A Nice Day for a Stampede

This past Saturday, following the monthly gathering of “Cars and Coffee”, several local Ferrari and Lamborghini owners gathered for an organized drive, coupled with a photo shoot for a local luxury lifestyle magazine—QC Exclusive.

Getting 15 or 20 cars together for an organized drive, or rally, is a lot of work.  Unfortunately, the frequency of rallies in our area is infrequent.  Most of the organized rallies are in the central or eastern part of NC (the FCA President lives in the eastern part of the state).  Driving six hours (three hours to and three hours fro) to participate in a one hour event makes about as much sense to me as ear lobe grommets.  It’s the classic “Raleigh/Charlotte debate”…

Stepping off my soapbox and before I forget, many thanks go out to Kevin Fielden and Brian Caughman for organizing the drive and the folks from QC Exclusive for documenting our day.

Here are just a handful of some of the great cars from this Saturday’s rally and photo shoot:

A nice comparison of the styling differences of the 308 (foreground) and the 328 (its successor):

This is a beautiful example of a 328 in something other than Rosso Corsa (Ferrari "Racing Red"). This 1986 328 GTS is shown in a very unique Azzurro Metallico.

This is a very rare car that everyone was delighted to see in person.  One of only 500 ever made, this 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4 is coming off of a fresh restoration and really "stole the show".  

Here, a 1990 348ts (foreground) and a 550 Maranello.

A Lincoln County deputy sheriff was dispatched to see "what all these cars were doing" at one of our rally photo stops.  He was blown away by all the cars and was very cool about us borrowing a photo op spot in Lincoln County.

All the cars are lined up for the last photo shoot of the day.

 An assembly point for a photo op.  1985 308 GTSi QV (Euro-spec) front-left.  1985 Mondial Cabriolet (right).  1995 Lamborghini Diablo VT (behind the 308 QV).

This has to be one of my favorite shots of the day.  Don't ask me how I did it...just know I wasn't "texting" at the time...

Finally, no rally is complete without some in-car camera footage.  Pardon my "shaky" shots, but it isn't easy changing gears, adjusting the radio, making a sandwich, tweeting, joining a conference call and waving to onlookers all while driving.  Of course, I'm kidding.  All photos/videos were taken with extreme care and caution.  Safety first!  Please, don't text and drive!!!

Until next time, "Keep er' between the ditches!!!"

The Grecian Formula and Other Advanced Mathematical Topics

Remember those ads in the 90s for “spray on hair”?  What were people thinking?  Really!!  I mean, come on…you’re getting a little thin on the dome (we all do) and you want to give it a nice blend because you have a hot date!  Pull out the Krylon…Matte Black, of course, and get after it!  Just hope your hot date doesn’t want to rub her fingers through your hair or give you a nice scalp massage.  If so, you better have some Wet-One’s handy!

So what does “spray on hair” have to do with cars?  Well, it knocks on the door of a sensitive subject…turning gray.  (I’m going somewhere here, folks…stick with me).  Not the graying of hair…but the “graying of hoses”!  (Two paragraphs and 11 sentences of complete and utter bull $#!t later and I’m finally on topic…cut me some slack…I’ve been busy and haven’t posted in a while!)

What do we do with those unsightly gray hoses?  Well, we dye them!  One of my judges at the National FCA event in Savannah last year gave me this tip.  I performed the tasks a few weeks ago, documented the process and wanted to share it with you…the paying customer. 

Before you say anything, I know my valve covers are red.  I know they are not supposed to be red.  I like them red and will change them back to “stock silver” before my next concours judging, but the red really does look sharp.  Anyway…

Graying hoses…give your ol’ engine bay a good once over and look for those fabric-braided hoses that might not be quite as crisp black as they used to be.  (Honestly, in the 328 and 308 there are going to be some you can’t get to without taking off the plenum).  I just addressed the vacuum hoses that were easily accessible and blatantly visible and will address the others buried deep in the bowels of beautiful Italian engine plumbing at a later date.

The dye I used was just standard Rit Black fabric dye.  You can buy this at any retail store. 

Remove the hoses you wish to dye, grab a small ladder (to hang the hoses from), some old cardboard/newspapers (to keep the dye off of your garage floor/driveway), some white thread (to tie the hoses to the aforementioned ladder), something to pour some dye in, a handful of Q-Tips (to act as mini-paint rollers/brushes) and GO (start working).

I removed the hoses one at a time and tied them to the ladder using the white thread.  I used an air hose to remove as much surface dirt as possible.  Then, simply poured some dye in a Red Solo Cup (you know….someone should write a song about those cups…you can use them for anything!), dipped my Q-Tip and started dying. 

You can see how the dye was absorbed into the fabric on the hose and really brought back the richness of the original hose.

This hose even had letters/numbers printed on it (keeping with the theme of not simply dying over something ‘original’), I used a toothpick to cut-in around the letters as not to just sloppily dye over them.  The end result came out really nice.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the end result.  It came out nice...trust me!

I also took this opportunity to clean up any hose clamps that might have had a little corrosion.  I let them soak overnight in Griot’s Rust Remover.  I’ll admit, I was skeptical of this product, but it did a nice job.  The original clamps freshened up rather nicely. 

I let the hoses “hang out” and dry for a couple days before reattaching them to the engine.  When reattaching, some of the dye came off on my hand (but not enough to even make a difference in the appearance of the hose).

The end result:

We went from a "Mitt Romney engine bay" (well put together and distinguished with a little gray in the right places) to a "Wayne Newton engine bay" (well put together and distinguished with absolutely no gray to be found).  Basically, a few hours of work took 15 or 20 years off my engine bay!  Unbelievable!! 

What did I learn from all this?  Ron Popeil was a marketing genius and Wayne Newton has undoubtedly solved The Grecian Formula…

Until next time, “Keep er’ between the ditches”!!!