March 31, 2002

Magnaflow Vintage 2.5 Challenge

The VSRG on-line shopping feature has been activated on the web site (use the Shopping link) or click on the banner at the top of the BSedan.Com home page.   We have a limited supply of most items and a few items are very limited so don’t delay. 

All of the proceeds from these items will be donated to the Children's Hospital of Seattle in support of SOVREN's Pacific Northwest Historics.  To keep our cost down we will are going to limit the use of credit cards to orders of $250 or more.  For all other orders we will accept a check or money order made payable to "Children's Hospital" (instructions are e-mailed to you with your order confirmation).  

One of the items is a small supply of brand new copies of the original “How to Modify you Datsun 510 610 and 240Z”.  This is the “bible” of 510 preparation that details much of the development of the BRE 510’s.  The book was co-authored by John Thawley Sr. (pen name of Bob Waar) who has autographed these for us.

The great story behind this find was that someone in Nissan happened across these in a mis-labeled box in their warehouse.  They contacted John Thawley Sr. who told us about them.  By the time we locked up all remaining copies, “insiders” had purchased a few. 

We only have 10 of these extremely rare books, all are NOS (new old stock) and they won’t last long so place your order today.

The other very limited item is the great book on the “Trans-AM Pony Car Wars”.  This beautiful book covers the early years of 1966 through 1972 and does have some 2.5 coverage.

What makes VSRG's copy of this book so great is that our copies have been autographed by Horst Kwech and John Morton.

We will be adding a number of new items over the next few months so check back often!

 

Welcome to two new sponsors!  Terry Tinney Performance Motors and Earl's Store #1 have come aboard as sponsors of the series.  Terry Tinney will provide gift certificates to the last place finisher for machine work.  Often the machinist is not well known but we know that many of the front runners in the series have their work done by Terry.  Look for Earl's to formally announce their package at Thunderhill but we have heard that it will be a great package.

 

The season opener at Willow Springs had a number of new faces and some that we have not seen in quite a while.  We want to welcome Bob Wass who put his Alfa in fifth place on his first weekend with us.  Great drive Bob!  We also want to welcome Robert Turney (510), Peter Procopio (Alfa) and Mark De Paola (Alfa , original TA).  Welcome aboard and we hope to see you at the next race.

Marisa Clay raced with us once last year (at the season opener) and was with us again in her 1972 BMW 2002.  Just like last year, she placed in the top 10.  We have the feeling that she will be a real contender with a little more seat time and horsepower.

Don Halliday was back with a brand new Neely prepared 510.  Don put the car in the very capable hands of it's builder, Tom Neely, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday who had probably the strangest luck of anyone.  On Saturday the transmission drain plug broke (or was torn loose) which resulted in a spectacular smoke trail on the front straight.  On Sunday something (probably a "marble" of tire rubber) hit the master cutoff switch mounted on the front fender and turned the car's power off!  It's pretty clear this new car is going to be a front-runner as it was very fast.

We also had a fair amount of press present.  John Thawley of "Sport Compact Car" magazine was a guest driver in Jim McAdory's 510 (until the car lost oil pressure) and will be writing an article on "Driving the 2.5" to be published later this year.  We also had a reporter/photographer from "Grassroots Motorsports" present as well as a Japanese film crew that was working on a documentary about Datsun cars.

We had a number of people drop by who indicated that they plan to begin racing with us soon and we look forward that.  We are also aware of a number of 2.5 cars that have been purchased in the past 30 days with the intent to prepare them for racing with us ASAP!

A few of us noticed a gathering of "Datsun people" who have a lot of race history, especially in the 2.5 era.  John Thawley Sr., who literally wrote the book on the development of the BRE 510, visited with us along with long time Datsun driver and mechanic Ed Johnson who now works for Classic Datsun Motorsports.  These two got to share a lot of history with Floyd Link, father of Steve Link, who worked on the engine program for the highly successful BRE team and who travels to most of our events to support Steve's efforts.

Our next race is not until mid-May however the entry forms are out and we have downloadable copies on the web site.  We are expecting a good turnout for this race and hope to have some of our friends from the Pacific Northwest join us again. 

 

 Some driver safety issues have come up as a result of the incidents at Willow Springs. 

It was noted that a few cars did not have window nets in place (or arm restraints in use) and in one incident it appears the drivers arm went out the window (luckily without any serious injury).  The primary purpose of the window net is to keep the arms and head inside of the car in an incident.  If you have ever watched a crash test on TV you probably have seen the dummy’s head propelled out the window and it is very common in a roll-over for an arm to go out the window.  A window net is cheap insurance and is designed to keep all of you within the car.

Seat belt mounting and usage should be checked to insure they meet the exact guidelines of the manufacturer.  Keep in mind that seat belts will stretch which is the reason the recommended mounting point for the shoulder harness is on the roll bar directly behind the driver (the shorter the distance from the mount to the buckle, the less total stretch).  The lap belts should be secured to the frame or roll-bar if possible.  If they are bolted to the floorboard, you should use spreader plates or the large washers (designed for this application) to strengthen the mounting.  Seat belts over five years of age should be re-webbed or replaced.

We cannot stress enough the importance of a full-face helmet and a neck collar.  Open face helmets offer only a fraction of the protection of the full-face and they offer zero facial protection if your belts fail.  The purpose of the neck collar is to slow head movement in an impact and when combined with a full face helmet the combination will offer the best protection against head injury you can buy short of a HANS device.

We have asked our host organizations to require the use of window nets and a full-face helmet in our series.

Thankfully the drivers are expected to recover from their injuries but we feel some of the injuries could have been avoided and their experience offers us a glimpse of what can happen when things go wrong.  It would be a shame to ignore this warning and be injured for the same reasons.

 

We noticed that HSR-West changed the Phoenix date to November 22-24 (Thanksgiving is the 28^th this year).  Since this is not a spectator event we assume that the Friday (22^nd) is for practice.  HSR-West should be sending out more info on this later in the year.

 

Reminder:   If you are a VSRG member and are reading this from the web site and did not receive this via e-mail, then we have a problem with your e-mail address.  Please drop us a line at jim@bsedan.com with your revised e-mail address. 

To help notify members we have also added a new page that lists missing or bad e-mail addresses of members.  The page can be accessed from the top of the "Notices" page.