Saturday, August 08, 2026
Truck's Top, Ted Polomis
I just learned that yesterday was Purple Heart Day
Thank you George! His time as a Huey Gunship side door gunner resulted in 2 purple hearts.
There are other regular readers that also received Purple Hearts, and I regret that I have not become well enough acquainted with them, to where I know them by name and can thank them by name, also.
There are other regular readers that also received Purple Hearts, and I regret that I have not become well enough acquainted with them, to where I know them by name and can thank them by name, also.
I just learned that John Force and I both have May 4th for our birthdays!
I already knew Audrey Hepburn, because before the internet, she was the only one famous enough to be mentioned on Entertainment Tonight's daily celebrity birthday announcements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Force John was born in 49, same year as my mom
Now that the internet has data gathered all the info and stats, it's a matter of just asking an AI program who was born on any particular day, to learn about the celebs that share your birthday.
So, here are some others that I share my birthday with, just fwiw
Richard Jenkins (terrific role in Cabin In The Woods)
Will Arnett (most fun Batman!)
Randy Travis
Mick Mars
writer Robin Cook, most famous for Coma (1977) OutBreak (1987)
Dick Dale (Misirlou)
Prescott Hill Climb by VSCC, and the 1st car is Spider, a Graham Nash 'Shelsey Special' I posted about in 2015
Spider was inspired by the success of 'Kim', a GN produced by Frazer-Nash in 1922. This was, incidently, the first of the 'Shelsley Specials' of which there are or have been 50 to date. Davenport obtained various GN parts from Frazer Nash and fitted a 1087cc prototype Vitesse engine.
In 1924 Davenport visited the Nash works at Kingston where L A Cushman, Capt Nash's mechanic, suggested that he buy the 1500cc engine out of 'Mowgli' which had lapped Brooklands at 92mph. This 1500cc twin was the only one of its type ever made - 4 valves, 2 plugs per cylinder, bore 89mm stroke 120mm, 2 magnetos and 1 Solex carburettor.
This car gave Davenport great success especially at Shelsley.
Spiders 1 and 2 are, indeed, seen annually at Shelsley and other venues. Indeed Spider 1 appeared at the Entretat hillclimb in France this year. At the Shelsley Walsh Centenary in August David Leigh went up the hill in Spider 1 wearing a brown 'cow gown' symbolic of Basil Davenports 'mechanics' clothes.
http://www.prewarcar.com/magazine/un-solved-mysteries/the-mowgli-mystery-update-now-there-are-two-see-read-more-001754.html via https://www.facebook.com/marc.tudeau?fref=nf
https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/10/mowgli-and-its-hill-climbing-mastery.html
geta load of this... the jumping of the St Lawrence River inspired a movie!
they chose a 67 Barracuda for this new Tuturro movie, that also stars Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito
this is making the Hollywood car of choice recently, the 2nd generation Plymouth Barracuda... John Wick and Black Panther 2 had gen 3s, that series Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne, and the movie Enforcer with Antonio Banderas, and the documentary with Ethan Hawke about Merle Haggard, a 67 in the Megan Fox movie Subservience, that makes 4 with a gen 2 and 2 with a gen 3
Friday, August 07, 2026
a moment to celebrate the genius, and fortitude, of Charles Harrison, it's a lot to read, but worth it.
He designed the modern plastic garbage can, and the world is a quieter, nicer place.
Until the early sixties a household can was round and made of galvanized steel. It dented when you dropped it, it rusted through at the seam, and empty it was heavy enough that hauling it to the curb was a two-handed job for whoever in the house got stuck with the chore.
And it rang. Every alley in America woke to metal on concrete and metal on truck, five or six mornings a month, before anybody in the house had eaten.
Harrison and another Sears man started asking whether polypropylene could be molded at that size. Nothing that large had ever come out of that process, so there was nobody to ask and no example to copy.
He drew it in 1963, rectangular instead of round so it would sit flat against a wall. He put wheels underneath, so a woman or a child could move it without help. (Has wheels and is cool!)
Then he took the noise out.
It went everywhere, into alleys and driveways and behind restaurants and schools, and it is the reason the bin outside your house has the shape it has. Harrison described the achievement without any ceremony at all.
"No more clang-clang of metal before breakfast."
That can was one object among hundreds, and he drew eight to twelve Sears sewing machines a year for twelve straight years. On a working day he could put one or two product ideas on paper every hour.
Blenders and baby cribs, hair dryers and hedge clippers, riding mowers, cordless shavers, barber chairs, transistor radios, the measuring cup you can see through. He made the Kenmore sewing machines lighter by moving them to die-cast aluminum, and by his own account practically every product in the Sears line passed through his hands at one point or another.
He rose from staff designer in 1961 to Sears Roebuck's chief of design.
He was a salaried designer, which meant the company owned the drawings. They went out into the world wearing the company's brands, and the households reading those catalog pages never learned whose hand was behind the objects arriving at their door.
In 1979, he was taken out of the design department, and promoted to Group Laboratory Manager. The purpose was to provide technical support to a specific merchandise group from the Chicago headquarters, but servicing Sears all over the world. He was the manager for a merchandising section, which included automotive, sporting goods, tires, and batteries.
