the Coffman Combustion Starter (thank you George!) an alternative to electric starters to turn over massive aircraft and tank engines in remote areas where electricity or backup battery power was unavailable.

The Coffman starter (or "shotgun starter") is a 1930s-1940s engine starter system that used a blank, gunpowder-filled cartridge to ignite and generate high-pressure gas. This gas pushed a piston that rotated the engine, often used in WW2 aircraft like the Spitfire to avoid heavy batteries

The original system focused the explosive gasses at the piston face, later versions fired the explosion into a geared starter drive, which rotated the engine via the flywheel.

The system worked well on remote Pacific Islands and on the battlefront. It was standard equipment in several World War II aircraft engines, including the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine used in British Spitfires, Pratt and Whitney R-1820 engines used in Grumman FM-2 Wildcats and Napier Sabre engine used in Hawker Typhoons. Several jet engines also used the Coffman starter

One of the drawbacks of using the Coffman starter was the build-up of carbon in the starting cylinder. As you see in Flight of the Phoenix, cartridges often had to be wasted as a means of blowing out the accumulated carbon in the cylinder before the engine would be able to start. Although sometimes referred to as a shotgun shell, the actual shell used was a four-gauge, much larger in height and diameter than 12- or 20-gauge shotgun shells. Variations on the Coffman starter were employed depending on application. Some geared starter drives held one, two or three cartridges while others held six or more.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/coffman-combustion-starters

huh, I just found the Wacky Racers info. A lot of this I'd never learned before now

https://eightiesbaby.net/2020/02/03/a-horribly-biased-ranking-of-wacky-races-teams

the bridge that inspired a very slow, but famous, race. The Posingford Bridge built in1907 was where the Poohsticks game was invented in 1928.

found in Schott's Miscellany, interesting stuff fills these books I first discovered about 20 years ago, and only a week ago found that that after the success of the original, 3 or 4 more on different topics were made

I was in a very rich neighborhood with very large 3 and 4 car garages... and no one left anything interesting out where it could be seen, except this young guy's (I met his mom) track Miata with Montana loophole plates

interesting aftermarket aerodynamic hardtop, looking though the windows I saw that the interior was stripped of carpet and insulation, a 4 point seatbelt is installed, and a roll bar. 

The No. 46 Ford Trophy Truck was disqualified from the 2026 San Felipe 250 following a cheating scandal, due to video evidence that Toby Price and Brent Bauman stacked rocks on a portion of the San Felipe course during the pair's pre-run

rocks on the San Felipe course could potentially slow competitors and give the No. 46 Ford Trophy Truck an advantage. 

Video evidence was submitted to SCORE officials, and, ultimately, they decided that the team should be disqualified.

https://fordauthority.com/2026/04/ford-team-implodes-after-toby-price-accused-of-sabotage-at-2026-san-felipe-250

mother nature will carry on, and that bug is going to split at the seams

this was 14 years growth

 https://www.facebook.com/david.kruk.1/posts/pfbid0tRHjTqUoAFYKRyASrBTaJtspukbd4wdS1gX5owCouNBJvCuUrhjbAMBiwL83az6Sl

the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles

https://www.facebook.com/groups/VSCCA/permalink/10163105677107371

seen on today's walk...

This makes the 2nd 914 I've found in this neighborhood... but that's a flat front tire on the passenger side front.

what the hell is the deal with this license plate? Yellow on black would be right for this era, but this sequence isn't the 3 letters followed by 3 numbers that would be proper for this year. Must be one of the new re-issued plates, which are fine for new cars, but, it's all wrong for the cars in the 60s to have the right color plates, without the right alphanumeric sequence

first time I've seen a 80s/90s 1st generation Humvee in nearly 17 years. 

 

this car has been parked so long, the tire dry rotted and went flat, on BOTH SIDES on the back. I think it's a beemer

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives recover $62,000 in stolen packages from a storage unit

https://www.wafb.com/2026/02/18/fedex-driver-arrested-after-62000-stolen-packages-found-storage-unit/

a court has concluded the 15-year legal battle over a Caltrans project that aims to modify a stretch of Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park.

a three-judge panel in California’s First District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court’s decision to reject the latest lawsuit from conservation groups that challenged the project’s compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

The Richardson Grove Improvement Project, as Caltrans has dubbed it, will modify an approximately one-mile stretch of Highway 101 as it wends through the state park’s massive coast redwoods, some of which are more than 200 feet tall and hundreds of years old.

Caltrans describes the work as “minor adjustments” that are necessary to improve traffic safety and accommodate industry-standard-sized semi trucks that are currently prohibited from passing through this narrow stretch of 101.

