Friday, December 26, 2025
Carbon fiber camshafts?
The weight savings alone might be an advantage, less rotational inertia means faster revs, quicker valve acceleration, and less parasitic loss.
That translates directly to sharper throttle response and more usable RPM, not just dyno numbers. On top of that, carbon fiber doesn’t fatigue the same way steel does, and it can be engineered to dampen harmonics instead of amplifying them. Less valvetrain vibration = more stability at high RPM, less spring pressure required, and reduced wear everywhere else in the system.
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Come for the train photo, stay to wonder about this very cool spiral staircase tower! Philadelphia’s Spiral Standpipe. I kid you not, if I hadn't started this blog on vehicles, I might have started one on history instead.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27858?size=_original#caption
130-foot spiral column that was to provide water pressure for the emerging neighborhood of Mantua with a standpipe wrapped in an ornate, circular staircase topped off with a 17-foot wide public viewing platform and, above that, a 16-foot statue of George Washington. Everything would be custom engineered, locally-manufactured, and, except for the base, in cast iron.
In the Fall of 1854, the 8-foot Gothic doorway at ground level was thrown open for the public to venture up the 172 narrow steps
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
The standpipe became obsolete after a reservoir that took more funds and time, came online in another 15 years.
The standpipe sat abandoned until the early 1880s, until, in yet another display of derring-do, engineers moved it in a single piece, to the Spring Garden Water Works.
But permanence proved fleeting and fickle; Philadelphia’s spiral column, its monument to industry, innovation, and history, was last seen somewhere at the end of the 19th century.
Its ultimate demise came without fanfare. Meanwhile, in Rome, the standpipe’s ancient progenitors remain standing—two millennia and counting.
Even more photos of the Long Beach Fire Dept 1927 Graham Paige touring 621 with the Bright Bumper and Woodlite headlight aftermarket upgrades
I posted a lot of photos of these in 2017, and all about the Bright Bumper
imagine doing the landscaping that's been put off for a 100 years, clearing out the bushes, shrubs, and hedges, and you find this... umm, wheeled thing!
I couldn't figure out what the heck it was... except steam boiler powered... but the post went on to show what the thing had been before rust took away all the small stuff
this 1930 Caterpillar Thirty tractor is the most original operating Thirty known to exist
The tractor had been owned by a farming family in California, they grew up with it and did an amazing job taking care of that machine its entire life
“He still had all the original things on it that were bought at the factory,” Walker says.
That includes components very difficult to find today, like the fan guard on the right side of the engine, the radiator cap, fuel cap. He even still had the brass key for the magneto.
US Navy Albina Engine and Machine Works ( a shipyard along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon ) Disney military patch
The Albina yard expanded its workforce and production during Portland's World War II shipbuilding boom.
It specialized in producing subchasers, vessels designed to combat German U-boats. Albina Engine & Machine Works also built Landing Craft Support vessels, cargo ships, and barges
