Darin,

Do you have any pictures of the Falcons at the hotel and the test track to share? That national is pretty much what I would expect it to be. It is also the one I really wanted to attend more then any other, due to the automive roots there.

Terry L. Rahn

Guys and Gals

I've got some pictures of both The Henry Ford (mostly the museum) and the Falcons. Give me a day or two to get organized from my trip and I'll get something posted.

We got there on Sunday evening and spent most of Monday at the Henry Ford museum, most of Tuesday at Greenfield Village and Wednesday morning at Fairlane (Henry Ford's home).

We ran into a downpour Sunday just north of Toledo and I finally got the 65 cleaned up Tuesday afternoon...just in time to cover it before another downpour. It got pretty windy, too and would have blown my new cover away except for the strap under the middle. Cleaned the car again (wiped it off with the duster and "spritzed" it clean with a mix of windshield washer fluid and water...learned that trick from someone on TFFN several years ago) on Wednesday.

There were about 25-30 tents/canopies set up adjacent to the show lot so everybody could sit in the shade and talk. Thursday afternoon was pretty windy which caused more than a little trouble for folks. The tent next to ours was not tied down and was blown into a car. A little later, the wind picked our tent up (pulled the tent pegs out of the ground) and set in down on the roof of the same car that had been hit by the first tent. That car had recently been painted but the owner is a cancer survivor so his priorities have changed. The car will be fixed but the owner is not overly upset about it. At least one other car was damaged by a flying tent. When I was loading our stuff up to go home, I noticed about 4 damaged tent "hulks" and several folding chairs in the trash.

I saw several TFFN'ers...Phil Barber, Glen Graham, Danny Barnhouse, Darin Wood, Dick Harrington and some others whose names I forget already (sorry guys...the memory isn't so good anymore).

The TFFN'ers did pretty good in the voting, too. Dick Harrington won first place for the best stock round body Ranchero. Danny Barnhouse won first place for the best modified sedan and took the award for Best in Show - Modified. Karen and I took first place in the modified hardtop class. Not sure who else from TFFN got awards.

We towed about 1350 miles round trip and the drive was pretty uneventful except for the terrible drivers near DC on the way back. With the poor quality drivers and major traffic backups due to construction, I had to stand on the brakes as hard as I could twice on the way back. I've got the thank the folks at Ford for the way my 2009 F150 handled the panic stops...no trailer sway, not darting around, no brake lock-up on the truck (I did manage to get some tire squeal, probably from the rear trailer brakes on one stop). I'm not sure our old Mazda would have handled the stops as well. We were also amazed at the number of folks driving down the interstates at 70+ MPH and texting away...I'd like to find some electronic device that I could fire at those folks that would turn their phones off...maybe even neuter the phone so they couldn't text again.

There were about 70 cars in the new Lite Modified category this year...first time the category was used. I think most of those cars would have previously been in the stock category so hopefully that will help clean up the stock classes and make things more fair for those car owners.

Next year's FCA Nationals will be in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and the 2012 Nationals will be in Louisville.

Later.

Sorry about that, 2nd attempt at the 100 car afternoon que. Not sure if the URL will wrap - may have to cut & paste

http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll27 ... o%20track/

If the above link does not work - here is a link to the first picutre in the sequence - hopefully one can get in thru the album thru it. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll27 ... 260050.jpg

I had bought a ticket for the banquet (by 2 pm I had seen enough Falcons and was ready to leave) so I decided to run an errand at the adjacent mall to kill time. On the way back, I noticed that I had a difficult time downshifting and as I pulled back into the parking lot next to the show my clutch petal went to the floor and the clutch did not disengage. Something (clutch fork?) broke in the bellhousing - all linkages were OK outside of the bell. I left the banquet early so that I could drive home before dark - w/o a clutch, I had to stop the engine at every light to downshift into first and refire the engine when the light turned green (did not want to also have the headlights drawing on the battery). I was a bit concerned about battery capacity, being charged by a generator. I rolled thru all the stop signs on the mall ring road and rolled thru a right on red to get onto the side street next to the adjacent freeway. Crunched the gears a number of times but I made it home and next week I hope to have the trans out so that I can see what broke.




aribert wrote:
Below is a link to an album of the 100 cars lined up to tour the Ford development track on Friday afternoon.
http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll27 ... o%20track/

Pics are labled from start thru 16, the line wrapped almost the entire parking lot. Because they limited the ammount of cars to 100 per group, there were two groups.

aribert, your link didn't come through completely clickable. Can you re-do it?

