Back to the Bricks®
January 2021 Newsletter
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Friends of Back to the Bricks® Program
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Have you wanted to be involved more with the Back To The Bricks®? Ever wanted to volunteer at any or all of our events? Well we have KICKED off an all new Volunteer program called, Friends of Back To The Bricks®.
Friends of Back To The Bricks® is a volunteer program designed to help grow our volunteer base, continue to educate our car community on history and heritage, and ensure the future of our amazing Car shows and events for the community.
Friends of Back To The Bricks® is in the infancy stage, we have BIG plans for the future, and eventually this program will be more of an exclusive club within our organization. We plan to provide exclusive discounts, freebies, opportunities to hear about our future plans, and grow our Committees and Board by selecting amazing volunteers from within this group.
If you are anyone you know loves to help, volunteer or be apart of something pretty unique, click this link and sign up today!
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The latest from the Chairman of the Board |
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Happy New Year to all of our Classic Car enthusiast community. 2020 is finally behind us and we can now focus on a very exciting new year with new events, new faces and new locations. The Back to the Bricks® committee has a lot of stored up energy to put on a full year of BttB events and can’t wait to put on the biggest Back to the Bricks® Car Show yet.
Our official first BttB event of the year will be an all new event called, Back to the Bricks® “Dust ’em Off Car Cruise.” This will be a totally free event to all Classic Cars, it will be held at the Dort Financial Center on Lapeer Road, Flint on May 23, 2021 from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Al Jones, our new Vice Chairman of the Board, will Chair this new event. We want to thank Dort Financial Credit Union for being the presenting Sponsor. Al will have more information on the Dust ’em Off Car Cruise in next month’s newsletter.
Our next event on June 4-9, 2021 will be the Promo Tour. Pete Cimbala and Rhonda Rau are Co-Chairs of this event that was canceled last year. Registration will open around the 2nd week in February for new registrations, but if you rolled over your entry fee from last year’s Promo Tour you will be notified shortly with more details, we expect this around the first week of February by email so be on the look out.
All of us are ready to get out of the house and hit the road this Spring, and Back to the Bricks® will have events every month this Summer between May and September. Watch for our Newsletter each month, Facebook post and our new website coming in mid-February.
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As always, stay safe, wear your mask and do your part. We want to all get out and have some fun this Spring!
Steve Hobson
Chairman of the Board
Back to the Bricks®
stevehobson@backtothebricks.org
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The First Official Event of the year is May 23rd,
Dust 'em Off Car Show
More details to come!
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We are excited to announce that the Rosie the Riveter Statue will be unveiled LIVE on ABC12s Facebook Page, and shared to our FB Page Friday Jan 29th at 9:30am. We hope you will tune in and watch!
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Important dates to know about!!!! |
Visionary Promo Tour
June Jun 4-9th 2021
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Tune Up Week
August 9-14th 2021
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FREE Concert
Friday August 20th 2021
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Main Event
Saturday August 21st 2021
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A more detailed Back to the Bricks(R) events calendar will be coming out on our website and social media pages soon!
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What's new with our Executive Director |
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Hey everyone!
WE DID IT!!!! We made it through 2020... WOWZA what a wild ride, what a year! When I began with Back to the Bricks® in January of 2020 I had NO idea what would unfold. I am honored to say that our Chairman of the Board Steve Hobson, the Executive Committee and Board of Directors, all the AMAZING Volunteers and Sponsors came together, made difficult decisions, but put the Health and Safety of others before the wants of our organization. Sure we WANTED to host more of our great events, we wanted to see everyone down on Saginaw Street rocking out to the tunes and seeing the fantastic cars lined up. But it just wasn't smart for us or any of our amazing car enthusiasts.
What we did do, was host Road Rally's that helped get everyone out in a safe and healthy way, practicing social distancing and still enjoying the open roads and classic cars. We absolutely plan on bringing these back this year. The feedback from these events was so positive, we know it's a staple in our seasons line up.
With that said, Steve talked about our all new event to the line up, a Kick Starter to the spring. I am super excited because this will be the first of many NEW events to our organization. We are still working on details, but hopefully I can announce TWO more new events coming down the pipeline soon. Our committees are working hard behind the scenes to make sure we have all the details right to put on these all new events.
