Anyone Going to Ripken this Week ?

[Murf]

Anyone here planing on attending the East Coast Rally at Ripken stadium this week ? I will be going up either Friday or Saturday to snoop around for anything I just "have" to have.

[sturmtyger380]

Yes, Sir! Chris and I will be going. He says we need to wear our G741 hats.

I plan on dragging my M38A1 up there to display. I am debating on bringing any M37 parts to sell. I have a drivers and passenger side fender assembly I don't need. Not in great shape but someone might want parts off of them.

I might just throw them in the back of the pickup and see what happens. Alan

[Murf]

I'll look for the hats!

Carter ? Cabel?

[milstencil]

I'll be there with a truck load of M37 parts.
H & I 15 & 16 with weebee webbing.
Rick

[Carter]

I'll be there Friday and Saturday with G741 hat on, may not be driving the truck this year, have not decided yet.

[Murf]

If you do drive it I need to get some pics of the the engine bay and carb linkages. But don't bring it on my account if you had other plans.

[w30bob]

Hi Guys,

I plan on getting up there on Friday and Saturday, but they're not calling for great weather. Might be a rainout both days. Nothing quite like the smell of wet canvas!

regards,
bob

[Murf]

Well, that thoroughly sucked! Friday that is... Drove 5 hours got to the show about 930AM, started making my rounds. Only a few people were set up. More people had their stuff there but they were still asleep. Weather started to deteriorate...I knew it was going to get soggy so I came prepared. The rain started and almost everyone started packing up. So I learned that "Rain or Shine" only applies to the event organizers.

got an awesome exhaust pipe gasket

[w30bob]

Hi Murf,

Same here..........I got up there around 9:00am on Friday and was surprised to see very few vendors overall, with lots of empty spaces between them. I don't know why they don't put all the vendors in 3 or 4 rows instead of spreading them out all over the parking lot. I hung around until the rain got pretty heavy and everyone had packed it in.........around 2:30pm, and then headed back home. Thought about going back on Saturday morning........but decided to get some work done around my place instead. As one of the vendors said........"They ought to stick a fork in this event, because it's done". I did end up getting some good deals on M37 parts......but I had to walk miles to get them. I had to shake my head as I was heading back to my truck to head home. I thought I had done a pretty thorough job of finding all the M37 parts......but as I was walking back to leave I passed a guy who just bought what looked like a NOS tailgate. I was like....where the heck did he find that!!!! Oh well. Better luck next year.

regards,
bob

[milstencil]

Where were you guys???? We were set up and selling by 8 and stayed to 4:30 before closing for dinner.
Had a sign, "M37 PARTS", everybody but Bob and a couple of G741 hats just walked on by.
Friday was the busiest for us once the rain started, everyone wanted to get out of the rain.
Like Bob said, this show is done I've been going since the early 90's and the show operator's just
don't get it. A lot of the hobby are "old folks" now and the way they spread it out makes for a tough walk
for a lot of people.
See you mid west guys at Findlay this coming weekend
Rick

[Murf]

I did see that tailgate. Thought about buying it "just because",,,it was only 60 bucks!. But I have a spare already. Thought it best to let it go to someone who can use it. Peter DeBella had (Jeep Parts) had an assortment of NOS cosmoline packed 37 parts. I was looking for g741 hats in the sparse crowd but never saw any.

I fully agree with you Bob. The vast empty spaces between the vendors was annoying. I usually walk one side at a time, take mental notes on prices the first round and go back through again to pickup what I want. The space made that method stupid. With the weather moving in I was fast walking miles (it seemed). After 2 rows I was bouncing across the aisles. It wasn't a total bust....the porta-john had plenty of toilet paper

[rickv100]

I went on Saturday since the weather was nice and walked around for the morning. I did look at some top bow corners at the one vendor dealing in M37 parts but did not have the money to buy them. Since my M37 is mostly complete, I am not in the market to hunt down parts like I used to.

I had a talk with Cabell Garbee about the show and he mentioned that a row of vendors cleared out on Thursday night as well.

I overheard several vendors complaining about the lack of foot traffic and selling items. But anytime there is rain in the forecast, vendors usually leave early or don't go. I have been hearing complaints about the Findlay show dates interfering with the Aberdeen show for several years now.

I have been going since 1990 and it is slowly shrinking each year.

Rick

[sturmtyger380]

Yep. That was me walking around in one of the G741 hats.

Got ready to drive up on Wednesday, had the M38A1 all loaded up and found out the trailer spare had a crack in the tread surface that air came pouring out. Geeze it had never been on the road and is only 4 years old. I am going to try a warranty claim on that one. So the jeep stayed home as I did not want to risk not carrying a spare. (No one in town had that size.) It would have been the only M38A1 up there to show too.

So we were there for Thursday morning and for that day there were more vendors than normal and I found some good items. I saw the M37 NOS drivers fender and decided I would save the money and work on the one I have. That tailgate did not have the reinforcements that I could see.

Friday there were a few more folks selling but not a whole lot more. By 10am the rain was there and we bugged out to the hotel, ate lunch and read some old magazines we bought, returned about 2:30pm when the rain was gone. By then some vendors has packed up and left. Others never uncovered their items again that day.

Sat we went back and it was the same folks as Friday. So we looked around awhile bought a little bit of stuff and headed back the 10 hours. But yes it is getting less, I remember all the spots full and you could spend an hour just looking at one row of stuff.

[Chris P]

The only G741 hats I saw all weekend were Sturmtyger's and mine.

I bought some nice NOS steering parts off of Milstencil. I would have liked to have bought more of what he had, but my budget was light this year. He had an NOS bridging plate that I REALLY wanted, but I just didn't have the cash. He also had a set of NOS headlights, complete with older looking bulbs with metal connectors. Elsewhere saw an NOS generator to regulator cable, which is the last piece of original wire on my truck (and it's looking grim!), but I couldn't afford to pay $125 for it.

I thought that Thursday was excellent. I saw a ton of great M37 parts, including the NOS tailgate and fender and an assortment of other smaller body parts. There were a couple of near perfect hoods and one vendor had a near perfect set of bed sides with inner fenders and a front panel. Saw a few hardtops and a number of complete wheels, including an NOS rim.

This was the year of old typewriters, must of saw a dozen of them.

A gorgeous maintenance truck was on display.

Every year a lot of the vendors leave on Friday evening, so it never seems worth it to go for just Saturday. This year when the weather seemed iffy on Friday the crowd really thinned out compared to Thursday, so many vendors decided to pack it up. It was really the costumers that made an exit before the vendors did.

Overall it was great show that was well worth the drive, and we drove over 600 miles!, but you had to be there for Thursday to make it worth while.

[Cal_Gary]

Tough break guys, especially for those who traveled a long way to the rain-out. Fortunately you have many more events to consider than we do here in the West. I've gotten very selective when it comes to these events, as none are close and some are very small aka not worthy of consideration to make a long trip. For example:
Salt lake one way to:
Lodi (Tower Park/Camp Delta Spring or Fall meet)-700 miles
Pleasanton (MVPA National)-750 miles;
Fruitland, Id (annual event)-407 miles;
Dillon, MT (annual event)-371 miles;
Gilbert, AZ (annual event)-688 miles.

There haven't been any events locally in the 6 years I've lived here; Vegas is 6 hours but rarely has anything for the HMV scene either. I can only imagine how isolated Tony feels down-under!

So in summation, it could be worse. Be thankful that you got to attend at all-I'd love to attend the Aberdeen meet one time but can't afford to make the 2100 mile trip.

Oh, thanks to all for your candid feedback! Hope it's fair weather next year for all of you!
Gary