Camfest story as told by a satisfied customer.........

[Bizzy]

Way to go Kirk & Chris! thumb

February 04, 2004

In Real Life: Camfest!

The Taurus has been Ford's bread and butter car for a long time. And though it made Ford's stockholders very happy, drivers know that "bread and butter" is just about how spicy the Taurus is. By comparison, the Camry actually is exciting. So after a little while, Ford gave their performance folks a chance to show what they could do with the platform, and the result was the Taurus SHO.

According to Ford, SHO stands for Super High Output. Others say if stands for "Same Homely Outside" or "Several Hideous Ovals", both of which are partly true. There's a bigger front air dam and a spoiler on the trunk, plus lower profile tires (225/55/16) and big honkin' brake rotors, but mostly the SHO is a stealth vehicle ("Who, me, officer? A Taurus can't do that") with a very discreet "SHO" on the trunk if you look closely enough. And if you hated the 1996-1999 Taurus "oval" design, the SHO didn't improve it much (me, I kinda liked it).

Some say it stands for "Surprise Hyundaes Only" but that's a lie, and we have the silhouettes of a dozen 300M's and Camaros and ricers stenciled on our fender to prove it.

Ford has shown a persistent inability over the years to sell performance cars. Spoiling their performance marques by letting them get fat and sluggish like they've done a number of times hasn't helped. But every now and then Ford forgets they're a giant, bloated corporation and puts out some cars that say, "See, we could have made them all this good." It isn't long before the bean counters (who live in mortal dread that, despite their best efforts, someone, somewhere might be having fun) seize power again, and Ford goes back to being a typical corporation. A lucky few of us caught the suits napping, made it past Ford's brain-dead marketing, and got ourselves a SHO.

The 1996-1999 version had a 32-valve Ford/Yamaha 3.4 liter V8 engine making 235 BHP and 230 pound feet, rev limited at 6900 for the sake of the accessories. If that isn't quite as impressive as it once was, this is: ZF rack and pinion steering, same as on the Ferrari Maranello, and believe me, it spoils you for everything else. The SHO is a joy on the twisties, and as a highway cruiser it's a dream. Because of the torque curve, it was born to do a quick 60 to 80 squirt to put annoying traffic effortlessly in the rear-view. The only negative is that the speed where I find a pleasant groove is viewed with alarm by law enforcement officers.

Or, rather, it would be the only negative thing if it weren't for the camshafts: the camshaft sprockets are basically pushed hard into place, and the only thing that keeps them from slipping and inviting a valve and a piston to become better acquainted is happy thoughts. On some cars, after about 65,000 miles the happy thoughts run out. Replacement engines cost $13,000. They've stopped making them. If you've got Ford's extended service package, they look at the value of the car ($5,000-$7,000), the cost of the engine, and say to heck with it and total the car. Remember, they are an insurance company, and expecting an insurance company not to act like weasels is like expecting Beyonce to sing the Queen of the Night's aria.

And so it came to pass that people who still loved the car and didn't want to sell it but didn't want to wait for their turn with the fickle finger of fate began to take matters into their own hands. Some folks pinned the cam sprockets, others welded them. Ford recommends Loctite, which is just typical. Kirk Doucette, President of the North East SHO Club has turned cam welding into a fine art, adding new plugs (not cheap: the engine is in there pretty snug), a thorough cleaning, new gaskets, O-rings, and thermal insulation of the rear wiring harness. He's done 250 of them.

And Kirk and Chris said, "Behold, for we visit Nashville and we shall lay hands upon the SHOs and anoint them with welding rod and the sign of our coming shall be 'camfest'". And they said again, "And verily our prophet Rick shall make straight the highway before us. Rev. Bob, thou shalt gather unto thy bosom thy second born son, Robert, and thou shalt attend unto us in the City of Music". And we were all, like, "We're there, dude!"

We arrived in Nashville a little early – I'd found the aforementioned groove and it didn't start to rain in earnest until we were well inside the outskirts. Rick Glass was there to meet us. He'd showed up early just in case, and stood out in the rain to direct us where to park. We hung out for a while at Short Cut Auto, a little 2-bay garage. Robert was looking at the mechanic who was putting the tranny in Rick's SHO and who pretty obviously hadn't done that before, and he was thinking about how to tell me that maybe we'd made a bad choice. Nil desperandum, Rick has borrowed the garage for after hours, and the masters hadn't arrived yet.

