Sitting patiently in the rafters for 50 years

It's days like today that reaffirm my love of The Garage.  Sometimes, unexpectedly, that old stone structure springs something on me that I couldn't have seen coming, even if it fell from the rafters.  Despite the never-ending battle against dust, the constant necessity for cleaning and the bevy of rusty implements that always threaten to drain me of my blood, sometimes The Garage just blows me away.

The magneto gear.  Note the cutouts.

I have been extremely busy working up there lately, namely on the Maxwell, but partially on cleaning and organizing.  I put the mag on the car in a dry run only to learn that I was missing a crucial piece that marries the magneto shaft to the magneto gear (which is inside the crankcase).

This is a very unique part, and I'm absolutely positive that we have nothing like it.  Held in with a D-shaped pin, the little metal sleeve fits around the magneto shaft and is held onto it by the mysterious nut and split washer that I've mentioned before.  The little sleeve has two wings on the end closest to the mag, and these fit into notches on the center sleeve of the larger magneto gear.  Between these wings and the D-shaped pin, this is what allows the spinning of the car's engine to spin the magneto and thus distribute the spark.

The magneto shaft with the nut and split washer.

A World War II vet in California graciously sent one of his to me from his Maxwell Model G, but thankfully it's the same size.  So with that, I turned it over to my father.  He took it to some men who can use their machines not only to replicate this part but to train others in the machine's operation.  It's a win-win!

In the last couple of weeks those men have scanned the piece into a CAD program, measuring it to the third decimal point before using another calibrated machine to corroborate their numbers.  They were actually impressed at how this small, well-machined piece could have been made 100 years ago, so they're going to try a couple of different methods to recreate it---I'll let you know what they find if they are successful.

In the meantime, I learned that the Maxwell spark plug wires (which should be 7mm wires, but can be nine if need be) were brown, not oak like I originally thought.  Using some old shoestrings, I figured out how much of the wire is needed to reach the four plugs as well as the coil.  Assuming I want some extra, here's what I found:

• The first two spark plugs require 36 inches of wire to reach them.
• The back two plugs need 28 inches of wire apiece.
• The coil wire, of which there is only one, can be 20" in length.
• This adds up to 148 inches in total.

Figuring out the distance to the coil was tricky, though, since I didn't know where the coil attached to the car.  Consulting another member of the Maxwell Registry, I found that the part I figured to be the coil holder was, in fact, the coil holder, and it attaches using two bolts to the front hole on the left firewall support bracket.  The top hole goes on top of the bracket's front hole, and the bottom part of the bracket sits on the bottom lip of the frame rail.  This way, the coil is hidden under and angled floor board and is not that far away from the magneto.

This is what the left rear frame looked like.

I'm also waiting on the measurements from this same gentleman on the Maxwell's oil tank.  Holding just two quarts of oil, the tank is relatively small and shouldn't be hard to make, but my lack of a sight gauge is a bit difficult.  If nothing else, I'm thinking of taking cardboard and mocking up a tank to see how it fits in the engine bay, and I can adjust the measurements from there.  The original tank was sweat soldered together, which is something I presently don't know how to do, but we can work on that later.  If I have to weld it, I'll weld it, but I'd prefer not to (given that there isn't a weld on any other part of the car).

I should qualify that last statement, I suppose.  There are now welds on one part of the car, and I'm fairly proud of it.

The plate is now gone, so I can make a new one.

The left rear corner of the frame, to the keen-eyed who may remember, was incredibly rusty and full of holes, and one of those mysterious plates that may have been used to square the frame was nearly gone.  After considering my options, I figured that I could not only fill the holes but also replace the plate with some leftover sheet metal from the body I made last summer.

I measured the remnants of the old plate before knocking it out, finding it was a triangle that was six inches long on one side and seven on the other.  The longer of the two rested against the rearmost crosspiece, but not smoothly.  There had been some repairs done sometime in the past to this area, so I had to make cut-outs in the new piece with a Dremel tool after tracing around the obstructions.  This was mostly trial and error, but eventually I got a suitable union between the two, so I clamped it in place and began the welding process.  Using relatively small rods with a medium-to-low setting on the welder, I was able to fill in all the holes and, by doing so, affix the new plate to the frame rails.

The new plate with cutouts.

