{"id":4025,"date":"2009-06-24T10:12:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T17:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/giuliettas.com\/?p=4025"},"modified":"2009-06-24T10:12:27","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T17:12:27","slug":"motherlode-400-event-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/2009\/06\/24\/motherlode-400-event-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Motherlode 400 event report"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Motherlode 400, organized by expert and enthusiastic haver of good-times Josh Prentis ran on June 20 \u2013 21st<\/sup>, but began for me on Friday the 19th<\/sup> when I spent an hour rigging up an air cleaner for the Sprint from some borrowed components from shop mate Duff.\u00a0 Sprint\u2019s oil and water levels were fine so I chucked one of my better looking spares in the trunk, filled a pillow case with tools I might need, stowing it under the back parcel shelf panel and declared myself prepared for the worst.\u00a0 Having commuted 70 miles a day in the Sprint for two weeks solid, I was confident my tools would stay stowed unless needed by a fellow motorist.<\/p>\n

Joined by first timers Hoon and Coutney in their charming Datsun Fairlady 1600, we rolled off from Peet\u2019s coffee in Oakland at 7am on Saturday.\u00a0 Meet up was at the Jackson Lodge in Jackson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"motherlode<\/a>Pedal Pusher Citation bait getting used to the new and potentially improved Sprint that she is half owner of.\u00a0 The tach cable started squeeling like crazy soon after this and I had to cut it at the firewall.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"h<\/a>Hoon and Courtney in their Datsun.\u00a0 Best color ever?\u00a0 This car stopped charging the battery at some point on day one so the Sprint did all the charging for both of us and we swapped batteries a few times.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"rally<\/a>On a one-and-a-half lane fire trail with a name like N2 W23 or some such we ran across a group of sand rails (or what ever you call them) filled with smiling ‘I’m about to go off-road and have fun’ faces.\u00a0 That’s one of those zip-out rear window late 60’s Porsche 911’s they made like 10 of.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"nick<\/a>Nick Pon ran a solo event in his 1976 2002.\u00a0 He and I met on our first rally, the 1999 California Melee, he in this car and me in an exceedingly crappy yet great Austin Healey Bug-eye Sprite.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"sonora<\/a>Sprint is catching its breath after about 30 minutes of first and second gear steep climbing, hindered by an Acadia minivan that seemed to plot against any momentum we built up.\u00a0 It kind of looks like I must weigh 500 pounds the way the corner is pushed down.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"massive<\/a>This is what it is all about.\u00a0 Wide open epic roads.\u00a0 This is the view looking down towards 395 from Monitor pass.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"shaun<\/a>Less than an hour from home and Hoon’s Datsun required another battery change, the third that day.\u00a0 You can go about an hour and a half running with lights at night without charging the battery.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All told the tour probably covered 500 miles with about 250 miles of gettin\u2019 there and gettin\u2019 home thrown in. \u00a0On day two we climbed the Sonora Pass, Monitor Pass and Ebbitt\u2019s Pass, with a combined elevation approaching 30,000 feet. \u00a0The Sprint\u2019s newly rebuilt 1300 buzzed happily along on 20 minute sustained 5000 rpm climbs in second gear, only registering a slight warm-up of the oil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only problem encountered by me was an over-estimation of my fuel economy on day two resulting in a short head scratching session on the finish line after wheezing and burbling into town and stalling as I parallel parked. \u00a0Shaun Pond (crazy man appearing to pull puppet strings in picture above) found a loose spade connector to my coil which he put the squeeze on and Windsor Owens donated a gallon of gas and one or the other saw the Sprint fire up and idle in the usual way. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you\u2019ve never been on one of these events I highly recommend it. \u00a0You get to make new friends, re-establish contact with old friends, give your classic sports car a good workout while enjoying magnificent scenery and best of all your cell phone doesn\u2019t even work most of the time so there is no point in even worrying about your work-a-day life until Monday morning, allowing you to be here now, in the moment for a full two days, rare in our so-called improved modern life.<\/p>\n

There is a link to a bunch of photos on my event photo’s page<\/a>, and a write up of last years event can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Motherlode 400, organized by expert and enthusiastic haver of good-times Josh Prentis ran on June 20 \u2013 21st, but began for me on Friday the 19th when I spent an hour rigging up an air cleaner for the Sprint from some borrowed components from shop mate Duff.\u00a0 Sprint\u2019s oil and water levels were fine … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Motherlode 400 event report”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[103,111,114,118],"class_list":["post-4025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-motoring-events-shows","tag-alfa-romeo","tag-car-rallys","tag-cars","tag-classic-cars"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rufushamilton.com\/giuliettas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}