DMC open house concours competition (long)

["Grimsrud, Knut S" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx>]

I had the honor of participating in the concours judging at the recent DMC
open house, and I thought I would share some of my experiences and details
with the group.



The cars competing this time were among the finest DeLoreans I have had the
privilege of examining closely. Three cars competed for the top spot, and I
think that the total mileage of all the cars combined was probably around
1000 miles. All the cars had been meticulously prepared for the competition,
and the care and work their owners had put into them was clearly evident. In
order to help support the preparations, DMC graciously provided their
facilities and their personnel for the period prior to the competition (some
of the DMC personnel worked into the wee hours supporting the final
preparations of the cars). This concours was probably the closest
competition seen thus far with only a few deductions separating the 1st and
3rd places.



As is always the case, the cars are judged in 6 different categories. The
categories are:

Operating Controls (make sure everything on the car works
correctly)

Exterior

Interior

Undercarriage

Engine Compartment

Luggage Compartment



The judging criteria are based on how well the car represents the factory
delivered ideal car. Included in this is fit/finish, cleanliness,
originality, wear/tear, etc. Many aspects of our cars had variances as
delivered from the factory, so the criteria are based on how the car was
supposed to be delivered according to the best available documentation thus
far. As additional/new documentation is discovered in the archives, the
judging criteria will likely be refined. The specific criteria against which
the cars were judged are documented in the judging handbook available from
DMC - judges follow the handbook in order to ensure that the criteria and
items judged are well known to everyone beforehand.



In order to eliminate variations in judging from impacting the outcome, the
6 different categories are assigned to 6 different judges, and the same
category is judged by the same judge on all cars. This helps ensure
consistency and uniformity in judging across the cars.



I judged the luggage compartments this time around. The luggage compartment
has the fewest number of judge-able items in it, so the items that are
judged generally have substantial point allocations, and the judging for
those items reflect the heavy weight allocated to them. Each of the 6
categories carries equal weight in the overall outcome (50 pointes each) in
order to avoid the potential for inconsistencies between judges in the
different categories impacting the outcome.



There were several common items that I encountered with the cars that you
might be interested in if you are preparing a car and want to watch for
common gotchas:

- The carpet in the bottom of the trunk received several deductions. It
appears that perhaps the plastic edging around the perimeter of the carpet
has shrunk with age resulting in the corners of the carpet curling under and
causing a bubble/pouch in the carpet corners. This prevents the carpet from
laying flat in the corners. This was a common issue and as a result everyone
was generally equally impacted by it, and it therefore had little impact on
the outcome

- One of the screws securing the plastic cover over the hood latch causes
the corners of the hood latch cover to deform and stick out strangely rather
than laying flat. This seems like a natural artifact of the plastic
deforming when the screw is tightened, and again this equally impacted
everyone. I'm not sure that this is due to over tightening or whether it is
a result of a shortcoming in the way it is mounted.

- Fasteners in the luggage compartment (especially the philips headed screws
for the access panels) were in a couple cases not pristine. The philips
headed screws generally get marred anytime you remove and re-tighten them
resulting in the star in them getting rounded. Since these screws are so
inexpensive, marred or rounded screws can readily be swapped with pristine
ones.

- The spare tire should be properly inflated to 60psi. This should not only
be the case for a concours car, but for any car that is driven since you
never know when you might need to limp home on a spare. You'd hate for it to
be flat when you really needed it.

- The carpet on the underside of the hood seemed to often have bubbles or
other voids in adhesion that resulted in it not lying flat against the hood.
This could be a result of the adhesion being lost in some places where the
glue is applied thinly, especially where the car may have been parked in the
sun where high hood temperatures might soften the adhesive. With the hood
closed, gravity is working against you.

- The rubber seal around the hood often had excessive adhesive used in
applying it resulting in a lot of visible goo around the edges of the seal
and visible adhesive stringers stretched across the glue line of the seal.



After sharing a few of these items, you might get the impression that these
cars are very closely inspected - I would hope that is indeed the case since
the purpose was to be able to differentiate between the three extremely well
prepared cars. Even so, this was the first time where a participant
approached me requesting that the judging be even more meticulous than it
was.



It was a pleasure to get to closely inspect the fine cars competing in the
concours and my congratulations to the three competitors for their exemplary
cars. These cars were among the finest I have had the pleasure of reviewing.



Knut





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