Alberta Rides February2015.Indd
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svaalberta.com Winter 2015 ALBERTAProtecting the rights and privileges of the autoRIDES hobbyists of Alberta. Who are the Dropsicles? Find out on page 27! FORD MUSTANG ARRIVING THIS FALL TO MACLIN FORD IN ARS CA E LG Y A 7 R 9 97 Y YEARS OnlineOOnliinee atat Mon - Thurs 8:30am-9pm Fri & Sat 8:30am-6pm maclinford.com DEERFOOT AT GLENMORE, T@maclin_ford GLENMORE AT DEERFOOT 403-536-1917 Prices are plus GST and Fees Vehicles may not be as illustrated EXECUTIVE TEAM HERE’S WHAT’S INSIDE Our trip to the 2014 04 What Factors Affect the Value 18 PRESIDENT Corvair International of My Collector Vehicle Harry Bullock Convention [email protected] / (403) 394-6486 Ray Caught in an Affair! 20 NORTH VICE PRESIDENT Alberta licence Plates and 06 Paul Gordash Collector Vehicles A Week Is Not Enough! Arizona 23 [email protected] Auctions 2015 Sooner or Later You'll get SOUTH VICE PRESIDENT 08 Les McKelvey Hooked! Dropsicles 27 [email protected] Spring Thaw at 30 10 Coming to a Mailbox Near You 28 SECRETARY Ted Lobley From Bar Car to Show Car [email protected] / (403) 681-0001 12 New Rules for Exporting 30 Vehicles from the U.S. TREASURER Magna NM 16 Jim Herbert [email protected] / (403) 241-2218 DIRECTORS Al Riise [email protected] / (403) 274-4474 Orest Lazarowich PRESIDENTS MESSAGE [email protected] Bob Bownes Special congratulations to Premier Jim Prentice for his recent purchase [email protected] of a restored 1956 Thunderbird at the Barrett Jackson Auction in Warren Rogalsky Scottsdale this January. He picked a very fine example of a collector car [email protected] / (403) 280-9332 and I hope to see him on the road driving it this summer. Earl Clements [email protected] Once again the Arizona auctions had a record year with total sales from Bill Hunter the six different auction companies exceeding 292 million dollars. (Also [email protected] keep in mind these are US dollars.). Ferrari dominated the top ten list and while most of us can only dream of purchasing that type of collector Don Cooper [email protected] / (403) 934-0041 car, if you attend the auction you can get up close and get a good look at all the cars. On a related note if you are importing a vehicle into Canada Dave Scragg [email protected] / (780) 940-2641 from the U.S. the rules have changed as of last fall. A very good article in this issue explains one member’s experience. Jess Smith [email protected] Also included is an article on Hellaflush. Never heard of it? Read it to SVAI DIRECTOR get an insight into another type of collector car. Confused on how to Bill Chadderton [email protected] license your collector car? Want to know who invented the tow truck, or how a collector car is evaluated? We have articles to help with that. NAACC DIRECTORS Warren Rogalsky [email protected] We are very pleased with the participation we are receiving from our members and are thrilled to share their knowledge and stories. Thank Jim Herbert [email protected] you very much for helping make this issue of Alberta Rides an excellent read. Think Spring and prepare for the touring season. EDITOR Farin Manji [email protected] Harry Bullock, President, SVAA ALBERTA RIDES 3 Our trip to the 2014 Corvair International Convention in Tacoma, WA Michel and Suzanne Gelinas, Calgary AB This year’s convention being only 800 miles from our home hanging crooked and it was evident I would have to drive in Calgary made it an obvious decision. We took two days the car without the clutch. I pulled out a printout from the to drive our ’64 Monza convertible to Tacoma. The slight glovebox of an old article about how to do it. After reading detour from the Okanagan Valley to see the Grand Coulee the instructions a couple of times I started in first gear, Dam was certainly worth it! shifted to second… stalled at the stop sign. Trying to re- start from the intersection was more of a challenge, given The convention was hosted in a beautiful downtown Tacoma the slight uphill. Knowing the host hotel was up the hill in hotel, a free short tram ride away from the world-class Tacoma and not knowing how far away we were, we decided LeMay America’s Car Museum. We arrived a day early so to play it safe and stay put. By then other rally participants Suzanne and I could drive down to Mt. St. Helens. We were stopped-by to help. A broken clutch pivot bracket under the very fortunate to have beautiful