We stopped off at Rick's house to play with his dogs (one of whom had chewed something, but he confessed) and wait for his kids to get home from school, and we delivered them to their grandma's (the kids, not the dogs). We arrived back at the shop, and before long up came Kirk and Chris. Kirk (who looked at the underside of Rick's SHO on the rack like it was his face in the mirror) gestured at the transmission and the connectors joined themselves together out of sheer respect. We hauled Rick's car down and pushed it outside, and Chris started to sweep.

Chris swept that side of the garage until you could eat off the floor. He wiped the grease off the air hoses. He laid out his tools and materials like they were surgical instruments. He glanced over in my direction, and I began to wonder whether I was dressed well enough to stay inside that garage. Kirk whispered to him, "He's the customer, Chris." Chris shook his head and sighed. He wiped the water and dirt off Black Beauty (my '99 SHO) discarding paper towels until the towels came off the car clean. He opened the hood, attached a bib to the front of BB (after satisfying himself that the bib was clean enough), and Kirk made the initial incision.

After a while, our stomachs started growling, and Rick took me and Robert off to Fat (Somebody)'s, a little drive-through hamburger stand where we discovered that the big size burger really was too big, no matter how hungry we were at the time. We returned to find Chris cleaning out the intake manifolds, which activity would consume a case of solvent spray, several sets of rubber gloves and countless lint-free towels. As we ate, Chris made sure none of the crumbs fell in his side of the garage.

About this time Kirk got his welding tools out. And before long, we heard the crackle of cams and sprockets being joined together, and what Kirk hath joined together let no man cast asunder. With grave misgivings, Kirk and Chris allowed us into their side of the garage long enough to gaze upon the welds, and they were beautiful. They'd hauled off a front wheel and turned the wheel so as to position the cams at 120 degrees and then 240 degrees, three welds. That operation was on the far side of the car from where I was sitting, but the way I could tell they'd done something with the wheel was that three of my wheels looked the way they usually looked, and one was cleaner than it had ever been.

Then Kirk started on the extra things: the plugs; the way the wires to the injectors were laid out and then set with a little bit of Loctite so that if you put the car in a paint shaker, those wires wouldn't flex a millimeter; the half conduit to keep the rear harness off the exhaust manifold. Kirk discovered one of the bolts on my throttle linkage had come off, so he replaced it (with an identical Ford bolt to what had been on there, which he'd brought along, just in case).

At this point, Kirk was eating the pizza Rick had ordered and Chris was closing up, putting the appearance cover on (I don't have to tell you what he did to the cover before he put it back on, do I?). And finally, he stood in front of the hood and looked, and I could see the tape playing in his mind, checking that everything was back where it should have been. And sure enough, he discovered a couple of little black pieces that covered something up were missing, searched for them on the bench, and found and installed them.

I have never had the knowledge of a single car I've owned that was as thorough as Chris's and Kirk's. And to have that kind of knowledge of a whole line of cars just amazes me. I had watched two masters perform, and it was exactly the same feeling I got from watching Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax in concert.

At this point I got a little blurry, having hit the wall (I evidently wasn't quite over that bug that had put me down all last week), and I left a lot earlier than I'd wanted to, and snoozed most of the way home while Robert drove. Kirk and Chris's performance had been a little longer than Yo-Yo's and Manny's, but not by much: Chris started to sweep at 4:00, and by 9:00 we were on the road headed home.

Just as Kirk had predicted, by the time we got back to Decatur the car was running better than ever. There had been an area around the middle of the torque curve where it was a little rough and a little weak, and whether it was the new plugs or the cleaning, I don't know, but it's smoother and stronger. And the inappropriate upshift we'd occasionally get driving around town is but a fading memory.

My only regret was in crapping out too early to enjoy the rest of the evening, because I'd intended to stay on a while, especially after all the kindness Rick showed us. The job was immaculate, supremely competent, and it was a joy talking with three fellow SHO owners and admirers. I may come to the next camfest just to hang out, and I promise I'll dress better.

Posted by revbob at February 4, 2004 05:47 PM