jeff
serg
billhardtuned.com's tales from the Double 500 - by Jeff
From the broken down seats of the hardtuned.com "Spirit of Oakland" 1976 Mercedes 450 SEL Type "R"
| jeff |
serg |
bill |
After storing the hardtuned.com Double 500 450 SEL "R" for nearly two months, last minute "event prep" really got started Friday afternoon with quick wash and fluids check in the car. Friday evening, Serg made his way up to Oakland for the sticker application and tool kit selection.
| Bill came up with the car's theme name, based on Monday night's break in and stereo theft in front of my house. The car was suitably dubbed "Spirit of Oakland" which was visible under the rear quarter window shattered by the thieves' crowbar. |  |
| We went for a subtle theme, with Barney the Purple Star hood ornament, dead Rallye 2000 lights, functioning drain pipe brake ducts, hardtuned.com graphics, a squad car style roof number (1166), Type R badging, fluorescent yellow grand-sport style hash marks and jacking point arrows. |  |
Serg and I headed out early to pick up Bill on our way to the event. Our full time heater was especially strong on the freeway. While crossing the bridge, the towels that we had stuffed down the vents actually blew out and flapped on the dash. At Bill's house we made a last ditch effort to slow the airflow by duct taping the intake for the vent at the bottom of the windshield. This last minute act saved us from boiling in the car over the course of the day.
 |
"Team Sproing -Pug" car owner Nils Levine
lives dangerously close to Bill, so we found the Sproing- Pug Bonneville on the
street and added several decorative stickers and a courteous tap of the horn
before departing for San Francisco Toyota, and the start of the Double
500. |
Around 7:00, roughly three dozen marginal automobiles ambled up to take part in this year's Double 500. We took the bus stop spot in front of the event. Nils created his own parking lane on Van Ness with some stolen traffic cones. Within minutes, Nils had created a lineup of half a dozen double parked heaps.
SF TOYOTA: June 29th
7:15am
Memorable Entries:
| Jay Lamm and friends dressed in white lab coats, arrived driving their 1970 Mercedes 220 Diesel, with perfect lettering adorning both front fenders spelling the team name "MASTER RACE TEAM." |  |
| Plymouth Valiant (complete with Lotus Cortina style green primer stripe) Lotus by Valiant - doesn't that make it a LoVal … with the in Lotus crowd? Entrants were "super soaker equipped." |
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| Dodge Diplomat with cop car style graphics, and door stars topped by the name "Chiefy." | |
| Panhard roadster from Santa Clara declaring itself "Le Porsche Francaise." Dick Tuttle estimated its value after getting an estimate on bodywork from Hill & Vaughn to be negative $11,000.00 |  |
| Super clean Fiat Strada - bought for $400 at
auction. An "Owdee" 4000 quattro, '76 Alfa sedan, Martin Swig's 79 Alfetta, rusty Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40…….etc. |
|
| Cadillacs: One Coupe de Ville from Washington State complete with bull horns and "Dukes of Hazard style horn. Another Coupe de Ville with bicycle handlebar bull horns, and a third Coupe de Ville covered in the Stars and Stripes that had clearly more than $500 worth of vinyl on it. Another notable Cadillac was a black Eldorado that lost its vinyl top on the freeway on the way to the event. |  |
Everyone involved gathered, collected their shirts and Double 500 decals, and listened to a few of the entrants tell lies about the cost of their vehicles.
Sproing -Pug team member Michael "Motor" Kiesling
(Designer of the popular Sproing -Pug logo) showed up on foot
before the Sproing -Pug Bonneville. I assume that they were trying to minimize
the mileage on the car before the event. KSFO Radio's Tom Bennet waived the
green flag, and the cars sputtered to life.
The route was pretty straight forward; across the city, out across the Golden Gate Bridge and towards Stinson Beach and up Highway One. What a sight, with heaps bounding down the hills on Franklin Street. While waiting at the light to turn left onto Lombard, the Supersoaker equipped LoVAL (Valiant by Lotus) pulled up on our right, and nailed Serg in the passenger seat (and me) through our manually operated side window with a stream of water. This was a great beginning.
