CLASSIC OPEN HOUSES

[marc1951]

Although the Classic was on Sunday, there were several shops that had open houses Friday and Saturday.  Being an out-of-towner, and to justify the cost of the trip from Seattle, my friend Bob and I attended as many as possible. I thought some of you may be interested in what we saw.

My first post show Dave Folt's Transmission. It was not an open house, but a visit to an old friend and I thought it might be of some interest. Dave's shop was impressive and had so many rooms that you could get lost.

The 1st pic is one of the assembly rooms.

The 2nd pic is the bay and you will notice his dragster covered. I understand that both Dave and his son, Daniel, will be on the asphalt soon with almost identical turbo, alcohol fueled cars. Dave and Tom Schuh have been partners in a record holding dragster for years.

The 3rd pic shows transmissions waiting to be given the Folt's magic. Thanks to off-road racers, Dave says business is good.

The 4th shows another assembly area.



Marc Buehler

[marc1951]

Another open house we atttended was JayCee who makes very high quality products. I bought a mag brace and a front pulley from him recently.
This was the most impressive of all the open houses. They had lots of race cars on display, a live band, a free BBQ and a open shop to explore.


The 1st pic shows the cars lined up. You can see the band about half way down .....Relics or something (I apologize) but they played surf music, etc.  -very entertaining.

2nd one is of inside their showroom. They had a display with 4 different motors.

3rd one is inside their dyno room

4th one is the shop and you can see several motors being worked on

[marc1951]

JayCee's open house had so many things going on, i decided to add some more photos.


1st pic shows some killer carburation and mainifold. Notice the brackett welded to velocity stack.

2nd one shows people crowding around a CNC machine watching it work. I started to crowd my way into the goup so I could see what was going on but soon thought why am I doing this, I work in a machine shop and see this stuff every day. It looks like they only had 2 machines which surprised me but, who know, maybe they have more in another building.

3rd one is a Fiat race car in the parking lot.

4th one is of the BBQ area. They served hotdogs and hamburgers.  I wonder if the homeless knew of this free meal?  <grin>


I need to do some work so I can save money to attend again next year, but I may have some more photos later.

Marc Buehler
DRA

[.]

Thanks Marc !
 

[Jason Foster]

  Hey Marc,
  Just want to say it was a real pleasure meeting you this weekend glad you had a great time. It is surely evident you are once again bitten by the bug...  And hey the blower on the '57 can wait you got a long drive to Fullerton and Irvine in the '51 next year.

  Also glad to see you scored the pedal assembly piece you needed awesome. Looking forward to seeing more progress when you get the time.
  Jason

[cal-look 56]

I think I will take the week off next year and enjoy all the festivities.  I live so close and never get to do everything because of work.

[Rick Meredith]

I think I will take the week off next year and enjoy all the festivities.  I live so close and never get to do everything because of work.

Ditto! And it's not like getting time off is an issue, My employer is pretty generous in that.

[Black Sheep]

Wow I love the open house idea , and the way local business put themselves out for the customer's  can't imagine that happening over here  I live the wrong side of the pond 

[johnl]

Marc,

Great to see you again after what some 30 years??  Sorry I didn't recognize you at Nick's, but I will say you've become more distinguished over all of these years 

Keep the photos and written word coming and hope to see you and the Split down here soon. 

Best,

John

[marc1951]

It was great to meet you too, Jason. My friend, Bob, got a kick out the moment you realized who I was....."Are you Marc Buehler?". He's still giving me a hard time about being "famous"......I keep telling him it's not me, it's the car! LOL

Thanks John, I actually enjoyed the fact that you didn't recognize me.
That's the best weekend I've had in a while!

Ok, now back to the open houses.

We went to Vee Dub Parts Unlimited, but I guess I didn't see anything worth taking a picture of. Very nice store though, reminds me of the old Auto Haus stores. People there were very friendly. They had several nice cars on display and had free food.

We started Saturday morning by visiting A.J. Sims Low Bugget and got there before they were set up so I only got a couple of pictures.

Picture 1 just shows the front of his business and a couple of his race cars

Picture 2 is my buddy, Bob, looking up the driveway where another shop (sorry I don't remember who they were) but they kept running their dyno every 1/2 hour or so.

Picture 3 is a picture of Robert Taylor of www.Fastfabonline.com. 
He set up a booth at Low Bugget. He seemed familer and it turned out he was on the Boyd Cottington show. What a nice guy and the workmanship of the products he makes is excellent. Check out his website if you need nerf bars, breather boxes, guage brackets, etc, etc.

I got so involved to talking to A.J. Sims (We talked for over an hour) that I forgot to take any more pictures. This guy takes the time to talk to anyone about cars and motors and seems quite knowledgeable and willing to help. Another super nice guy.
He had a swap meet in the back room which was more of a "I'll take any offer, just get it out of here". He had just moved into that building and didn't want to haul all that stuff upstairs. Here is where I met Jason.
I wish I had taken more pictures here but, I got distracted.

[marc1951]

My last open house and least favorite was Rimco. They are a machine shop and have been doing maching on
VWs for as long as I can remember.  The place hasn't changed since my last visit there, 30 years ago. They do quality work but I always found them not very friendly and that hasn't changed either.

They had seveal unusal cars in their parking lot, had free food, and a unique inflatable bouncer for the kids shaped like a VW bus.

Picture 1  shows some of the race cars on display.

Picture 2 the inflatable bouncing bus

Picture 3  although not all the lights were on, the shop shows it age and seemed very depressing.

Picture 4 shows the front counter....I swear it's exactly like it was 30 years ago.


Marc

[JS]

Cool pics Marc, keep ´em coming! 
I thought Rimco went out of business not long ago? 

[edcraig]

Hi Marc,

Great seeing you on Sunday!!  Great show, ands as always fun seeing everyone.

...Ed.

[marc1951]

We also went to the Ed Economy's Toy and Memorabilia show at the Crowne Plaza.
Because this was the host hotel for the Classic, the parking lot had a lot of VW action.


Picture 1 is self-explanatory

Picture 2 shows what I believe is a car designed to thwart driving while drunk. One wrong move and you get a spike taking a blood sample

picture 3  gives you a kind of idea of the VW activity going on in the parking lot.

picture 4  is inside at the actual show. It was one room with lots of stuff.......oh and Frenchy was there, of course. Seeing Frenchy again was worth the price of admission to me.  His sister has a flower shop in my town, Marysville WA.......small world.


Marc

[marc1951]

ooops, I posted the wrong picture of the "spike car"

Same car, but this shows the spikes.

mar