July Car In The Room
SIDE CURTAINS - July/August 2024
Clubrooms: Neil Hunt Park, Tarawera Rd, Rotorua
Postal: PO Box 2014, Rotorua
Email: rotorua@vcc.org.nz
Website: www.rotoruavintagecarclub.org.nz
Vero Insurance: Phone 0800 658 411 and quote your VCC membership number
Club Meetings: 2nd Wednesday of month (except January), 7.15pm for 7.30pm start
OFFICERS
Chairperson - David Tomlinson
Secretary - Hayden Duncan
rotorua@vcc.org.nz 021 939 705
Treasurer - Dennis Whimp
Club Captain
Terry Wadsworth
Asst. Club Captain
Ronald Mayes
Neville Harper
Geoff Nitz
Alan Judd
John Newson
Mid Weekers - vacant
Side Curtains Editor - David Tomlinson rvvcc.editor@gmail.com
Beaded Wheels - Ronald Mayes
Library - Dennis Kenny, Ronald Mayes
VIC Inspectors - Ronald Mayes, Geoff Nitz, Hayden Duncan (numbers above)
Flowers - Doreen Green
CLUB CAR PHOTOS
If you want your club car photo on the clubroom wall then get in touch with Doug Green, and he will organise a time and place for a photo shoot. It would be good if we could have all member’s car photos on display.
Chairman’s Report
- June/July 2024
by David Tomlinson
The is the second issue of Side Curtains that has covered a two month period due to a lack of important information or contributions at the end of June.
Much has happened over the last two months. In June we had probably the best talk on a car ever, with new member Mario Klutman giving us a colourful roller coaster of a ride discussing his recently purchased Ford Model A Phaeton as the car in the room. It will be a hard act for anyone to match in the future. We also had our prize giving afternoon tea at the end of a short run. I had to miss the run and the prizegiving as the day before I put my back out pushing a car trailer into my shed. In fact, some two months later, I am still not 100%, having aggravated a back injury from almost 20 years ago. I am on the mend though.
In July we had our Swap Meet, and we could not have had a better outcome in terms of weather and the number of vendors. We had a warmish winter day, and no rain, dry underfoot, and so many vendors we had to put some in the show car arena, and others in the middle of the usual sales rows. Despite being a little short on member support on the day, we got through it all, but I again aggravated my back despite doing as little as I could in the heavy lifting department. I really want to thank all those members who contributed, not only on the day, but in the lead up, on set up day and the knock down on Sunday afternoon. Alan led us all well, and we had some hired help too from a couple of Side Curtains July/August 2024
other organisations. Although we pretty much had everything in our favour, and as positive outcome as we could possibly have hoped for, the final result appears to only be a bit better than previous years. The committee will discuss this in detail but it is likely that we will have to put up (for the first time in my years at the branch) both the vendor and admission fees for 2025. Some of the public are there for 3-4 hours, which is a very cheap day out, even if we go from $5 to $10. Another benefit of a $10 entry fee is not having to keep 100s of $5 notes in the change float.
I spoke to a number of vendors, all were very happy, some made over $1000 in their first hour, which for $10 is a very good outcome, so even a slightly higher vendor fee will have little impact on their profit for the day.
Show cars were not affected when we started charging, we had an excellent array this year from an old Bedford TK through to a late model Rolls-Royce Phantom. With rare exception, everything went so well with the Swap Meet this year. Even with many new people helping, almost no toilets and many people doing new jobs this year, we got through it easily. Hopefully next year the ground developments at the track will be completed and we will have more loos and a sound system back in operation. Onwards and upwards, and we will aim for an even better financial outcome in 2025.
Our July club night featured our branch secretary Hayden Duncan’s Hillman Hunter wagon as the car in the room. Very bright orange! Hayden has written an item about that car later in this issue.
As we had no driving event in July, it was very timely that the BoP branch organised a picnic lunch outing to the Steam
Museum at Holdens Bay, inviting all neighbouring branches to join in. We did email this out to all members twice, and mentioned it at July club night. There was an excellent turn out of members from BoP, EBoP, South Waikato and even a few from Waikato. There was a very small turnout of our members on a fine warm day, which is a shame as there were a lot of good people and great cars to mix with.
