Thriller

I beg to differ sir... Granted, I was not as forthcoming as I might have been. As a recipient of one of these CDs, I can attest to its fun factor. Some of the songs are classics that I've heard before, but a few of them are just fun songs I hadn't heard before. My youngest wants some on his MP3 player.... At any rate, I had the CD in the changer in the truck on our return from Ames and it played through at least once if not twice each day.

Small thefts are in a sense, the worst kind. They aren't enough for the police to care, not enough to bother with an insurance claim, but still reduce / remove faith in mankind. Lawn chairs going missing from the yard is one.... I try to give people the benefit of the doubt - everyone starts with a certain level of respect from me simply by being a human being and it is then up to their actions and words to gain or lose my respect. It is sad that many lose rather than gain. In this case Bob, it is sad to see how rude people have become. Rather than being grateful that you not only had gas on hand, but that you were willing to help the guy out, all he can do is ask for more. Who asks for gas to get home? All they need is the nearest gas station. If they are farmers with tanks at home, they need to be more prudent about filling and how far they drive (although these aren't typically in the sort of situation described). I'd better stop now...my thought process is going to get me in trouble with the political correctness police....

Tired. And that's Canuckistanis to you!

According to Standard Catalog of Buick, an 1911 Model 27 should have a frame number between 1 and 400, with and engine number from 1 to 405 - that doesn't make sense since they lump the models 26 and 27 together and there were 1000 model 26 and 3000 model 27 built. It could make sense to have a typo with 400 where 4000 should be, in which case your number makes sense. It is similar with the engine number. If I recall from Dave C's prior posts is that things were batched, so seeing a disparity in numbers wouldn't be a concern, but he is the man who can confirm. It should have a 106" wheelbase with 32x3.5 tires, a 210 cid four with a dark blue body and white wheels. The book concurs with Mark's response about options. Congrats on the new purchase.

Might have something to do with us injecting cash into your economy...could be something else. If you'd rather I didn't cross, I could probably arrange that...it would make parts of my life easier...and less costly.

If I remember correctly, it was discussed at the open meeting in Colorado Springs, but like many things in a volunteer organization, until someone steps forward to look after it, it doesn't happen.

John - agreed. However, the original intent regarding Friday judging was, as I understand it, at least in part to give breathing room on the timing of things. If there are some alternatives to provide the extra time required to improve the admin / banquet / award prep process, we should examine them. I believe I stated it in my original response that the down side to it was to sort of shorten the meet in the sense that those having cars judged lost a day of potential prep time for their cars. If we could improve our efficiency while maintaining Saturday judging, I think I would prefer that, but I could work with either day. The judging manual, including the forms, is a PDF on the BCA site under Documents - http://www.buickclub.org/BCA%20JUDGING%20MANUAL/BCAjudgingrev2.pdf

Well, considering Roy uses mapping software to get distance between your home zip code and the meet to get the distance, any extra miles you put on wouldn't count...however, if you wanted to make that work, you'd only need to go just over half way, then back...so consider driving on up to Winnipeg and I could show you a few of the sights.

Gianna and Bill doing the bikini car wash in Danvers? :rolleyes: :eek::eek:

I have never been to an AACA meet, but there is something about our judging that bothers me. I consider myself relatively inexperienced as a judge, but I generally enjoy it and, owning a variety of Buicks, I would like to think I have an idea of what is correct. Whenever I have judged, I have attended the judging school. Pete and Alan have repeatedly said that we want to spend 5-10 minutes per car. I would argue that 5 minutes probably isn't enough time, but many of the judging teams are closer to 20 minutes per car than 10. If it were 10 minutes per car, including initial transfer of points to the captain's sheet, then a 10 car class should be judged in well under 2 hours. If you had closer to the 5-7 that Brian has experienced at AACA meets, judges should be off the show field in just over an hour. If the judging was done by 10:30 or 11:00 a.m., that would certainly give some time relief to the judging administration group, the awards prep group, and those putting together the presentation for the banquet. I feel that the judging captains need to step up to the plate and keep a better handle on the time spent. Now seeing as our judging teams are often looking at 2-3 times the number of cars that AACA judging teams are, that tells me we don't have enough judging volunteers. In my mind, if I ask to have a car judged, I feel something of an obligation to assist with the process. Think about that...if every owner having a car judged assisted with judging, and teams of 5 judges plus administration would mean all judging teams could be looking at just 5-6 cars. The judges and the owners could get the judging out of the way far sooner and get to the other parts of the meet they enjoy, whether looking at the Buicks, chatting Buick with old or new friends, checking the swap meet, and so on. Heck, the swap meet vendors may be more inclined to stick around for judging day if they got a bit of traffic. I could go on, but I'd likely get riled up and / or rile someone else up.

