Delaware Valley NCRS Chapter Newsletter
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April 2015 Delaware Valley NCRS Chapter Newsletter In this issue: Chairperson’s Notes Amelia Island - 2015 Del Val Chapter – 1984, Year 7 The Early Corvette Hobby Years Tech Article – Speaker Re-coning Member Profile – Ken Sylvester Mind your P’s and Q’s – Taxes and LLc’s Editors Comments For Sale / Wanted 2015 Event Calendar 2015 Events Applications and Forms C6 Service Bulletins Chairperson’s Notes By John Kane Spring is finally here and, again, like last year, potholes are a problem because of the many snowfalls during the winter. The first spring NCRS activity this year was the Mason Dixon Chapter Meet at Adams Chevrolet in Havre de Grace, Maryland on Sunday, March 29th. Each yearr many of ou members volunteer to judge or just attend at this meet since it is less than an hour away for most of us and it is the first Corvette activity in the spring after a long cold winter. Everyone seems to be anxious to restart the Corvette season when March rolls around. Unfortunately it was unseasonably cold on March 29th. It was in the mid‐twenties at 7AM. The operations checks including cold starts were made particularly difficult because, believe me when I tell you, it was not comfortable. Furthermore, the parking lot was covered with many puddles of rain water from the previous day that had frozen solid overnight and it was very tough for the judges as well as the owners trying to navigate around the frozen puddles while going through operations checks. But once we gote insid where it was warm for actual flight judging it was very comfortable. Rick Aleshire always does a great job organizing the Mason Dixon Show. April 2015 The Board of Directors met in February and wrestled with the problems of continually increasing costs but with a paramount desire to maintain the quality of our many club activities, most notably, of the annual Run for the Ribbons Meet at County Corvette in October and the Gallery at Corvettes at Carlisle in August. Ultimately the Board decided that there would be no increase in dues for 2015. Our yearly dues have now been at $30 for many years. If you did not yet pay your dues, please do so by or at the April meeting. The Board has decided that having two cruise nights immediately prior to the June and August meetings of the year seems to have been very well received by the members and they will be repeated this year. Try to bring a Corvette out for each of those meetings when we gather early in the back parking lot at 7PM. At about 8PM we will move inside and have a buffet dinner prior to each formal meeting. Remember that the location of our meeting place is LuLu Shriners located at 5140 Butler Pike in Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462. Amelia Island Concours By: Bob Cook On the second weekend in March, the collector car world focuses on Amelia Island, Florida – located on the Atlantic Ocean just south of the Georgia/Florida border. The Amelia Island weekend includes a number of car‐related events such as cruises for various marques, seminars and dinners at the Ritz Carlton, a “Cars and Coffee” show Saturday morning on the golf course at the Ritz Carlton, four separate collector car auctions around the island, and the biggie is the Sunday Concours on the golf course at the Ritz Carlton. The Concours includes about 300 spectacular cars. I would say very few cars entered are worth less than $100K with probably at least 20% worth over $1 million. This year a number of Del Val Chapter members were in attendance. I saw Bill Skinner, Lou Cerchio, Mark Rudnick, Frank Stech, and Steve Gansky (and I may have missed some – there were ta lo of people there). Irwin Kroiz entered his 1968 L88 DX Sunray race car. Irwin’s car earned a second place award in the Corvette Race Car class. The award was presented in front of the reviewing stand by Don Warner, the originator of the Concours. (See photo) We arrived on Amelia Island Friday afternoon and attended “The Design DNA of Iconic Cars” seminar in which the Design leaders from Mercedes, Porsche, and GM described their design history and current methodology. Saturday morning, after viewing the Cars and Coffee displayed cars, we attended the “Car Guys of Television” seminar featuring 2 April 2015 Dale Walksler of “What’s in the Barn”, Peter Klutt of “Legendary Motorcar“, Barry Meguiar of “Car Crazy”, Ray Everham of “Americarna”, Wayne Carini of “Chasing Classic Cars”, Bob Scanlon – head of programming at Velocity Channel, and former race car driver and current TV announcer Tommy Kendall as the moderator. After a week earlier forecast of 80% chance of showers, Sunday dawned sunny with temperatures in