Mass Cruisers December 2017 newsletter

Mass Cruisers Auto Club Crusin’ at the speed of fun

December 2017 Unfortunately our scheduled end of season Bass Pro Shops Halloween cruise was rained out which disappointed many who had stockpiled candy for the trick-ortreaters.

However the first Sunday in November, when we get an extra hour of sleep, club members lined up in the Wrentham American Legion parking lot on Route 1A to join with other Southern New England Auto Clubs for the annual end-of season cruise to the Wright’s Chicken Farm in Harrisville, RI. See the pics inside.

We’re on the Web

Celebrating 26 Years of Cruisin’ Volume 26 Issue 12

December 2017

www.masscruisers.com And Facebook

MONTHLY CRUISIN

Page 2

Contact us by snail mail: P.O. Box 217, Wrentham, MA 02093 Or by email: HO350@comcast.net

We’re on the Web! www.masscruisers.com

Our clubhouse is located at 124 Main Street, Norfolk, behind the Dunkin Donuts shop and across the street from the police station. For more information please call: 781 551-0520. Visitors, guests and those interested in joining the

Mass Cruisers Auto Club are welcome to attend one of our monthly meetings held on the third Tuesday of each month in Norfolk.

Directory

Page 2

Presidential Emissions

Page 3

Husqvarna Museum

Page 4

Husqvarna Museum continued

Page 5

Wright’s Farm Cruise

Page 6

Wright’s Farm Cruise

Page 6

continued

Club Officers President– Ed Beatty Vice President—Diane Thornton Secretary—Patrick Touhey Asst. Secretary—Lesley Corda Treasurer—Wayne Lestan Asst. Treasurer- Kevin Rushlow Webmaster—Steve Vining

Texas Bans Dune Buggies

Page 8

Newsletter Editor— John Buchanan

Support our Advertisers

Page 9

Facebook – Patrick Touhey

STA-BIL 360 Performance

Page 10 New Member Liaison—Don Cole

2017 Food Pantry Results

Page 11 SSgts. at Arms—Rick Lawlor & John Sturniolo

Newsletter advertising is offered for club member businesses, Car Show and Cruise Night sponsors.

Contact: newseditor@masscruisers.com

Charity Coord. – Frank Bryant By-Laws – Roy Rossman MAAC Rep — John Buchanan

Special Events Cruise Night—Steve Huntington Car Show—Rich Armando Events Sponsors – John Buchanan Club Events Calendar – (open)

Monthly Cruisin

Presidential Emissions

by President Ed Beatty

Page 3

First, Maria and I will be making our annual December Christmas holiday trip to Sweden visiting with family and friends around the Skara & Skovda region southwest of Stockholm. I always have a great time there hunting for rare barn find motorcycles and visiting the interesting auto and air museums in the area. I provided some photos and information about the Husqvarna Museum that I intend to visit again on this trip. But this means I will not be present when we address the major club events planned for 2018 which have been discussed and will be voted on at the December 5 meeting. I think my position has been clearly stated at those early meetings to not undertake hosting a one day flea market during the vacated SSAAC Trading Bee weekend in May. Although we have grown our annual AutoFest Car Show with the 26th annual 2017 being the best one yet by all accounts, I personally would like us to also not run any more one day car shows, except for ones where we are invited to assist as we do with the Seekonk Show & Go show in April and the South Attleboro Lions Club Car Show in August. These are fun events where we do not have the major responsibility or disappoint if the weather doesn’t cooperate. I prefer we put our full effort and energy to support and grow our fifteen bi-weekly Bass Pro Shops cruises at Patriot Place which are recognized as the best cruise night event series in New England.

Some of the things I have been working on for the coming year are to bring in what I call high end guest speakers for seminar type monthly member meetings. To do this we actually will need a bigger setting than our current club house location provides, and then there is the problem of the stairs which prevent some members from being able to attend these meetings. I’ve asked John Buchanan to see if the Bass Pro Shops Conservation Room will be available for these 2018 monthly meetings and if it is he will book the dates for the additional months of February thru June. Of course we are already planning to hold our monthly January 16 member meeting at the Bass Pro Shops Conservation Room similar to what we have done for the past two years. A light buffet will be provided.