I used this opportunity to fill other deeper holes in the back half of the frame, and after grinding it down and laying some smoothing filler over it, the entire back half of the frame looked brand new!  Even though it will be covered by the lower body, I felt this was an important thing to do not just for aesthetics but also for the strength of the metal.  Hopefully my work will stand the test of time, but that remains to be seen.

With the holes filled, for the first time in over a year I put the back half of the lower body back on the car.  Along with the fenders, which were already in place, I put the new front halves of the lower body onto the car and stepped back to admire the gestalt.  For the first time in a long time, the Maxwell was truly looking like a car again.

Here's after the first (messy) round of welding.

So while I wait for the integral components to getting it running (the wires, the oil tank measurements, etc.), I thought I would tidy up some more of the bodywork---namely the running boards.  By focusing on these key pieces of the car, I would finally have an idea about exactly where the fenders sit in relation to the frame.  A correctly-installed running board would allow me to correctly line up the fenders and finally get them hooked to the car (instead of just sitting/hanging on the tires and fender supports).

From my research and from other Maxwell owners, the running boards were either ash or oak, 3/4" thick.  Using the fenders and the arm that holds the board, I determined it should be nine inches wide.  After fiddling with the fenders and getting them lined up (which was tricky without hooking them on), I estimated that the running board should be around 48 inches long, though this was meant to be an overestimate.

So all I had to do was call up the local lumber yard and order the wood, right?  If only.

Done for now!

They first quoted me a very cheap price for pine, which was in the ballpark of $7.00.  I told them that I need ash or oak.

"We don't carry ash," they said.

"What about oak?"

"How long do you need it?"

"I need two pieces around 48 inches in length."

"We don't have that size.  You can either get two feet longer or two feet shorter than that."

"How much is the longer one?"

"That will be $80.00."

Ouch.  Needless to say, I quickly said no to that.  That was a ridiculous amount for something that is a relatively common building material.  So I called the local Menard's for the same order, which they quoted at $62 of oak (they didn't have ash, either).  That was still a bit high for me, so we looked online and found a website that had poplar (which was commonly used for the floorboards, not the running boards) for $30.  This was going to be our plan, and we would probably order it later in the day.

So in the meantime I went back to work in The Garage cleaning a seldom-seen corner that houses a cabinet full of parts from a closing store my grandfather acquired back in the '50s.

My father soon got home from work, and I told him of my troubles at ordering the wood for the boards, and I asked if he could help me line up the fenders to double check my measurements.  As we stood there between the Maxwell and the old Farmall tractor, we began looking above us for some reason, perhaps out of boredom or curiosity.

Incredibly, directly above our heads was a beautiful, dusty, dark board stretched across the tops of several rafters.  Buried beneath a pile of plywood, chrome mouldings from old cars and my father's childhood toboggan, this long, broad board stared back at us.  Extremely out of place with the other pieces of wood around it, neither my father or I had ever noticed this nearly perfect piece of hardwood, looking down like the Cheshire Cat smiling from a tree branch high above our heads.

I climbed up onto the wheel of the tractor and slowly maneuvered the board from under the pile, careful not to upset a late '50s Oldsmobile grille that rested quietly on the object of interest.

When I climbed down, this amazingly out-of-place piece of lumber stood upright, propped against the tractor for us to inspect its dusty surface.  It looked like it was oak, and this was confirmed after I cleaned off all the dust and bird droppings from its wooden skin.  It was 3/4" thick, one foot wide and six feet tall.  It was exactly what I needed for a strong running board, and we were left dumbfounded by its presence.

I took it outside where my father and I cut it down to size.  One end had a split right in the center of the board, so I cut this end off when I sought to make the board 48 inches in length.  Improbably, what I just cut off was actually a very suitable piece of wood for the angled floor board that covered the magneto and the coil.  Even more amazing, after I measured how much of that floor board I would have to remove, I found that the split would be completely cut off with less than half an inch to spare.  It was like this random piece of oak was made for the Maxwell, sitting patiently in the rafters for 50 years while it gathered dust and waited for the day I would call upon it to become part of the old car.

Perhaps my grandfather saw the same potential in this wood that I did, which is why it was placed in the back of the garage nearest to the Maxwell.  Perhaps he put it up there with no purpose in mind, but the voice in our heads that told my father and I to look up today knew that we would get the message now.