_________________
Jonathan Leslie
Olathe, KS

Fantastic time at Dearborn Nats! Best part was the Ford Test Track event, meeting Edsel Ford and learning the history of the track. This was only my 2nd natl convention, but as stated in previous note the total cars at the event was 315. I believe the Detroit chapter said they had 340 registered cars, but there were others in the lot outside the event.

We just got home late sunday nite after driving 14 hrs from Dearborn back to the Twin Cities - 6 Falcons in the caravan. We made the decision to go thru Chicago on a Sunday afternoon . . . you know sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Well this was a "Sometimes Not" time. Traffic was horrendous and our cars nearly overheated from the 95 degrees and high humidity. We had to turn on the heater to get the engine to cool down. Pretty hard to do when we dont even have A/C in the car. We had a few mishaps along our trip, but everyone stayed safe and it was a huge success.

But we survived and over the week I will try to post some pix. Im on facebook too and share my pictures to anyone that is a friend. Feel free to connect with me there if you like. We have signed up for the "Stampede to Steamboat" Nats next summer in CO already. Cant wait!

Mike Sullivan

I checked my notes from the FCA Business Meeting and Alan Aniol (the guy handling registration for the Metro Detroit Chapter) said there were 316 Falcons in attendance (not counting any sitting the hotel parking lot that didn't register) and a total of 417 that had registered. That sounds like a big difference so I guess alot of folks registered but were not able to attend. I really did not notice many Falcons that were not parked on the show lot.

I forgot to mention the coolest thing that happened to us at Dearborn.

We got the 65 photographed Friday evening and, while we were trying to figure what type photo to buy, we were approached by Dale Amy. Dale is a professional photographer and automotive writer. He was at the FCA show checking out the Falcons for future issues of Modified Mustangs and Fords magazine.

He asked to look under the hood of the 65 and then asked if he could do a photo shoot of the car as one of the 5-6 Falcons he wanted for the magazine. Of course we said yes. He spent about 2 hours, had me move the car into 6 different locations and took about 150 pictures.

We've got to fill in about 8 pages of technical information about the car and write "our" story about it. He'll fix what we write to make it presentable. Not sure when (or even if) our car will be featured but I'll let you know when I hear anything.

While you're anxiously waiting word about our car, check out the other Falcons listed on the MM&F webpage...http://www.mustangandfords.com/featured ... index.html

That was 417 registered people. 316 of them brought a car.
DW

So did that beat Nashville?

no it did not. but a very enjoyable show

Well I'd say that was the last chance of another Nats beating Nashville. I don't ever see another impetus getting more cars than that to a Nat ever again, not with this economy. And I hope I'm wrong but it seems like the average of of Nats attendees is getting older all the time which to me spells doom for the future.

Falconators

Let's see if I can post a link to a photobucket album of cars at the 2010 FCA Nationals. I didn't get a shot of every car but tried to get a mix of all body styles and everything from bone stock to daily driver to heavily modified cars. Some of the shots are out of order (a shot of the interior may not be next to the exterior shot of the car)...sorry about that. That's the best I can do right now with my photo software and photobucket.

http://s990.photobucket.com/albums/af26 ... onals%202/

Let's also try some shots at The Henry Ford (the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village). Almost all shots are from inside the museum. The breadth of the collection there is unreal and well worth a trip to Dearborn.

http://s990.photobucket.com/albums/af26 ... ry%20Ford/

One more picture from the convention - what happens if you have a spare roundbody fordoor and really wished you owned a roadster?

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll27 ... 260044.jpg

I spoke w/ the guy - fordoor shortened 31.25 inches. Front half of front door and rear half of rear door. bucket seats mount to the floor pan kick-up normally under the rear seat. He has 10K miles on it since the surgery.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll27 ... 260043.jpg

Not my cup of tea but I certainly can appreciate his metal working skills!

I had registered but was unable to attend at the last minute.

Wish I had been there and glad everyone that went had a good time.