We are 30 miles south of the city of San Francisco, and about 30 minutes from the San Francisco International Airport.

We have a Ritz Carleton with a great golf course (LPGA quality at least), and the usual assortment of hotels and restaurants along the beach from Pacifica down to Santa Cruz. The famous surf break, Maverick's, and Pillar Point Harbor are short walk from the airfield.



Dream Machines is a fundraiser for the Coastside Senior Center. You pay a modest fee to enter your car, plane, bike, or whatever, and get two tickets to the show. There is a deadline for entering your machine. The rub is -- our cars must be at the airport early on Sunday morning, otherwise we park in the parking lot with the 100,000 spectators.

After we drop our cars or bikes off, we can have brunch somewhere with that special someone and then return later for the show. She can check out the machines or the boutiques in HMB.

I live about 4 miles south of the airport and have parking on the street for anyone towing a trailer queen to the show. There is also a High Performance Driving Event at Sears Point (Infineon Raceway) that weekend (www.nasaproracing.com), and I will be there on Saturday, if anyone wants to test their car or get some driving instruction before they show it on Sunday. Lots of options!

Any interest out there? Please let me know: yeah, nay, or maybe.

Thanks!

Gerie

Here are a few photos from previous Dream Machine shows.

Gotta Go... Chihuahua

It's time for the Chihuahua Express and teams have to go. Speaking of Chihuahua's and the need to go...

If This Don't Make Your Sick Nothing Will

Most of the post I make here are about stories that I believe everyone would enjoy or learn from but sadly there are times when we get reports like this one that just make a grown man want to toss his cookies. The only good news is that nobody was seriously injured. Unless you take into account a few broken hearts.




One of the nicest couple of guys I ever met that had anything to do with La Carrera Panamericana are Piloto Richard Morrison and Co-Piloto Richard "Rick" Hamlin The car they competed in on more than one ocassion is one of the more well know "regulars" that has competed in La Carrera Panamericana Origanal Pan Am Class. I am speaking of the yellow and red #422 Mercedes. California's Best Racing team have many awesome memories of moments we spent time together with them. Speaking from personal experience there just isn't anyone friendlier or more willing to go the extra mile to be of help or willing to offer a smile under any given circumstance. For these reasons it saddens me more than you know to make this post.




Here is a letter I just received from Richard Morrison, one that will make you feel his pain.


Hi Gary,

The bad news is that my Mercedes was in a shop that burned down 10 days ago.

Attached are more pictures than you would like to see, I’m sure. The fire appears to have started in the building’s electrical breaker box, Ignited a wood column then spread in the rafters. It was a wood framed “pole barn” type building. The center of the roof collapsed but the wall at the rear of my car stayed up with the roof attached so it formed a low roof over the car that probably shielded it from some of the heat/ The front of the car got much hotter than the back and upper part much hotter than the bottom. I’m hoping the radiator shielded the engine and wiring in the engine compartment. I completely rewired it last year. It was a one man shop behind his home. All was well when he went in for lunch and had smoke pouring out at 12:30. The rural fire department is literally across the street. It took 20 minutes for them to arrive and another 20 to 30 minutes to pump any water. They wouldn't open the door to try to drag the car out so that more air would not be admitted. That is confusing to me though as the windows were all broken out. The car was up on 4 jack stands with wheels removed to check the brakes, so it would have been literally dragged out.

The fire was weird. It looks like it didn't get hot below the top of the wheel wells. Some newspapers on shelves next to the car weren't scorched.































Here the #422 hauls the mail up Pikes Peak.



EDIT POST: Here is a very nice post from Marcia Blas Blog.

Was It Good For You?

Whats the ultimate finish to winning your class in La Carrera Panamericana?

Its a well known tradition that when you're finished doing something exciting that really gets your juices flowing there's only one thing left to do and that's enjoy a great cigar. And there's not many things that can get your juices flowing more than La Carrera Panamericana let alone winning your class (again) as Carson Scheller would know.

Is this a cool photo or what!

An Apple A Day Keeps The Bushings Melting Away

We had a absolute Blast and finished 3rd in class.... We Qualified 19th overall, which was spectacular for us also. We placed 1st in class on the Zacatecas day, beating the well prepared Alfa (that won all the other days) by 3 seconds....sweet! We had issues the entire race....kept melting bushings on our upper a arm next to the header. Uh JETCOAT???The guys replaced them 3 times during the race. It took less than 1/2 hour each time...Well Done. We had a continuous problem with our clutch also. T/O bearing, fork, and clutch rod.

I might add the funny part about when we got escorted out of SLP by a couple good motorbike cops, some of the towns finest. First they gave us directions, then they pulled us over, told us we ran a red light....What? Where?When?Huh? I showed them my racing license, then we gave them a few hero cards....showed them the broken car in the trailer, and Pow the red carpet service started. They gave us our own private escort complete with lights and sirens clear across town, stopping traffic along the way,to get us going again and even passing a wreck that just happened in front of us. Gotta love Mexico



When we departed from the morning service stop on the second day, our clutch rod broke, darn it. We got back to the crew and they hustled up a piece of all-thread from the nice people on the TBZ team and cut it to length, we were back in the race. We hauled butt to get back our place in the lineup, and the rest of the speed stages went well....problem was as we later found out at the drivers meeting, we were over the 10 minute limit, thus giving us the max. time for the rest of the day. No podium today.