Jules - over the years my family have submitted a number of articles for the Bugle and all have been submitted electronically. Just send something in to Pete the editor via e-mail. The free member ads could also be submitted electronically - it is outlined in the beginning of the classified section. Everyone needs to keep in mind that this is a trial for international BCA members. When they receive the Bugle weeks or months after members in the USA, the classifieds in particular can be out of date and they can miss out on items they want / need for their Buicks. This is especially important for those overseas who don't have access to the abundance of wrecking yards and parts suppliers we do in North America.

It has been a while since I've driven my '41 Special, but the oil pressure seems fine to me overall. Is that the pressure under load, or at idle? I would think your best course of action would be to clean up the engine, then run it to verify where you may be leaking. Good luck.

That's a great looking car Bob. How northern in MN? I'm in Winnipeg. I try to get down to the Twin Cities around once a year to attend a show and spend some time with Buick friends. The Gopher State Chapter of the Buick Club of America is planning a tour in the Duluth area (the dates escape me right now). I'm going to try to put together a tour in my part of the world for Labour Day weekend 2011 (did a small one in 2009). Welcome to the world of Buick.

Depending on where you live (and register the car), the state may issue a new VIN. Your best bet is to discuss with your DMV.

As usual I suspect I'm not making myself clear. I was just thinking with respect to the photos, that a checklist could be kept of cars photographed against the list of registered 400 point cars. As those photos were moved from the digital camera to a computer, a few minutes taken to look at the photos could determine if some didn't turn out well enough, and then some effort could be made to have a re-take done. I don't know exactly how it is done overall - I had volunteered to help out with photography in Rochester, but when I showed up for my shift I was told there were enough people there (don't understand why I was scheduled at that time then) and to go away. When my wife came there looking for me, they told her I never showed up...funny how I probably enjoyed myself more about 20 yards away parking cars anyway. All that is to say, I'm just trying to put forward an idea that may (or may not) improve the percentage of photos available for the presentation at the banquet. How was it done before digital photography? Were photos taken just for the Bugle and there were no photos at the banquet? If that is the case, if this is a big enough deal, perhaps we should just forget about the photos at the banquet. Personally I prefer to have them there even with issues. Mike - I'm not trying to suggest that a quarter of the cars in the Driven Class is a poor showing. I just thought it had been growing to outstrip the numbers in 400 point judging. I could be wrong on that. The one question is for the cars that did Driven and another form of judging, which class would they have been in had there been the usual conflict for timing? If they would all have been Driven, and just took opportunity of 400 point / modified judging because they could, then it is probably better than the other way around. Had they not taken advantage and the 400 / modified judging was the priority, then having about 60 cars in the Driven class would have been disappointing (in my mind).

