Sunday, June 28, 2026

coming home from Shrewsbury car show on Friday and a careless driver cut this Fairlane off and ran it into a telephone pole. 20 years of family fun and car shows... over.




It can be repaired... it's certainly not totalled, but the owners might be heartbroke, and sell it instead of putting up with body shop bullshit that lasts a year for a 2 week job

Mythbusters tested a Taurus out to see what the effect of dimples would be on gas mileage... and it was about 10% fuel mpg improvement. From 26 to 29.6 mpg


Adam had so much more life/enthusiasm than Jamie. 


I think it's to be expected from someone that chooses to look like this

giving a cool old Apache the idle up a hill test


someone forgot to play it safe and not lock up their brakes while racing up Pike's.... instead, they went for a small aircraft pilot's license, solo

 

JCB has completed testing of its hydrogen-powered land speed record JCB Hydromax car ahead of its attempt to break the land speed record later this summer at Bonneville (thank you George)

The test runs took place at RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire with Andy Green behind the wheel. The testing saw speeds increase from 177mph to 208mph

The 32-foot Hydromax car is powered by a powertrain developed in-house that combines two engines producing a combined 1,600bhp. The engines are “very similar” to those that feature in JCB’s own production-based hydrogen diggers, but have been enhanced by the need for speed.

lol, Swift is still doing stupid stuff


Comic Con is coming, July 22-26, and I'll be a bit busy organizing a team for waiting in line for Hall H in the next coming weeks, and that's going to reduce my amount of blogging a bit. Not a lot, but a bit


anyone have a guess what this is?


 

genius way to make a lazy Susan food delivery system, from a tire mount machine


I have no idea what the license plate on this Lotus means... does anyone have a guess?


 

the opening scene in Goonies, had this in the background of a car chase scene


 

I was there when the family driving this arrived at the grocery store... great 68, 327, 4 barrel and 4 speed

 

seen at 6:17 am on the drive to work. I think someone's car caught on fire, and exploded. I was nowhere near to see what happened... but that smoke was HOT and went straight up to the lowest clouds, then then kept rising




 the top of that smoke, rose through the cloud cover

a split second scene in Footloose, filmed in 1984



the tractor chicken race in Footloose, I'd forgotten about this... but am rewatching the movie right now... I haven't seen it since the 80s





Saturday, June 27, 2026

another trucking inspection by police, this time in Wichita Texas shows the same result as all the others... a ridiculously high number of truckers operating in violation of the laws


93 commercial vehicle stops 
109 equipment violations issued by DPS 
15 truck/trailer combinations impounded 
1 cab impounded 
24 individuals detained for being unlawfully present in the United States, from Mexico, India, Cuba, Algeria, Venezuela, Tajikistan, and Russia.

scenes from a 1986 biker anime, about a Suzuki GT380 engine rebuild



https://www.globalsuzuki.com/motorcycle/smgs/digital-archive/2_bike/ss2_005.php

interesting

 https://www.tumblr.com/sivadsucram  nsfw

A small aircraft crashed into a 108-storey ‌skyscraper in Beijing's central business district.

 
Police were preventing people from taking pictures and asking others to delete those they had taken ​while ushering ​people away from the building,

Friday, June 26, 2026

Terry Crews, ambassador for the Cadillac F1 team, has a new You Tube series that debuted May 5th




ever enjoy the song Summertime, by Mungo and Jerry?


The revving engine sound in the middle, is the sound of a Triumph TR6 roadster

When recording the track in Pye Studio 1, the band and producer Barry Murray needed a sound effect to match the song's open-road theme. Because they didn't have a motorcycle handy, the recording engineer (Howard Barrow) drove his Triumph sports car past the studio building while a microphone was set up outside on the ramp to capture the exhaust noise. 

coolest thing I saw today

 Having served as Vice President of Sales for Stihl America (one of seven serving the United States and Canada) for many years, his last assignment before retiring was as a corporate product liability consultant, where he said he "got paid $50 an hour to educated $100-an-hour lawyers how to use a chain saw," then served as an expert witness in personal injury court cases.


and I want to let you know that it's the 100th Anniversary of Stihl !  Still family owned !







The partnership started simply, with a 10-by-10-foot STIHL booth at championships, funding for minor improvements and a paintjob for One Moment. 

But what Phelps saw at the 2015 championships inspired bigger plans. Participants and spectators numbered upward of 150,000, even though online presence was virtually nonexistent, and the races were untelevised. 

When Phelps discovered title sponsors were planning to stepdown in the near future, he pitched STIHL execs on a major sponsorship. They responded with an overwhelming yes. The first STIHL National Championship Air Race was held in Reno in September 2017.




I grew up in the Upper Penisula of Michigan, that's way the hell up there, where it snows every winter, and in the 70s and 80s, going to the forests, to get deadwood, fallen trees, for dry wood to burn, and cutting up live trees (known as green) for drying until the next winter, was almost universal with everyone that lived there. 

Sure cuts down on the cost of heating when you only have to pay for a chainsaw, an old truck, and gas and oil for both. 

And I never saw anyone use any brand of chainsaw, that wasn't a Stihl. Of course, other brands existed. But I didn't know that. 

Same with fishing reels. I only knew of Zebco. Snowmobile boots? Sorel. Never saw anything made by any other company.   

Thursday, June 25, 2026

a set used on season 1 of "The Guilded Age"

thank you Marc for letting me know about Barney Oldfield Day at Museum of Fulton County! I didn't know that he became a movie star and even owned the “Oldfield/Kipper Saloon” in Los Angeles, which previously was the the Old Crow Bar, opened in 1906. They hadn't licensed the name from Old Crow liquor though, and were sued


1913... there's a parking garage there now... I bet Barney would hate the idea of a parking garage instead of a saloon, a race track would probably be fine, btu a parking garage? That's insulting to the memory of a race car driver

His car racing career began in 1902 when fledgling automobile designer Henry Ford hired him to race his model 999 car.

Barney was the first automobile racer to achieve a mile a minute

William Nolan, in his book “The Barney Oldfield” story, states that Oldfield took money earned from barnstorming to form a partnership with a former railroad conductor by the name of Jack Kipper. They took over the location and opened the Oldfield Kipper Saloon in late 1912.

Finally tiring of the saloon trade, Oldfield sold out in 1920 to the Rappaport Brothers, who operated a hattery business out of the building. In 1923 they changed their name to the New York Hat Co., continuing to operate through 1939

By the late 1940s, a Western Union Telegraph Office operated at 534 S. Spring St. Over the next ten years they would be robbed seven times.

the Z 6 bobtail bridge on the north side of Chicago, over the North Branch of Chicago River, South of Cortland St.,