In 1993 Sears shut the in-house design department down completely. Harrison was the last industrial designer to walk out of the building, after thirty-two years. He was the company's first black executive.
In recognition of his impactful and groundbreaking career, Harrison received the National Design Award for lifetime achievement from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2008 and an honorary doctorate from SAIC in 2009.
Martha Stewart introduced him at the gala and told the room she had learned to sew on a Kenmore machine. He had drawn eight to twelve of those a year for twelve years, so the odds were good that the machine in her story had come off his board.
Charles Harrison had come back from the Army in 1956 with a bachelor's degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and two years of military drafting behind him. The Army had trained him as a cartographer and sent him to West Germany to help redraw the maps of a country that had recently finished tearing itself and half a continent apart.
He was the only Black draftsman in his topographic unit. He spent two years making a wrecked place legible again, and then he came home and could not get hired to draw a toaster.
I share stories like Charles Harrison’s because history belongs not only to famous products and brands, but also to the people whose hands shaped the objects we use every day, the designers.
Have you ever been pulled over and the cop goes back to the cruiser, and you’re sitting there waiting…
And then the cop comes back and gives you a warning and tells you to have a good day….???
Well, what happened was that cop definitely dropped your driver's license down the crack in the seat between the center console, and it absolutely took him at least 15 minutes to fish it out.
Thursday, August 06, 2026
Mopar is bringing back the Super Bee! On the 60th anniversary of the Charger, they released the news that the new Charger will be available with 600Hp from a twin turbo inline 6 - they call it the 2027 Charger Sixpack Super Bee in Launch Edition spec
A pair of 85mm Garrett turbos, on a straight 6... 600 HP, 531 Ft Lbs torque
The Canadian Police recovered 392 stolen vehicles worth an estimated $28 million before overseas export from Canadian ports. The recoveries occurred in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Project NoCargo began in June 2025 after investigators identified a growing export-fraud threat. The program targets organized crime networks using stolen or manufactured identities. Those credentials can secure vehicle loans and insurance policies. Criminals then attempt to ship the fraudulently obtained vehicles overseas.
INTERPOL Ottawa identified the trend during 2025, according to the RCMP. Criminal networks used compromised or fabricated personal information to purchase vehicles. They also used those credentials to obtain insurance coverage.
The CBSA intercepted 1,590 stolen vehicles in rail yards and ports during 2025.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/392-stolen-vehicles-worth-28m-stopped-before-overseas-export-rcmp-says
New research shows that mountain lion/cougar/puma often steer deer populations away from human roads.
“On the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, deer alter their use of both space and time where pumas are present, overlapping less with roads and reducing activity at night, when some of the most dangerous collisions occur,” Suraci said.
Their findings, published Thursday in Current Biology, also provide some insight into how exactly pumas are causing less car accidents.
How to effectively advertise a simple tool... prove how the mechanic, or modern car owner needs to do an impossible job - changing the damn sparkplugs in a transverse mounted engine bay, or boxer engine bay
It's spark plugs. And it's the reason a dealer can look you in the eye and charge you seven hundred dollars for a part that costs fifteen.
Here's what nobody tells you about a boxer engine. The cylinders lie flat on their sides and the spark plugs point straight out at the frame rails, an inch and a half of air between the plug and a solid steel beam. The front two you can reach. The back two you cannot.
The worst one, the rear plug on the driver's side, sits buried behind the battery tray and the wiring brackets, where your hand goes in and your knuckles come out bleeding.
A swivel socket on two extensions flexes under load and walks off the hex.
A stubby flex-head ratchet has maybe five degrees of swing before the handle hits the frame rail, and five degrees is nothing on a plug that's been in since the factory.
A universal joint binds up and twists off the head every time
The service writer will tell you $700, give or take, to change four spark plugs.
But... have you ever heard of a chain bar. A chain, sealed in the bar. It stays dead square on the plug, so it can't rock and round it. The only reason that back plug is a dealer job is there's no room to swing a ratchet at it. Nothing to do with the plug. It's the room.
The maker is wild bear tools
FWIW, anything so utterly replicated by cheap imitations, especially when they are even duplicating the colors and appearance, must be quite damn good. I advise against buying tools made of Chinesium.
A crated Spitfire went to Sydney Technical College as an instructional airframe in 1949, but went unused, and sat outside where it weathered damage and vandalism (thank you VolksRob!)
This aircraft was the last Spitfire acquired by the Royal Australian Air Force. It was built by Supermarine in England in 1944, test-flown and then shipped to Australia. The Air Force took delivery of the aircraft in April 1945, but with World War II drawing to a close it was not required on active service and was set aside in 1949
1961–1972: The airframe passed through private hands in Sydney, including A.J.R. "Titus" Oates and later warbird collector Sid Marshall at Bankstown.
1972–1982: It was loaned to the Camden Museum of Aviation at The Oaks near Sydney, where it was made taxiable
1982: Col Pay acquired the Spitfire and moved it to his base in Scone, NSW.
