Hey Chapter Members and Guests,

If you don’t know me, my name is Karl and I have the fun honor to be the leader of our chapter. This thread is to inform you of the status of our Chapter and what we are doing. I also want propose some goals and activities for our fun group. Here are the major areas that I want to talk about:

1. Chapter Numbers and Region
2. 2007 Get-togethers recap
3. Chapter Goals and Challenges
4. The Thumper Project
5. Open request for ideas and feedback

Chapter Numbers and Region

Current Chapter Membership: ~168
New members since Jan, ’07 ~ 38

Geographical region of our chapter:
I talked with Steve (SteveBricks), the SoCal chapter leader, and Clint (WillyB) former NorCal chapter leader about what our chapters’ geographic boundaries are. We came up with two major definitions for this.

1. On-the-map2. Self-Identifying- For those who are “tweeners” , those who are not sure, we suggest they look into both chapters and find which share the same interests as them. Both chapters have great members and both have unique chapter personalities based on common interests.

2007 Get-togethers Recap
We met in both large and small groups many times in 2007. Below are the ones I remember. If you I missed one and/or you have photos from these, please post them.

• Turlock swap meet 2007
• Micke Grove F100 Show (Thanks to Jagred for setting that up) Dan, Tim and a few others went to Tower Park afterward and made music and ate more food.
• Welding Training at Mike’s- Mike taught me (actually he did most of the work) how to fill holes in my fenders with a Mig Welder.
• Thumper work party at Clearlake with Dan, Mike, Chet, AJ and myself
• BBQ at Mike’s (Mike’s wife is a saint to put up with all of us truck guys) Chet made some great Bear Stew. Some of us brought our better halves and kids with us as well. This was the biggest get-together for the year.
• Dinner in SF with Fred (FTEFred) from Australia, Ben (SierraBen), Dan (Tigerdan) and myself. This was a great meeting since I learned a lot about Ford trucks in Australia.
• Good Guys car show in Pleasanton (November)

Chapter Goals and Challenges These goals are open to discussion and changing. New goals are welcomed as well.

1. Thumper- Most of this will be brought up later in this thread when I write about the project. The challenge for this project is getting it done. I feel our chapter goal should be to set a challenging, but attainable deadline to get it done. We also need to define what “done” means for the project.
2. Get-Togethers- I recommend we plan at least two big get-togethers for 2008. The main point of these will be to socialize and have fun. I also think that we can have a bunch of little meets that may have only a few members show up and still be great. I know we all have full schedules so it is hard to make every meet.3. Other goals? Please bring up ideas for Chapter goals

The Thumper Project
Background- Early in 2007, the chapter decided to build a mud racer out of a ’72 F250 2WD that Clint was holding on to. Parts of the plan include making it a 4X4, putting a 460 with an auto transmission into it, big wheels, and then race it. Over the past year, the two main workers have been Mike (3Mike6) and Dan (Tigerdan). Tim (oldfordnstone) found us an engine and brought it to the 2007 Micke Grove meet in Lodi. Mike worked on the engine while Dan’s been working on making a 2wd into a 4wd and to get the steering, transmission, and transfer case to work. In 2007, a number of members helped out over a few weekends up at Dan’s place near Clear Lake. I want to thank Chet (anolddog) and AJ (mecinoid) for their help on the project. Please tell me if I forgot anyone who helped in 2007. This is not a full and complete history of Thumper and if I made any mistakes, please post corrections.

This weekend Dan is bringing Thumper down to Mike’s place for the next part. At that meeting, we can plan out what needs to be done next to get Thumper racing. My hope is that since Mike’s place is pretty central to members, we can work on it together and more often. We need to make sure Dan, Mike, and the rest of us work together on it so that no one is stuck doing all the work. As suggested above, I think we need to decide what it means to be “done” and then come up with a timeline that gets us done. Then we can race Thumper and teach other chapters to respect and fear our racing prowess.

Open Forum
I am all ears for hearing what has worked, what I (we) can do better, and ideas for future chapter things.

Thanks for reading this long post. Please reply with your ideas and have a great weekend.

 

Regarding Thumper, I think "Done" will be when it's street legal.

I'd suggest we break down things on it when it's here, then set goals accordingly...

I/e
Brake lines...this could be a good thing to kill an afternoon on, plus a good teaching/learning experience for those who have never run/fabbed up thier own lines...I could show people how to do the cutting/routing/flaring etc...we'd have plenty of left oevr stock to let everyone do a bunch of flares to give them the confidence to do thier own line...major plus here is that you save a bundle over buying pre-bent/made to fit lines.

Exhaust...This will kill another afternoon, and there's a few different ways to go about it...Dan would be the guy to teach gas welding (I can do it, but it isn't my strong suit) or we could mig it in, but gas is easier if you know what you're doing...again, this could be another mini-meet, and once learned could save you some good coin over paying to have a muffler shop run new exhaust for you.

I'm not sure what else we could do to tie into a get together, most everything else I can think off (finishing the engine, hoses/belts/etc) is just grunt work, and not much learing/meet stuff...but extra hands are always cool to have around...plus, once we start on the front end, it'd be good to have a few bodies around to lift off the front clip for easy access.

