Inliners International Forums General Discussion Bench racing Vision Statement

Some will say that I have posted this in the wrong section. My reason for doing so is that more than Inliner members will see it. I have asked both Rich Swick and Tom Lowe to write their vision statement. They will also post them here.

PRESIDENT’S VISION

I’m honored to accept the position of President of Inliners International. I feel strongly that Inliners International is a GREAT Club. There is a valuable history that we cannot afford to lose along with experience and knowledge that should be shared with future generations. I will try to be a “Leader” from the front and not from behind. There will be problems, but I believe that you handle them when they are small and manageable and don’t let them become big and unmanageable. If we want the Club to survive, it is imperative that we reach out to past, current and future generations. All car clubs are facing this dilemma. This can only be accomplished by embracing technology. That doesn’t mean that there is no place for “traditionalists,” those with a love of classic inline 6s from years past, it simply means that we need to encompass all inline engines, both vintage and modern. I believe that one of the most valuable tools will be through the internet. I have personally noticed an increase of individuals with inline engines, yet they don’t realize that our Club exists. They are unaware of the valuable experience, knowledge and networking available to them.

Following is a list of items that I want to accomplish during the first year of my term:

• My top priority as President of Inliners International will be to address our financial status and to get the finances under control. This will be accomplished primarily by cutting costs in publishing “The 12 Port News,” our largest expense, and by generating revenue through advertising, merchandise sales and other means.

• My next priority is getting the website up and running as soon as possible.

• Communication is the strength of any organization. Implementing regular meetings with the Club Officers will happen, as well as personal contact by me with ALL of the Chapter Heads.

• Increasing membership to the Club MUST happen. We need to increase the awareness of the Club to a wider audience, enticing both former members to return and new car enthusiasts to join the Club.

• Consideration will be given to “restructuring” the Club to more effectively meet the modern-day challenges that we face.

I welcome any comments or recommendations. If I can accomplish the above goals over the next year with the help of EVERYBODY, we would have really accomplished something. AND I KNOW WE CAN IF WE WORK TOGETHER. I repeat, this is a GREAT Club. Karen and I have met many great and interesting people, both nationally and internationally, and many have become good friends.

Luke Lucas

Congratulations Luke! You have your work cut out for you, I wish you luck. As a vote of confidence I'll be sending my membership application and dues very soon. I will also sponsor/pay for at least one new member. Is that address the same?

Thank you for posting this here. There was no post here about the convention, no news, no pictures. No interest? I hope this site will become important again. I hope there is much discussion about where we are heading. Tom

I appreciate your vision moving forward! One of the things I loved about this group when I first joined was the willingness to help each other out, and a lot of positive support. I sent my check in to Linda today to reactivate my membership.
Dave Ekse

Greetings ,

My name is Rich Swick and I am currently the Chapter Head for the Arizona Chapter.I will be taking over the duties as the clubs new Merchandise Coordinator this July. I wanted to let you know we will still offer most of the current club merchandise as well as expand to give club members a few more options as far as T-shirts,hoodies jackets, decals, etc. I will also be working on a product line for the ladies including shirts and visors.

What I would like to see is the club have a more Professional and unified look as we head closer to our 40th year as a club. With that, we will be working on crew style shirts for the Officers and Chapter Heads . Other ideas include shirts featuring cars from the Club's Founders and others who were and are an important part of the clubs heritage. If anyone has ideas or things they would like to possibly see as club merchandise please feel free to contact me.
I know my post here is not as long as Lukes' post, and I would like to say I look forward to working with Luke and Tom to move the Club forward. Rich

Hello,
I am Tom Lowe and will be the Advertising Coordinator starting in July.
Will be reviewing the many avenues to help generate income for the club.
There are ads in the 12port, some from members and non members. Some from small business and large business. More larger companies could advertise with Inliners and gain business from the membership. I will make use of the new website to try and gain more ad sales.
We all know or have contacts that could use Inliners to advertise and gain sales. We need to all work together to generate these leads. Feel free to pass them over to tom@12bolt.com.
With the incoming team of Luke, Rich and myself mixed in with the existing team, we should get off to a good start. Let’s get this snow ball rolling down the hill and watch it grow.

