Roland Leong has passed away


Roland Leong, known far and wide for his "Hawaiian" race cars was a successful gas dragster driver in Hawaii, came to California in the early 1960s and got work at the famed Dragmasters chassis building emporium near San Diego. 

Leong’s Dragmaster-built rail was driven to the Top Gas victory at the 1964 Winternationals by future motorsports legend Danny Ongais, and the 1965 Winternationals and U.S. Nationals with driver Don Prudhomme, duplicating those Winternationals and U.S. Nationals victories in 1966 with new driver Mike Snively – but switched to Funny Cars in 1969 and was immediately successful there as well, winning the Winternationals back to back in 1970 and ’71 with drivers Larry Reyes and Butch Maas.







I just remembered that I want to find a new home for a pair of these... now, I wonder if there is anyone who would even want to buy them...



The other one is under some stuff in the garage, this one was looking the part of a factory original spare (well, close enough, I've only had the car to one or two shows in 20 years, and a half dozen cruise nights, likely no one ever looked in the trunk and appreciated the original looking spare)

Do you think asking 400 for the pair seems right? New remakes are about 400 each, a set of 4 of these (without rims) on ebay are 625. Plus shipping

thank you Conner Kranz and the Sea Foam marketing dept!


A result of a SEMA card drop, or fill in the card and drop it in the fish bowl, so, I took a chance! Nice!  

Robert Forster's father was a logger, and then an elephant trainer for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, but left to join the Army and flew in WW2


As a tribute to his father, Forster hung one of his father's Barnum & Bailey Circus posters in the office of his character in Jackie Brown, as well as his dad's short elephant hook. 


When he received his draft notice for Vietnam, his mother suicided by burning herself at home. "“She was hysterical about the thought of my going to Vietnam,” he says, his voice suddenly choked. “She used to say, Who has the right to come and take my son and kill him?’

Forster kicked off his film career on as high of a note as one could imagine—a film directed by John Huston and co-starring two of the biggest actors in the world at the time, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.




He starred in Delta Force with Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, he worked with Gregory Peck on The Stalking Moon (western), who sponsored him into the Motion Picture Academy (and Peck was it's president, who with Candace Bergen, were actively changing it from stodgy old guard Hollywood to performers who had a 1st hand perspective vs financial interest in what won) 

He got the starring role in a 1972 tv series, Banyon, as a Los Angeles private eye that would work any case for 20 a day, and drove a 32 Packard model 900 Light Eight convertible Coupe

Banyon’s office was down the hall from a secretary school in the Bradbury building. They have an agreement for him to use one of her students whenever needed. This gave the young secretary-to-be some experience, and Banyon got a different pretty young secretary for free every week




He was nominated for best supporting actor Oscar for Quentin Tarentino’s 1997 hit “Jackie Brown, and was Tim Allen's dad on Last Man Standing, and had a great role in Breaking Bad's sequel El Camino

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/04/archives/robert-forster-how-to-succeed-in-flops-about-robert-forster-robert.html
https://www.wranglernews.com/2019/10/31/robert-forster-recalling-a-memorable-encounter/

Richard Ha, of the Hamakua Springs Country Farms on the Big Island's NorthEast shore, restored a sampan and uses it on the 600 acre farm


Chefs of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine have been given tours of the farm on the sampan bus, seeing the hydroponic lettuce and watercress operation, seeing first hand the sustainability farming of fresh, locally grown produce 

Now it's getting restored and improved for safety






He bought this sampan bus at auction a few years before 2007. There were seven or eight of them for sale that day. This one, which had previously been owned by the Lyman Museum, was the most authentic.

The Lyman House Memorial Museum offered tours of Hilo starting in 1988 with there sampans

This Plymouth was one of 8 for auction in the early 2000s, and went for 8k


Wednesday, December 27, 2023

B-17, Tondelayo, was barraged by flak from Nazi antiaircraft guns, the gas tanks were hit 11 times by 20 mm shells without touching off an explosion.


The crew wanted the shells as a souvenir of unbelievable luck, so the rounds were sent to the armory dept to get defused... 

when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found NO explosive charge. They were harmless.

But one shell contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech.

The Intelligence people scoured the base for a anyone who could read Czech. Eventually they found one to decipher the note.

Translated, the note read: “This is all we can do for you now. Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea.”

A member of the Czech underground, working in a Nazi munitions factory, had deliberately omitted the explosives in at least 11 of the shells on his assembly line. He slipped the note into one of the shells, hoping that someone who benefited from his efforts might discover why.

Elmer Bendiner was the navigator, he told the story of that bombing run over Kassel, Germany


Stevie Nicks posing with Larry Clouatre’s “Matter of Time” Chevelle in Sept 75! Thanks George!



The photographer was Fin Costello and the photoshoot took place in Wallingford where Fleetwood Mac was recording a set for a radio show at the Trod Nossel recording studio. 

These pictures of Stevie were published in rock magazines like Circus and Creem.

Tony Neri was contacted by his buddies at WPLR ,who wanted a race car for a Promo photo shot. There was this new group with a girl lead singer, ready to do a concert in Bridgeport to promote their first album.

 Tony told them his “Ad-Man” Chevy II wasn’t available, it was at Lindblad chassis getting worked on. He suggested his racer buddie Larry Clouatre’s freshly custom painted Chevelle 








You can buy one of these posters at https://www.ebay.com/itm/166512609848