In regards to meets/GTG's, we need to think strong about a swapmeet thing too, we brought this up a month or so back, and it kinda died off, so let's put that on the agenda as well.

 

Thank you for recognizing my contribution but all the tools I really need fit in my wallet. I wasn't very much help. I did mount a couple of rear wheels, but I belong to the "I eat paste" part of the group.

 

Heck Chet, don't sell yourself short, I mentioned something about this way back when, but you have near as much money wrapped up into Thumper as anyone...asides from wearing them mechanics gloves, you turned a good wrench too

 

I was sick and out of commission for a few months, plus I kind of lost control of the project while it was in Clear Lake - Clear Lake is a full days drive north of me.

Is this formal notification that I am no longer Project Leader, and our original goals have changed?

 

Hi Clint,

No such message was implied. My intention is to get the truck racing. How we get there is between the experts (you, Dan, Mike, et. al) since I don't know what it will take to get there. My role is to help where I can and to focus the energy to getting it done.

I apologize if I misstated or omitted anyone's role in the Thumper project.

 

Hey Clint, I don't think the goals haven't changed a bit...we're looking for a mudbogging, trail riding street legal truck.

I think Karl is just trying to refocus us to get to the end goal as a good CL should do.

It's still your truck (as far as I'm concerned...whatever water that will hold) and you have the lead on input/direction it will take, I don't think that Karl was trying to step up and be the Project Leader on Thumper, but I think he was just trying (like I mentioned before) to refocus our efforts and get a plan going.

BTW, I've said it before, and I think it's worth saying again, but you have probably been the biggest contributor to get this NC Chapter going, I recall the days of FTE and seeing no new posts here for weeks at a time until you popped in and brought us to life.

We may not be like next door neighbors and tripping over each others stuff, but without your pushing to get something going, we'd all; be lurkers instead of contributors.

My only complaint is that because of you, I now know Dan.

 

Dang, looking at the time stamps..shows how slow i typed...Karl hadn't posted when I started typing my response...oh well, maybe the wife will get me one of those voice-to-type things for Xmas

 

Thank You - - -

When we started the experts on other FTE forums told me the most difficult job we had was adding the front axle - universally they said it would break us. We got stubborn and decided that was the way to go, and somehow Dan made it work.

The other thing they said was that we would not be able to bolt the heavy duty C6 Dan had to a 460 - it is out of a diesel. Again, somehow, Dan made that work too. . .

But that made it work only Dan could plan and accomplish, which he did. Now we have that done and the rest should be straight-forward.

I will wait until we can drive it before I renew my challenge to the wimps from Las Vegas, and the big talking Southern California boys.

But it will not be long, and then we will see if they have sand enough to stick with us.

We will need to enter it in a couple of local events so we can try it out and pick a driver. We agreed that the driver would be drawn from the crew, or their children (over 16). Then it is off to Las Vegas!

 

As for the rest of the chapter - one thing I always enjoyed was an active forum. I used to insure we had at least 2 threads going all the time. I thought that was a good way for us to get to know each other.

I would like to see more posts - but you have to give them something they are interested in to talk about.

Also, there was a group who wanted to camp - most had motor homes or trailers. It would be nice to convoy down to Santa Barbra or over to Moro Bay - even up into the mountains. I found one nice meadow near Tahoe we talked about.

Yosemite is also a good day trip - but it is expensive. ($20 a car last year). It is fun to take a bunch of kids there and walk the trails.

 

when thumper get to mike's place in the sun. i would be willing to help out when i can. mostly on sundays and every other monday, since i dont live/work too far from mike.

actually i was in oakdale the other day, but i was running a bit late, so i waved toward mike as i drove past his street

 

Karl - That was a great State of the Chapter write up. I'm glad you have time to put it all down and lead us this year. Thank you !!!!

I would also like to thank Clint for the fantastic job he has done the past year with every thing he has had going on. GJP !!!! (Good Job Partner ;-0)

As for me, I will be at Mike's tomorrow with work gloves on to help if needed during the unloading of Thumper. I'm always glad to lead a hand. When money becomes more fluid I'll be glad to donate some $$$'s towards chapter projects, trips, outings and other needs that I see. I would like to thank all of you for making this group so much fun. I would also like to thank those that have so generously given their time AND money to help things along.

I'd like to mention of all the support this chapter gives it's members in helping them keep or get their trucks on the road. Sometimes we drag them down the road. ;-)
Clint, Dan, Mike and Karl have all helped me and others in this regard. I feel it is really important to point this out and share this with you all in the chapter. Matter of fact, if we had a annual chapter award for Best Supporting Member it would be really hard to figure out who we would have won it for this past year imo.


Spring is in the air and we're looking forward to getting some things going I can see.



I am the here but, just wanted to let you all know how pleased I am to be part of this group.

 

Dan mentioned that at another forum they have a "found on craigslist" thread that is tacked to the top of the forum page. I suggest we do that so if anyone is perusing craigslist and finds something great for our Fords, they can post it there.