1985: Following an intensive three-year rebuild of its weather-worn fuselage and structure, Pay successfully flew the restored fighter on December 29, 1985, marking the first airworthy restoration of a Spitfire in Australia
1982: Col Pay acquired the Spitfire and moved it to his base in Scone, NSW.
1985: Following an intensive three-year rebuild of its weather-worn fuselage and structure, Pay successfully flew the restored fighter on December 29, 1985, marking the first airworthy restoration of a Spitfire in Australia
Wednesday, August 05, 2026
Columbia University started classes in the new Morningside Heights campus in October 1897, with a running full-size locomotive engine underneath Havemeyer Hall in the the Locomotive Laboratory. (Thank you George!)
But there used to be a full-size locomotive engine underneath Havemeyer Hall.
The mechanics labs were located in what was known as the West or Havemeyer vault, the subterranean space north of Engineering and in front of Havemeyer.
The main attraction of the vault was the Locomotive Laboratory featuring a fullsize engine mounted on rollers. The “Columbia” locomotive had been exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and was then donated to the school by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Weighing 63 tons, the engine could be made to run in place up to sixty miles an hour.
The Locomotive Lab also made quite an impression on visitors: it was a fully functioning train engine inside a building. In 1911, Professor Rudolph Tombo met with the King Albert I of Belgium, who recalled having visited Columbia a few years earlier and seeing the indoors locomotive. According to Tombo, “the King remarked that shows how practical you Americans are. Instead of sending the student into the shops, you bring the shops to the student.”
So what happened to this locomotive? The lab was built in the era of low-steam pressure and hydraulic engines. With changes in technology, the old locomotive had become obsolete and the lab equipment had to be modernized. In 1920, the “Columbia” engine was sold to a junkman for $400, who had cut it into pieces to get it out of the small entrance to the building.
However, one piece of the locomotive did stick around campus for a bit longer, at least through 1961. The bell attached on top of the engine was used during finals to mark the beginning and end of the exam time. This was back when exams were held in the gymnasium, a practice Columbia discontinued in 1965. The current whereabouts of the bell are, unfortunately, unknown.
The Locomotive Lab also made quite an impression on visitors: it was a fully functioning train engine inside a building. In 1911, Professor Rudolph Tombo met with the King Albert I of Belgium, who recalled having visited Columbia a few years earlier and seeing the indoors locomotive. According to Tombo, “the King remarked that shows how practical you Americans are. Instead of sending the student into the shops, you bring the shops to the student.”
However, one piece of the locomotive did stick around campus for a bit longer, at least through 1961. The bell attached on top of the engine was used during finals to mark the beginning and end of the exam time. This was back when exams were held in the gymnasium, a practice Columbia discontinued in 1965. The current whereabouts of the bell are, unfortunately, unknown.
people get upset over some pretty stupid things... and call the cops because they are clueless... like this example, of a guy flying a helicopter to the Cabelas... legally. Some Karen called the cops, jealous that she doesn't have a chopper to use to get to the store
a Wisconsin man flew his helicopter around 6 p.m. Saturday, and landed in the great big empty parking lot of the Cabela's store in the Village of Richfield, Wisconsin.
He said the drive was too long, according to police,
The pilot was properly licensed, landed safely, complied with all applicable Federal Aviation Administration regulations and answered the deputy's questions about helicopter landing requirements.
Deputies determined no laws had been broken, and no citations or arrests were made.
Something I only just learned of... the the Taconic State Parkway, a 105-mile scenic roadway passing through New York, prohibits commercial vehicles from using it. "vehicles with painted or displayed signs, names, or insignia"
“When New York State’s picturesque state Parkway system was built early in the Twentieth Century, it was designed for automobiles.
Low stone bridges on the Parkway system have posted vertical clearances as low as 6 feet, 11 inches.
Commercial vehicles often hit and get stuck under these low bridges, causing serious accidents and long delays while they are being removed,” said the New York State Department of Transportation.
So, since this isn't widely known, and is often violated, the state uses it as a revenue generator, and on July 27 and July 28, 2026, troopers conducted an operation targeting commercial vehicle traffic, and made 114 tickets for violating the Parkway Rules and Regulations, (vehicles with painted or displayed signs, names, or insignia operating on the Parkway)
AAPEX has announced celebs that will be in attendance
Mark Walbergh, Mia Hamm, Jimmie Johnson, Randy Johnson, and Barry Sanders
the United States Air Force has only one dedicated close-support fighter, the Warthog / A 10 (thank you George !)
It has a 30mm Gatling with the payload capacity of four B-17s.
the Air Force has stopped training Warthog drivers, and depot maintenance operations on the A-10 are wrapping up.
Now, though, there's a new bill in Congress to keep the 'Hogs flying for a few more years: It's called the Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt Act.
That's right. It's the BRRRRT Act.
That's right. It's the BRRRRT Act.
We've learned from the war with Iran how useful a flying Avenger cannon can be, and that's prompting a lot of people to take another hard look at keeping them around. The BRRRRT Act proposes to keep at least 126 Warthogs flying.
There's still a place in the modern battle space for a dedicated, low-and-slow, dedicated close air-support airplane, and the A-10's a very, very good one
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