Dave or Helen’s

If that was a bullet we think we dodged it.

Just over a week ago we had a mishap, a problem, actually what we had was an electrical fire in the TR6. The 30+ year old headlight switch failed and created a dead short under the dash. If Dave hadn’t been in the car with a wrench handy we believe it would have not only burned the car to the ground, but considering it was in the garage also burned down our house.

Dave has spent many a late night under the dash of the Triumph over the past week running some new wire and repairing some of the damage. It looks like we’re back up and running without having to replace the entire wiring harness. That would have been a +200 hour job and one he wasn’t looking forward to. 

The rally is in 35 days. 35 days? Oh my we still have a lot to do!

There will be so many touching stories as a result of this event. Due to the pathetic headlights on the 6 we wanted a factory light bar so we could mount sets of rally lights. These bars haven’t been made in over 30 years. If you can find them used they are very expensive. Quite by accident Dave “met” a man in California through email who had a set of front and rear bars. Not only did he ship us his front bar so we could copy it, but he gave us his back bar! The trust he showed in us really made an impact. The front light bar has been fabricated, test fitted, and sent off to be chromed. 

Two of our concerns have been how tired we’re going to be after all those miles in a very little car and running behind schedule because weather slowed down our arrival in Birmingham. Our plan was to drive the 6 to Birmingham and it wouldn’t look very good if we were late because of weather or other problems. Hauling the 6 in an enclosed trailer seemed to be the perfect solution. We’ve found a gentleman, who again we’ve never met, is willing to loan us his 24′ trailer.  It should make life much easier hauling the car there with the truck and starting “fresh” the day of the rally. A 24 footer is a monster trailer. If any of you know someone who has a 20′ trailer we’d like to talk to them.

Tee-shirts for the kids…. Helen came up with a great idea! We’re making tee-shirts with the Circle S Racing Team logo on them. Under the logo will be the word “driver” and a line. We’ll be able to take a sharpie and write in kids names on the tee-shirts. On the 26th we’re going to the hospital to take kids for rides. Once they have on their tee-shirts, we’ll put them behind the wheel for a picture, and then print the picture so they can have it by their bed. We’re attempting to get the local police to give us a police escort when we go for rides. Chris’s Stuff (the supplier of all of the shirts at the winery) has donated 24 kids shirts and Avery Dennison (the manufacturer of the paper stock the winery labels are printed on) has donated the iron-on transfers. THANK YOU!

The final route is set! A few changes have been made to the route due to construction delays and road conditions. Day #1 we’ll start early in the morning at point #1 on the below map. Late Saturday night, barring any disasters, we’ll pull into Tupelo, MS:

Day #2, Tupleo southeast to Pratville, AL then to the finish, and a good stiff drink, in Birmingham.

The number and types of cars entered is growing and getting very interesting. In addition to a 1932 Bentley which has recently entered the rally there are a couple of other Triumphs, MG’s, an old Austin Healey, and a 1949 Bentley. Looks like we’re going to have a great group of old British cars.

Thank you for your support, your words of encouragement, and your prayers.

stay tuned……….

Tags: Cars

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.