On to Quaretero, more problems with the clutch rod and bushings but a 3rd place anyway. (along with having a little help from the federalies) they helped us get to the track when we ran out of gas 1/2 mile before we arrived. Then Christan and Dan helped us with a couple gallons of gas....got around the track 6 times and to the Pemex...so much for being light on fuel to go fast.....we needed more than fumes. It was 2 out of 3 days on the box. We are still doing well. Then to SLP, that was a good day. Still fighting the mystery clutch rod problem, but we still pulled off a 2nd for the day.



We elected to fix the problem that night, removed the tranny replaced the flywheel, pressure plate, t/o bearing, disc in the rain, up till 4am and it was still bad.....damn! What are we overlooking? The race left for Aguascaliente without us.....we were seriously thinking of calling it a done deal. We loaded the car into the trailer, and headed to the finish line in Aguascaliente.

On the way we came up with another plan. Lets get there and try to fix it for the stage to Zacatecas.... OK OK OK we fixed the problem and delivered the time steward a written letter at the drivers meeting stating why we missed the stage and we were back in it. With a new clutch fresh bushings, and sticky tires on we were ready to haul mail to Zacatecas.

Al kicked 10 tons of ass in this race.


Having missed the last day placed us all the way back in the pack. The car was as good as it had felt the whole race..... we must have passed more cars in speed stages than anybody that day. What a BLAST!!After a great day racing we all went to the Garufo Restaurant and had a world class Argentinean dinner, then did the donkey walk to the bullring and Proudly took the team to the top box on the podium beating that lighting fast Alfa (by 3 seconds) that had been sweeping the competition away from that piece of real estate the entire race. It was great!

Onto the final leg to Nuevo Laredo we were just trying to get her home.....and we did. Turns out we pulled off a 3rd for the day and 3rd overall in class.
NEVER GIVE UP, Its a long race. We are signed up to do it again this year. YAHOO! That's what happened to us.



I might add that Steve our chief mechanic who took the pics/videos was a Super asset to our team. The crew worked their butts off, we could never have done so well without them. A big thanks to Steve, Al, and Oddvar who became my Shepard and helped us through the Event.



Thanks from the Apple Farmer



These pics were taken by our crewman Steve Berry.

Does Anyone Recognize This Lady?

This photo was taken in Zacatecas during the 2007 La Carrera Panamericana. If you know what team she was with or her name, please drop me a line at gfaules44@aol.com

How Brand Loyal Are You?

We all know it's not very nice to make fun of someone else's misfortune but when it comes to racing (assuming nobody was seriously injured) all bets are off. Having grown up during the Muscle Car era (the real one) I can recall a day when it was an unwritten law that you choose one brand and from that point on there was a line in the sand that you dare anyone to cross. Unlike the many choices available today, back then for all intensive purposes there was only three to choose from. Ford, Chevy and Dodge... period. To say many an argument or even a fight started over a heated discussion about such differences would be putting it mildly.

Since those days of old many things have changed but for us old timers the "Choose one" frame of mind still holds loyal. So the big question is, how brand loyal are you and have stuck to your guns all these years?

What got me started thinking about this was when I noticed one of the Historico C class entries from 2007 there is a new entry of someone we competed with during the 2007 La Carerra Panamericana. But I couldn't help but notice his team is now changing over (Or shall I saw moving up. LOL) to a different make of car. In this case the team I am talking about is Piloto Robert Stuart and Co-Piloto Steve McKelive who drove the #366 Corvette that got more photos taken of it than Mexico has cactus. This year they have gone from a Chevy Corvette to a Ford Mustang.

For what it's worth they are not the only team who saw thew light and made a move up. Last year saw Bill Shanahan make the move up when he too got rid of a Corvette and replaced it with a Ford. The big difference is Shanahan's Vette didn't get nearly as much press or recognition as Stuart's Vette did and understandably so as you can see from the following photos.

This is what the #366 Vette looked like at Oxaxca just before qualifying.




This is what Jon and I saw as we came around the corner and even though only seconds had gone by it was already impossible for us to tell what kind of car it was. Based on the black cloud of smoke we could only assume it was what was left of the #366 Chevy Corvette.



As glad as I am to see the Chevy guys realize the Fords are a superior race car I just cant wait until the next time some ask me, "Hey, do you know what FORD stands for?" so I can show them these photos.

For what it's worth, this post was not intended to hurt any feeling and was just a little racing humor. For those who can't stand the heat... Don't stand next to a lonely tree in the middle of nowhere in Mexico especially if you hear a Chevy coming. LOL!


Here is a photo of the new Mustang to be driven by Robert Stuart this year. I must say, after all that they went trough in 2007 including wrecking their tow rig and trailer and now to take on La Carrera Panamericana one more time makes me take off my hat to them and wish them all the luck in the world. The good news is they can't do any worse than they did in 2007 but I am willing to bet they'll have a fuel-cell in this car. Good luck guys. (P.S. Don't forget to bring the title to your race car this year.)