MOPARS UNLIMITED TACOMA CHAPTER – FEBRUARY 2016 NEWSLETTER

2016 Chapter Officers

President/Sunbust Director – Chris Pfaff (253)255-3435

Secretary/Treasurer – Kyle Leftwich (253)343-8763

Sergeant At Arms – Tom Layton (253)468-3534

Sunbust Registration Coordinator – Jen Linenko (253)255-4939

Club Store Co-Managers – Pete Fisher (253)278-8802 and Chris Thibodeau (253)820-9840

Membership Director/Web Master – Charles Waters (253)722-3742

Newsletter Editor – Pete Holbrook (253)375-7072

Blind E-mail addresses for most officers are available on the club web site at www.moparsunlimited.org/contact The President’s Desk & Sunbust News What does Mopar mean to me? That is a question that is brought up by an article that I have put in this month’s newsletter. For each of us, Mopar means something significant, yet different to all. Whether it’s a kids first Mopar being a used Dodge Neon, and loving front wheel drive cars from the 80s and 90s, or possibly a seasoned veteran that recalls the “good old days” where they grew up in the back seat of the ‘57 Fury, and loved cruising the boulevard in their ‘71 ‘Cuda, or it could possibly be a punk kid that grew up cruising a land yacht, and now looks at the modern V8s with awe and inspiration. For all of us Mopar fans, it makes no difference. Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Plymouth, AMC, De Soto, or any of the other great names that have had the Mopar brand under their hood, it’s all the same. We all have a love of the mechanical inanimate objects that we all become attached to, in one way or another.

http://blog.fcanorthamerica.com/2013/07/15/what-does-mopar-mean-to-you/

For this year, we are looking at getting back to that love of our cars that we hold so dear. At the January general meeting we went over all the shows and events we as a club want to go to together. Pete has them posted up in this newsletter. So grab your calendars and save some dates. We will have some good times cruising together in force to a few shows to help out our regional cousins, we will be hosting a local poker run once again, and hopefully we will have some great guest speakers. So here’s to you, and your love of Mopar. Thank you for making this club great, I will work to help us make it amazing.

Now to Sunbust news, March 2nd at 7PM, that’s right, I am starting with a date, I will say it again, March 2 nd at 7PM. This will be the date for our second Sunbust show meeting. Once again it will be held at my house (7031 Tacoma Ave S). All voices and opinions are appreciated and we love the support at these meetings. Now that I have that initial message out, I will go over what we worked on last month. Artwork has been decided. We will go with one shirt this year and just as in past years we will be featuring our sponsor cars for the back. This will have our Mopars Unlimited, Tacoma logo and will also have our sponsor’s logo artwork included as well. The front of the shirt will be a bit more detailed. It will feature all four cars in a drag race type of format. We have a modern Challenger that will be staged at the start line with our classic Plymouth Roadrunner. On the sidelines we will have the other two cars in a car show and shine scenario. The signage for Sunbust will be written out on the Christmas tree. I am working on sourcing an artist for this project. I hope to have a rough sketch ready by the March meeting. This will help us get flyers ready earlier than in past years. As for next month’s meeting, we will be going over rates, as well as possible adjustments to the car classes. There is much more, but I will leave that for other times.

Chris Pfaff

Secretary/Treasurer Report

Well I finally did it. On Jan. 12th I had my left hip replaced. It took the surgical team 3&1/2 hours to do the surgery. My hip was all fused together. It feels so much better, I’m using a walker but I should not need it in about another week or so. I still have my right hip and both knees to do. I have to wait to see how much I have to pay out of pocket before I schedule another surgery.

I talked to Sharon Eckman today, she is doing fine and she told me to tell everyone she says hi. She is selling Dave’s ‘70 ‘Cuda and is asking $35K OBO. I’m going to send Chuck Waters, our club webmaster, pictures to post on our website with contact information. It would cost about $1,500.00 to ship the ‘Cuda up here from Ventura, CA but it is completely drivable and if you wanted to drive it, even with the 440 he was getting 17 miles to the gallon after he installed the 5 speed OD transmission and the 3.55 rear gears. Of course, the price is negotiable.

As soon as I can, I have to clean up my Dart and drive it. I really miss driving the Dart, but spring is coming.