I frequent a site called Rusty Bowties. It is smaller than here but there is a lady there that does prining,shirts cozies, calendars, etc. The quality is great. She does custom shirts with members' cars and the site logo. It would be worth looking into.
Tamara Morrison Graphics

Thank you! Tom, Rich and I being new to these position all have positive attitudes and will striving to make our Club successful. The address for the membership renewal is Linda Henry,6558 Red Hill Road, Boulder, CO 80303

Thank you for your support.

Congratulations and good luck Luke. As I pondered what changes are needed one thing has always been at the back of my mind. That is the preferential treatment still being given to the Chevy / GM marques over any and all other brands. While it may not be intentional and there will be those who argue that we already embrace and welcome all makes let me point out a couple of glaring examples of how there is still residual favoritism shown.

Got a list of Hall of Famers handy? Look at it and pick out one person on there who was not a GM Guy. Nope - not one in all these years. C'mon, there has to be one noteworthy person who isn't a Chev / GM guy. And that also brings to mind another question - why all guys? Not a single woman worthy of recognition? Ever hear of two-time IHRA World Modified Champ Ann Peto?

'Nother example? This website has a "Engines" Forum. But all the other marques are relegated to their own niche forum, be it topics of engines, chassis, or whatever. There is no parallelism -of-thought here. If I post a question about a 250 ci six in "Engines" it is assumed by the readership that I am speaking about a Chevy 250. While it may seem like a petty thing that the forum is biased toward GM/Chevy imagine if the "Engines" forum was for Jeep, or Hudson, or Jaguar, or whatever.

OK, end of rant. Good luck to all the officers, new and incumbents.

Beater,thanks for the info. I will check it out.Also have been talking to a local shop that has done shirts for a couple of the different racer reunions around here.

All done by privileged old white guys. They are not capable of seeing their prejudice and therefore can not do anything fairly.

Rich, I got an email from Tamara. She is the whole deal website and graphics. She checked out our website and seems to be interested. I don't know how involved she is with the Rusty Bowtie site beyond the merchandise or how expensive she is, but check it out. Tom

Rusty Bowtie

Congratulations Luke and thanks for stepping up to lead. You’ve made quite the list for your first term. Let me know how I can help especially on item 2 - the website. You'll find me a big fan of evolution versus revolution . . . for example, we have had a new website 'in the works' for some time now . . . but that's no reason for not maintaining our current home page which remains unchanged since early '14.

regards,
Keith

Grag,
As you may know the founders of this Club where all GM guys and therefore the Club was for them and like minded people. It wasn't until later that they welcome ALL those interested in "Inlines" engines to join them. I took a quick look at the 2017 Club Roster and it is hard to find many members who are not GM people and I can understand why they might assume you are talking about a 250 Chevy and not 250 Fords.

I can understand your frustration. Because you bring up some good points and we would want to include all "Inliners", I'm inviting you to jumping in and helps us correct these problem as you see them. We certainly could use your insight and knowledge.

While I'm asking, how about becoming the Michigan Chapter Leader? We need someone to fill that vacant position. You are a very busy person this I know. But, it has been my experience if you ask a busy person to help they will and do a great job, I hope you will accept my invitation to fill this position.

Luke Lucas

FTF,
I had nominated Mike the year he passed for the Hall of Fame. He was a member for a few years and one of the people who wanted to start a chapter here in Arizona. I think the 17 years he was involved in the hobby his contributions were significant especially to the inline Ford community. I would also like to see "Gramps" on the list aswell and many others. I have a large contigent of Ford folk as inliner friends and those who are members of my chapter. For the Mopar contigent Doug Dutra should be considered aswell.

At one point I sent a letter into the 12PN with a list of potential nominees and wrote a paragraph about each one.
No reply
nada
crickets

Thanks Luke. I plan to continue my Inliners International role as the National Tech Advisor for the Ford 240 / 300 Engines, but I cannot and do not have enough time to devote to pulling together a Michigan chapter.