I reckon over 100 VCC members were there, but fewer than 10 from Rotorua. It was nice to see the purchaser of Ralph’s Buick bring the car over for the day, even picking Ralph up in the car and bringing him to the event. We had perhaps 5 branch member cars present. It was discussed (even though we had done this at the same venue in 2018) that the 5 branches present, and Taupo, should perhaps do something like this at least once every year. It was certainly an enjoyable day with a bit better congregating together than we achieved in 2018.
Early in August I attended the VCC AGM and Executive meeting. The Friday night started with a fair bit of rigour which potentially set the Saturday afternoon up for a long drawn out saga regarding the future structure of the VCC. In the end it smoothed out very quickly and the Saturday ended earlier than expected. A new draft constitution for the national body and for all branches was presented, and this will be sent out to all clubs as PDF documents soon. We will circulate these to all committee members, if any other branch members would like to see either document let Hayden or I know.
This month we will have no car in the room, but will sit back and be enthralled by Ronald Mayes’ reel video footage of the 1980 International Rally, and don’t forget the Sulphur City Rally at the end of the month, that a small dedicated team are putting a lot of effort into making into a great event.
Local Heritage Week 2024
We recently received the following communication from Council, and have offered to have up to 20 cars on display on Saturday, 23 November, possibly after a short drive around town. More details and appeals for vehicles will be in the next Side Curtains.
Rotorua Library, Te Aka Mauri, is inviting community groups and individuals to host events as part of a city-wide event in November: He Kete Rau Mahara – Local Heritage Week. This yearly event celebrates the rich heritage, culture and history of Rotorua. We would love for Rotorua Vintage and Veteran Car Club to be part of this year’s celebratory week. Running an event during the week offers a great opportunity to: SHARE your organisation’s unique story, RAISE your profile in our community, PROMOTE your products and services, REACH a wide range of people.
We are also running a heritage day at the library and in Jean Batten Square on Saturday 23 November, to launch the week. If you’d be interested in bringing a car down, or driving around the CBD the same day, I know the community would love it.
Some of our prize winners this year
VCC AGM 2024 - Tauranga
Branch Prize Giving for 2023/24 year
Summit Cup (Most Rallied Vintage) – Bill & Adelai Skelton
Skelton Fleet Trophy (Most Rallied Post Vintage) – David Tomlinson
Trevor Burns Trophy (Most Rallied Post-War Vintage) – Larry Freemantle
Kiwi Cup (Most Rallied Post 1960) – John Newson
Ken & Lynn Rowson Trophy P80 - Pat Burr
McGill Trophy (Night Run) – not contested
Johnson Trophy (Club Captains Run) – Les Martin and Nathalie Descat
Mowbray Cup (BBQ Run) – Les Martin and Nathalie Descat
Cliff & Shona Wickham Trophy (Chairman’s Run)
– Terry Wadsworth & Shelley Adamson
Lakeland Ford Trophy – (Most Rallied Ford) – Kevin & Maryann Scott
Norman Honour Trophy (Lady Navigator) – Pat MacKay
Harry Lapwood Cup (Male Navigator) – Alex Tomlinson
Caulfield Cup (Novice Member – less 2 years in Club) – Larry Freemantle
Mathias Cup (Most Aggregate Points for Year) – David Tomlinson
Anglis Cup (Significant contribution to the branch) – Maryann Scott
July Car In The Room
by Hayden Duncan
I had originally brought a 1974 Hillman Hunter sedan back in 2022, with the intention of having the Hillman as a project car. With this I also brought a bare body shell as the original body is badly rusted and not suitable for WOF standard.
I started doing up and restoring the car by getting the carburetors cleaned as they were clogged with gunk. I also replaced the spark plug and leads, ignition coil, dizzy cap, points and rotor and a new positive terminal battery lead along with a new slave cylinder and clutch.
I then started to sand back the shell body when I stumbled across a 1976 Hillman Hunter Estate for sale in Ngongotaha on Trade Me, which was in very well looked after condition.
The Hillman on Trade Me has a few paint spots on the body that needs painting to match the color of the rest of the car which is a similar color to ‘Burnt Orange’.
After talking with the person selling the Hillman for a couple of days, I decided to go ahead and buy the Hillman in October 2023.
The estate has a 1725cc engine with a 4 speed manual transmission, twin Stromberg system, mild cam grind of which I’m unsure of. It also has extractors, so has been hotted up a little.
I have had to replace the original radiator with a universal Fenix performance radiator and fuel pump as the original fuel pump had collapsed.