weather for the 150-mile dash was discovered. A “field repair” was attempted without drive. Others told us they’d been there and could not see success. A club member kindly let me use his cell phone to the mountain because of the low clouds. The first evening call the roadside assistance number given to us the morning is the welcome dinner followed by the valve cover race. of the event. The gravity racers must have a Corvair valve cover in their design. I had an improved model this year but did not make Hagerty Insurance is a sponsor of the convention and offers it to second round. Better luck next time! free assistance to the participants during the driving events. It took some discussion to convince the man-on-the-phone The Concours d’Elegance took place on the grassy area they were to tow us back to the host hotel in Tacoma and adjacent to the LeMay on the second day. The Corvair was not only 10 miles. Telling him where we broke down was the featured marque at the museum with a few models a bit trickier. The road sign at the nearby intersection inside the front lobby. Being an attendee at the convention read 416 ave and 316 st. In which city he asked? In what gave us unlimited free admission to the museum all week. county? Didn’t I tell him we’re just following the rally Even Suzanne enjoyed it! directions and we don’t really know where we are? He must have Googled it, or something, as he asked me to confirm Though the weather was less than pleasant the day of the if there was a cemetery at the intersection. Sure enough Economy Run and Rally, the scenery of the rally route made there was so he said the tow truck would be there within two up for it. Beautiful sinuous roads through the countryside hours. Upon leaving, the member’s wife left her own phone northeast of Tacoma were ideal for the Corvairs. The rally with us, just in case. Two hours later her phone rang. The directions and questions were simply and clearly written towing company said they sent the truck out and could not and made for a not-so-stressful drive. We actually thought find us. I assured them we had not moved an inch in the we were doing very well compared to other years. After a past two hours! I got back on the phone with Hagerty. By brief stop on the side of the road I could not shift the car then we had opened the “panic envelope” handed to us at into gear! I suspected a broken clutch cable. I never had the start of the rally and could see where we were. Hagerty a broken cable before but I’ve carried a spare ever since sent a different towing company from nearby Enumclaw to we bought the car 16 years ago. I got Suzanne to operate our rescue. The flat-deck driver took great care loading our the clutch while I looked under to car to see everything Corvair onto his truck and dropped us off at the hotel some apparently working fine. By then, the clutch pedal was 28 miles away and 4 hours after our initial breakdown, ALBERTA RIDES 4 all at no cost to us. That evening I removed the clutch pivot bracket from under the dash. Many said they’d never heard of such a breakdown. The next day, the member who originally helped us brought equipment from home and welded the bracket while sitting in the outside vendors’ area of the hotel. All he would accept from me was lunch! It took a lot of tongue-twisting to re-install the bracket in the car without removing the whole brake pedal assembly but, that afternoon, I was test-driving the car around the block! We certainly wish we had completed the rally and never had time to write up a hard luck story. We did take second place in our class in the Economy Run (third place overall) with 29.82 miles per US gallon (that’s nearly 36 MPG to us Canadians!) We left the convention early Friday morning, as scheduled, to tour the Boeing factory, and drove up to Vancouver Island to spend a few days with friends. The drive back to Calgary went well. The total mileage for this trip was 2,400 miles. I am sure the welded bracket is way better than the factory’s original brazing and that I will never have this problem again. Looking forward to more Corvair driving and rallies in the future! Above: The broken pivot bracket ALBERTA RIDES 5 Alberta Licence Plates and Collector Vehicles Jim Herbert, SVAA Safety Check Coordinator, Calgary AB I was approached at church a couple of Sundays ago by a How to register and licence a collector vehicle in Alberta? young couple who had just inherited a car.