Tunachuckers Can-O'-Blog

Back in the heady days of the 1970's, you just weren't cool unless you had a Citizen's Band radio.  This is what I have been told, anyway.  You see, I was born pretty late into the 1970's (around the time that disco reached its zenith and automobiles, their nadir) and as such, my earliest memories date back to the Reagan years.  Nonetheless, I was fascinated by CB from an early age, and when I bought my first truck, I promptly outfitted it with a Realistic unit under the ashtray. 

When a cellular phone finally found its way into my Ludditic pocket, the CB found its way onto a dusty shelf in the corner of the basement.  Ironically, it wasn't before the CB had been out of my day-to-day routine for about 5 years that I was finally christened with my own handle:  Volvo Clearinghouse (or VCH, if you're into that whole brevity thing). 

Now I bought my first volvo about 6 or 7 years ago- a green 122S, 1968.  I remember the occassion with incredible clarity.  I recall the online classified ad, going to see the car, the test drive, missing the 1-2 shift and being amazed that the little 1.8 litre engine could pull off a 1-4 shift without missing a beat...most of all, I remember how strange, different, and wonderful that little car was.  I'd mostly owned large American barges prior to that car- sure there was the '71 BMW 2002 I fiddled with in college for a bit, but that car was an unmitigated piece of cow dung, plagued by incessant overheating and brake problems.  I finally wrecked it, fixed it, and gladly traded it for a fistful of dollars,  happy to see it go.  But this little Volvo (I'd yet to learn they were also known as Amazons) was different.  It exuded a feeling of solidity.  It seemed honest, simple, and fun.  Besides, my friend Dimitrios, who grew up in Greece, had been regaling me for years with wild tales of driving bravado he'd perfomed back in his home country behind the wheel of his father's 122 estate.  $2100 later, the little green 122 was in my stable. 

It took awhile for the Volvo bug to set in, but apparently Swedish cars work a strange and eerie magic upon their owners, making them incapable of rational decisions regarding automotive purchases.  Just ask any Saab enthusiast.  (Heck, just today I found myself slightly lusting over a 900 turbo...)  Not yet 10 years after buying my first 122, I've now seen almost 10 volvos pass through my hands.  All of them have been either 122s or 1800s (which are mechanically similar) and I could write you a small novel on each one.  My most recent acquisitions resulted from a contact with a fellow LeMons racer, whose handle is equally appropriate: oddcarnut.  About 2 weeks ago, oddcarnut (who races Saabs in LeMons) directed me to an overlooked eBay auction for a pair (yes, a PAIR!) of 4 door Volvo Amazons, a scant 30 miles from my house.  I bid, but the reserve was not met, and the auction ended.  Undaunted, I emailed the seller and after some phone calls, a deal was struck.  Last week, during two consecutive days, I hauled first one, then the other Amazon home to my auto orphanage.

One of the cars, a primered-and-blue '62, is pretty tired.  The body sheetmetal is reasonably intact, but the floors have a serious case of Flintstone-itis going on, and the two leftmost pedals were abnormally far from the firewall (both master cylinders, I later discovered, had been lifted).  The interior was a curious pile of debris in the center of the car, with nothing really resembling door panels, a dashboard, headliner, or even seats.  The tires dated from the era of bias plies. 

The other car, by contrast, showed promise.  A red '65, it appeared to have been painted sometime during the second Bush administration, and the rust monster had been kept reasonably dormant.  Like the '62, it was missing an air/fuel induction system, but the kindly old minister/ auto body shop owner who sold me the duo included an assortment of manifolds and carburetors.  I spent most of last weekend installing a manifold and a Zenith carburetor on the car, fixing and bleeding out the brakes, fitting a rear bumper, chasing out the electrical demons of corrosion and hack-job wiring, and replacing a very, very tired water pump.  The little red dude responded well to my tinkerings, and after a quick bath and a vacuum, even tidied up nicely.

The tires, stock size 165/R15, are brand new, but both drivers' side roundies seem to have an annoying perpensity to lose alarming quantities of air in short order.  I plan on getting them re-seated, fixing the fairly shady windshield wipers, and hopefully having the little red devil on the road by this weekend.  Some spares are on order from IPD, and I raided my stash of ancient volvo parts for the rest of what was needed.

My new daily driver?

Its been so quiet around here these past couple of weeks, you could hear the crickets chirping.  Seriously.  Don't you hear them?  My apologies on that, on behalf of the team.  I have been bogged down in a swamp of real job work to do, and apparently none of the other Chuckers has had anything worthwhile to post about.  Either that, or they were too lazy.

