The Wheels of Tron or "Oozing Guilt out of Every Pore"

[W1RC]

We all know that The Timtron's vehicles are very unique and distinctive, to say the least.   Here are some photos of a few of the more memorable rides he has owned over the years.

The "Little Red Pinto", aka the "Pinto Valdez", so named because it left an oil slick wherever it went.

Then there's the famous "Cadaverlac", a 1972 Cadillac hearse he found while installing a shortwave transmitter in "Throw-upton", Kentucky.  Unfortunately these days the "Cadaverlac" is off the road due to mechanical issues.  It needs work.  Hopefully one day these matters will be attended to and you may see the Cadaverlac once again at Deerfield in all its glory.

This is the famous Chevy "No-Va".  Tim inherited it from his mother in 1995.  It's a South Carolina car so it had no rust on it when Tim got it.  It's still on the road almost twenty years after he got it. This picture was taken at Hosstraders at Hopkinton NH about ten years ago.


Another view of the "No-Va" at Boxborough MA August 2000.  Yes, that's Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, checking it out.

For many years Tim's vehicles were mechanically challenged and would not pass the Maine state safety inspection.  Tim became very adept at sticker transplant technology using what he was able to find on windshields on wrecks at Folsom's junk yard.  However one year he was unable to find one but happened to spot a piece of cardboard the exact color for that year?  The rest is history.

There's a wonderful story about this sticker and a good friend of mine who was a Maine State Trooper and worked at the Troop C barracks in Skowtown.  Keith is a badge collector buddy and also a short-wave listener; quite the fan of da Tron.  One time when I was visiting Tim he met me at a local restaurant for breakfast.  He seemed quite agitated.  "Errrrr, I nearly had a run-in with the State Police", he exclaimed.  "I was driving along the back road and out of nowhere there was a State Trooper right on my ass.  When I was stopped at the light he was right behind me and I was sure he was going to pull me over.  When the light finally changed I went straight and the Trooper turned left. Phew!"

Later I went over to the barracks to visit Keith who was the administrative trooper and pretty much always there and available for a visit.  "What kind of car does your friend Timmy drive?" he inquired.  When I told him it was a little red Pinto he laughed and said: "I was driving into work this morning and all of a sudden this red Pinto came out of a side road and cut right in front of me; darned near hit him.  It was obvious he didn't see me at first but when he did he slammed on his brakes and I nearly ran into him again.  He was oozing guilt out of every pore of his body.  I had my hand on the switch that turns on the flashing lights to pull him over. When I saw that big antenna on the roof I figured it must be Tim so I let him go".

Lucky he didn't because had he stopped Tim and seen the hand-drawn sticker it might not have been too good for the Tron.  Police discretion can just go so far........

Well I guess the statute of limitations on counterfeiting in Maine must have run out on this one so it's okay to tell the story now.

[/center]Here he is singing "I'm a Piss-Weak Little Mobile".
http://forum.near-fest.com/mm/Multimedia/pissweak.mp3

Gotta love it.

73,

MrMike, W1RC

[N1BCG]

LOL! Double ++ FB on the pix and stories!

Now we need to encourage Tim to start making instructional videos for posterity (posterior?). Imagine the lasting value to JNs for generations to come of a "Rig De-Hyellifications Made Easy" box set featuring all the popular boatanchors including Rangers, Valiants, Apaches, and more!

Each video would contain details on which condentures to yank out along with drilling and blasting tips to make room for all kinds of more scroteful components for greater outpoot.

An indispensable resource from the Timtron Institute of Technology!

[VE3LYX]

Not too bad a singer for an old fart!
don

[K1JJ]

heheheh.... that's quite the homebrew sticker.

A coupla stories:   Back around '95 a bunch of us took a ride in the Cadaverlac  out to the Rotchester  Hamfest. Tron had a homebrew plate modulated 813 rig in the back.  People were giving us smiles and thumbs-up all along the way on the NY Thruway. Some would pass, slow down, let us pass -  just to be sure what they were seeing.

We stopped at a HJ's and an excited lady came over to axe Tim if he was one of those tornado chasers.

That night a bunch of us went out to an Indian restaurant.  Tron was dead tired and fell asleep just as the Indian waiter axed him for his order. Tron didn't respond and started to snore. I told the waiter that this was the famous Guru Trogladite in a meditative trance - not to disturb him until later.

That night we got back to the Piss Weak Hotel - Sinan's house high on a hill overlooking Syracuse below. It was about 1AM. Tron fired up his Thunderbolt amp on the CB band and we proceeded to terrorize the city of Syracuse. Tron had a blazing signal. We were all pretty drunk and posed as a bunch of thugs broken down in the center of town with a flat tire. We were axing if anyone could come on down and give us some help changing a tire. The channels became dead silent as we staggered into each local group. It was a scream.

The next day, Sinan was mowing the lawn and complained about Tron sometimes leaving antenna wire in the yard, so he had to be careful mowing. We ran into Tron later and told him Sinan's tractor got caught up in some wire and snapped the crankshaft - and he was very pissed. Tron turned white for a minute until we let on it was just a joke.

Another time:  Tron was visiting my QTH with the Vega. (big antenna, etc)  I was following him on Rt 2 here in CT.  There was  a slight traffic jam ahead and they were letting cars thru one at a time. Big bunch of police and fire dept guys. Tron was about 300 miles from home.  As we crept thru the police and fire bottleneck suddenly there was a lot of yelling and screaming. A bunch of the fire guys started yelling "Hey TimTron!!" and waving.   I was shocked.  Evidently some must have been radio enthusiasts  and recognized his car.