Another area I hope we can help club members working on their projects is to set up dates where members can review their needs and volunteer to provide helping hands as they tackle different phases. Greg Pope has indicated that his latest Batmobile build project will need helping hands at some point when he gets to the body prep stage and new member Steve Fernald is looking for help as he is undertaking a full restoration of his 1979 Chevy C10 pickup truck. Many members have provided this help when asked and I think we need to communicate and make these calls for helping hands more visible.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and have healthy, wealthy and happy 2018 New Year .

Monthly Cruisin

Husqvarna Fabriksmuseum

Page 4

by Ed Beatty

I’ll be going to the Husqvarna National Air Museum again this December on our annual Christmas vacation in Sweden to visit family. The museum is free to the public and they have a unbelievable military plane collection as shown in the pictures that I’ve taken on previous visits. But first a little history on Husqvarna located in Husqvarna, Sweden, about a 3 hour drive southwest of Stockholm on Lake Vattern. The original company was one of five weapons factories that King Gustov IV Adolf founded way back in 1620. When it was privatized in 1757 it was renamed Husqvarna for the town it was located in. As weapons orders declined the factory started producing sewing machines in 1872 (now Viking Sewing Machines) but that was not sustainable so they focused on building hunting weapons, stoves, cookers, bicycles, motorcycles and other household appliances in 1877 up until 1978 when Electrolux bought them and changed their manufacturing focus to forestry and horticultural products that we associate today with their brand. Husqvarna became independent again in 2006 and continues to manufacture under their brand and other familiar brands like Gardena, McCulloch, Poulin, Weed Eater & Flymo.

Whatever happened to those Flymo hovercraft mowers that started flying around here in the mid 1960’s?

Back to the museum and a few of the more interesting pictures I’ve included here. The Husqvarna Museum occupies the original factory’s workshop built in 1867. The waterfall was used to power the mechanical drilling operations for weapons manufacture in 1689. Today it

Husqvarna National Air Museum occupies original modern 1867 factory space still provides electrical power for the museum and manufacturing.

Picture below shows a plane with a blue swastika. It was flown over from Norway in World War II to avoid occupying Germans from not capturing their Air Force. They flew it to Sweden undercover. Other planes displayed in the museum have similar stories.

The drilling works at the waterfalls and the powder mills at the left. Drawing is from the late 17th century.

The two pictures below of the French Breguet B1 show a water cooled rotary engine that has brass cooling jackets around the cylinders and shows a thin wire going to the spark plugs. The pilot sits in the rear of the fuselage where the headrest can be seen.

Page 5 Monthly Cruisin

Husqvarna Fabriksmuseum continued

It is a very interesting Factory with motorcycles guns and everything they manufactured dating back from its beginning in the 17th Century. They did manufacture a car before World War II but there are no surviving examples left, only pictures. There are cars from the from Sweden’s most visited Motala Motormuseum http://www.motormuseum.se/ inside that I took pictures of; a 1907 Cadillac that’s parade driven in nearby Linkoping and hiding in the midst of this large collection was a car with a fin in the back belonging to a rear-engine air-cooled Czechoslovakian 1950 Tatra 600 Tatraplan.

They had an extremely rare Mongolian motorcycle and, as I walked around the museum, I found second one. It had a 5 cylinder radial engine mounted on the front wheel. Years ago I had The Misfortune a riding one.

This picture of a boat with wheels was in the museum. A local man got sick of his British car and rebodied it with a boat I used to drive around the area with it.

It is an air museum and Husqvarna Motorcycle they very wisely maximized floor space by suspending many of the planes from the ceilings.

I intend to visit Husqvarna car museum again this month and another private museum that has so many cars it’s indescribable. I will be taking more pictures and will share them with you. Also, on this year’s trip I’m visiting my engine builder who is going to take me to a wholesaler that only deals win American muscle cars because Swedish collectors love big cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns. At the Lidkoping airport, the Big Power Meet each July attracts over 20,000 classic U.S iron and hot rods from all over Europe, so if you want to attend the 41st Annual Power Big Meet in 2018, July 5-7 is the date.