Our accounts are getting low. We have approximately $2,500.00 total in our accounts but the rental of Frontier Park for the Sunbust is pre-paid for, August 20 th and 21st.

I have the schedule for the Car Club Challenge Drags for Bremerton Raceway and Pacific Raceways and they are as follows:

www.BremertonRaceway.com Track phone #360-674-2280

March 26 th #1, April 9 th #2, April 30 th #3, May 7 th #4, May 14 th #5 and September 17 th #6

Gates open @ 8am on Saturday, with time trials @ 9am

www.pacificraceways.com Office phone #253-639-5927

May 20 th #1, June 10 th #2, June 17 th #3, July 8 th #4, July 15 th #5 and August 12th #6

Gates open @ 4pm on Friday, with time trials @ 5pm.

Both websites have information about current weather, racing fees and rules http://www.carclub-challenge.com/reference.htm this link has rules for racing and point accumulation, but local track rules must be your primary guideline.

Well that is all for now .

Kyle Leftwich Event news Feb 5 th & 6 th , Corvette & High Performance Swap Meet , Puyallup, WA, 360-786-8844 Feb 13 th & 14 th , 50 th Annual Early Bird Swap Meet , Puyallup, WA, 253-863-6211 Feb 11 th thru 14 th , 56 th Annual Circle K NHRA Winternationals , Pomona, CA Feb 17 th Monthly General Meeting - Al Young to speak

http://www.mohai.org/press-media/press-releases/item/2593-world-championship-drag-racer-al- young-comes-to-mohai-june-22-2013 Feb 26 th thru 28 th , 32 nd Annual CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals , Chandler, AZ March 6 th Off Road & High Performance Swap Meet , Puyallup, WA 253-847-8202 March 12 th & 13 th Almost Spring Swap Meet , Puyallup, WA 253-952-3746 March 16 th Monthly General Meeting - Larry Hansen - to speak on W&W, Rod a Rama, Freedom Fair etc. March 17 th thru 20 th , 47 th Annual Amalie Motor Oil NHRA , Gainesville, FL March 18 th thru 20 th Portland Roadster Show , Portland, OR 503-232-4567 March 26 th & 27 th NW Rod a Rama R&C , Puyallup, WA 253-377-2525 March 26 th car club cruise to the Rod a Rama. Meet @ 8:00AM at the Loose Wheel in Puyallup. Breakfast, then cruise to the show March 31 st thru April 2 nd , Portland International Raceway Swap Meet , Portland, OR 503-823-7223 April 1 st thru 3 rd Portland Swap Meet , Portland, OR 503-678-2100 April 1 st thru 3 rd , 17 th Annual NHRA Silver State Nationals , Las Vegas, NV

April 20 th Monthly General meeting April 22 nd thru 24 th , 7th Annual NHRA Four-Wide Nationals , Charlotte, NC

April 23 rd - Poker Run/Cruise In - Location to be determined April 29 th thru May 1 st , 29 th Annual NHRA Springnationals , Houston, TX For Sale News Chris Pfaff received the following e-mail “…Carl Line contacted you regarding selling our 1936 Plymouth P2 Deluxe. It has had only 3 owners since 1936 (two of which are my Dad and I).The car has been garaged and is very clean. It is in 1936 stock condition. Car runs well, with no major mechanical issues. The interior has been restored to original style fabric and colors. Many parts, gauges & switches are stock. Many parts and manuals go with it as well. Pictures are available. Asking $10,000 OBO. Car is stored in my shop in Olympia. Contact Jeff Line @ 360-239-5137 Membership & Web News With the beginning of the year, it is time for most of us to renew our membership. There are a few folks who renewed late in 2015 and they earned membership through 2016 in doing so. The sign up instructions are listed below and can be done three ways. (1) Go to our website and renew online using your PayPal account. Follow this link: http://www.moparsunlimited.org/membership/signup.php (2) If you don’t have a PayPal account you can print the form at the end of the newsletter (see last page) Then fill in the blanks (print neatly or type) and mail with your check to the club P.O. Box. You can also bring the completed form to our monthly meeting at the Round Table Pizza on Hosmer where we can accept your check or cash. The meetings are held the 3rd Wed. of each month @ 7:00, so come support your club. (3) Blank membership applications will also be available at the club meeting. The Last Word – Newsletter Editor’s Prerogative From the Internet I found this on the internet recently and the reason I bring it to your attention is because this outfit seems to have one of the answers to making a modern Gen III Hemi run without the restrictions found in the Mopar electronics that come with the engines. Maybe Dustin Ward could use this information? They are in Vancouver, WA http://www.nutterracingengines.com/hemitronix/hemitronix_background.html In case you long for the days when Funny Cars actually bore some resemblance to actual cars, there is a class for that …Nostalgia Funny Car. This shows a day spent at Famoso Dragstrip (Bakersfield, CA) doing licensing runs for a new driver and his car. The team of Stone, Woods & Cook was a famous one from the glory days of the “Gasser Wars” http://www.hotrod.com/features/1601-monday-night-funny-car-porn/ From Facebook there are pictures of the pistons that Dustin Ward is using in his Gen III Hemi bracket motor. He is moving on from the LA engine platform, the pistons are works of art and weigh less than 400 grams each! In comparison I have found a listing for an off the shelf Chevy 350 Speed Pro hypereutectic piston that weighs 565 grams. Obviously the lighter you can make the reciprocating assembly, the quicker the engine will accelerate and the less stress on the crankshaft and connecting rods. I don’t have any numbers regarding the weight of high compression pistons for a LA series motor, but judging from the photos that Dustin posted of the destroyed race motor from his Dakota it could be that he found the stress limit of that particular LA engine.

