It has literally been “too cold to blog”…
The new shop has an electric heat pump – which seemed like a great idea at the time (and probably still is, really…) – but when temperatures get THIS low, a heat pump pretty much just pumps up your electricity bill. So we turned the heat WAY down over here (51 degrees), and have been hunkered down in the old shop for about the past 10 days.
Of course, that means that the office, packing room, etc. up here on the second floor of the new shop is FREEZING, and so I have been coming over, handled the emails and parts orders, and getting the hell back out of here! last night, it snowed about 5 inches, so Brent didn’t make it in, and I spent the first couple of hours today dealing with that. Ironically, the snow brought “warmer” temperatures with it – and sunshine, and so I decided to crank the heat up over here today and get caught up.
The snow is a pain, but I can’t really complain about it – especially now! I was just talking to a customer in Massachusetts yesterday, and their business is all but SHUT DOWN up there from the snow! He said that they have received about 8 feet in the past month, and their industrial park has a one-lane “tunnel” cut through it, with 12-15-foot high sides! That has got to be a NIGHTMARE!
Anyway, in the middle of all of this, we are plugging away with shell work & parts sales – and on the homefront, Valentines Day, visiting with friends, and the Pinewood Derby – an annual Cub Scout tradition where the kids build a small car out of wood and run it down a track 3 lanes wide – powered by gravity…
This was my 6th Pinewood Derby – spanning 34 years. As a Cub Scout myself, I was in the Pinewood Derby 3 times – in 1981, 82, and 83. My father and I built some pretty cool cars, but I never even came close to winning… Then in 2012 and 2013, I helped out a friend’s son with his cars, and we DID come close to winning, but alas, weren’t quite there…
THIS year, 2015, was Cooper’s first year in Cub Scouts. He is taking to it pretty well, and you would be surprised how much 7-year-old boys still LOVE the Pinewood Derby! We worked on the car probably 4 or 5 times over the past couple of weeks, for 1-2 hours at a shot so he would not get bored – cutting it out and sanding, painting, filing and polishing the axles (nails…), melting lead into the car for weight, etc.
Finally, the big day came this past Saturday AM, and…
WE WON THE PINEWOOD DERBY!!!!
FIRST PLACE!!! I have to tell you – it was better than winning the Indy 500…
Then we went Ice skating with the whole family (and no-one got hurt – unbelieveable for the Hadleys…), and THEN we went out to some friends with the kids and had a great time. It was a LONG day – culminating in a ride home late Saturday night in the truck with 3 inches of snow – which the kids loved. Altogether, it was GREAT day – it really put a smile on my face the next morning thinking back on it – on at least one day, I had followed through on Goal #1 for 2015 (and 2014, and 2013, and…) – “spend more time with family.”
But back to E-Types… On Sunday AM, I got up on THE COLDEST day of the year, and headed down to Virginia on one of my semi-famous “E-Type cars and parts rescue missions” – take a look at the latest treasure hunt!
-
-
Here is the starting grid for the Pinewood Derby on Saturday AM. The official Cub Scout cars are in the front row – 17 cars – which is actually a pretty small field for Pinewood Derbies… The back row is for fathers, siblings, etc.
-
-
Cooper’s car is the green car #9. Cars 56, 57, and 58 are my cars from when I was a Cub Scout…
-
-
Cooper chose the color scheme, and painted the little windshield and spoiler, but I sprayed the car. He wanted to do it, and I am all for him doing as much as he can, but he wasn’t string enough to press down the nozzle on the spray can! he also chose the number – 63 – which I thought was GREAT! I though he was picking the year of my E-Type, but it turned out that he chose it because it was Herbie’s number in “The Love Bug” and he said it would be good luck!
-
-
There is not much to the Pinewood Derby track – it’s pretty simple – they just roll downhill!
-
-
-
Victory – 34 years in the making!
-
-
Up early the next day, headed down to Winchester, VA for a batch of E-Type and XK parts!
-
-
It snowed about 3 inches the night before, and the scenery on the trip was really beautiful!
-
-
The wind, however, was another story… This is the Millard Tydings bridge on I-95 near Havre D’ Grace, MD. The wind was BRUTAL – gusts up to 60 mph! This bridge was limited to 40 mph, and no empty trucks, etc. Look at the whitecaps on the Susquehanna river! That town up on the right is Port Deposit, MD.
-
-
It was COLD – 10 degrees Fahrenheit – and I started out the day at just 2 degrees! I settled in with a Top-40 countdown on satellite radio from February of 1964. This was great because you get a real feel for what listening to the radio was like back then, versus just hearing the same old beatles and rolling stones songs on modern Oldies radio… The mix was mind-blowing – the beatles were just htting the charts, early Motwown, Hello Dolly from Louis Armstrong, surf instrumentals, it was GREAT! This song by the Sapphires was about song 36 I think, but I knew it well because it was a Philly group and it got alot of airplay when the Oldies stations started up in the late 1980’s around here.
-
-
So I’m just cruising along with my coffee in my nice warm truck listening to my music – the new truck is SO NICE! This shot shows western Maryland, and this is almost EXACTLY where I jack-knifed the truck and trailer in the snow just about a year ago, going to pick up a Series 2 OTS body shell. That was 14 months ago, and it was very satisfying to realize that in that time, I got it back to the shop safely, sold it, converted it to a Series 1, restored and mounted the customer’s original doors and bonnet, and then delivered it as far as Chicago! Plus all of the other stuff we accomplished in that time, and fior a guy who feels like he is always behind on shop goals, realizing what had been done since I was standing with a wrecked truck right here last year felt pretty good!
-
-
Here, we are crossing the Potomac river into Virginia, just outside Harper’s Ferry.
-
-
And just a few miles down the road, you cross the Shenandoah River as well.
-
-
Here we are coming down a street in Winchester, VA – very close to our destination.
-
-
This is it! This rose-colored house was built in the late 1700’s, and was really neat to check out inside. The house was home to a couple that had lived the jaguar dream, owning several XK’s and E-Types – most of which came out of one barn when a local widow who they had done some home repairs for offered the cars as payment for the work!
-
-
I’m here to pick up the leftover spare parts – all of their Jags were sold off a few years ago. There are some nice little tidbits here, including the star of the show – that 4.2-liter E-Type triple SU setup. In addition, we brought home everything else you see – if you’re making the trip, you might as well get it all, and I will find the parts a good home – including those INCREDIBLE original XK140 rear wings!
-
-
We’ve started to load the truck – here you can see a whole pile of 16-inch XK wire wheels, a pair of 3.8 E-Type Coupe seats, and a Mk II overdrive transmission – and we DID get the rear overdrive portion as well.
-
-
This was another nice item – a rebuilt 3.8 E-Type head with a low serial number – a little research shows that this head would have been installed on an E-Type sometime in October of 1961.
-
-
In addition to the 4.2 SU setup, we also came home with this 3.8 intake manifold – minus carbs unfortunately… By the way – call me if you need this – I have several extra 3.8 E-Type intakes.
-
-
Several hours later, we’re crossing the Millard Tydings bridge again, and the ice has either melted in the sun or moved downriver. All of these pieces will be used to complete partial cars here, augment our customer’s restorations, or even simply be stacked on shelves and/or my desk until we figure out just what to do with them!