The folklore goes on and on.

T

[WBear2GCR]

WHEELS OF TRON
COMING THIS SPRING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

STARRING

JOHNNY DEPP as THE TRON

[KB2WIG]

I usda drive a Jeep CJ5.  I was poor. In the winter, when in need, I would clean off the headlights, tail lights and sometime the windshield with the miracle elixir.  Then one day, while listening to 75m, Tim expounded on how he sometime would cleansed his windshield.

I felt a spiritual one-ness as Karma worked her spell.


klc

[W6TOM]

  Good stories, sounds like a real character!!

  In he early 90's I had a mobile radio repair route, my territory was all the coastal counties from San Francisco to the northern end of Santa Barbara County, 250 miles give or take. I had a white Ford van, with LOTS of antennas on the roof plus a few ham too, I was a real road warrior.

  One day I pulled into a gas station in the Bay Area, this guy that worked there really started to give my van a close look. Then he made a comment in a very heavy heavy Eastern European accent, "you CIA ??", staring at the antennas.

  In a very low voice I said, "No, don't tell anyone, I'm KGB". The look was priceless!!

[VE3LYX]

I can see it now. W6KGB
don

[n1exi]

timmy showed up at my qth with a friend - forgot her name but his vehicle attracted a lot of attention at 1 am!
greg - n1exi

[Dave KA2J]

Here's another picture of the "No-Va" at the rainy 2003 Rochester Hamfest.

[KA0HCP]

Heckuva load coil!

[AJ1G]

I am about 99 % certain that the picture of the red
Pinto Valdeez was taken by me at Deerfield in the early 90s.  It looked very much as I remembered one I took back then. I didn't have it in my digital picture files and never posted it myself to the Internet. I remembered that my son Dave had scanned the original print photo a long time ago and asked him to send me a copy.  Sure enough, except for some vertical cropping on the picture Mike posted it was exactly the same in terms of the shot angle based on alignment of points on the car to features on the building wall and the reflections of the overhead wires in the hatchback glass.  While we were up at Dave's today he remembered that he may have included it on a web page he put up back in college in 1999 that featured various cars, mainly his.  He was able to use an internet archive server to pull up the web page from back then which was posted on a now defunct ISP.  The link to the picture was broken but the title describing it as belonging to Tim was on the site.  Curious where you found it MrMike...a Google search for Pinto Valdeez turned it up on a similar posting you made on the Near-Fest forum back in 2013, but nothing any older. Just goes to show you that things you post to the net usually never go away!

[Steve - K4HX]

The Not Fast and Not Furious

Tron stopped off for a night at my place when I lived in Baltimore. This was right after he had received the Toyota from his mother. He was either on his way or returning from South Carolina.It was right before Christmas. I talked him into my QTH on 75 meters! No 2M repeaters needed.

The first time I ever met Tron, he was returning from Kentucky after working on a SW transmitter there. He has driving a Pontiac (aka Poontiac) Le Mans (or similar) of early 70s vintage. The back seat was removed and that area and the trunk were loaded with radios and parts, including some big transformers. Those poor springs!

Then there was the time two other AMers where coming to stay at my place prior to the Timonium hamfest. The passenger side door opened on the F-150 pickup and out rolled about 5 beer cans - CLANG CLANG on the side walk. My neighbors were not pleased as this was about midnight.

[W3RSW]

The first time I met da'Tron in person (and many of you characters for that matter  )  was at one of the Gathersburg fests; you remember, the full fairgrounds with wall to wall surplus gear and just as surplus hams.  I think it was the year when the modified BC610 was the AM rig of choice. Dave's ?

Steve, I think your Amwindow still has links to the festivities. It was a couple of years or so before the pig year, or was it? Fuzzy logic fails me.

Anyway Tim arrived with much fanfare in the Cadaverlac with the 813 rig right behind the front seat.
His  833 (?) P'..Oleen "still" was much admired and reverently brought out at midnight alomg with the other implements of ceremony, chiefly the bucket of Rocks, all of course broadcast to a grateful nation.

[Steve - K4HX]

That sounds like 1998, Rick. That was the last year for the BIG FARFest at Gburg. Those were the days - 10,000 or more attending and a huge number of vendors and tailgaters.

http://amwindow.org/pix/htm/gburg98.htm

[W3GMS]

That sounds like 1998, Rick. That was the last year for the BIG FARFest at Gburg. Those were the days - 10,000 or more attending and a huge number of vendors and tailgaters.

http://amwindow.org/pix/htm/gburg98.htm

Steve,

I can't open the attachment.  It says I need a plugin.  I did down load Quicktime so not sure what the problem is. 

Joe GMS

[W3RSW]

Oh yeah! That was definitely it.
Mucho thanks HUZman.
 Quick time works on ASRock Atom 330 but not my iPad.
I see The BC-610 gets top billing for the first third of the vid.

I never attended Gathersburg, Timmonium or Howard Co. without several
liter cans of Fosters brought along.  Everyone got at least one.
Then there was the year at Ho. Co. where I got really tired went to bed and left a whole case on the ground for everyone.  Got up next am early for a woods call and darned if the whole case wasn't sitting there, still unopened.
"We thought you were saving them," so the miscreants chorused.  Now that's trust and honesty from quarters least expected.  Buds forever.

Taking a cue from JN, I handed out cigars a couple of years, but no one, virtually no one will beat JN's 2003 Cubans. He should have an easier time getting them now.  Every so often I put up pix of Cuban time at Howard Co. You guys must have them duped and memorized by now.