4 Wheel Parts Meet n' Greet
4 Wheel Parts Meet n’ Greet. Oct. 10, 2009 Thanks to all who made it out to 4 Wheel Parts on short notice. We had 7 members/prospective members in attendance. Those that made it out were, Loro, Connie, Gary S., C.J., Jim O., John R. & family, and myself.
Dusy and I arrived at 10:00 am. We were greeted by Loro, Sierra, and Alpine. We arrived with the parking lot full of rigs and several participates socializing in the parking lot. It is always a pleasure spending time talking to others about ED4 and our hobby.
Four Wheel parts provided lunch for us with one of their great taco feeds. Soon it was time for the raffle. Several ED4 members came away with prizes. The Ruiz’ family won a tow strap, and several of us won t-shirts. In some cases (Loro and Connie) won two t-shirts each. As promised, Carlos, had a drawing just for ED4 members. The prize was a $100 gift card. Congratulations to Jim O’Leary who won it.
Thanks again to all who made it out to the 4 Wheel Parts Meet n’ Greet.
Good Guys Car Show
I want to thank Ed Lorenzen for the donation of the spaces, parking passes, and free admission to the Pleasanton Good Guys Show. I would also like to thank John Ruiz, Mike George, Richard Beard, Ellen, Ole and Sherry for help to man and women our club booth. John, Mike and I arrived in Pleasanton on Friday afternoon. We set up our site with John's table and canopy, Mikes Bronco, and my supervision. Ed came and joined us for an evening BBQ, visiting, and talking about what we might expect from the weekend. Off to bed by 11:00pm, to sleep by 12:30, train whistles, and then 3:30am the rest of the vendors pulled in to start setting up. One vender was very kind to John and parked his diesel older Dodge right next to John's bunk. This fellow must have let that thing run for a good 15-20 minutes before finally turning it off. More train noises, people clanging and banging, car alarms going and not much more sleep. Ed did warn us about this, thanks Ed. We finally decided that no more sleep was to be had and up at 7:00. Wow, I thought this thing opened at 8:00? There was a steady stream of people at least 4-5 wide heading into the gates. The Bronco did draw some attention and we must have spoke with 15-20 people that either had had one or still did. I asked each one if it was for sale and said a difinate NO WAY. John hit the parking lot and put flyers on some 100 or so vehicles, all being 4x4's. Richard Beard joinded and gave us a couple hours of help. We handed out probably another 100 or so flyers to people stopping by or when asked if they had a 4x4 they said yes. Several of the people thought that they would like to do the clinic and would check their calendars.
I stayed Saturday night with Ed in his trailer and got very little sleep due to his neighbors. I think that they stayed up the whole night talking, rearranging their inventory, and starting their vehicles to maybe run the heater. Up at 6:00am to get the passes back to the gate for Sherry and Ole. I expected to see Ole there already, but he was not. They were waiting at Jack in the Box till 7:00. Ole and Sherry brought photo albumns and Ellen brought her lap top with some DVD's. With all in very capable hands, I left about 10:00am to go home and get some sleep.
Another nice Club run with 8 members participating. Once again thank you one and all for help and clinic promotion. Darell
Meet'n Greet
Great day of food, friends, and, more food. Conversing about the hobby we all enjoy, and promoting the fun club that we are a part of. Thanks go out to all who participated and provided the food and gear that made this event happen.
We had a very good turnout with members and prospective members. Those in attendance were Michael C., Jason, Dennis H., Darell, Ellen, Brian M., Jim O., Mike P., Chuck R., John R., Shane R., Sherry, Ron F., Everet K,. and yours truly. I hope I didn't miss anyone.
Special thanks to Jim for taking the time to load up his truck with the ramp, easy ups, tables, & Bar-B-Q. Thank-you to those who provide what seemed to be an endless supply of food. Tri-tip sandwiches, donuts, cookies, salsa, chips, soft drinks.
We talked to a lot of visitors, gave out a lot of Clinic flyers, and Membership packages.
Thanks again to all who participated.
Meet'n Greet
Meet'n Greet & Hollister
Dan’s combined trip report and hearsay from Saturday’s April 19 Meet &Greet, and Sunday’s HHSVRA trip April 20, 2008.
All week before the April 19/20 weekend I had been putting everything back together in my ‘87 VW Syncro Vanagon (also known as a VW Type-2 T3 Syncro Transporter) to get it ready for the field. In between field runs I have a habit of rebuilding parts of the truck that were working just fine before-hand, and adding contraptions that I may actually use someday if I can just stop taking the truck apart. Actually this last month I had the electrical system torn-up with the entire fuse block out just to document some previous wiring additions that I had done last year. Also I needed to get the rock guard back under the engine as there is only 12in. of clearance down there.
