BATOC”s annual President’s

Mystery Tour was held on

January 21 this year. Our illus-

trious leader did an excellent

job keeping the location a

secret (from most everyone)

this year. We were told we

would be heading in a south-

erly direction and we would be

visiting a world renowned res-

toration facility. After which

we would be lunching near a

body of water. Well, the last

part wasn’t that difficult to

figure out but for the life of me

I could not figure out where we

were going. Our destination, it

turned out, was Canepa in

Scotts Valley

(www.canepa.com). An abso-

lutely incredible collection of

cars. Some of them could eas-

ily be elevated to the cate-

gory of works of art. Down-

stairs is the “for sale” show-

room with its gathering of

some of the coolest exotics

and high dollar restorations

I have seen in one place. All

for sale for the right price.

The upstairs held Bruce

Canepa’s car collection

featuring some iconic race

cars, some very cool motorcy-

cles and other legendary ex-

hibits from the world of auto

racing. From Dale Ernhart’s

Nascar to one of the Titus

Trans Ams and the list goes

on. Amazing!! (did I say that

already?) . If you could tear

yourself away from the amaz-

ing collection long enough to

walk around the corner and

through a door you found a

catwalk that over looked the

shop area. There were even

more amazing (sorry, I can’t

seem to stop saying that) cars

in various stages of restora-

tion. From a 70 Cutlass to a

Lambo that looked like it was

having it’s appendix removed

in an operating room. AMAZ-

ING!!

After that we had lunch some-

where (just kidding). After we

left Scott’s Valley we traveled

to Capatola for lunch at

Zelda’s on the beach. We were

able to have a relaxing meal

while watching the waves

crash just on the other side of

the big windows.

It was a great run and a fan-

tastic way to kick off what

promises to be a fun filled year

of new adventures with some

great friends and our Bay Area

Thunderbird Club.

E V E R Y B O D Y E N J O Y S A G O O D

M Y S T E R Y

S P E C I A L

P O I N T S O F

I N T E R E S T :

PRESIDENT’S

MESSAGE

MEETING MIN-

UTES FROM

JANUARY

BOARD MEETING

CLUB PAGE

EVENT FLYER

TECH

CTCI CONVEN-

TION

CLUB CALENDAR

B A T O C

What’s neW in birdland?

FEB 2017 Volume 58, issue 2

P a g e 2 W h a t ’ s n e w i n b i r d l a n d ?

WE ARE OFF AND RUNNING Last month I posed the proverbial New Year’s Resolution question and challenged all of us to ensure that 2017 would be better than 2016. Of course, that really is not a very high bar and it actually seems like the bar gets lower and lower every year. But….lest I digress into a rant, let’s move on to the positive. January brought us a very successful President’s Mystery Tour to the Canepa Automotive Museum in Scotts Valley. Despite the bad weather, the rainy drive over the Santa Cruz mountains and despite that we all drove our “X” brands, we had a very large turn out and everyone enjoyed the amazing cars, amazing facility, the pounding surf in Capitola and the great lunch at Zelda’s. Thank you all for braving the elements and blindly following the leader to places unknown. It is always a fun surprise. January also brought us our annual BATOC Board Meeting at the Adams’ Castle and another great time was had by all. While several board members were absent, we covered many productive topics and tackled several pesky prob-lems. Take a look at the recap elsewhere in the newsletter and know that great things are coming and fun will be had. And speaking of fun, January also brought us the news that Tim and Laura Knapp wanted to pass the Activities Chair torch down the line and I am happy to report that Mary Cummins and Phoebe Blackwell have stepped up and will co-chair our activities department. Big plans are already in the works and a great big Thank You to both of them for jumping into the pool. February brings the first challenge to our new V.P., Marlon Blackwell as he takes the reins for our February meeting as Susan and I make our way to Hawaii for our anniversary. I know that Marlon will “knock-em-dead” and run a fabulous meeting, even though he’s probably all sweaty and nervous about now. Treat him well and don’t chase him off. One of the things that was discussed at the board meeting – and has been touched on at our regular meetings – is the probable need for a new meeting location and plan. As we know, we have pretty much outgrown the Buttercup and most of our meetings have been standing room only for most of the last year. And while the board discussed numerous ideas, we are particularly interested in the overall input of the membership since our monthly meetings are the very glue that holds us together. We discussed different locations, different formats, different days, different meals and a myriad of other thoughts – but your input is needed and we will be discussing this for several months to come. So, please bring your thoughts and ideas to the meetings or feel free to call me at any time. Any idea is open to discussion. So….on that note, I will see many of you tomorrow at our fabulous SuperBowl party and look forward to seeing eve-ryone else next month at the March meeting. If we don’t see you at the SuperBowl party have a great time at your own party.