We made our way across the bridge, and out towards Stinson Beach. While waiting at the light to turn left towards Highway One, "Team Sproing -Pug" tapped us from behind. In retaliation we backed into them gracefully as the light turned green, then made sure we varied our speed in annoying ways for a couple of miles. The weather was perfect, and the coast was sunny and clear. We carved our way out towards the water in our 5100lb autobahn cruiser, fully compressing the suspension and squealing the tires until catching the bike handlebar bullhorn Caddy. I decided to take advantage of a large gravel turn out to lock the rear brakes with the foot operated emergency brake and slide the car sideways a bit. With the rears locked, and the car at about a 35 degree angle, I pulled the brake release so we could square up our trajectory and head on down the road in a semi-graceful slide. The brake release knob came off in my hands as the rest of the mechanism disappeared into the dash. We ground to a halt in the dirt with the rear brakes locked up. After only 15 miles, we were on the side of the road. The Master Race Team pulled up to offer assistance in broken German accents. We laughed about the circumstances of our self inflicted "brake-down." Serg jumped in with a screwdriver and unlatched the ratchet on the parking brake and we resumed the chase within minutes. However the E-brake was strictly off limits for the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, Nils and Motor (team Sproing- Pug) took an alternate route out to 1, and didn't roll by our "parking break."
Door Dings are of little concern |
The first stop was at Point Reyes Station, where we caught up to Nils and Motor, and practiced courteous parking Double 500 style. |
Serg drove from Point Reyes Station to Point Arena. The Sproing Pug Bonneville was ahead of us; slowing to a crawl at the base of every hill, then full throttle, watching our 180 horsepower try and drag all of that road hugging weight up hill. Of course the Bonneville was no match for the Spirit of Oakland through the turns….
Serg Pilots the
hardtuned.com Mercedes along Highway 1.
We stopped again in Point Arena and talked with the drivers of a particularly dirty BMW 325. It was an unsmoggable trade- in that had not been washed in years. I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to lube the muffler bearings with a little ATF through the patent pending hardtuned.com muffler bong. The strategy was to get the exhaust up to temperature, then pass the Bonneville in a "James Bond" style smoke screen. I was behind the wheel, and just after the smokeshow started, we got around. Nils tried to pass back on one of the longer straights, but the sheer width of the Spirit of Oakland combined with its' suddenly vague steering kept the Bonneville at bay. Several other Double 500 participants were behind us during this stint, including the silver Mr. Goodwrench Regal run by FART (Faulknor Auto Racing Team) and the LoVAL Super Soaker Valiant. Our screen lasted about 8 miles. We were being conservative on the straights, and pushing through the twisty stuff. It was funny looking back down the straights and seeing all of these crappy cars blowing by motorhomes and slow traffic on the two-lane highway. Things got exciting for Team Sproing-Pug when the FART Regal nudged them from behind at speed. We ducked off up a side road in order to get behind the Regal, but it took me too long to get the big Mercedes turned back around to quickly resume the chase.
We caught up with the Bonneville (this time with Motor behind the wheel) near Fort Bragg and our lunch stop. A tank of gas went into the Benz, confirming that we were still averaging somewhere around nine miles to a gallon. Everyone converged at North Coast Brewing Company for lunch. The parking lot and surrounding streets were littered with shitty cars. The Panhard roadster was running strong, and I think the only missing entrant was an International truck that supposedly had lost a wheel.
Reliability update: To this point the car had performed flawlessly. It took us about twenty minutes to realize that the passenger in the rear of the car would be prone to nausea from a combination of coolant/heater smell and exhaust fumes from our tape bandaged exhaust system and strip caulk filled rust hole in the floorboards. The fact that the left side rear door glass was no longer retracting slowed the exit of noxious fumes. We switched places often. The heat problem had been mitigated by the last minute duct tape job over the vent on the outside of the car. Over this distance, previously unknown heat related issues popped up. We found that any food product left in the rear footwells turned to liquid after 20 minutes of driving from the heat of the exhaust. The drain pipe brake ducts were performing flawlessly - no brake fade whatsoever.