I cut the running board to its correct width, and in doing so I was left with a narrow sliver of oak that can also be used as a regular floor board when that time comes.  Amazingly, only a few inches of this piece of oak will not be used, and I'm still blown away whenever I think about it.

Before I left The Garage today, I walked with my newly-hewn lumber and placed it on the car.  For the first time since 1910, the little Maxwell got a new running board, and damn did it look good!  I positioned the fenders to rest on top of the board, and in doing so I saw them slide a bit closer to their correct location---something I will measure and mark and photograph before I begin the attaching process.  Then I will take those measurements and apply them to the other side, whenever I get around to finding another piece of suitable wood.

I stood back to admire our work, and I thanked whatever or whoever put that board up there.  I folded up some rags and took off my gloves, setting them gently on the red paint of the Farmall before turning to leave.  As I did, I shot one more glance skyward, partly out of curiosity, partly out of amazement.

Hanging four feet from the board we just discovered was another one just like it.

Letting the cauldron boil and bubble the rust away

What a busy last few weeks it has been, toiling away in the old stone Garage.  In a very short time, the Maxwell looks like a car again, and I'm starting to realize that this folly of an adventure may actually lead to a working car.  There are many unknowns, but it's wonderful to see.

I'll update you more completely in a future post, but I want to touch on a topic I've mentioned in passing several times this summer without a proper explanation:  Electrolytic rust removal.  Yes, I can hear the droves of people (probably all four of you) heading to the exits at this point, but stick with me!  I promise this can be a helpful topic.  If nothing else, hang around to see how many times I've shocked myself by trying to mix electricity with water...

Here's the test item hanging from the board before cleaning.

My delving into electrolytic rust removal actually started a while back, after reading about the topic on countless restoration websites.  They say it's a hands-off way of removing all of the rust from the surface of metal without the messy grinding, naval jelly, WD40 or other wives' tales of how to get something clean.

Let me preface this by saying that the process works, and it works really well.  But how?

I don't want to bore you with a sciency explanation of what regular, red rust is and why it's bad, because believe me, I could (and I would probably be the only one enjoying it).  In order for you to understand electrolysis, though, you have to know some things in a metal nutshell.

The point is, after getting weathered over time, a chemical reaction takes place at the surface of a metal object, and the process of the metal being eaten away leads to rust forming from the new compound---iron oxide.  This happens when metal is exposed to water and carbon dioxide.  The iron acts as an anode, which means it gives up negatively charged electrons, while other parts of it act as a cathode, which is the opposite.  This is what usually can be brushed off or flakes off when the part is handled.  Underneath is basically newly-formed magnetite, or "Black rust," which is what we're working to reverse (I swear this knowledge will come in handy later).

Here's my initial setup with rods and wires. It's not high tech.

In most cases, when water hits the metal, whether through rain or humidity in the air, the water and carbon dioxide that makes up a portion of our atmosphere (0.04%) combine to make an acid.  The oxygen component of the acid reacts with iron and oxidizes it (which means that the iron loses electrons.  The opposite to this is called reduction, which is gaining of electrons).  The electrons go from anode to cathode, or from negative to positive.  Think of it like how one end of a magnet is only attracted to the opposite end of another magnet.  Like charges repel, opposite charges attract.

So, once we know this, how can we reverse the process?  The metal underneath the outside corrosion should still be okay (unless it's really rusted all the way through), so we need to remove the rust without hurting the underlying metal.

So let's use electricity and water---two things that you normally shouldn't combine, but since this is The Garage, why not?

Alright, ready to connect!

To set up your electrolysis, you'll need a five gallon bucket, five gallons of water, some washing soda (this is different than baking soda), some metal wires, a battery charger and some pieces of metal that you don't mind getting really rusty.

After filling the bucket with five gallons of water, add five tablespoons of washing soda and mix it in.  Washing soda is not baking soda.  The former is sodium carbonate and the latter is sodium BIcarbonate.  Long story short, the former makes the process go faster than the latter, but if you can't find washing soda, baking soda will work, just not as quickly.

Using the wire, connect all the pieces of sacrificial metal together in a series, but do NOT close the loop, as your battery charger won't appreciate it (one of many ways that you can upset your charger).  Set these pieces of metal (rebar works extremely well and is quite cheap) into the water, but make sure one of them sticks up above the water so you can connect the battery charger.