Chairman Emeritus Al Hatch, talked about winterizing your vehicles in the last Al's Garage. I love the stories he shares and the nuggets of information I get from these articles. I can remember when I was a kid, my dad working on old Chevy Pickups in our driveway. He never had to winterize them, California offered nice weather pretty much all year round. But I have the memories of working with dad on them. Handing him the wrenches he needed, picking up the trash and running to the kitchen when he was thirsty. This winter, my daughter joined me in the pole barn to help get our truck ready for her long winters nap. It was nostalgic being there with Peyton, going over what needs to be done to the old Ford to make sure she's good to go in the Spring. Peyton helped with hooking up the trickle charge, cleaning all the windows, greasing the door jams and wiping down the truck. I was able to talk with her about why it's so important to take care of your things, especially your vehicles. With my Ford turning 40 this year, we have to take care of it. The only thing Peyton is really curious about is how the heck do you have 3 pedals in the truck when moms car only has 2. I am sure most of you got a little chuckle out of that, one day I will teach her to drive the ole 4 speed, but not too soon... I don't want her to grow up.
Well that's all for now, stay tuned into our Social Media page and make sure to give us a comment every so often. It helps keep us alive on your newsfeed.
Have a GREAT day, week and Month everyone!
Amber Taylor
Executive Director
Back to the Bricks®
Direct: 810-877-8383
ambertaylor@backtothebricks.org
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Unisex Sherpa Quarter-Zip Pullover Two Color Choices |
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NEW Winter Hat and Scarf Set Three Options |
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Sport-Tek Ladies Tech Fleece Colorblock Full-Zip Hooded Jacket Two Color Options, Also Available in Mens |
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This month's Newsletter WINNER is:
Mic Ybarra of Davison Michigan
Congratulations on winning!
This month's special prize is a Back to the Bricks Hat, and Collectors Shirt!
You will receive an email with more details!
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Al’s Garage
Vol. #2, Issue #1
It is now 2021 and let us all hope that this year will be 100% better then 2020! Have you been spending any time in your garages working on the winter car projects? Like a lot of you, I have spending time in the garage taking care of a multitude of small projects. No major projects but a lot of long over do projects. Before I get into some of them, I would like to discuss garage safety.
If you remember, in the previous two editions of ‘Al’s Garage’, I wrote about how my buffing wheel had ‘got me’ a couple of times. A good friend of mine, Don, was showing us a pair of safety glasses that had a broken lens. Obviously, we questioned him how the lens got broken. He proceeded to tell us that he was removing the spot welds on a body panel of a pickup truck that he owns. Using a special bit to remove the spot welds was going along fine until the bit snap in two. The part of the bit that broke off hit Don’s safety glass lens square on. The flying piece of metal shattered the lens, but it remained intact ultimately protecting Don’s eye. The moral of the story here is obvious and brings us all back to ‘garage safety’. There is a reason for safety glass, protective gloves, face mask to include not only dust mask but paint approved face masks, protective clothing, jack stands and more. I suspect many of you have similar stories to tell and hopefully most of them saved you from personal injury.
Now for the ‘car projects. Years ago (about four years ago) we had taken the ’33 Auburn to the ‘Spring Auburn Warm-Up’ meet. On brief tour to the countryside for dinner under a covered bridge, I flooded the Auburn. Having several ‘experts’ gathered around the car it was suggested to remove the spark plugs and clean them. That was easy enough to do so we proceeded to remove them. Upon reinstalling the plugs one of them was cross threaded back into the head (and not by yours truly!). The car ran fine but it did bother me that it was not installed properly. Well, this was one of the winter projects to be corrected. I tried to remove the plug and it would not budge. Not even with using a breaker bar! I tried using my battery powered cordless impact and still no luck. Ah, my compressor was on, I got my air impact tool out, crank up the air pressure to 150 psi, and walla, the plug came out! Unfortunately, it was only the top part of the plug with the threaded part of the spark plug still in the head! Well, let us see what and easy-out would do. No luck there either. How about heating up the head with a set of torches? Same results the threaded body of the spark plug would not budge. How about the use of an air chisel? Well, it did finally start to move but the wrong way and the threaded part of the spark plug fell into the compression chamber. No problem, right? Wrong! We could not remove the part with a magnet. The result was to drain the radiator, remove the head, order a new head gasket, purchase a 7/8-20 tap and I am now back in business. So, what is the moral of this story? I guess it is anybody’s guess, and this is just the way the dice rolls and not every time is a winner.
Keep plugging away on the winter projects as spring will be here before we know it. Stay safe and when you are out in your garage.
Keep on rollin’
Al Hatch
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