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The Tracker apr may 2019 Anyone else been out for a cruise yet? Feeling Tired? (pp. 4-7) You Dirty Rat (Fink)! (pp. 8-9) A Wonderful Lady Will Be Missed (p. 10) Did You Sleuth Out the Mystery Car? (p. 17) MICHIGAN WIDETRACKERS CHAPTER 16 OF POCI WWW.MIWIDETRACKERS16.ORG 2 President's column Hello fellow Widetrackers! It looks like we have made it through another winter. Even with the polar vortex and the bomb lows, we survived it. With the way the forecasters sensationalize the weather, and they are never right, it makes me want Sonny Elliot back doing the weather. It's winter folks. It's Michigan. It snows and it's cold. Nothing new. We had our Holiday dinner at the White Horse Inn again this January. There was a great turnout this year, and the feedback I received was that everyone had a good time. It was nice to see so many out. In February the club went to the Automotive Hall of Fame and the Henry Ford Museum. Members signed up to go, but only 5 members went. The club's Social Committee tries to come up with things for us to do, and it must be discouraging to them when very few members participate in the events. Our Dust Off car show is June 8th this year, so mark your calendars. This is our only fundraiser for the year. The monies raised from this allows the club to make donations to different charities and help defray costs for other events throughout the year. So please plan to participate in the Dust Off. It is a lot of fun, and you get to look at a lot of beautiful Pontiacs. Hopefully we will have great weather. It's not been so good the last couple. The Autorama was held on March 1st to 3rd. It was a nice show with many fantastic cars and trucks. I went on Friday. I counted 14 Pontiacs, and there were some real nice examples. Hope you were able to make it. Another outing the club is planning is to the Pontiac Museum in Pontiac, IL on May 20 to the 22. More details will be sent by email and given out at the club meetings. Our new website is now up and running. It is miwidetrackers16.org. It will take some time to get everything on it like we want, so be patient while our new Webmaster works on it. In about a month we should have our Pontiacs back out on the road. That will certainly be nice .I cannot wait. That's all for now. Hope to see everyone at the next meeting Arnold Boersma President 3 Webmaster's Wise Words By Bob Klauka, Webmaster Hi, Widetrackers. For those who haven't met me before, I'm Bob Klauka, and I've taken on the job of Webmaster. Some of you may have noticed that our old website, widetrackers.org, doesn't work any more. Unfortunately, without knowing the administrator passwords that were used on the site, I wouldn't be able to make any future changes to the site to run it, so we've had to start over from the ground up. So, I'm excited to tell you all that I'm currently in the process of building the new Michigan Widetrackers website. The new web address will be miwidetrackers16.org, and it should be up and running soon. Like widetrackers.org, I will be updating it and adding to it regularly, and if there's anything you really would like to see on the site, let me know. One thing I would like to do is to make the website all-inclusive. To do that, I'd like to dedicate one page to each member, and on that page, I'd love to showcase pictures of your cars so that we can all get to know one another a bit better. If you could, I'd like to ask each of you to write a small paragraph about your cars to go along with the pictures. Some ideas for those who don't know what to write might be things like: Why you chose the car you did How you came across the car Any improvements you've made How long you've owned it Anything interesting or funny about the car Anything else you might want to say Just remember to keep it clean, folks! (And by that, I mean the cars! Keep the cars clean! Sheesh, what'd you think I meant?) You can email your pics and comments to [email protected]. For that matter, you can email any questions or comments or suggestions to me at that address, too! Just please be patient and bear with me for a little while as I get things up and running. I promise to get things up on the site as soon as I can. Stay tuned! 4 Let's Talk Tires—Part II By Bob Klauka In the last issue of The Tracker, we talked about tires, how to read a tire code, and how to convert old size tires to the new system. We will now finish our discussion on tires by looking at tire wear, inflation, and the tire/ wheel relationship. TIRE WEAR Tire manufacturers put wear indicator markers in the tread of tires to tell you when to replace them. About half worn: Worn out: In the first photo, you can see that there's still a bit of a height difference between the horizontal wear bar and the top of the tread. In the second photo, you can see that the wear bar is even with the top of the tread—and is very difficult to even see! Time to pony up for a new set of rubber. GOTTA KEEP THE AIR IN THERE SOMEHOW! Driving on worn tires is extremely dangerous. Although 32psi doesn't seem like much, when that force explodes out, it can do a lot of damage to your undercarriage, or to those around you. If you're lucky, your tire will stay in one piece. However, many times, a blowout will create a lot of shrapnel when it lets go—the next time you're driving along the Interstate, have a look along the shoulders if you don't believe it. SO HOW DOES IT WORK? Despite the physical size of a tire, it is actually a very small patch, about the size of your hand, that actually makes contact with the road. That's why it's extremely important to have your tires in good working condition. This interface is called the contact patch. The only way to get the maximum contact patch area is to keep your tires properly inflated. (Continued on page 5) Let's Talk Tires—Part II 5 (Continued) That little black rectangle is all that is keeping you connected with the road at any given time. A properly inflated tire will wear evenly (assuming the alignment is correct). We'll discuss alignment another time. Here's an image that will explain it better than words can: The grey at the bottom of the image shows you where, and how much, of the tire is actually touching the pavement. As you can see, a properly inflated tire will get the best contact with the road. Underinflating will cause the center of the tread to lift up from the road and the tire will wear heavily on each edge. Furthermore, an underinflated tire will heat up if you drive an extended distance. You don't want to be in a car when the tire explodes at 70 MPH! Overinflating will cause the center of the tread to extend too far downwards, causing the tire to wear in the center portion of the tread and leaving the outsides 'looking good'. When it's raining or slippery, an overinflated tire will lose traction sooner that a properly inflated tire. Just bear in mind that tires do not wear evenly all the way around, so when you're inspecting your tires, make sure you look around the entire circumference, and take measurements at several points. TIRE AND WHEEL RELATIONSHIP Proper inflation is not the only thing to keep in mind when it comes to (Continued on page 6) 6 Let's Talk Tires—Part II (Continued) tires. Like a marriage, a good tire and wheel relationship is critical to happiness (I think Freud said this). The chart below shows wheel width to tire size ratio. If you violate this chart, you've now become the engineer for the tires, wheels, suspension and alignment of your car. And if you take that upon yourself, don't be surprised when the car doesn't perform the way the manufacturing specs say it should. If you put too narrow a tire on a wider wheel, you risk the tire coming off the 'bead' (the place where the tire touches the wheel). If you put too wide a tire on a narrower wheel, you change the performance of the sidewall which can crack and deflate. You also risk scrubbing the sidewall on curbs and things. (Continued on page 7) Let's Talk Tires—Part II 7 (Continued) WHEN TO REPAIR A TIRE The guidelines for repairing a tire are shown on the image below: Never attempt to repair a passenger car tire if its damaged in the red shaded area because the forces are the greatest there. Bulges or bubbles on the side of a tire CANNOT be repaired. This should be replaced immediately.

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