Project opponents, on the other hand, argued that both the construction activity and the resulting road realignment could harm the ancient trees — not by removing any of them down but by cutting into their root systems.

A simpler solution? Make the one mile stretch a one lane, one way, and the road is already big enough, in the video they had a cop doing escort duty with lights on to make both lanes clear for the trucker... so, they are used to the idea of it being single vehicle use already, just like narrow country bridges. Put a stop light on either end of the one mile, one way, one lane section, for shifting the direction of traffic flow

Skip the first 40 seconds and it's over at 3:10. The rest of the video is open highway like any other, no cool redwood trunks inches away from the road

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2026/mar/30/appellate-court-sides-caltrans-richardson-grove-hi/

there's a new way to fix photos, and not use Photoshop. It's called Restore AI, but the cost is about the same. Looks a lot better in general, but the complaints are about the details of people's faces

https://www.on1.com/restore-old-photos

beware the April Fools pranks, there is buggery afoot

https://fordauthority.com/2026/04/ford-mustang-mach-t-revealed-as-pony-cars-first-pickup

there's an easier way to start an old motorcycle than an electric starter... a shotgun shell port, same as airplane engines

 

lol, enlisted grunt doing his time in the Navy fixing jets (in boondockers!) memorialized with a photo... when officers memorialized their Navy time with a photo, they were flying the damn jets, or in the cockpit

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4268308513419014&set=gm.4345004079073980&idorvanity=2444464425794631

the Wrigley family (Wrigley Field in Chicago named for them) bought a Douglas C-47 Skytrain, converted it to a DC-3 in 1947 and used it to fly from Chicago to Catalina Island

The Wrigley family eventually sold the plane and only recently was the family able to track it down and repurchase it. Alison said last week the family was fortunate to have been able to re-locate the DC-3 and said it is undergoing a complete restoration. 

 With only 3,434 hours in its logbook, this apparently is the lowest-time DC–3 in the world.

https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/visitcatalinaisland/items/601089/calendar/2026/05

https://thecatalinaislander.com/airport-in-the-sky-returns-to-grandeur/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRX26UVEi3N/?img_index=4

Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother Syd was the first to offer air service to Catalina in 1919, operating a small seaplane service that lasted two years.

I've covered the Wrigley ownership in https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/01/private-island-owners-used-to-be-quite.html

environmental and Indigenous groups filed a lawsuit in Las Vegas federal court, arguing that the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, one of North America’s largest sources of lithium, poses a major threat to the endangered Tiehm’s Buckwheat, a desert flower endemic to the area, which could even cause it to go extinct.

Of course, it's in the middle of nowhere between Vegas and Reno, and no one outside of the people in the lawsuit have ever heard of, or think that one flower in the middle of nowhere that no one will ever visit the area to see

In fact, other than this news about the lawsuit, no one will ever hear of the flower.  

https://www.fws.gov/media/tiehms-buckwheat-6

https://fordauthority.com/2026/03/ford-ev-suppliers-lithium-mine-permit-upheld-by-u-s-district-court

Walt Disney and Ward Kimball at the Chicago Railroad Fair of '48

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1580481083455246&set=a.556940129142685

the Santa Rosa parents of a 16-year-old just discovered the cost of getting their i8 BMW out of impound, and bail for their kid, as that dumbass was arrested for reckless driving, at 130 mph on the 101

This is NOT that actual car, it's the i8 I found last week parked in Mira Mesa. 

https://autos.yahoo.com/people-and-culture/articles/teen-driver-hits-130-mph-133007286.html

dropping a new Vette.... really? How after all these decades of using lifts, has the process not become fool proof? How after a decade of internet ridicule, hasn't every shop and garage, gotten the message "there will be international online shame and notoriety if you drop a car on a lift"?

it’s not the first time a C8 Corvette has fallen off a lift. This marks at least the third documented case since the model’s introduction, with earlier incidents in 2020 and 2021 pointing to similar mistakes.

While these cases are rare relative to total production numbers, they reveal a pattern that shouldn’t exist at this stage. By now, lifting procedures for the C8 platform are well-established. These aren’t experimental vehicles anymore—they’re widely sold performance cars with known service requirements.

Yet the same type of error keeps happening.

 
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/ownership/articles/dealer-drops-corvette-z06-during-133000493.html

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10163792604429373&set=pcb.1592745625111871

https://www.facebook.com/groups/385679492485163/user/702004372

seen on tonight's walk, first time I've seen a seen an Austin Healey 3000 on a walkabout