the 70s – a perfect day for a concours. And the cars showed up – from a Ferrari GTO (last one sold at auction brought $38 million) to classic Duesenbergs to beautiful design dream cars from the 50s and much, much more. There were several Corvettes – a group of seven Corvette race cars from the late 60s and 70s, a 63 Z06 owned by Andy Cannizzo, the 67 L88 race car owned by Glen Spielberg, and a replica of the 1953 Motorama Corvette Corvair owned by Michael Henderson as seen in the famous photo of the 53 Motorama “Corvette”, the station wagon “Nomad”, and fast back “Corvair”. I am including a few pictures which are only a tiny example of the cars on the field and the weekend activities. Sir Sterling Moss Race car 1967 L88 Race Car John Greenwood BFG Car Replica Motorama Car 3 April 2015 Doug Bergen Race Car Waiting for the gates to open Irwin Kroiz getting award 4 April 2015 Delaware Valley Chapter – 1984 (Year 7) By: Club Historian, Bob Cook In our newsletter series of the history of the Delaware Valley Chapter we are up to year 7 ‐ 1984. The Chapter officers for 1984 were Chairman – M.F. Dobbins, Vice‐Chairman – Howard Dupee, Secretary/Treasurer – Tim Raisner, Newsletter – Dick Robinson, Events – Stan Freed, and Judging – Bob Fox. The only change in board members being the combination of the secretary and treasurer offices and Dick Robinson taking over as newsletter editor. The Eastern Regional meet was held in Williamsburg, VA on July 4 – 7, 1984. A number of Del Val Chapter members attended the event. Five Chapter members entered cars to be judged and all five received top flight awards – John Kane’s ‘58, Frank Stech’s ‘67, Howard Dupee’s ‘66, Ken Robb’s ‘63, and Bill Ganji’s ‘63. Stan Freed had recently sold his ‘66 which also earned a top flight. Members driving Corvettes to the meet were: Dick Robinson – ‘56, Bob Fox – ‘61, Clay Green – ‘62, Howard Dupee – ‘66, and Tim Raisner – ‘67. Other members attending were Dick Moritz, Doug Cherry, Leon Schlorff, Bruce Jones, Jim Bingham, Dave Schrader, Bob Cook, Frank Andalora, Reg Wirth, and Ken Heckert. The fourth annual Chapter meet was again held at Bryner Chevrolet and attendance by both members and spectators increased considerably versus 1983. The feeling of the Chapter was that the quality of the cars judged was “truly exceptional”. The average award for flight judged cars was 92.3. However, the total number of top flights were 10 out of 26 cars judges; second flights were 15; and third flights was 1. (This seems much lower than recent Run for the Ribbons meets. I wonder if the quality of the cars has improved or if judging standards have changed.) At the November, 1984 NCRS Board meeting, the Board voted to admit the 1968 to 72 Corvettes to membership – by a unanimous vote. The 1985 NCRS National Convention was scheduled to be held at the Sheraton Inn in Danvers, MA from July 30 to August 3. The Delaware Valley Chapter agreed to co‐host the convention. Planning started during 1984 and was discussed at the last couple membership meetings of the year. A road tour to the convention for Chapter members was under planning in late 1984. More on this in the next newsletter…. And finally, here is a tech tip from the September, 1984 newsletter which I feel deserves to be repeated: (from Dick Robinson – Newsletter Editor in 1984) “There have been a number of tech tips printed extolling the virtues of silicone sealer as a gasket compound. This product does have many good characteristics. However, if improperly used it can destroy an engine. The quantity of silicone applied is of vital importance. If too much is applied, the excess silicone is squeezed out of both the inner and outer mating surfaces. This excess cures as lumps or ribbons that can cut off fluid flows. I have seen a Ford 289 with its bearings destroyed due to small lumps caught by the oil pump, ground up, and passed into the oil pressure system where they lodged in the crankshaft oil passages and starved the bearings. I have also seen a small block Chevy engine with warped heads caused by overheating when excess silicone, squeezed from the water pump mounts, became lodged under the thermostat. Before using silicone, think – do I really need the silicone to seal the joint? If you decide “yes”, be very careful with the quantity used. Try an experiment – squeeze out how much you think you need on two similar surfaces and bolt or clamp them together. Observe what happens to the excess material. Adjust your quantity accordingly.” 5 April 2015 The early Corvette Hobby Years—they really WERE different By: Dick Robinson The 1956 Corvette that I bought from by brother in 1969 was a worn out, but very original, car that I thought deserved to be brought back to life.