G'day all,
here is a report on the Around the World rally stop in Duluth. I have a
collection of photos, does anyone have web space for them?
I went up to Duluth, MN on thursday night and stayed at the Holiday
Inn where the rally was based. It was great to see all the cars there, (most
of them anyway). A number of people from the Healey and Mercedes clubs in
the Twin Cities had come up as well. They were busy washing some of the
rally cars. All the cars had a good coating of dust and many looked more
than a little battered. Janet Chisolm arrived in her Chevy and was
immediately whisked over to the car wash area where a horde of people stated
cleaning the car and replacing a dead headlight. We decided that her car
could be an honorary LBC as she had a spare Lucas headlight! Her car was a
bit battered down the right side from where it had rolled whilst travelling
through BC. None of the glass was broken though; which was a suprise. The
#55 Chevy was getting some front suspension work done on it. But otherwise
there was not much activity in the car park on thursday night. The #23
Packard came in about 2130 or so. That was also treated to a wash and brush
up. We reckoned that was about 3 LBCs worth of car wash :-)
The next morning I went to a breakfast with the rally participants and
local car club people. It was interesting to hear the stories straight from
the drivers. David Dabbs, (39 Ford), remarked that a local garage that
wanted $170 for a space to work on a car + $70/hour for a mechanic did not
look like much of a deal to people who had been doing major repairs in
gravel parking lots!
For some reason or other the conversation turned to Bugatti Royales and one
of the French drivers remarked that he had worked on one! Quite a step up
from bashing tin on LBCs :-)
Out in the parking lot there was much more activity. The Park Ward Bentley
was having some work done on a rear hub. It looked like quite an effort just
to get the rear brake drum off. Those cars have LARGE parts! The Lagonda
had come in over night and was being looked at to find a problem with
misfiring. The driver thought that there was water leaking onto the
distributor. They had previously broken the exhaust manifold and it showed
signs of a significant amount of welding to fix it. Terry Maxon said that
every time they welded a hole shut it warped the manifold a bit and another
bit broke when they tried to refit it. The 4.5 litre Bentley had its valve
covers off and was getting some adjustments done. Claude Picasso's Mercedes
looked a bit sad with its duct-taped VW windsreen. As of thursday night the
windscreen had not showed up at the hotel.
The Hillman Hunter was up on jack stands getting its wheel bearings looked
at. They were almost put out of the rally by a local garage who removed a
wheel bearing by smashing it, before checking to see if they had a
replacement. They didn't! The local sports car club was apparently able to
provide a more-or-less the right size replacement to get them on the way.
Cheers,
Simon
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