However on the way home with a stop off in Iceland for a little bit of rest & recreation Marie and I plan on seeing the Northern Lights, going to the Blue Lagoon and I hope to personally climb a 1,000 ft. glacier ice wall if weather permits.

Monthly Cruisin

Page 6

Wright’s Farm Cruise

By John Buchanan

The November Sunday morning that we turn the clocks back one hour, car clubs from all over Southern New England cruise the back roads to Harrisville Rhode Island and the Wright’s Chicken Farm to sit down and enjoy their famous family style all-you-can-eat chicken dinner. Each club reserves their own table seating in the huge function hall. But the big draw for me has always been seeing all the early Ford Model T and Model A clubs that show up regardless of the weather. Fortunately, the weather may have been grey, cold and looked threatening, but it was great for cruising. The Wright’s back parking lot is where the Function Hall entrance is located and it becomes a free giant car show. For the past few years we have also combined a vineyard wine tasting and antique shop crawl in Chepachet Village just down the road from Wright’s. This year’s wine tasting was at the Purple Cat Winery, which also features craft beer tasting as well, is also in Chepachet and just around the corner from the village shops. We had 10 member cars lined up in the Wrentham American Legion parking lot on 1A ready to cruise and several other car clubs cruised on by waving and tooting their horns as they were on their way. The threatening weather resulted in many members bringing their daily drivers which is O.K. as this is all about enjoying those Sunday morning and afternoon drives we used to take back in the old days with our families, and many times it was to no where in particular.

Monthly Cruisin

The “Who’s Who” at the Purple Cat

Page 7

Monthly Cruisin

Page 8

TEXAS DMV OUTLAWS DUNE BUGGIES John Buchanan

California usually sends ripples through our hobby with their tough enforcement of all things restrictive to our hobby interests, so it was a shot out of the lone star state of Texas reported on Nov. 6 by Daniel Strohl in his Hemmings Daily column. Texas DMV begins revoking titles for dune buggies, sand rails and other kit cars.

Hemmings Blog 2017 Nov 06 Texas revoking dune buggy & kit car titles It was reported that Texas began halting registrations of newly built dune buggies as far back as 2013, however previously built and registered dune buggies were grandfathered. Many kit rebodied buggies built on VW chassis & drivetrains were registered under the donor vehicle identity, however the DMV adopted a Texas Administrative Rule in 2015 which explicitly made any vehicle designed or determined by the department to be a dune buggy ineligible for title regardless of the vehicle’s previous title and/or registration. This action placed dune buggies in the same ineligible for title category as race cars, off-road vehicles and flooded cars.. All dune buggy and sand rail owners in Texas were sent letters alerting them that their titles have been revoked and they have to surrender the vehicle’s original title, windshield sticker and license plates to the DMV. Evidently the DMV considers dune buggies and sand rails are designed for off-road usage and may not be legally operated for use on Texas streets or public roadways. Further, the decision to ban dune buggies came about because many of these vehicles do not have key safety components or do not have a body at all and, as built, were not designed for on-road use. Further, as modified from previously manufactured vehicles, also do not keep their on-rad qualities.

This has sent a shock wave to this hobby segment with many owners selling them out of state or parking them to avoid the risk of facing legal troubles if they were driven on the streets,. The Save the Texas Dune Buggy Facebook Group started a GoFundMe campaign to hire a lobbyist to work on rescinding the ban and has also distributed a petition to the DMV. Although Texas is the only state at the moment that has an outright ban on dune buggies, some states refuse to issue titles or registration for sand rails.

According to the article, the fear is that if this Texas ban on Dune Buggies and other kit rebodied vehicles stands and is not reversed, that other states will follow suit.

Could a similar ban happen in Massachusetts?

It’s hard to say. Texas, like Massachusetts, is one of the 17 states that performs annual vehicle safety inspections however, their antique registered vehicles are exempt from annual inspections. Massachusetts performs annual safety inspections on antique vehicles so concerns about dune buggies lacking adequate safety for public highway use that the Texas DMV cited as a reason to deny them from operating on their roads is not a factor.

Another benefit we have is that the Massachusetts Association of Auto Clubs is on the watch for changes in our laws that could impact our collector vehicles and already has a registered lobbyist available to bring on board should one be needed.