And long time Inliners International and nationally prominent racer and innovator Jerry Arnold also comes to mind. Too bad his election would now have to be done posthumously.

http://www.mmshof.org/inductees/jerry-arnold/


The list is long...

Sorry for taking this post O/T. It would be a good idea to start a separate Forum for Hall of Fame inductee nominees. That way folks could post a little blurb about their nominee and everyone who reads this website (hopefully that would include those responsible for picking the inductee) could digest the info in each nominee's bio. And let's not make non-GM inductees a niche sub-set. How 'bout it moderators?

Greg, all are good points, but unfortunately the high performance industry is still heavily biased toward the awesome Bowtie.LOL. As has been pointed out, there are many other notable standouts with outstanding credentials in other brands, while it seems people with lesser accolades in the Bowtie camps get more praise. Like bias and prejudice in other groups, it takes time for those barriers to be overcome. When it comes to a vote, some decision makers simply aren't going to vote anyway but Chevy orange, regardless of what the candidate has done or accomplished. Of all the people in the Club that have the voting capability, how many are actually Ford Guys? Just Rich....probably against 30 or 40 voters that are Chevy guys. That's only ever going to have one outcome.

Also, this is going to make some people mad, so I'm warning you in advance. Since the Hall of Fame honor is a Club Title, it is only worthy of someone in the Club to receive it. If you look back at all the 30+ past Hall of Fame recipients, the one thing 99% of them have in common is they also were supporters of the Club as members or had other duties in the Club. So why would you give someone that doesn't support the Club the privilege or honor of such a title like this? That same logic would say that someone that isn't a Club member could be the Club President, or a Club Officer. Club membership should be a mandatory requirement for this honor just like it is for any other Club Title. Also, ask any Hall of Fame member what they think of electing someone from outside the Club with this honor. It would be a slap in their face for those that have actually equity in the Club as far as being a supporter and have membership.

See, told ya' you'd get mad....LOL

Nope.
I'm not mad.
As a matter of fact when I submitted my original letter of nominees I asked that very question, Are y'all looking for somebody INSIDE Inliners or Prominent in the inliner world in general? I mentioned I never heard back on my query / nominations, but a couple years later in the 12PN it was clarified that members would be eligible. That still leaves a lot of wiggle room. Current members? Past members? Members who had their membership purchased by someone just so that guy would be eligible for HoF? And what about deceased members, like the aforementioned Mr. Arnold (R.I.P. Jerry)?

As far as the aftermarket industry being tainted orange, let's just agree to disagree on that one. If 12 port heads, split exhaust manifolds, fuel injection and the like were avaliable from the factory like the big Ford six there would not be a greater need for the aftermarket bowtie stuff. Example: I know bunches of guys who are currently taking the lower half of our EFI intake, adding a plenum and their choice of carb(s) for a home built project. They don't need no aftermarket intakes.

Hall of Fame recommendations were requested in the last two issues of the 12 Port News. Any member can recommend someone. They are then voted on by the Officers and Chapter Heads.
At this point, there are three nominations. Traditionally, two are installed at the Convention.

Will Willis

OK. I would like to announce my two nominees for the Inliners International Hall of Fame.

here

Unfortunately, both have passed away recently so I am recommending them posthumously.

Jerry Arnold
http://www.mmshof.org/inductees/jerry-arnold/
And that's just his racing accomplishments. He also ran a very successful head porting business.

Mike [sorry - forgot his last name] of Phoenix AZ,
who was the Founder of Classic Inlines and developed and marketed parts for the Ford 144, 170, 200, 250 inlines. NOTE: nln6pinto may have already nominated him. If so consider this a "seconding".

Thank you Will and Luke for your consideration.

