Saturday, May 25, 2024

cool nose art


it was once prohibited by law to sell cars with their bodies painted in red or white in Japan? In fact, it was Honda forced this regulation to be revised in 1960s.

A styling designer at that time painted a prototype of the SPORTS 360 in reddish orange to make it stand out just little bit more. As Soichiro Honda liked it when he saw it, he gave it a go-ahead to adopt the red color on the next new model.

But back then in Japan, due to the fact that red vehicles could be confused with emergency vehicles such as fire engines and ambulances, using red on car bodies for the domestic market was restricted by law.

Soichiro Honda appealed through a newspaper column: Red is a basic color of design. How can they ban it by law? I have heard of no other top nations in the world in which the state monopolizes the use of colors. And Honda’s person in charge paid frequent visits to the Ministry of Transport (currently Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport) to finally obtain approval to use red.

Honda’s first tiller, the 1962 F150. It was revolutionary back then to paint industrial products in red.



a daughter and her dad are going to get her great grand dad's old 65 Ford truck on the road again!


the guy who posted this wrote:

My youngest is about to get her permit. 
When asked about a car she said she wanted my truck. I thought she meant my suburban.

No she wants my grandfathers 65 F100 flare side. 

So we began work on it today. I think she will be the only kid I know that will be able to drive a 3 on the tree. I figure she won't be able to text and shift.

interesting and a bit aerodynamic. Willéme LD610 circa mid-1950s - France

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=395469940150852&set=a.174812662216582

a glimpse of a happy moment in someone's high school years when friends would get together JUST to hang out with each other

and if it wasn't for a smart person bringing along a cheap camera, the moment wouldn't even be remembered. Photography, the back up for poor human memory recall. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=396156010082245&set=pb.100090635465679.-2207520000&type=3

Friday, May 24, 2024

you must have seen this before but I never have using the boiler to keep the coffee hot



is this more than a perpetual motion machine? A flywheel (A big one, maybe 15 to 25 pounds) and two sets of springs on an eccentric crankshaft


Even the police got tired of Karen



either of  these links give a better, color, version of a more complete video, and they end with more humor as Karen's bitching gets ignored by the cops, right to her face

vintage twin-engined 1965 Hornet Marauder III enduro go kart

 with West Bend 820 two-stroke engines, its original Hurst Airheart rear disc brake, and its eye-catching three-gallon aluminum fuel tanks https://silodrome.com/hornet-marauder-iii-enduro-go-kart/

Did NYPD influence the Hudson PD to get scooters? Or vice versa? .


the Spanish Eibar factory-built Lambretta Li 150 Special scooters manufactured for the New York Police Department back in the 1970s

the total number of Italian scooters across the 79 precincts was an even 1,000.

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-couple-days-ago-i-posted-strange.html was the post about the Rabbit Scooter the Hudson PD used

Oahu drivers now can purchase a shaka decal for their license plates at any satellite city hall. Only about 5,000 of the shakas will be available for $30.50.



Sue Snyder of Cumberland County has the only “PSU” vanity license plate in all of Pennsylvania, and it's caused a lot of trouble for her, as every moron DMV on the east coast sends HER the tickets for ANY other state's PSU vanity plate


Penn State university claims to have the biggest alumni association in all of America — which resulted in one “PSU” license plate in a lot of other states.

That didn’t matter either until states started using cameras to enforce highway tolls.

“It actually started with Delaware,” Snyder said. “There was a BMW with A ‘PSU’ tag that kept going through their toll booths down there.”

“I fought them for three years,” she said, sending them all the evidence they should have needed and more that she didn’t drive a BMW, never mind that — as far as she’s concerned — any state sophisticated enough to figure out her address should also be able to figure out what kind of car is on her registration.

Then came New Jersey — which she said was particularly reasonable about canceling the bills as soon as she called and pointed out the error — and Pennsylvania, where out-of-state “PSU” plates were causing her to get billed but where a PennDOT representative made a note in a system to check “PSU” photos manually before billing Snyder. Problem solved.

But Maryland? Sent her a ticket for a black sedan with a “PSU” license plate from an unrecognizable state and nothing else about it in common with Snyder’s white crossover.

from 1962-1972 the bare aluminum on the outside of Air Force One (the VC-137C) was so highly polished that they used baking flour as an abrasive to polish it.

Anything more abrasive than flour would scratch the pristine shine they had. 

 ‘And they said that “Gold Medal Enriched” was the best for polishing. 

 ‘So, that’s how scuff marks on the shiny bare aluminum on the outer skin of 27000 and 26000 were removed back when I was a pilot in that wing.’ 

a swarm of Super Bees... damn, it sure would be cool to see something similar when no one tries to do something stupid and crashes.

 https://www.facebook.com/reel/1354317325525174

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

the luckiest driver I've seen in a LONG time




https://www.tumblr.com/ampervadasz/751155439209676800?source=share  for the video

very good artist, Maurice Laroque-Turgeau





this might be real, but no matter what, I bet it moves real fast if you point a red laser dot in front of it


People posing with cars, a tumblr page. Thanks John S!











an early Motorola Demonstration Car at the R.E. Olds Museum in MI


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=7848237288554792&set=p.7848237288554792&type=3

an example of why bridges have load limits posted... some people were not smart enough to avoid weak bridges

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=385588044303660&set=a.137126059149861

the fun part of what I think of as this hobby, is finding new stuff, that's 100 years old... but new to me... and a bit crazy in design

And then when I try to learn more about this... I find I discovered these 4 years ago. Lol.. https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-line-drive-tractor-thanks-steve.html oh well, at least this is a new photo I hadn't found until now




I haven't heard from Al Bergstrazer in a long time, but in 2020, he commented 

 There were a handful of manufacturer's prior and during WW1 who made line drive tractors, Rumley as I recall was one-but it was specifically for agricultural use. 

The manufacturers called them "Rein Steer". Lacrosse made a Model M

 It kind of made sense, because horse drawn farm implements were all made so the operator sat on the implement and operated all of the controls from that seat, as well as the weight of the driver aided in the operation of the implement in that a lot of them were ground driven

So you either figured out a way to rig up your horse drawn equipment to operate from the tractor seat, or bought new equipment. 

Then there was the line drive as a third but not popular alternative. There were several problems with line drives, the most obvious is that it wasn't a team of horses, who knew how to follow a furrow, or a road without you constantly yanking on the reins. 

A line drive was generally a lot of work to operate. Then there was unhitching it and hooking up something else, it was kinda a bear to do, either pull the trailer up, or wrangle the line drive-sort of. There was a company (Emco power horse) in Utah who made these but only a 4wd version just before and after WW2

there was a site that had a comprehensive guide to them all, http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/reinstractor/reinstractor.htm  but it doesn't work anymore, only the images show up in Google image search. 



the only factory built Silver Ghost service vehicle Rolls-Royce produced, built to be a dignified method of visiting the Silver Ghost owner's estate and if removing their car to the factory service facility.


Prior methods included utilizing Ford TT trucks with wrecker derrick - not at all fitting for the transportation of a Silver Ghost. It is specially equipped with four-wheel brakes and a special tow bar that connects to the rear fitting and has a casting that fits a Silver Ghost front axle on the other. With this arrangement, one would have to look carefully to see the car being towed is not actually moving under its own power. It also has tool boxes built into the rear bed area to be utilized by service personnel when visiting a customer's premises.