And speaking of , I have been subscribing to the E-mail postings of Tim McAmis. He is a very successful builder of (Seriously OverPowered Door Slammers) race cars and he has developed a series of HD video tutorials regarding off season maintenance, tuning and fabrication of drag vehicles. The good part is that the videos are available for FREE!! All you have to do is to subscribe to his web site www.timmacamis.com and the videos are viewable on any device with an internet connection. My junk may never be as sophisticated or fast as what he works on every day, but I can dream. And from www.NHRA.com I have been checking out the entry lists for the various classes at the Winternationals and as of 2/2/16 I see there are 15 cars entered in , 5 of them are Dodge Darts with last year’s champion, Erica Enders-Stevens in a new ’16 and 3 rd place finisher Allen Johnson in last years ’15 with a new wrap, the Gas Monkey Garage crew has entered a Camaro and Aaron Strong from Milton, WA has entered a Camaro, too. For the 2 nd year in a row, there are no Fords to be found in the entries. The Pro Stock teams are all on equal footing because of the rules changes and I think Mopar’s chances are good. Of course, they are best in Dragster, Fuel Funny Car, Top Alcohol Dragster, Top Alcohol Funny Car because regardless of what body they carry all the engines are replicas of the Gen II Chrysler Hemi, but we all know that.. In the Stock Eliminator category 1/3 of the 75 entries are Mopars powered by the full array of engines from the 426 Hemi all the way to down to a ’80 Plymouth Horizon with a “stock” 4 cylinder…my mom had one of those and I drove, but I never thought to race it .

And this is what Erica Enders-Stevens 2016 Pro Stock Dodge Dart looks like before lettering

In Local (Kent, WA) News

I posted this on Facebook on Tuesday the 26th “My brother-in-law, Robert Chatelain , was at work as the shop manager at Automotive Experts in Kent, WA yesterday when an explosion and fire was triggered in the waste oil storage tank in the shop. The shop owner, Chris Ollom , was closest to the explosion and suffered 3rd degree burns on his head, neck and face. Robert pulled him from the fire and the shop fire suppression system put out the blaze before the Kent FD arrived. Chris is at the Harborview Burn Center in Seattle for treatment and is expected to fully recover. Robert is back to work this morning to meet with the insurance adjuster. We all hope that the business will quickly return to normal operations and that Chris makes a speedy recovery. There is more information at www.kentreporter.com “ The last I heard was that cleanup and repairs to the facility are progressing and they should be able to reopen by mid-February. There is a lesson to be learned here and that is, we enjoy a hobby that can involve some risk to ourselves, others and our property. We all need to be especially careful in our handling of flammable material in our home garages and shops. Few of us have the resources that allow for a professional fire suppression system, but we all can have appropriate fire extinguishers placed conveniently in our home and shops and understand how they operate. I have to admit that in the Shell station where I worked in my 20s our procedure for cleaning the shop floor was to mix regular gas with solvent, sprinkle it on the greasy spots and scrub with a broom. Then rinse into the grease pit, where it would evaporate overnight. I discovered the folly of that procedure while I was welding closed a holed engine oil pan on a Cadillac one Sunday morning. I had the Caddy on the rack and was standing on the grease pit grate, as I was gas welding the hole closed, the remaining engine oil was dripping, on fire, into the grease pit below and suddenly I was standing in a fire of my own making. I sprayed the fire out with a handy hose and continued to close the hole in the oil pan. That was one of the first times that I discovered, I was not bullet proof. On Monday we started using detergent to clean the floors and never went back

