The next club meeting:
5:00 p.m., Saturday, July 2, 2009,
Poolside at the Carter's, BYOB.
July, 2009
From a billboard by GM for the
Woodward
Avenue Dream Cruise in Detroit, MI.
With the heat of summer upon us and the Caravan behind us, the pace of club activities has significantly slowed. We did have one event, a ‘Critter Cruise’ to McClelland’s Critters near Banks AL. Our group of almost 30 enjoyed the monkeys, tigers, lions, ligers, bear, and snakes. Of course the mid 90 degree heat did prove a daunting foe, but we soldiered on for about a hour while Mike (the owner) gave us a private tour. We then caravanned to Country’s Bar-b-que in Troy for lunch.
For July, we actually have 3 events to attend. On the 4th, 10 Circle City Corvettes are signed up for the ‘Vettes for Vets at Talladega’ event, where we will be making “warm” laps around the super speedway. Then on the 11th, Jean and I will be hosting the annual July Pool Party at our home. Finally on the 25th, we will have a Mystery Cruise to a restaurant in Blountstown, FL where we will be meeting up with the Cruisin Corvettes of Tallahassee!!
We did have some noteworthy Corvette ‘additions’ during June – Tommy Patterson picked up a ’06 Z06 with a STS twin turbo package, and Charley and Jim Robertson bought a new GT1 Championship edition coupe, affectionately called “Jake”. Two fine additions to the beautiful livery of Corvettes in the Circle City Club!!
Bruce
Click for the Museum Homepage: National Corvette Museum - opens in its own window.
Click here for Charley's NCM Newsletter
Courtesy of your NCM Ambassador -
Charley Robertson
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Why do airplanes have a service life of forty years or longer and cars don’t? However, cars can, and do, easily run 200,000 miles and more, and 20 years or longer, if given the proper maintenance.
You can run your car to the 200K-mile mark and more by the amounts they can save on labor by doing it yourself. The money saved can buy tools and parts to not only pay for immediate repairs needed, but to implement thorough preventive maintenance as well. For example, go to a repair shop with a bad alternator. You'll probably come out with a bill for $300 or more ($125 for a remanufactured alternator and $75 to diagnose the problem and replace the alternator). You may soon be back with a bad battery, bad alternator or bad drive belt, but those are new repairs ... and they can "nickel and dime" you to death. Each of these problems can leave you stranded with a car that won't start and has to be towed to the shop. A few of these problems will soon have you feeling that your nice new car has turned into a clunker and reached the end of its useful life. You may cast away a good car, even though it only has 80,000 miles on it, and then be saddled with new or larger monthly car payments.
An alternative is to do the repair yourself, and throw in preventive maintenance as well, by rebuilding the whole charging system. You can replace the alternator, voltage regulator, and battery and drive belt for about the same amount of money (assuming you buy the parts at a discount from a discount auto store, mail order firm or online car parts center). Then you can forget the whole charging system for several more years and many tens of thousands of miles.
The key to keeping your car from turning into an unreliable clunker is performing good preventive maintenance. If two tires are worn and two are marginal, replace all four.. If the shocks are getting old, replace all four at once. If the heater and radiator hoses are old, drain the antifreeze and replace all of them at once. When a drive belt gets worn, replace all of them at once. Going for 200K miles, if your engine smokes, rebuild the whole thing. If your transmission slips, rebuild it and throw in a new/remanufactured torque converter. If a front-wheel drive CV joint gets noisy, replace both drive shaft halves, and throw in new wheel bearings while you're at it. When you replace spark plugs, replace the plug wires and distributor cap and rotor at the same time. By rebuilding systems, you'll save money in the long run and keep your car from becoming an unreliable clunker.
And above all, be sure to change your engine oil and filter religiously every five thousand miles (three if your trips are short). If you do this, you might even get 200K miles without an engine rebuild, but if you do have to rebuild the engine you may not have to have your cylinders bored ... a savings of several hundred dollars.
The do-it-yourselfer must be prepared to accept messing up an occasional repair. It's part of the learning process. When this happens, accept your misfortune and do the repair over again, or accept temporary defeat and take your car over to your favorite professional mechanic. Just be polite, be humble, bow your head and admit your failings, hand him the parts in a basket, then shut up and let him do the job. Being diplomatic with a botched job is the mark of the seasoned shade tree mechanic. Even with messing up a job here and there, you'll save money in the long run and be able to afford keeping your car in like-new running condition long after others have hit the bone yard.
Save a bundle of money on labor doing your own repairs, but don't cut corners on tools and parts. You'll watch your neighbors go through three or four cars while you go through one. Then take the money you save on car payments and go buy you a nice Classic Corvette. It'll be a lot of fun to own and drive, it'll turn heads going down the street, and you'll probably sell it for more than you paid for it.
Terry
July
4 Vettes for Vets. Run a few laps on the
Talladega Speedway.