The next step is to submerge the item you want to de-rust in the solution.  It is extremely important that you don't let the object touch any of the metal rods, or else your battery charger will get very angry (thankfully this is easy to avoid depending on how you wire your rods together, which I swear is not a euphemism).

The way that I first did this was to set a piece of wood across the bucket (since wood does not conduct electricity), then hang my part from it using a separate piece of wire.  You can also submerge your metal part into the water if part of it stays above the water line.  Then you can clip the battery charger here instead of the wire.

Either way, when you're ready to start, hook the positive lead from the charger to one of the rods (or to the wire connecting them).  You need to make sure all of your connections are tightly wound to the rods and the object, or else this won't work.

The negative lead will attach to the object/the wire suspending the object.  You can check the connections in the rods by lightly brushing the negative lead against each one to see if there's a spark.  If not, readjust the wires and make sure they are wound tightly around the rods.  It may also help to run the portion of the rod where the wire wraps around it under a wire brush to make sure you have the cleanest contact possible.

When your connection is solid and the charger shows a current is flowing, you should notice tiny bubbles coming from the metal part and around the rods.  Congrats!  It's working!  But why?

By adding sodium carbonate to the water, you're giving the newly-made solution a way to carry ions between your anode and cathode, creating a current.  Sodium is positive, so it will move to the negative connection (the part), whereas the carbonate is negative, so it moves to the positive.  This helps create an environment where the black rust can be reconverted into iron.

So once the part is cooking, you can leave it for several hours, and it should be fine.  Just as a heads-up, use only regular iron pieces in the solution.  Trying to de-rust any plated metal or stainless steel or anything won't work very well, and it will release dangerous gases (which are never good).  Also, don't spend a ton of time breathing in the gases from the regular process, either, and avoid sparks or open flames while you're doing it, too.  The process won't suddenly explode, but why take a chance?

The pick head after it was taken out of the solution.

After the piece has been in the solution for a while, you should see its surface turn black in places, meaning that the process is actually working.  When you remove the part, IMMEDIATELY wipe the piece dry, removing that black coating and staving off the corrosion from starting right away.  You can even run the part under the wire brush after drying it off, and this should yield a brilliant, bare metal finish.  But know that this bare metal is again susceptible to rust, so either prime and paint the piece or oil it right away.

So has this worked for me?  Absolutely!  I tried cleaning a random pick head that I found in The Garage a while back.  It didn't have a handle, and it was rusty, so it seemed perfect for an experiment.  I hung it from a wire and dipped it in the solution, letting the cauldron boil and bubble the rust away.

Oh, hello Beale Brothers logo.

When the day was done, I removed the piece and wiped it dry, suddenly noting the wonderful manufacturer's logo on its side.  I had never been able to see it before!  From this information (and in true Garage fashion), I found that the pick was 100 years old and produced in Alton, Illinois, by the Beale Brothers Company, which ceased existence well before 1920.  Go figure!

I have also cooked several Maxwell parts in the solution, from the coil holder to the brake rods and exhaust manifold.  With each of these, I let the piece stay in the solution for several hours before wiping it off, running it quickly under the wire brush and priming it (except for the manifold, there).  I'm always amazed at what brilliantly shiny metal awaits under the black coating, and I know with certainty that rust will not suddenly spring up from under my primer and paint, since I eliminated nearly all of it in the process.

So yes, electricity and water together are normally dangerous, but as long as you pay attention and make sure your setup is sound beforehand, you will soon have the most thorough solution to rust problems, and it won't even require grinding, lathering on naval jelly or being covered in dust after wire-brushing the rust away.  This novella of a public service announcement was brought to you by Woodsie's Garage.

Of Horses and Men

For those who are still riding the emotional wave of the Belmont Stakes, I figure now is as good a time as any to go on a horse racing kick, especially in lieu of the strong comments made by Triple Crown hopeful California Chrome's owner directly after the race.

His remarks on trainers sending horses to race specifically at Belmont (and thus to spoil any Triple Crown attempt) really got me thinking about which side was the best, and I'm honestly not sure.  The more I've thought about it, I can see both halves of the argument.  So, to make sense of it, I'll try to tie it into motor racing.

Steve Coburn, one of the co-owners of California Chrome, has had quite the year.  His little horse, who was purchased for just $10,000, was told that his thoroughbred was not of high enough quality to compete for the Triple Crown.  Many said he had no chance given his lack of prestigious lineage, and several weeks later he leaves Belmont Park just under two lengths away from being the first winner of the three majors in over a third of a century.