Craig, were you as vocal when the GSC doubled dues? I don't know as meetings are too far to attend. Of course someone had suggested higher rates for international members...a lot of good that would do with one of me paying a higher rate. There were families there, although not many. My children enjoy riding steam trains and we considered going on the train, but didn't have time to make it happen. I'm not sure what your idea is of what the hospitality room is supposed to be. As far as I am concerned, it is a place to be able to get out of the weather and socialize. It is nice to have drinks available, but for a $50 registration, the expectation should not be that the club feed everyone at the meet. I have heard of freeloaders crashing the judges' breakfast in the past for a free meal - if nothing else, that is an argument for keeping it away from the hotels. The reality is that we have been over this numerous times over the past year. The membership generally supported a dues increase to maintain the size and colour content of the Bugle. Not everyone will be happy - the BoD certainly understood that. You can't please everyone all the time. We have now seen an increase in membership month over month. Clubs evolve. Anything that remains static won't survive. It doesn't help the club that Buick generally stopped making what most folks consider collectible cars, with a few exceptions over the past few decades. I was just going through a price guide and noting that car values seem to be rising again. If that is the case, perhaps it is more that the affordability of entry level vehicles to get into the hobby is a bigger deal. If you can't afford $10k to purchase / maintain a car, then certainly, $50 for a club membership doesn't necessarily make sense. However, if they can get into a car for under $2k (like say my Electra), and can afford to insure and drive it, then $50 per annum is not going to be a significant deterrent. Whether or not the club has enough visibility to get them interested is probably more of an issue. Of course, that varies by region - for example, if you live in the Flint area, the national meets and Buicktown chapter probably make it easy. If you live in North Dakota or Montana, where you don't have local chapters, the club is much less visible. Even so, are all Buick owners in the Twin Cities BCA members and GSC / Fireball Chapter members? No. Not everyone wants to join a club. Frankly, people lie. It is easier to say $50 is too much than to tell someone who is passionate about a club that they aren't interested in joining. I'm not going to say the Ames National was perfect. Nor am I saying that the BoD is perfect. Both are run by humans, therefore imperfect. If you want to have a say, start with constructive criticism and potential alternatives. Presenting a problem without a possible solution / suggestion for improvement is just complaining. People will always tire of it. The other thing is to realize that the club is a collective - some will share your views, but others will not. All views are valid, but majority generally rules and decisions have to be made in the best interest of the club. My family enjoyed the meet. We didn't partake in any of the tours that had cost associated simply because it does turn into a lot of money when one multiplies it by five. However, that didn't need to make the meet. My children can go back to school to see their friends saying they sat behind the wheel of a Motorama show car. How many can say that? They have friends they like to see at each meet, just like I do. It is a family atmosphere - we can essentially let them run free on the National Meet grounds. It is a heck of a lot safer than the streets of Winnipeg.

Hey Roy, I wasn't trying to be harsh with respect to the photographer. If a tripod is set up in a particular location and the cars are in a particular location, the photos should be pretty consistent. I understand there would have been issues with photos on Friday in the weather, but generally photos and the safety check are done at essentially the same time, which has to be done before the judging, so in a sense, there needn't have been any photos taken on Friday. When I think back, I don't recall them photographing my card nor getting particulars, so in my case (photo taken Wednesday morning when things were not hectic), I don't know what happened. If the photos were poor, if they were being copied over to a computer and looked at on a daily basis, some effort could have been made to get another photo of the car...again, in my case it wasn't hard to find as it was parked in class all week and a good proportion of the folks knew me and that it was my car. I'm not saying I would have done better - I am also human and I know it, therefore imperfect. It was just a disappointment at the time not to have the car on screen. On a related note, perhaps someone else who maybe has notes on the order of the presentation could run the computer, rather than the announcer / presenter. Pete seemed to tire of not being able to find the correct car as the evening progressed. So there were only 59 cars in the Driven Class that weren't judged in another format? I thought over the past few years that we were growing that class and that we were well over 100. While it is nice to see folks taking advantage of being able to enter more than one class of judging, it is a bit disappointing to me that there weren't more driven cars overall.

One real positive is that it resulted in many of the cars then being driven to Jewell since the judging was over and folks weren't as concerned about every speck of dust. That said, I found it really shortened things. It pushes the judging school to Thursday, so there seemed to be less time to do stuff and get things ready. A positive is giving more time for judging administration, and could open up judges to assist with administration or the preparation. That said, it could also have left time for photo retakes, if there had been a checklist kept of the photos that were taken / turned out versus the cars that were (expected to be) in attendance at the meet. As Don stated, it isn't the end of the world not to have your car's photo up when you are presented with an award, but it would be nice...it also gives more folks at the banquet the chance to put a name / face with the car. I guess I'm of mixed feelings about it. There are advantages and disadvantages to it. If it came to a vote right now, I'd probably abstain since I don't feel strongly one way or the other. Had I not been parking cars on Saturday for the open show, I'm not sure what my family and I would have been up to. One thing that is nice to have is a period of time with cars parked in their classes that isn't specifically at judging time so that people can observe / learn / ask questions / etc - things like model-specific information or perhaps get some interesting photos of a row of bumpers / fins / lights.

There's something wrong about a garage you can go barefoot in....

The mere thought of a XXXL bikini is disturbing....

trade/1965/sell/buick/riviera//coupe//trade Looks nice.

Indeed - denying Marge could be dangerous

There was a time I got my paper copy about the same time as you Roberta, if I recall correctly. Then it got convoluted and I got mine later than the other locals. That seems to be straightened out again - I got my July Bugle on the Friday before we left for Ames.

Looks good. Congrats on getting your own Buick. Do I smell a Porthole article? For some reason, the quarter window / roof line shape on these cars catches my eye.

How much did Fred get spectators to cough up working the gate? He he he....