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nicko

nicko

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that you can fit exactly 36 bottles of wine on the parcel shelf of a BJ 8, after a degustation , I found out ! 20160318_134025.jpg
chin chin
nico
 
That's what I like. A forum that deals in cold hard fact. Useful fact.

All we need now is a lengthy thread on the fascinating subject of oil as a balancer. :(
 
EV2239 said:
That's what I like. A forum that deals in cold hard fact. Useful fact.

All we need now is a lengthy thread on the fascinating subject of oil as a balancer. :(
Click to expand...

I like to deal in important facts, you may have noticed the panier on the back so there is still scope for more ! Sorry can't help with the oil, I've lost my balance with the wine!
 
Can you imagine having a full shelf in wine under a Tourneau cover and being stopped by the Revenuers? Or, explaining to a State Trooper the loud clinking of the bottles as you drove down a Highway? Or, having an accident that broke many of the bottles and validating that you were not drunk? Or, ...

Not me.
Ray (64BJ8P1)
 
Wow, now there's a way to get the wife to go for a ride in the Healey!
 
Kind of makes you wonder if the Healey would have made a good rum-runner. In any event, you can deliver that load to my house. I've got room in my wine cellar.

Griz
 
RAC68 said:
Can you imagine having a full shelf in wine under a Tourneau cover and being stopped by the Revenuers? Or, explaining to a State Trooper the loud clinking of the bottles as you drove down a Highway? Or, having an accident that broke many of the bottles and validating that you were not drunk? Or, ...

Not me.
Ray (64BJ8P1)
Click to expand...

Don't know if I've posted this here before. but here's my beer in a car story:

I have a good friend we'll call Bob, because that's not his real name. Bob's an ordinary guy who has one extraordinary talent. He's actually been able to make money by diligently tracking down rare sports cars, particularly Austin Healeys, and selling them at a profit. As a result, he's had some pretty interesting cars in his garage over the years. One of the most spectacular was a Ford GT40 that he imported from England. We're not talking about the foo foo Ford GT here, but a real honest-to-God GT40 race car that was built as a continuation car by Safir Engineering and featured a 351 Cleveland topped by a bunch of Webers about 10 inches behind your head. White, with blue over-the-roof stripes, y'know, like this:

167qzgo.jpg


Bob decides he's going to drive it to the Lime Rock vintage races. Now this might not be a problem, but did you forget I said "racecar"? Car would run only on race gas and registering the car for the street was impossible because it violated every reg the EPA, DOT and the DMV could think of and some that they didn't even have a chance to come up with yet. Not to be deterred, Bob slapped a dealer's plate on it, but since the car was fiberglass without anyplace to put a magnet on it and no license plate holder, the only place to put the plate was in the rear window. You can imagine how small the window is on a 40" tall car, so basically from the rear it looked like no plate at all on the car.

We took the "shortcut" to Lime Rock, a winding back road through some of the prettiest scenery in the Berkshires. If some movie producer wanted to cast the part of "Sports Car Road" this one would get the lead. Unfortunately, on race weekends it is the gathering place for every local yokel for miles around who are trying to enrich the coffers of their picturesque southwestern Massachusetts and Northeastern Connecticut villages at the expense of those rich sporty car fellas.

As Bob was showing me what a GT40 could do on this particular stretch of God's-own sports car playground, which happened to be about four times the legal limit and half the speed that Dan Gurney could have driven it, a helpful soul gave us the universal sign that a speed trap awaited over the top of the next hill. With heroic braking and downshifting, Bob managed to get us under the speed limit before we crested the rise and we motored sedately past the radar officer.

I knew this wasn't going to go well. Just imagine you're some small town cop seeing a white race car with blue over-the-roof stripes pass by. By the soul of Buford T. Justice, I intuit we're going to be having a conversation on the side of the road in the very near future. So I stare into the fender mirror and ... wait for it ... there they are ... we're lit up.

The nice officer approaches the driver's window, I slide open the tiny window (no real race car would have roll down windows) and direct him over to the passenger's side to talk to Bob. Wait a minute, Rick. You said Bob was driving, but now you're sitting on the driver's side? What gives? You forgot I said this was a British race car with the steering wheel on the right-hand side where God and the Queen intended it. As soon as the officer gets to Bob's side he notices the four six-packs of beer I have lined up next to me on top of the fuel tank in the side sill. Are any of those open, he asks me. Since it was 9:00 am, luckily none were. (Note to self, when your buddies ask you to bring beer to the track on Sunday because all the liquor stores are closed, bring a car that has a trunk).

Then Bob and the officer had a nice little chat. Bob was asked for his license and registration. Registration? Are you kidding me? Then there was a lengthy discussion of who we were and why the f... we were driving a car designed for over 200 mph at LeMans on the street. I didn't get all of Bob's explanation, but what I heard of it, it was total B.S. And then, the officer asks for my driver's license. WTF? What did I do? As far as I know, there is no statute in MA or CT entitled "Felony Riding in a Racecar on a Public Way" I was perfectly fine with Bob being led off in cuffs. He[[, it was his car and he was having the joy of driving it where it had no business being. But now this was serious. No way am I going to some one-cell, one-cot hooseqow without a fight. "Excuse me officer," says I, "you're more than welcome to see my license, but can you tell me why?" "BECAUSE YOU'RE DRIVING THE CAR!" he said in a tone that made it perfectly clear that I must have been the stupidist bastid in the stupidist car that ever put one tire into his jurisdiction.

"Actually, I'm not," I calmly said while I pointed out to this bastion of the law, highly trained in powers of observation, the steering wheel in front of old Bob, whom he had just been conversing with for about twenty minutes. Whoosh! It was as if the Michelin Man had just stepped on a pack of carpet tacks. I don't know if it was embarrassment, exasperation or just a cat being tired of playing with a mouse, but the officer handed Bob back his license, saying, "Maybe you shouldn't be driving this car on the street" and let us go without even a warning. Maybe we shouldn't have, but it was one he[[ of a good time and one great story.
 
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