FCA NW Region Concours 2014

The NW region of the FCA hasn't held a concours in years.  But the current leadership decided to put on one.  Since I had just had the 330 painted in its original silver, I decided to enter it.

I got the car back in mid-March and the show was scheduled for mid-July, so I figured I had plenty of time to put everything back on the car.  However, this ended up like most software projects I've ever been on.  The amount of time to complete expands to the schedule plus more.

I ended up working until 12:30 AM the night before.  This included polishing and waxing the bright work, installing the hood torsion bars, on which I managed to lose a clip so had to improvise, grille and taillight covers.  I had checked all of the lights and found that the left side repeater wasn't working, so seemed to get it working.  A couple of other things I had planned on getting done, like new trunk carpet, re-stitch the pleats in the driver's seat and get the clock working didn't get done.

The day of the concours had showers for the forecast, but I got up and used Griot's Speed Shine to get all of the dust off.  Of course, it drizzled on the way to the show, so had to stop by an auto store to buy some micro-fiber towels to dry off the car.  I had gotten the toolkit, owner's pouch, etc. back in the car, but forgot to grab the original keys.  I had also made up a binder with the build sheets, etc. along with a brief history.

So I got to the show, parked the car and dried off everything.  You can see some of the competition, a very nice 275 GTS.

When the judges came around, I went through the motions and when they asked for the turn signals, I accidentally also hit the headlight stalk, which broke off.

Of course, this was before they had asked to see the headlight operation, so I got points off the the headlights not working properly as there was no way to actuate the switch due to where the stalk broke.  That repeater light also decided to no longer work.  In addition, when I put the tail light covers on, I managed to loosen both brake light wires and since that was the last thing I did that night, didn't realize that the brake lights no longer worked.  Now, it the judges had told me about the brake lights in a timely fashion, I could have fixed them as I did so prior to driving home.  You can fix any defects while judging of the next car is going on and can call them back if you resolve the issue.

The net result is that I ended up with a third in class award, but probably would have gotten second without the electrical issues as they mentioned later that my car and the second place, a 330 GTC, were really close in points.

Oh well, a couple of more weeks and the car would have been in much nicer condition.  But having a firm date for the show meant that I did do a lot of work, just not quite enough.