GTSparkplugs

Well just a few more days to go. Me, my cousin, and friends make way to Monterey. While it has been a known issue that I despise car shows I attend this one with a usual glass half full (as I can be) attitude. Actually the Pebble Beach part of the show is the low point for me. I an not too interested in many of the cars that show up (I do enjoy the cheese and wine part). The one with the Ford marquee was a notable exception since a ton of GT40’s were on display. The weekend starts early as we all leave Thursday morning for the drive up out of Los Angeles area. My luck has it I have a dentist appointment that morning, seems I’ll have to hold off on the beef jerky for a while into the trip, but please be assured that it is a meat weekend instore. Back to the trip, the high point for me has almost always been the Historic races. I just love poking around the pits and chatting with a few folks that I know (Sunbeam Tiger guys, Shelby Guys). Another nice part of the trip is the Italiano Concorso. One of the only, and I use the term carefully shows that I ‘Enjoy’. I hope to have a bunch more photo’s and possibly video for those not in attendance. If anyone sees me walking around, please stop and say hi, I will be wearing a hat as ususal.

It seems to never end. Every time I pass a magazine rack you check out the cover car and they boast something like 590hp Civic, 670hp WRX, 800hp (YOUR BRAND HERE), etc. That’s cool, someone modded up a car and made some big hp. But now those numbers are starting to climb for the production cars. No big deal, but too many knot-heads driving them around and showing up at car gathering showing off their pride and joy. Fine, but make sure you know how to drive your car. Just because you have the bread to pick up a Veryon, Porsche GT, etc, learn how to drive your car so I don’t have a nice laugh when I see your car on the Wrecked Exotics Site. It is a bummer when you check out the carnage on that site. And it is not getting any better, cars are getting faster and have more HP every year. And people aren’t getting any smater or better drivers it seems. If you have one of these cars (you know who you are) and think you can drive fast because it handles like a dream, let me know when the pictures are going to be up on the Wrecked Exotics Site. Simple solution, take a high performance driving course where they let you drive YOUR car. Or find out about track event that offer the HPDE (High Performance Driving Event) where you can get an instructor and hit the track and drive as hard as you feel safe AND don’t endanger me. By the way, you can use BLUE tape to keep any rock chips from messing with your paint and I can assure you that the damage from that will be less they you plowing into my Excursion (You will lose).

Seems being slow to finish my Cobra might land it on TV. Not that I really give a crap about that, it was funny coming across this while reading a blog about Top Gear USA Style. Looking and going well at least the car has some good company as I do like Adam’s Challenge Stradale (with the exception that it has a stereo) and his nice collection of odd cool cars. I have not included this in the VSE Cobra build thread but if you want to see about it, that thread starts HERE or if you want to see the more static site Shift Here.

All this chatter about miles per gallon… You only hear about it when the price of gasoline goes up. Once it stabilizes we are back buying performance cars and SUV’s. On with the discussion…

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I have come to the conclusion that I must have a bad a$$ blog due to the fact that I get a hoard of spam. I can say one thing that the Askimet Wordpress Plugin works so well that I hardly ever have to do anything to keep it out of the rants and raves. Sometimes I look at the messages to see how stupid the spam-bots are by making it so easy to detect. You would think in this day an age of High-tech that they would be better. Seems not. Any-a-way’s not much going on from the car front, got the word that the Sunbeam Tiger Gauges are completed. I’ll post more info on that in the Tiger section in a week or so when they show up. The Mustang’s engine is back under way at QMP, I had a problem with wrong crank and had to get a new one, then had to swap out the connecting rods since they were Chevy Journal vs Ford. Now back on track, will have to see what next might be instore. GT40 is dormant, Cobra dormant, but close, will update on that as well in the next week or so.

Well I bit the bullet and did the front brakes on the ‘X’. I had started to have the standard vibrating pedal that most of the F250, F350, and Excursions have. I had a set of pads put in under the pre-paid service policy which amounts to the lowest cost pads without turning the rotor. Well about 20k miles later the pedal and truck would vibrate pretty bad when braking in the 50mph down to 40mph range.

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California’s New Cell Phone Law,  Safety Or Just Another Revenue Stream that is the question?

At first I thought that the new DMV laws that are to go into effect July might be something that is really good. I’m still a bit torn as the question of safety while using a cell phone is obvious but expecting this to really be policed is another story.

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Here is the information on the Tiger United 31, which is being held at Big Bear Lake.

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I just added a Garage Sale page. Time to get some workin’ room in the garage. Check out the page at GtSparkPlugs Garage Sale

I have some of my 1965-1966 Mustang parts, some small block Ford stuff, some fiberglass parts, some big block chevy parts (just a bit, more coming). And other odds and ends.

Not such a big deal, but I did my first web tool. It is a Tire calculator. Given the tire specifications it will calculate the dimensions of the tire as well as revs per mile, etc. This is the start of the tools section on GTSparkPlugs site (not set up yet). The goal is to do a tire size, gear and shift point tool set, next will be to add the data entry for rear end gear ratio, and trans gear ratios. Then calculate the speeds per RPM and shift points. The tool that I have been using and is very good is called GearCalc. It is a simple windows tool and very handy, but wanted the functionality on a a web based tool. So good for a couple of things, one is I use it all the time and nice to have it on the web, the other is good practice learning JavaScript which is a cool language.
Here is the link to the Tire Size Calculator Page

GTSparkPlugs Tire Size Calculator