Well, when life hands you LeMons, you know what they say:  Go racing!  Maybe not,..but anyway, as I've been traveling a bunch lately for my job, I've had the opportunity to drive a whole mess of various rental cars.  You see, a lot of my friends and family, when posed with the question of "what to rent?", attempt to find something they are familiar with.  But part of the reason i have a pretty decent car collection going at home is I like to drive different things.  So why would I stick with the same old, same old rental cars? 

Why, indeed. 

On a recent trip to Atlanta, I decided, rather than drive one of my own whips, I'd rent a car.  I was only going to be gone for a day, and I needed something to cover about 250 miles round trip with a minimum of baggage, and be good for getitng around metro Atlanta.  I called up the travel lady, and the only avaialble cars were with Thrify RentaCar, and were Corollas.  So, this is what I got.  I'd rented a Corolla back in 2008, and it was a decent car, so I figured a 2010 model would be about the same.

Now, I wagered the new Corolla, for as much as it has a reputation for a stoic, staid transportation appliance, would at least (in light of the recent issues with Toyota) potentially offer some excitement, anxiety, or what-have-you for its possibly stickable accellerator pedal.  Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case with my rental, as the friendly Thrift agent informed me that all of their Toyotas had been retrofitted with the precision-engineered steel plate dohickey that was supposed to cure the problem of unintended accelleration.  Thus, any accellerating I would be doing would be totally intentional, and hence, very boring.

My Corolla was a beige 2010 model, exactly as pictured above.  The interior was beige, the paint was beige, and I'm pretty sure, had I checked, the engine would have been beige.  I'm surprised Toyota doesn't specify beige gasoline.  The term "penalty box", I think, adequately sums up this car.  Its not a particularly bad place to be, but you got there probably for doing something you shouldn't have been doing, and you're just killing time in there while you could be doing much more exciting things.  The acelleration was not mind-numbingly slow, but it wasn't great, either.  Average.  The engine noise sounded...average.  Wind noise was...average.  The automatic transmission seemed...average.  Well, you can see where I'm going with this.  The car was as average as it was beige. 

I will, however, point out the notables about this car, few as they are.  My main recollection, after driving hundreds of miles and passing countless Waffle Houses, is this:  The front seat legroom stank.  Now, I am 5 foot, 10 inches tall, which puts me square in the median height for US adult males.  However, even with the seat as far back as it would go, my knees still bumped the steering wheel.  Somehow, my arm position was about right, but I could not get the seat where it needed to be.  Now, the 2010 Corolla is no longer a small car.  Thanks to model bloat, its about as large as the original Camry was.  Its not a particularly nimble car, doesn't feel or look small, but the passenger compartment is a bit undersized.  With my driver's seat as far back as it would go, I scratched my head in wonderment as to how a human being with legs would fit in the aft seat, too. 

In the "good-ish" column, fuel economy with the automagic was around 34 to 35 mpg, about what I expected from mostly highway driving.  Manual models get more like 38, or 40, if you drive like...well, a Corolla owner.

The normal mode of guiding a car down the road involves some sort of a wheel, connected to the front wheels, that you turn from side to side to go left or right, as you desire.  In the Corolla, the wheel accomplished this task, however the steering had the unfortunate combination of being exceedingly quick and inexplicably numb.  Some people have complained about this, many of whom were derided on internet forums to "stop putting on your lipstick and drive", or some such thing, but I have to say, it did seem to take an inordinate amount of concentration to keep the car going straight at 75 mph.  There was practically zero road feel or feedback, and even slight movements of the wheel led to the car darting around unpleasantly.  This, at least, gave some excitement, enough to partially make up for the lack of a sticky accellerator pedal.  However, in my journalistic quest for the Truth, I decided, with a co-worker riding along as witness, to try an experiment.  In our own "Ride of Death", I mimiced a "stuck accellerator" by depressing my foot to the floor while driving about 30 mph or so through downtown Atlanta.  As the car hunted for an appropriate gear to complement my throttle position, I said "Oh no!" in my best fake acting voice and then, after accellerating for about 5 seconds (long enough for the wheezing 4 banger to propel the car almost to 45 mph) I reached down and nicked the shifter into nuetral.  The engine, unencumbered by drive wheels, zinged up against the rev limiter, and I safely braked the car to a stop. If I'd so desired, I could have shut the key off, too.   In short, anyone whose car "ran away from them" is a dolt.

So, to recap:  The Toyota Corolla:  Good for transporting two people, if they are of below average height, and have either no friends or only leg amputees, for distances of non-highway travel, in relative beiginess.