Evidently Texas Dune Buggy group had to hurry after the fact and has set up a GoFundMe campaign to bring on board a lobbyist that will work to convince the DMV to rescind the ban.

Monthly Cruisin

Page 9

Support Our Advertisers

Monthly Cruisin

Page 10

STA-BIL 360 Performance

By John Buchanan

Getting my street rod and classic cars prepped for the winter hibernation includes adding Sta-Bil fuel storage stabilizer when filling up the gas tanks. There are two practices about guarding against the dreading phase separation risk in today’s ethanol blended gasolines; 1. drain the tank like I do for my lawn mower, shredder & snow blower and 2. fill up the tank with gas to reduce the head space and condensation from occurring. In the old leaded gas days I would always pour in a can of Christy Drygas, an alcohol based absorbent, to prevent fuel line freeze-up in the winter. There is no more gas line freeze up problems with 10% ethanol fuels but that dreaded stale gasoline and phase separation problem is real.

When I went to look on my garage shelf, all I had were those regular 1 oz. Sta-Bil sample packs I picked up at car shows along the way and a quarter bottle of marine Sta-Bil so I went to the auto parts store to pick up a fresh bottle and discovered there was a new Sta-Bil 360º Performance line of fuel stabilizers on the shelf and a 2 for 1 sale going on. Upon reading the label closely it said “Ethanol Problem Fighter” something never clamed with the original Sta-Bil product. Finally, Gold Eagle has finally made available a stabilizer I can feel comfortable about using to help avoid potential phase separation during those long periods of non-use during the winter months.

There are some myths about Sta-Bil products that have occurred over the years that need to be busted: 1. Sta-Bil contains no alcohol; 2. Sta-Bil works with ethanol blended gasolines; 3. Each Sta-Bil product is specially formulated to address and prevent a unique set of problems, they aren’t all the same, just different colors; 4. Sta-Bil branded products are not just kerosene; 5. Sta-Bil does not gunk up your carburetor, however if you’ve never used a fuel system cleaner it will wash off any accumulated gunk off the fuel system walls.

By the way, Sta-Bil 360 Performance is not recommended for Diesel fuel. They have a Sta-Bil Diesel product for that and it is not recommended to use for regular gasoline either.

Monthly Cruisin Monthly Cruisin

Page 11

2017 Food Pantry Results (6,828 LBS & $11,500)

Ralph Chadsey wrapped up the 2017 Food Pantry food and monetary collections, generously donated by our fellow car show attendees at this year’s Bass Pro Shops cruise nights, by having Treasurer Wayne Lestan make out five checks for $1,700 each to the five local area food pantries. The checks were delivered to Food Pantries in Wrentham, Norfolk, Foxboro, Walpole and Attleboro in early November ahead of their busiest Thanksgiving and December holiday season. The checks were the second installment from the proceeds with the first $500 checks being distributed in late July ahead of the back to school shopping season. The money collected is in addition to 6,800 lbs. of non-perishable can and packaged food goods that were delivered to the food pantries after each cruise. These donated funds allow the local area food pantries to purchase perishable and complimentary food items from the Greater Boston Area Food Bank which collects donated food from the major super market chains and distributers. $1 provides 3 meals for famiFoxboro Food Pantry lies in need.

Ralph Chadsey & Valerie Addison Many of our car cruise regulars drive into the cruise with either a bag of can goods or dollar bills to pass out to our members manning the cruise entrance gate.

We thank you for your continued support for this effort which has grown these past two years from a one-time experimental Thanksgiving collection effort in 2015 when area food bank shelves were running low on donations.

Norfolk Food Pantry Jane Sylvester, Ralph Chadsey & Dee Harten

Wrentham Food Pantry Andre Pepin & Ralph Chadsey

Walpole Community Food Pantry Donna Kelley

Attleboro: Hebron Food Pantry John Buchanan & Michelle Burch

Monthly Cruisin

December 2017

Last Page

Member meetings are held the 3rd Tuesday of each month at the Norfolk MA clubhouse.

P.O. Box 217 Wrentham, MA 02093