President's After Run Report - Sunday 16 February 2014
MR2's are hot cars and the weather on the Run yesterday (heat and humidity) was a direct match.
Although everything on my AW11 works as it should, I now know what past writers meant when they have described the air-conditioning on the 1989 S/C model as either "just adequate", or "detuned by Toyota to get better performance from the 4AGZE engine". With the outside temperature over 40 degrees C in spots, I was glad we had chosen not to have a long Run to start the year off.
Not everyone on the Run had their A/C working, as is sometimes the case when major engine performance mods are carried out on SW20's, so at the farewell point of the Yamanto Golden Arches it was obvious that in the best spirit of The Biggest Loser a number of kilos had been shed since the start . The red ones certainly looked the hottest, in more ways than one.
While its also great to have all three models represented on Runs, the comment from the Spyder owners about having the top down with the aircon going to cool their feet had more than a few envious people thinking about trade-ins. If only I could fit in one and there was space to take a change of underwear for overnight stops.
Thanks to everyone who came on what was a very hot day. Danny also rates a special mention for helping out with supplying some new 5 Watt 80 channel radios, although we did find out that backwards compatibility is a problem with these so-called split frequency models. Its incredible what can be packed into a hand-held format and the range gain you get with 5 Watts and a better antenna.
The next Run, on which we are going to hold our postponed AGM, is on Sunday the 16th of March, so please mark this date in your diaries. A reminder too that all the proposed Run dates for the year are on the sticky at the top of this Forum page.
During discussions yesterday a couple of suggestions were made about start times, destinations, etc; and we will be examining these over the next few weeks with a view to improving the experience.
Hope to see everyone, including some of the new Forum members, on the next Run.
Walter