So I feel that I should explain may to our avid reader(s).  I was going to be the May champion.  I was going to handle it, even though a full 2/5 of the team was bailing out.  And then, I ruined my roof.  You see, the hinge pin that the May race rested upon was the big truck restoration project in my garage.  You see, my garage was the only place left that we could feasibly work on the Lemon.  I went out there and worked like a fiend for like four days after the kids went to sleep desperately trying to get rid of the truck.  All four days worked towards one goal: ruining the roof of the truck.  I now have a washboard that I created after seeing the tiniest little fissure in the metal.  Now I have set myself back at least two/three weeks.  Combined with two work trips, one of which took the entire weekend and the beginning and end of the coincident weeks, and it's over.  My lovely wife asked me yesterday if both the truck and the Lemon would fit in the garage - bless her - but it would be tight and unpleasant.  Especially for the three others that have the schedule to accomodate May.

So, that's it then.

Since the anti-climactic LeMons race about a month ago (editor's note: has it really been only a month?  It seems like years and years ago...) I've made a few posts on the race, and the car.  I think Brian made a post and so did Rob.  But, I realize that as awesome and fun as LeMons is (even when your car goes kablooey) its quite possibly not something that'll generate a blog entry or two every week- especially since our team has basiclaly resigned itself to not competing in the May race.

So, for fun and to create a little more participation on the blog, I've created two new categories.  The first is "Tuna Whips".  No, this is not an S&M discussion generator (except perhaps for Citroen SMs).  Each of the Tunachuckers has their own rides besides our mutually-owned 1966 Volvo Amazon race car, and I thought it would be a good place for us to post about them- project car progress, pictures, etc.  I hope to see stuff on Rob's Berkeley, Anthony's Bug, Brian's Volvo wagon, Jamie's RX-8, Matt's Corvette, and McCall's Mustang.  My bother, who created this blog, I'm sure can share stories on his cars too.  And I might post an article or score on my own project car hells.

The second new category is "Internal Combustion Rants and Raves".  This is a pretty broad category, and again, I hope to spawn some interesting discussions.  Just rented a new Ford Focus and loved it/ hated it?  Write about it here.  Got an opinion on some piece of car-related legislation?  Post your diatribe!  And so on.

Let the blogging commence!

--VCH >:XX

What can I say?  Nay, what can anyone say?  They're two great tastes that go great with...racing!  As reported by faithful Jalopnik weekend update dude Murilee Martin, after our race car's crank bearings shuffled off to Valhalla, we decided to reroute our efforts to chili preparation.  Saturday night at the LeMons race was the Great Chili Cookoff.  Not to be too anticlimactic about the whole thing, but we lost.  It just wasn't a Tuna sort of weekend, I guess.  Though we did win some sort of imaginary consolation prize for having the best presentation:

Yes, that is a valve cover.  Yes, that is the valve cover from our race car.  Since the engine wasn't really using it, we decided to take it off and fill it with Chili.  Wise heads prevailed and the valve cover was first thoroughly scrubbed and lined with several layers of aluminium foil.  Could we be trendsetters?  Could future LeMons cookoff entrants follow our lead?  I sure hope so.  Imagine...Oil Pan Gumbo!  Piston Skirt Martinis!  Timing Cover Shrimp Cocktail!

The Vikings sure appreciated Tunachucker Valve Cover Chili, as did the vegetarian who somehow was able to eat turkey - we used ground turkey in our chili, to be healthy (also, it was cheaper than ground beef).

Now, what goes perfect with a steaming pile of chili in your valve cover?  I've already answered that question- beer in your mug!  Judge Murilee is known near and, well, ok, just near, as a beer connoisseur.  And since bribery of the LeMons judicial system is considered de rigeur, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this:

Now, that right there is one mighty fine piece of glassware.  Any gearhead would be proud to display that in the china cabinet.    As one might discern from the near-empty state of the above-pictured beverage conveyance device, Judge Murilee is requesting a refill of his chosen libation.  And who could deny a man, especially one as hard working and dedicated and communist-medal wearing as Ms. Martin, a cold frosty drink?

Of course, that Saturday night, there wasn't a man to be found who appeared to have been denied a drink.  There's something about the comeraderie of being flat busted, having a broken race car, hundreds of miles from home, resigned to sleeping in a mildewy 1974 camper before treking home in defeat the next morning, huddled under drafty blue tarps and a hastily assembled carport, bunched around a propane heater to fend of hypothermia, that brings out the desire to just try to, in spite of it all (and this incredibly running-on sentence) have one mother of a good time.  Photographic evidence of this phenomenon shall be forthcoming...