FTF
Mike Winterboer #5716
I would like to renominate Mike for the Inliners Hall of Fame.Mike Was on the old Clifford Performance Bulletin Board and thats where I met him and another local inline six guy. IIRC a few people had disagreements with those running the BB and decided to start thier own BB. Mike had just had 200 rebuilt and had a cam gear leterally come apart in pieces during break-in. He asked on the BB if there were others having the same issue and if there was a better alternative. Someone had posted about the double roller timing chains they had down in Austrailia. Mike started a group buy and he then started asking about other parts shortly afterward he was importing headers, timing chains,balancers 250 -2V heads and things took off from there and FordSix performance was born. MIke strived to learn all he could about cams, carbs etc. had multiple chassis dyno sessions with customers cars and various set ups and documented the information to share with others. His biggest accomplishments had to be developing a new cylinderhead based off the Aussie 250-2V head and intake for the small sixes, and showing people that having a six wasn't a bad thing He also eventually took over Fordsix.com when the original owner stepped down. Mikes' hard work was appreciatted by many and he was making a name for himself in the Aftermarket Industry as he would have people referred to him by other companies when they were asked about parts for the Ford six. In one magazine article about performance mods for the small six he ws even refered to as "Thee GodFather of the Ford Six." Mike had and still has a following of Ford Inliners and thru him have made some great friends and we are still "Keepin' it Inline"

Thanks for filling in my lacking and erroneous details about Mike.

Rich, if what you also said previously about Mike being a legit Inliner club member, then I definitely would cast a vote for him for the Hall Of Fame, given all that you just included. I still think it should only be open to actual Inliner club members, that also participate in the club and promote and support it. Trying to pay for someone to be a member in an attempt to have someone of notoriety become a HoF inductee for the purpose of having your favorite brand represented is just lame.

It is lame regardless of the motive.

Well, its a club. Its a club honor and title, and should only go to people in the club. Not that there are not many well deserving people that represent all brands that could be selected. But I feel that we as a club are an exclusive bunch, and can select many from within our own ranks that deserve the title since we know them and they know us and it makes the choice more personal to everyone within our group. I also agree that we need more brands represented in the HoF. I definitely give a vote and thumbs up for Mike Winterboer. Hope I spelled it right.

Greg-

Would you condense the information on Jerry Arnold for me please? I'm not sure what would be the most important parts of his bio.

Please send me an email with it.

Thanks

Will Willis

Here is a letter I recieved today from some friends in Tucson about Mike.Not trying to side step this thread ,Hoping Will can post the the nominees for this years Hall of Fame inductees in a new thread.
Mr. Inline
Mike Winterboer
1952-2105
Mike Winterboer was a visionary and innovator of Ford classic inline 6 performance. His mission
began with a broken timing chain in his 1967 mustang coupe. He found it extremely difficult to
find replacement performance parts. He could only find parts from Australia, so he decided to
find a way to make it more convenient for other inline 6 enthusiasts who dared to be different by
keeping the 6 rather than taking the easy route and converting to a V8. He knew there was
potential to develop the six into a performance motor and there were those out there that shared
his interest.
Mike began distributing the parts he was able to obtain from Australia and the US. Through
much research he was able to design and begin manufacturing of an aftermarket aluminum
head and intake to replace the iron integral log head. He developed a network of enthusiasts to
test and refine his new products. Since the release of the classic inline heads, intakes, valve
covers, DUI distributors, exhaust headers, and various other custom aftermarket parts, inline
enthusiasts have had a reliable market to upgrade their inline six motors. Mike’s innovation has
assisted NA inliners to achieve V8 performance on the street as well as progression to
>400rwhp in turbocharged 250s to race down the dragstrip or to rip up the autocross!
Unfortunately, Mike succumbed to pancreatic cancer in March 2015. A living memorial prior to
his passing was held with his family and closest inline friends in attendance with the promise to
carry on his legacy. In his passing the inline six community lost a very valuable innovator.
However, due to Mike’s passion, inliners are continuing to offer the parts that Mike revered and
are pursuing the preservation of the inline hobby through the newly formed Vintage Inlines.
On behalf of all inliners, Mr. Inline, rest in peace, your legacy will be carried on.
Stay Inline!
Sincerely,
McLearran Motorsports