The plans for the car in the future is to swap the stromberg system to 45 DCOE side draft twin webers and a Pipercross twin carb air filter as well as swapping the diff for a highway diff along with finishing the paint work that needs to be touched up. It also has custom milled Mk1 Ford Cortina front shocks inserts and 4WD rear shocks.
The ultimate end goal for the Estate is for it to be a cruiser that can comfortably keep up with modern traffic while still remaining as a headturner.
From the kitchen at the Swap Meet by
Pat Mackay
Twelve months ago when Doreen said she was no longer going to do the Swap Meet again, I said that I would not take over but I will still help. So I was under the impression that someone else would organise it and I’d help. Sweet!!!
Coming up to this years Swap Meet I was handed over the “Bible” by Doreen. Then all of a sudden I was landed the job. Panic!!!
At the last meeting there was still no one to help early in the morning, I wouldn’t ask Pat Burr to come in early as she was ill at the time. Then all of a sudden the guys had a brainwave idea. They put Lynda (Terry’s partner) in at the early time.Thanks guys for that great thinking. So if she was feeling ok Pat was to come in about 9am.What a relief.
Saturday afternoon I arrived early at the stock car track to clean the kitchen to find a lovely fairy (Sharon) already cleaning away. Fortunately it wasn’t to bad. Lovely to have Sharon to help set up. Sunday morning arrived and there was Lynda. She was an angel and super good at making lovely sandwiches and doing anything and everything. She was marvellous. Thank you so much Lynda. 9am arrived and my other angel appeared in the form of Pat Burr with lots of lovely baking. Thanks Pat for your help and yummy baking.
At the last meeting Alan said savouries and sandwiches would be fine. Yeah right! Everyone loves something sweet too. We saw no one until 9am except the same little mouse that kept popping in last year reappeared every now and then (with an English accent) to have a nibble here and there of the food (we called him Alan)!!! It was really good to see everyone enjoyed what was on offer and there was not a lot left over. Great. Thank you to all my helpers and Carol for her lovely little fish pies. It seemed that a great day was had by everyone.
Side Curtains July/August 2024
RALLY SECRETARY
3. The decisions of the organisers shall be final. Veteran Car Club part in their to be held on the RVVCC RVVCC Club available RVVCC Club be collected
David Tomlinson
PO Box 114, Ngongotaha, Rotorua 3041 Ph 027 412 8227 - info@rvvcc.org.nz
Entries close - Wednesday 28th August 2024
DRIVER _________________________________________ EMAIL __________________________________________
NAVIGATOR ___________________________________
VEHICLE YEAR/MAKE/MODEL __________________
PHONE _______________________________________
__________ Remittance enclosed
Pay entry to ROTORUA VINTAGE CAR CLUB
BNZ: 02 0412 0236263 02 Use surname as reference!
RALLY REGULATIONS
1. One person in each vehicle MUST be a financial member of VCC NZ.
2. Driver must hold a valid current driver’s licence.
AGM & CLUB NIGHT - August 14th
Neil Hunt Park - 7.30pm
Home Movies of the 1980 International Rally in Rotorua
Followed by tea and coffee.
Sulphur City Rally Saturday, 31st August
This year’s event will be mostly country roads, travelling 130km in the morning competitive section, followed by a cooked buffet lunch including roast meats, vegetables, salads, soups, cake slices and tea and coffee at a rural venue. After lunch there will be some “out of car” games for both the driver and the navigator. The afternoon run is a non-competitive 105km run back to the clubrooms for afternoon tea followed by prizegiving at around 4pm.
We have a block booking for tables at the Good Eastern Taphouse for those wishing to have dinner out after the rally. There is an entry form elsewhere in this issue.
COMING EVENTS
www.rvvcc.org.nz
The branch website aims to meet the needs of our members, to promote our branch nationally, and to potential new members. If you have any suggestions please contact David Tomlinson.
Please also make sure you “Like” our Facebook page to keep up to date.
Contributions to Side Curtains
This is your magazine! Please feel free to share anything you think might be of interest to the membership by sending it to the editor, preferably by email, and a picture says a thousand words, so include photos where possible. Members taking part in club runs or events hosted by other branches are encouraged to pen a short piece about their experience to include in the next issue going to print. All items to the editor by the end of the month.
Side Curtains July/August 2024
Combined Branch Run July 2024
Central