But his defeat did not sit well with Coburn.  Beaten by a few horses which were trained specifically for this event, the spurned owner pulled no punches in saying that entering horses with the sole purpose of spoiling a Triple Crown bid was "the coward's way out."  He said that it was "unfair" to the quality horses and to the millions across the country who wanted to see the drought end.  For horses to be sat out of the three legs of the Crown then go against horses who are trying to win it the 'proper' way is not right.

His wife tried to poke him in the back on camera to tell him to calm down, but he turned around to tell her that he would have none of that.  His assault on the owners of horses like (Belmont winner) Tonalist continued, and as it did, I began to wonder if he was actually right.

The cynic's argument would be that if your horse was truly the best, it shouldn't matter who it faces; it should still be able to win the race against whichever horses are tired, fresh or are Belmont specialists.  It should be able to win like the other 11 horses in history who have won all three.  But even this statistic makes me wonder:  Was the trend of sitting horses out of certain legs a commonality even before the 1980s (when the Triple Crown drought began)?

Look at the stretches of winners over time.  In the '30s and '40s, Triple Crowns weren't very uncommon.  Heck, sometimes it was only a year or two between the feat was accomplished, and I imagine it was almost an oversaturation back then.  Even in the seventies, when we had our last winners in Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed, they were four and one years apart, respectively.  Think about that, two Triple Crowns in two years.  Then something changed.  It wasn't anything in particular, mind you, it was more of an intangible.

Horse racing today is not horrendously different than it was back then.  Horses today are faster (although Secretariat's records from 1973 still stand at every Triple Crown track) but are far more fragile than days of old, partly due to specialized training methods, different nutrition and technology to assess the health of the equines.  But for 36 years, no horse has won the American version of the Triple Crown---capturing the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes in the same year.

The previous longest drought between champions was broken by Secretariat (another record he currently holds until a horse breaks through some year), becoming the first horse to do the feat in 25 years (Citation, who won in 1948, had a wonderful pedigree that included two brilliant European horses, one of which was undefeated in its career).  We're now sitting at 36 years and counting since Affirmed, and I start to wonder how many more we'll see.

Since Affirmed, 13 horses have won the first two majors before coming to Belmont and seeing their dreams disappear.  Sadly, I remember watching half of these.  Most of those horses were beaten by entrants who skipped one or both of the prior Triple Crown races, but I don't know the exact number (since I wasn't old enough to keep track of some of those things).

If we look back at the last four to accomplish the feat, some wonderful stories emerge.

In 1978, Affirmed essentially won the Triple Crown over another horse who would have won all three races were it not for Affirmed.  Alydar finished second in every event, but the talent of Alydar unfortunately happened to coincide with the brilliance of Affirmed.  Separate them by a year (let's push one of them to '79 since Seattle Slew took care of '77), and we would have one more Triple Crown winner.

When Slew had done it a year earlier, he faced some challenges throughout the three legs.  He won the first over Run Dusty Run before meeting Cormorant at Pimlico.  Some had challenged back then that Cormorant would be a quicker horse and would stop Slew's bid, but down the stretch Cormorant faded, and the race turned into Seattle Slew beating Iron Constitution by a length and a half.  By the time the Belmont came around, the horse faced several new challengers, but he still won by four lengths.

Secretariat's year is a bit of an oddball given the sheer dominance of this horse.  He is, undoubtedly, the strongest Triple Crown winner in history.  In his three major races, Secretariat's biggest competitor was a dark bay thoroughbred named Sham.  An anatomical oddity, Sham's heart was twice the size of an average horse's, and he found success wherever he went.  A Santa Anita winner, Sham finished second to Secretariat in both of the first two legs of the Triple Crown.  In fact, he was even leading at times until the stretch.  Two and a half lengths was as close as he would get to the legend in those events, so his trainers were eager to take him to Belmont to challenge again.  Here, though, at the scene of Secretariat's most crushing victory, Sham led early before finishing last.  The distance, and perhaps the great rivalry with the Triple Crown winner, was too much to make all three races.  He just couldn't do it, but he was still an incredibly successful horse.