| While at lunch, Motor wiped his brow to reveal a fine layer of soot and remarked "Thanks asshole." After some fine brew pub grub, we headed out with Bill behind the wheel of the Spirit of Oakland. As soon as we hit Mendicino county (earlier in the trip) things turned foggy, and we were not in danger of melting from our full time ambient heater. We headed further north, and then inland towards Branscomb and Laytonville. This was a really nice road - no markings and pretty smooth. While following Nils in the Sproing- Pug Bonneville around an uphill right hand corner, it shot its right rear hubcap into the bushes. We stopped to retrieve the hubcap. Later, we found a dirt shoulder suitable for a quick skid pad style cornering test. |  Bill drafts the Sproing-Pug Bonneville |
A few miles outside of Laytonville we ran across the 1976 Alfa sedan dead on the side of the road. We stopped, as had the Eldorado, and Bonneville, and were eventually joined by the "Bullit" Ford Tempo, and bullhorn Coupe de Ville. Apparently the Alfa had spontaneously quit running. The points were in question, as was the fuel supply. Serg kindly siphoned a gallon of gas from our tank, but it was not meant to be…. There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen trying to diagnose the Alfa with minimal equipment and no parts. After 45 minutes of hanging out, the group decided to bumper-push the Alfa into the next town. The vinyl topless Eldorado did the pushing. We left the guys there to decide whether they would try the auto parts store and start changing electrical parts, or leave the car there. The Alfa contingent made it to dinner. I think the car is still in Laytonville.
Head Scratching, followed
by....
Bumper Cars!
| From Laytonville we headed towards Highway 101 and down to Willits. We stopped in an abandoned gas station next to the 101 Diner, where the locals were quite colorful and a little agitated. There we met up with the occupants of the green Fiat Strada, and another Valiant (the Turquoise Turtle Valiant.) |  |
We headed south on 101, and blew off the Ukiah stop. The police were out in force on 101, as we saw 3 CHP cars in about as many miles. By this time the fumes were really getting to us. On back roads there was enough direction change to keep the wind circulating in the car, and the speeds were varied which kept the exhaust heat down in the back of the car. The freeway was a different story. Smoke was visibly pouring out of both front footwells as well as the rear driveshaft hump on the rear floor. I had started driving at Willits, by Ronert Park the car needed fuel again and we all needed air. We all had headaches and just wanted to be outside of the car.
Several of the participants took a shortcut on Highway 20 back to 101 so that they would make their 6:00 dinner reservation. We were a couple of hours late with our Alfa stop. We rolled into Il Fornaio, and the Double 500 "Parc Ferme" dizzy and smelly, but the Spirit of Oakland Benz was still running strong. Amazingly, team Sproing-Pug's completely bald right front tire was still holding air.
PARC FERME at IL FORNAIO
Nils and Motor found the FART Regal team, and whined "My neck, my neck……." They laughed and introduced them to the lawyer riding along in their car.
Team Sproing-Pug, and Hardtuned.com's Spirit of Oakland team were joined by the lovely Jennifer (Bill's wife) for dinner, and we had a fine evening. Bill got off easy by hitching a ride home with Jen. Serg and I inhaled another half hour worth of Mercedes exhaust. When we got back to my house, everything was looking a little hazy. It took about a day to recover from the fumes. We all had a great time though - next year we will find something with no exhaust leaks.
The Hardtuned.com Mercedes was de-stickered Saturday night and Sunday morning. The parking brake release was retrieved, I made a Plexiglas window for the one that had been busted out, and it was ready to go back on the market.
The most effective of our low budget hardtuned modifications was the drain pipe brake ducts. The brakes feel great even though we did our best to abuse them. The car still drives reasonably well, and could probably travel thousands more miles….
Sumitomo Tires on Benz...
riden hard, put away wet
Serg agreed to advertise and deal with the sale of the Benz. It was on Craigslist Monday night at $675. By Tuesday morning, Serg had received 13 emails on the car. I brought the car down to Los Gatos during the day. The first guy that came to look at the car (Tuesday evening) bought it for very near the asking price.
Serg also found the Fiat Strada on Craigslist for $1500.00
We have already started brainstorming on potential vehicles for next year.
2002 Double 500 Event photos from hardtuned.com