Radcliffe Motor Car - May 7, 2011

The original tomyang.net fall party morphed into a combined event with Richard Garre's Radcliffe Motor Car company down in Reistertown, MD.  This was the fourth year and the first one that I attended.

Buddy Obara and I met up with Mike Franz and Tom Welsh.  Mike has a 2HL 330 GT and Tom a 365 GTC/4.

After a stop for gas, I ended up driving Tom's car.  I have only driven a GTC/4 for a test drive a few years ago.  Tom's car has a 400i engine with a hot cam and straight pipes since he's working on the exhaust.  The clutch engages pretty low and with little low end torque due to the cam, I stalled it the first three times I had to stop.  Of course, as we leave the gas station, there is a police car and two cops watching all of us leave.  I just idled it out and kept watching in the rear view mirror if they were going to stop me for having too loud of a car.  The drive to Reisterstown was pretty uneventful, at least after I figured where the clutch engaged and stopped stalling the car.  The roads were interesting, but too much traffic to enjoy the driving.

Tom Yang was greeting the cars and taking pictures when we arrived.  Buddy was in front and Tom got worried when I wasn't in that car since he knew I was staying with Buddy.  Then he had a double take as he saw me driving the GTC/4.

The event is mainly aimed at gear heads.  Richard's shop mainly works on Ferraris, so they were the major marque with 39 represented but there were also a smattering of Lambos, Fiats, Alfas and Masertis too.  There were eight 330 GTs present, the most I've ever seen in one time.  Six are shown here, with one in the shop getting the engine rebuilt and another that came later.

There were several ongoing demonstrations along with a great bunch of people just to talk cars with.  In another garage that mainly works on British cars, a 250 GTE was having its engine rebuilt.  The engine is complete and they started it up on the test stand.  Click on the right picture for a short movie.

Admiral Philips was there with his Pebble Beach first in class winning 500 Mondial.

The weather really cooperated, sunny in the low 70s.  Just a great car day.

One of the things that I did while I was at Buddy's was to try and fix some stripped studs holding the air cleaner down.  I got the studs fixed, but then had a fiasco.