SAAC Forum

Could've ironed it...

Another classic from our time: Led Zeppelin was one of the recipients of the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors for their lifetime of contributions to American culture.

The finale of the evening's performances was an amazing rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" performed by Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson and featuring Jason Bonham on drums wearing his father's signature bowler. John Bonham's untimely passing in 1980 prompted Led Zeppelin to disband in tribute to their friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Rx09cBs50

Me too! Thx for posting!

I'm a late model Shelbyer, with a 2019 GT350. It's a driver with 19,000 miles on it - 1400 of which were accumulated at HPDE events. My dealer is aware of my shenanigans.

I did have a problem this summer with my 5th gear, which my local dealership repaired. While there, a salesman and I were discussing the high-end Mach E. For grins, I asked him what he'd give me for the GT350 in trade. He offered $2K more than I paid for it 3 1/2 years ago.

What do you do to make these transactions more safe? In my early days, I had some dodgy experiences with buying and selling vehicles and have developed practices to make me more comfortable.

When I sell a vehicle, I interview that person a bit on the phone before inviting them to a test-drive/ride at my house where I can setup some "precautions". I either accept cash (verified with a counterfeit-detector pen), or I meet the person at his bank. At the bank, both of us walk up to the teller where he requests a Cashier's Check made out to me. That's how I know the check is not a fake. The buyer has to arrange to get the funds into their bank account ahead of time. After he receives the check, we stay in the lobby and exchange the vehicle documents and funds. The lobby provides a fairly public and secure place to conduct the transaction.

When I buy a vehicle, I inform the person I'm not bringing cash and that I will either give them a check, or go through the process above. I do take "precautions" when looking at vehicles in areas I'm unfamiliar with. If the area is sketchy, I'll ask to meet in a well-travelled public parking lot.

At SAAC-46, I rented the garage next to the bay where the Blair family had Bill's car parked. He unfortunately was unable to attend due to health issues, but I met his lovely family.

I got a few shots of his car:

Quote from: Coralsnake on September 17, 2022, 06:00:43 AM
That's the Dan Guernsey car

I literally laughed out loud! Glad I wasn't drinking my milk at the time.

Thx Coralsnake!

I tend to keep my stuff a while.

I purchased my first decent stereo gear in 1974. I paid $25 for a used & non-working Marantz 1060 Amplifier. Some quick work with a soldering gun and I was in business.

I've used this amp continuously since then. It has needed only contact cleaning & some new caps and tubes. It's been downgraded to my garage stereo, but still rockin' after nearly 50 years.

My in-house system consists of an Adcom amp and receiver driving Bang and Olufsen Beolab Tower speakers along with some vintage Bose 601s.

Congratulations on the retirement!

I pulled the trigger a bit over two years ago. Loving the new chapter.
Thx again for your help at SAAC-46. I wish you'd brought your car. Would have loved to see it!

Length: I'll concur that 20' would be the minimum usable length, but 22' or 24' is worth the extra cost and parking hassle.


I'll add a few more thoughts:

Tow Vehicle: Having a decent tow rig can make your experience effortless. I now have a '17 Ram 2500 diesel and it is much better than my old Suburban 2500 with a 454. I barely feel the trailer behind me, even in the mountains.

Brands: Featherlite and ATC have been mentioned as good choices and I agree. Does anybody have an "InTech" brand aluminum trailer? Back in 2018, I was leaning towards InTech when I found a good deal on my 24' ATC. InTech was reported to be founded by former-ATC personnel. I'm curious if they truly are on par with ATC and Featherlite as they seem. At that time, they were a tad less expensive than ATC.

Construction: Aluminum is considerably more expensive than steel, but the aluminum trailers hold their value better. Look at the list prices of used steel vs aluminum car haulers. When you figure in how much more you can get for the aluminum trailer when your done with it, I think that narrows the price differential a lot. Plus, you get to live with a nicer and lighter trailer while you're using it.

Winch: Loading a car into a trailer by yourself, especially a clutch-equipped one - under its own power - can be stressful. My '65 Mustang has quite a bit of room side-to-side, but my '19 GT350 has only 2" of clearance to the trailer fenders on each side. A winch is well worth the peace of mind. It makes loading a car by yourself a cinch (pun intended). Plus, it comes in really handy when your car isn't running or it blows up at a track day.  (Ask me how I know.)

Escape Door: Make sure you get a trailer escape door that allows you to completely open your car door over the trailer wheels. Many trailers have "escape doors", but their lower edge opening is too high to enable you to get the car door open. The ATC and other high-end brands have escape doors which provide an opening all the way to the floor of the trailer and also allow the removal of the wheel fender, so your car door only has to clear the trailer wheels. If you can't get your car door open with the car in the trailer, you'll still be doing the Bo & Luke Duke thing getting in and out of your car.

Though the information below is 6 months out of date, I thought it might be interesting to see how fuel prices vary in this corner of the country.

After visiting SAAC-46 last summer, we continued to drive our '19 GT350 on what became a 4100 mile road trip. The goal was to minimize the time on freeways and prioritize two-lane twisty back roads. We started here in Idaho, drove the scenic route to Sonoma, north up Highway 1 to the Washington Peninsula, to Seattle for a visit with my daughter, then east along the "High Line", including a Columbia River crossing on the Inchelium-Gifford Ferry, across to North Dakota to celebrate my nephew's 20-year Air Force retirement at Minot AFB and finally back home.

We typically stop at brand-name stations and always use Premium fuel. I routinely track my fuel stats, so I summed them up for this trip:

Location     Avg.     Max      Min
Overall        $4.34   $5.20   $3.60

California    $4.89   $5.20   $4.70
Wash          $4.51   $5.07   $4.30
Oregon       $4.23   $4.36   $4.00
Montana     $3.92   $4.59   $3.60
ND             $3.75   $3.75   $3.75   (Only 1 fuel stop in North Dakota)
Idaho         $4.05   $4.57   $3.70

At one time, I planned to use my '65 Mustang for Vintage Racing. That ship sailed long-ago, but from my research at that time, I remember the fuel requirements for my Vintage class said that the fuel must be "Pump gas, defined as fuel commonly available at roadside gas stations".

I don't know if that was the requirement for the Shelby cars back in the day. The SCCA class fuel requirements may have been different than that allowed in European-based competition.

For me, the surprise equipment requirement at SAAC-46 was for "fire-resistant gloves".
I'd never seen that in my dozen or so track days. It might have been a Sonoma Raceway request rather than a SAAC mandate, but ask about this at Indy to be prepared.

LOL +1

Welcome to the Club. Nice looking car!

I have autocrossed since the 80's and just started doing Track Days in 2019, so I'm fairly new to them as well. I started with a HPDE (High Performance Driving Event) group called Hooked-On-Driving, or "HOD" for short. They have a nice write-up on their website about getting started with Track Days. This is the HOD website: https://www.hookedondriving.com/first-timers/#beginner. There are several other organizations, like SCCA, the have similar introductions - just search for "beginning HPDE".

I ran the Track Day at SAAC-46 last summer in Sonoma and had a blast. SAAC runs their sessions slightly differently than HOD, but they are very similar. This HOD website might answer some of your questions.

On a (maybe) related note: At SAAC-46 last summer, a member by the screen name of "gt350hr" organized an informal drag racing session. I had never done that before. That was an absolute hoot as well. I don't know if SAAC will have access to a drag-racing track at Indy, but if they do and if gt350hr (or someone else) repeats this at SAAC_47, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, I won't make it to Indy. Have fun!