The big difference in the ages is highlighted best, in my opinion, by the 1948 Triple Crown winner, Citation.  An unbelievable force in horse racing, he was the first equine to win one million dollars, and he once won 16 straight races---most horses today don't even race that many times in their entire careers.  After his strong victories in the Derby and the Preakness, Citation actually won the Jersey Stakes before winning at Belmont.  Think about that.  He ran a whole other race between the second and third legs and still became the eighth horse to win all three majors, doing so in record-tying time at Belmont Park.

So where do Coburn's statements fall in all of this?  Is there a history of horses losing their bids to Belmont Specialists?  And if so, what does that mean?  The answer to the former is "Yes," but the answer to the latter is tricky.

Part of the structure of horse racing is that there isn't a cumulative points championship with the goal of a world title at the end.  Skipping out on one Grand Prix would lose millions of dollars and a chance at the World Drivers Championship in Formula 1.  In horse racing, though, you're letting a living creature rest and eliminating the chance for injury in another race.  On that front, I don't mind letting them sit out sometimes.

But a Triple Crown bid is different.  It's one of the few things in the Sport of Kings that spans more than one event.  It's a long-term goal in a sport that deals with things one race at a time in the limited span of a thoroughbred's third year.  But in a way, a Triple Crown bid can also be a one-race thing.

Losing the Derby opens up a wide range of possibilities as a trainer, but if you leave Churchill Downs with a blanket of roses, you will have to head to Pimlico since you are expected to try for the Triple Crown.  As a result, you don't see horses win the Derby and then not try to make it two-for-two.  Even if you plan on coming back for the Belmont, no one skips out on the Preakness.

Also take into account that when a horse has lost the second leg, many choose not to enter it in the Belmont (which is why there has not been a single horse in 20 years that has won the Derby and the Belmont without winning the Preakness).  This is for preservation of the horses for obvious reasons.

But what about the first situation, where your horse doesn't win the Derby?  As an owner or trainer, who owns a horse to win and make money, you severely decrease your chances to win the Belmont (the longest race of the three) if you try to run the Preakness as well.  Especially if you think your horse tires easily, it doesn't make business sense to try to run all three when all you'll be left with is a tired horse and no wins.

This year's Belmont Stakes purse was $1.5 million, and that's a hell of a lot of money to be dangled in front of owners.  If you had a chance to win it, why wouldn't you do whatever you could to increase your chances?

But on the flip side to this, in Coburn's case, he's obliged to run all three because his horse could legitimately win all three.  The test schedule for California Chrome existed the moment he won at Churchill Downs, and while his owners could have sat him for the Preakness, the ridiculousness of doing so is extremely obvious.

What Tonalist did today was not with dishonor.  He ran a wonderful race and could not be challenged.  Commentators spoke beforehand that he loved this track and had won here before.  He was, in every sense, a Belmont specialist.  And does that decrease the feat of what he did?  To some, like Coburn, absolutely.

Let's say that there was a team in Formula 1 that wanted nothing more than to win the Monaco Grand Prix.  They sat out the entire year, not traveling to the other races and not challenging for any other Grands Prix.  Instead, they spent their time running laps at Monaco and focusing only on it (never mind that it's in a city and you can't do that...just go with me here).

So when the Monaco Grand Prix came around and the teams that had been dominating F1 racing all season came to the principality, that's when this particular team showed up.  While some were fighting for the World Championship and the Constructors Championship, this team took pole position and won the race, celebrating madly afterward.  Should their win be accepted the same as a regular team like Mercedes winning the Grand Prix because they were only focused on this race while others were looking at the long-term?

That's a question I can't answer, but I imagine many of you will have different opinions.

To a purist in the sport, their win is rather shallow.  Like a golfer who only played the same course over and over, then won when the professional circuit came to town, should we be surprised by such a win?  Not really.  But to a businessman or businesswoman, this is smart.  This is the best way to increase one's chances for victory.  And as a result, in a business sense, the payouts from the win taste just as sweet as those you could collect by winning an otherwise unwinnable major.

From a fan's standpoint, they may not think about this.  The casual fan may only tune in for the Belmont Stakes upon hearing that a horse may win the Triple Crown, and that's it.

Is this an issue that needs to be addressed in some way?  Perhaps.  Will anything come of it?  I doubt it.  Splitting the fields (horses running all three versus standalones) or holding a longer-term championship may do it, but racing is steeped in tradition, and those changes may face some opposition.

Was Coburn justified in what he said?  Absolutely.  But was he right?  That's a whole other debate.