Saturday morning was an eye-opener, there were a LOT of Jeeps in the 4 Wheel Parts parking lot and they all seemed to belong to the folks from my new club!! Okay, I have seen Jeeps before, usually in my rear view mirror on a trail, har har… Actually the vehicles that I see out on the trails are mostly standard non-modded CJ’s and sometimes a Dodge Colt that had been set ablaze and filled with shotgun holes. (I used to off-road in the Angeles Forest in L.A. where you never know what you will find) I spent Saturday talking with the club members and looking at their rigs. I was very impressed with the quality and shear amount of work being put into these rigs, I am a design engineer for work and hobby so it is always interesting for me to get a look at the design and workmanship of a vehicle. I spent a little time in the parking lot bolting on some beefier drive shaft guards that I had just finished welding up for my Syncro “QUADRO”.
And on to Sunday. It was a great day for a ride. I got down to the Coyote Creek at 9am and found the Jeeps, the crew, the dogs, and yes the No Parking sign. We don’t need to heed no stink’n “No Parking” sign. We hung out for a while, played with the dogs then headed out for the hills. When we got to the day-camping area next to the obstacle course we stopped to bleed-down the tires and here is my first lesson needing to be learned. The standard Syncro uses 185/80-14 tires, yes 14″ wheels, after much discussion with various Syncro groups, I had installed 15″ steel wheels with 215/75-15 BFG All Terrain T/A’s and they run great on all types of terrain, I run them nominally at 50 PSI and as I don’t do much rock crawling I do not air them down. The GVWR of the Syncro is 5,512 Lbs. The off road tire usage chart that I checked showed 15 PSI for this size tire, don’t know, I thought that would be a bit low so I went the day at 25 PSI. The ride and stability was good but I need to learn a bit more about terrain and tire pressure. For the first run of the day we rode to the top of Hector Heights, always a nice ride with lots of varying terrain. For this trip to Hollister Hills, I recorded all the runs with my GPS to save the track info to compare with satellite images on a mapping program. Until recently, none of the on-line satellite map servers had much photo resolution in the area of the HHSVRA. Now you can see most all of the trails that are open to the sky and I wanted to compare where we had been. For those interested, Hector Heights coordinates are N36 44.675 W121 25.154 and it shows up well on Google Maps. After some lunch we headed back down and stopped by the ravine and Truck Hill for some rig tests. Here is another lesson I need to learn, should I be trying to straddle that ravine? The Syncro has a wheelbase of 96″, a track of 64″, a tire diameter of 28″, and can run a lot of trails but I need a little more help in deciding if my rig is capable of that ravine. I do know that I would not try to cross the ravine like Jim did but maybe a clean run up or down would work. I was pretty impressed by Ron’s run up and down Truck Hill but I’m not going to do that. We then went over to the obstacle course for some fun. I did do the stair step three times, after each run I had to find the loose objects that went flying around my trucks cab and tie them down better. Some of the crew were trying to get me to run the mud pit. I have in the past but my excuse this time is that I had just finished adding the pretty drive shaft rock guards, and the on-board air system is down there without its guard and cover and I still needed to use it at the end of the day, so there. Looks like fun was had by all and I will be back in May for the Safety Clinic for some lessons, to discuss tactics, and get some questions answered.
Out,
Dan
Meet'n Greet
Name: CJ ArnesenDate: 4-19-08 Location: 4 Wheelparts off of Bird Ave. Hwy280 Trail Boss: Tom Vella Attended by:Rich, Dede & Mike, Jason, David G., Jim H., Dennis, Darell, Ellen, Jay, Jim O., Mike P., Chuck, Sherry & Ole, Tom, CJ, Ron, Mike G., Daniel.
I showed up a bit late to the meet and greet, around 10:20am. The 4 wheelparts parking lot was already full of ED4 rigs. I found a parking place and was welcomed warmly. I spent most of the event checking out everyone’s rig. Some of them had recently been completed or heavily upgraded.
Below: Ron shows off his 8" longarm kit for his LJ
Next are Ron’s, Ole’s, Tom’s, Jason’s and Jim O.’s
Jeeps all lined up.
Here is shot of Jim’s recently finished CJ. It is
absolutely gorgeous.
Richard B. probably had the best display of rig at
the meet up. He had framed photos of his rig over the years.
Everyone was a delight to talk to and had wonderful stories to share. I talked to Sherry for a while about the Safety Clinic, which I’m very excited to attend. Jim H. showed me his copious amounts of skid plating and armor he has on his jeep. He also mentioned his new "flashlight" which I can’t wait to see. Daniel toured me around his VW (totally awesome setup by the way). Jason was kind enough to show me a bit about his rig, and even came over and checked mine out. I was impressed by all of Ellen’s trip placards/ badges on her dash. That is a lot of trips. Ron’s LJ is way too pretty, but I do like the yellow. I was impressed by its flex. Jim O.’s jeep and Jason’s are truely works of art. Next time I’ll have to check out the Early Broncos more as I really don’t know much about them.
Around 2pm I decided to head out. I said my good- byes and left with a heart full of good feelings, and excitement for the Hollister run the next day. A nice little thing that happened while I was there had to do with 4 wheelparts. I recently lost of of my swaybar disconnect pins. I went to the counter and showed them what I needed, and they gave me a new one for free. While it didn’t cost them much, it sure gained them a bit of respect, and free advertising by word of mouth. Thank you 4 wheelparts for the pin, and for the great location to meet and talk jeeps. Thanks, CJ Arnesen