Happy T-Birding Dave

PREZ

MESS

P a g e 3 V o l u m e 5 8 , i s s u e 2

BATOC Meeting minutes January 14,2017 In attendance - 41 members We welcome a visitor this month, Mario.. he has a 1955 T-bird that he's had since 1972 and started restoring three years ago. He hopes to have it running this year and heard about our club via Gil. Welcome! We had a great time at the Christmas party last month. Jack Starr has reserved the Dollar club out in Ross for Friday Dec 22 for next years Christmas party. And will update info as time goes on.He's looking for a caterer. Superbowl party will be out at the Guthrie's house February 5th. Tony Lloyd's 75th birthday is also that day. Kathy will bring a cake!. Lisa has duffles, totes, and sweat jackets in stock if you need any. We have a few calenders left at $15 each if you need any. The “Presidents Mystery Tour”will be next weekend. Rain or shine. Lunch will be at about 1:00. After lunch you'll be an hour and a half from home. Let Dave know if you'd like to join in! We'll be leaving Danville at 9:30 from Bagel street cafe in the “ Livery Shopping Center “ and leaving the Dublin spot at 10:00. If it's raining we'll still go, just bring your other car. Sunday April 9th the Villanueva's are hosting an outing to Glenn Ellen, to see a 21 car garage private collection. The collector is a friend of the Villanueva's . The tentative plan will be to leave from here at 9:00. We'll probably have a box lunch or possibly stop along the way for lunch. And wine taste up in the area at a local winery. Greg Canella and Lisa Brill-Nadler are talking about doing a “Rosie the Riveter” outing. The board meeting will be on Saturday January 28th at 4:00 at Dave's house. Anyone who wishes to come is wel-come. Maria's treasurer report: We are solvent Respectfully submitted, Kim Dixon Secretary

MEETING

MINUTES

P a g e 4 W h a t ’ s n e w i n b i r d l a n d ?

2017 BATOC BOARD MEETING A very productive board meeting launched BATOC into 2017. Even though sev-eral board members were unable to attend, we were able to discuss many items and plan many great new ideas. One of our on-going issues has been our “hacked” web site. Guy Cummins made a very nice presentation to the board and the board approved the migra-tion of the site to a new “Go-Daddy” web service that includes automatic virus monitoring, scrubbing and updates, along with guaranteed virus-free set up. Guy will head this project and plans to migrate our previous, beautifully designed (Don Perry) site to the new service – minus our Chinese hackers. Good job, Guy and we can’t wait to get our site back. Another discussion focused on our standing room only monthly meetings and the probably need for a new, larger location. Unfortunately, there are very few restaurants with large enough areas who don’t require large deposits and guar-anteed attendance, etc. So, this presents some unique problems. So we are enlisting the entire membership for ideas and suggestions. This may include a new location, new time of day, a new format for our meetings, etc, etc. We are open to anything and everything. So, put on the thinking caps and bring your thoughts to the meetings. I am sure that we will be discussing this for several months to come. We also discussed the revival of a Route 66 excursion next spring. This idea has been floated before and many other clubs have embarked on the trip and made fabulous memories. This will probably involve about a 10 day trip that will cover the western half of Route 66. But the plan is wide open at this point and we will be forming a planning committee at the next meeting or two to spear-head this amazing trip. This is a great opportunity to get involved and do some-thing really fun. Let me know if you’d like to help. Marlon Blackwell and Jean Riley will also be working with CTCI to develop a new membership packet for the national club that can be distributed to new BA-TOC members as they join. We want to get membership in CTCI up to (or close to) 100% and having a pre-assembled membership packet supplied by CTCI will be a big help in reaching that goal…and it helps CTCI increase their member-ship, as well. Thanks to all of our fabulous board members for their dedication and for their many great ideas. In fact, thanks go out to ALL BATOC members for making this a fabulous, welcoming, fun, exciting club that attracts the best members ever. Here’s to a great 2017

Dave

P a g e 5 V o l u m e 5 8 , i s s u e 2

By now everyone should have received their invoice to re-up their BA-

TOC dues for 2017. If you haven’t paid them, what are you waiting for.

You don’t want to take a chance on missing out on even one of the fabu-

lous fact filled newsletters. Right? Mail them into Maria or pay them at

the next breakfast meeting.

Also don’t forget your dues to CTCI are also due for 2017. There are

many benefits to belonging to the International Thunderbird Club. Not

only do they offer insurance coverage for sanctioned club events to pro-

tect it’s members but there is also access to lots of information about

your Tbird at your finger tips and also a great bi-monthly publication so

you can keep up with what’s happening in your hobby on a global scale.

If you’re not a member yet you need to put it on your to-do list.

Our next breakfast

meeting will be Feb

11th @ the regular

place. Don’t forget

your BATOC Bucks

and a raffle prize.

Valentine’s Day is Feb 14th. Don’t forget your best girl or guy

this year with something special. BATOC just happens to proba-

bly have just what you need. I’m sure your honey would love

something sweet( see what I did there?) from the BATOC swag

store. Give Lisa Brill-Nadler a call for all your Valentine needs.

Oh, and by the way get that

Tbird out and show it off.

You never know when you’ll

get another chance. Burn

some rubber. You probably

need new tires anyway.

P a g e 6 W h a t ’ s n e w i n b i r d l a n d ?

New Brakes So if you were paying attention last year I installed a new set of disc

brakes on the front of our 56 Tbird. I was asked the other day if I was

happy with the set-up after having it on for a while now. I have to say I

have some mixed feelings about how they work. On the one hand they do

work much better than the drums that we had. It was like wrestling an

alligator in an emergency braking condition before. No more. They

brake in a straight line now. That alone was worth the effort. But...I in-

stalled a stock divorced power brake booster at the same time. Turns out

the booster may work for standard drum brakes but it doesn’t actually

build enough pressure to operate disc brakes properly. I think the disc

required something like 1500psi to accommodate disc and the stock

booster only puts out somewhere around 800-900. Might be enough as-

sist drums but not enough for the disc. Apparently there are other boost-

ers of the same design that were installed on big trucks that put out more

pressure but I’m not sure if they even made enough for the disc. I’m still

looking into it. Meanwhile I don’t really expect to ever have the brakes of

a modern car but I’m happy if I’m able to make it a little safer to drive.

All in all I’m happy I did the upgrade.

My dad was the on e who taught me what hotrodding was all

P a g e 8 V o l u m e 5 8 , i s s u e 2

BATOC.ORG