$35 donation for 5 laps. $25
per multiple 5 lap sessions.
Club,
On the 4th of July, there is an opportunity to make some "warm" laps around the Talladega racetrack. It's the Vettes for Vets event that I mentioned at the last meeting. Click on this link for all the information including hotel information: http://www.vettes4vets.com/index.html I just made our reservations for July 3rd and they have 23 more rooms left, so if you want to attend and stay at the host hotel you need to get moving.
Bruce
Sponsored by and benefits the
Alabama
Gold Star Families
4 Family 4th Car
Show at National Peanut Festival. US Hwy 231, south of Dothan.
Registration from 0800 to 1100. Awards at 3pm.
http://www.family4thCelebration.com
Click
here for the flyer.
11 Pool Party at Bruce and Jean's home in Enterprise. Bring a dish
to share, BYOB, your bating suit, and your
folding chairs. Club providing
meat course, soft drinks, and party items.
Starts at 5:00 PM. More info to
follow.
25 Mystery Cruise to Blountstown
June Mystery Cruise - In Bruce's words:
Yesterdays ‘critter cruise’ to McClelland’s Critters was full of ups and downs. On the up side, we had a great showing of 30 folks (about half of those were kids), the cruise to the park and to the restaurant went well, and the private tour of the facility was fun, entertaining, and educational. Also, lunch at Country’s Bar-b-que in Troy was really good. On the down side, Charlotte Countryman turned her ankle on the rough ground, it was hot, oh and did I say it was HOT! I hoped that starting the tour at 10:00 would get us through before the heat was uncomfortable, but no, it was stinking HOT the entire time there!! We did get some relief at each enclosure from a water sprinkler.
I guess everyone enjoyed the snake experience best of all as many including Charlotte Kloos got to have a snake around their neck, and Terry and Collette Weldon’s grandboys got to handle Corn snakes and Ball Pythons. I’m accustomed to handling snakes so I got the treat of handling a 120 pound Burmese Python, oh my gosh was that guy strong!
Most impressive were Mike and Cindy McClelland, the owner/operators of the park. They run the place pretty much on their own, and how they keep the place open is beyond me. They have to feed about 300 pounds of chicken to the big cats and bears every day, and I don’t think they have much attendance to offset this expense, let alone make a living. I have a feeling there will be several of our charity donation forms filled out with McClelland’s Critters at the top.
Click here to see the June mystery cruise photos
When members travel, sometimes we receive a photo report. Hint, hint.
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Andrew and Charlotte Countryman. 2001 Magnetic Red Convertible Before we bought our C-5 we had the pleasure of owning a 90 C-4 red of course. Is there any other color?. Our 01 mag red vert started out as a used vehicle at Bondy's of Enterprise. Charlotte told me we were just going to look. Well everyone knows how that is, look to buy. So on a rainy night in Nov 2003, we drove her home. We have had he pleasure of owning her ever since that rainy night. I do wish I could tell you a long and exciting story of all the high performance mods that have been done, but alas, I can not. She does have a Black wing intake and Bolar cat back exhaust very nice sound. Also, some of the nicest wheels made for the Corvette, CCW 505 A's. They can be a pain to clean, but do look so nice. Although she is not the fastest, she does put down 305 to the wheels verified on the dyno, which at times is more than you can handle, but 500 plus to the wheels would be soooo nice. She is not be the best looking vette in the world, but close and she belongs to me. I do try to keep her turning heads .I know all of you cringe when you have to drive her dirty. Don't you know it is a sin to drive a dirty vette. I have been a vette nut since my early teens but did not have the pleasure of owning one until I was 50. I plan to keep a vette for as long as possible,as I can think of nothing better to drive. As you can see my story is not full of spills and trills, so is not very long. But it's my story and I am sticking to it. I do hope to be able to stay involved with our club for as long as possible. Andrew
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We welcome our new members to the club!!!
David & Debra Brown from Eufaula (2008 arctic white coupe)
Bobby Hill from Headland (1998 red coupe)
| HAPPY July BIRTHDAYS 3 Colette Weldon 4 Sue Simmons 7 Jean Carter 11 Mike Walker 20 Kittie Eggleston 23 Glenn Bowens
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July ANNIVERSARIES:
14 Marty & Valerie Cochran 18 Russ & Connie Smedley |
The Detroit Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise
How to make your car last: http://tinyurl.com/qwdp7t
Nostalgia videos at http://www.oldbluewebdesigns.com/
LS2 Engine Assembly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ZQQRDmlJc&feature=related
President:
Bruce Carter
Vice
President: Russell Lewis
Secretary: Barbara Pattberg
NCM
Ambassador: Charley
Robertson
Treasurer: Jim Robertson
Caravan Coordinator: John
Hickman
Local Event Coordinator: Bruce
Carter
Newsletter
Editor: Terry Weldon
Member at
Large: Greg Prettyman
Member at Large:
Kelly Walker
Webmaster: Brent Gourley
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