In Local (Graham) News I was able to do some general maintenance (transmission drain and refill on my ’87 D100) with the assistance of club member Leslie McGirt and it was a learning experience for both of us. Thank you, Leslie! And I have finally gotten around to spending time on my race project (My Junk) and been working on the ignition system for the race 440. The engine came with a Mopar electronic distributor and I was going to use the Mallory 6853M CD ignition system that I bought some time ago, but I ended up using that in my daily driver and it performs very well in that capacity even though it is seriously overkill. So the race distributor is now set up with a modified Mopar pickup coil leading to a GM 4 pin HEI Control Module. It is incredibly simple and cheap to put together costing under $100.00 to assemble and with the addition of a E-Coil for another $100.00 I will have enough ignition system to do all that I need in the Ramcharger for less than I paid for the Mallory unit alone. I will bring it to the General Meeting for “Show-n-Tell”. The photo is of a SB modified distributer (the big blocks rotate CCW and the SB rotate CW, but the adapter is the same) I will bring copies of the instruction sheet for the adapter for those that would like the information.

I bought the GM HEI 4 pin Control Module from www.rockauto.com and evidently they were happy enough with my recent purchases and others that they gave me a 5% discount code for online orders only and that code is 4095595737193261 The deal is you plug that number into the “Where did you hear about us?” space (above your payment information) on the checkout page. Don’t put anything else in that block or you won’t get the 5% discount. There are no limits on orders, either size or number and they said share it with your friends, no problem. It does expire on 4/3/16 so don’t wait! Time to wind this up. Pete Holbrook

Those “neutral starts” will get you every time! I have had days like that…

Member #______Paid______#______Date______Exp.______D DP MC For Membership Director's Use Only

FROM THE CLASSICS, ANTIQUES AND MUSCLE CARS TO THE NEW SPIRIT OF PERFORMANCE AND BEYOND Our purpose is to promote the preservation and restoration of motor vehicles produced by the Chrysler Corporation and to provide a common meeting place for the membership to accomplish the purpose of the Organization and promote goodwill among themselves and their sport. “We don't want to be the biggest--just the best; what else is there?" --Lee A. Iacocca Please Print or Type: Date ______New __ Renewal __ Name ______Age ______Address ______City ______State ______Zip ______Phone (_____)______Email ______If you don’t list an Email address we will mail the newsletter to you via USPS Occupation ______Make and model of car(s)______Other special interest autos owned (non-Mopar) ______

Would you be interested in a staff or committee job? __ Yes __ No What special skills do you have that might benefit the club? ______Do you have any suggestions as to the type of activities in which you would like to see the club participate? ______Any other suggestions or comments?______What or who encouraged you to join Tacoma Mopars Unlimited? ______If you are under age 18, for club insurance purposes, we must obtain your parental or legal guardian's signature prior to acceptance of membership with the Tacoma Chapter of Mopars Unlimited. Parent or Legal Guardian signature ______Please return completed form and membership dues to:

Mopars Unlimited - Tacoma Chapter Membership Director P.O. Box 44903 Tacoma, WA 98448-0903

Make checks payable to "Mopars Unlimited" Membership rates (according to month of registration): If you join in the month of - You will owe- Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr $20 Add an additional $10 for dual membership (spouse) May - June - July - Aug $17 Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec $25 (which includes the entire next year) Premium (Paid) Membership entitles you to the following; membership card, club window decal (new members only), monthly newsletter (free ads), and parts discounts at participating dealers/businesses. Free (Associate) Membership entitles you to e-mailed newsletters and our thanks for paying attention.