Saturday, April 19, 2025

Happy Easter!

 

the Bosch Magneto Ignition, it made the internal combustion engine feasible for powering the automobile. And due to the family tree project I'm working on, I found I'm related very distantly!

 

In 1897 a customer asked Bosch to customize a three-wheeler with a magneto ignition system. 

Robert Bosch tasked his factory manager, Arnold Zähringer, with finding a solution, which he delivered by making a fundamental design modification. 

Until then, the electrical energy had been generated through the rotation or oscillation of an armature wound in copper within a magnetic field. The technology was capable of providing ignition at 100 rpm

 Zähringer set it up so that a lightweight metallic sleeve surrounding the armature would rotate or oscillate instead, enabling a large number of ignition processes, sufficient in smaller, faster vehicle motors that operated at up to 1,000 rpm.

Jenatzy drove a Mercedes to victory in the Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland in 1903 — thanks in part to the reliable Bosch ignition system, which stood up to the harshest conditions.

Bosch secretly supported the resistance against Adolf Hitler, and together with his closest associates saved victims of Nazi persecution from deportation.

He established his last will and testament in which he stipulated that the earnings of the company should be allocated to charitable causes.

His father ran a large progressive farm that included a brewery. 
His nephew was future Nobel laureate.

 On 24 May 1884, Bosch sailed for the United States, becoming an engineer under Thomas Edison and Sigmund Bergmann in New York. On 13 May 1885, Bosch sailed for London, where he found employment with Siemens Brothers. On 15 November 1886, he opened his own "Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering" in Stuttgart.

Bosch was greatly concerned about promoting occupational training. Prompted by his awareness of social responsibility, he was one of the first industrialists in Germany to introduce the eight-hour work day

Robert Bosch did not wish to profit from the armaments contracts awarded to his company during WWI. Instead, he donated several million German marks to charitable causes, including to the establishment of Stuttgart's Robert Bosch Hospital in 1940.


One of my ancestors, Henrik Bosch, 1493-1526 lived in Frankfurt, and Robert Bosch's ancestors were from the nearby Stuttgart area, though the efforts I've made in looking in Ancestry.com found that his ancestry haven't been thoroughy documented earlier than the late 1700s

getting a well preserved Massey Ferguson back in running order

this is such a pleasant video to watch, and I LOVE that thermostat

Blake Denton just pulled the front wheels to beyond the finish line in the World Series of Pro Mod 1st round at Bradenton, 4.31 at 191 mph


good old days at the dragstrip

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3003743860/in/photostream/lightbox/

cool vintage dragstrip photo!


 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3003798254/in/photostream/lightbox/

MG TD (thank you to the commentors Jeff, Ron, and 65 Mustang) with a race engine, and wheelie bars!

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3016517255/in/photostream/lightbox/

a racing Hurst SC/Rambler!

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3017350472/in/photostream/lightbox/

lots to look at in this photo, cool old wrecker, a drag race, and the biggest damn deep sump oil pan I have ever seen

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3017357354/in/photostream/lightbox/



oh hell, what's the deal with this 3rd taillight on the Camaro, it hurts my eyes!

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3016525629/in/photostream/lightbox/

I love getting a photo of a cool pace car I haven't seen before, and check out the IH Travelall ambulance!


 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3019338237/in/photostream/lightbox/

they didn't bring ladders, instead, they just climbed onto rvs and that fruit juice stand! (probably an Orange Julius )

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dog427435/3019338787/in/photostream/lightbox/

enjoy the eye candy of 60's race track cargo delivery trailer with an unusual set of axles, and look at those huge exhaust pipes!

 

back when Pepsi and Coca Cola sponsored stock car racing

the Battlebird... because about 70 years ago, guys used to be able to do fun stuff, without blank check sponsors, with lots of skilled mechanics without a lot of rules and lawyers

 https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/holman-moody-the-history.571847/

in a new twist to the sleeping beauty story, a bikini contest winner was woke up in a hospital, near a race track, by a race car driver, and he took her to see his shiny new ride. Or something like that


 https://public.fotki.com/gwadagone/sixties-nascar--dec/68allison.html#media

here's proof that someone will always graffiti something nice so they will be known when others go to look at something famous



https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=29484759864503631&set=g.293156547881991

when they really aren't wrong... it's effective, gets the job done well, but is overkill. However, it's a decent free replacement (or recycle/upcycle) instead of trying to find someone that makes a replacement part


 

someone learned of a 1950 bug that had ben abandoned way out in the woods after seeing some time as a farm seed or fertilizer spreader

 






I like gadgets, and innovations a LOT, and there are a couple cool ones in this video I want to share, like the compaction tool that uses a truck spring!


Might even be part of the axle, and use the brake disc!



Coffee and donuts video for the day, skip the first 40 seconds

and the coolest piece of petroliana I've seen in a while, the daily rate card Hertz had to rent the GT 350H

Happy Birthday to Robert G!

 






damn, this is vintage beautiful


 https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-nice-collection.html

Friday, April 18, 2025

wow, interesting that they went retro on the artwork in the ad for this whisky, and used Barney Oldfield, and the Peerless Green Dragon... I suppose it was an effort to not cast the implication that current drivers would drink and race, but rested on the notion that in the good old days of 1910 or so, it was common place, and totally fine

 https://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2024/08/p-m-whiskey.html

the Jeep Gladiator Rubicon High Top Honcho concept for the 2025 Easter Jeep Safari, and the Convoy







I like this look, and so many guys have made similar rigs, or upgraded / restified originals... so, why the hell won't Jeep make these? 


This is the J6 Honcho

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2025-easter-jeep-safari-concepts.html

ok, this is a reason to not stand too close to dragsters, when nitrous backfires.

 

See a much better view of this at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1785529692009038 

there once was a tank named Bomb, and another named Holly Roller. Bomb only took two hits across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and never missed a day of work from when it landed in Normandy on D-Day until Germany's surrender



was used by the Canadian Army 27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment) which landed in France on 6 June and fought across northwest Europe until the end of World War II.

In the course of the war Bomb fired over 6,000 rounds

 It was one of the few Canadian tanks that fought without interruption from D-Day to VE Day.

Bomb was built at GM’s Fisher Tank Arsenal in Flint, MI with twin inline 6 cylinder 2 stroke diesel engines with a total 14L of displacement. Power was 410hp


Thursday, April 17, 2025

really attention grabbing way to advertise oil

 https://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2024-09-09T21:30:00-04:00&max-results=10&start=319&by-date=false

Bill Horton's 'wingless' HW-X26-52 once got 10 feet off the ground after 18 months and 50k in 1952

 https://x.com/tempest_books/status/1657656995930066944/photo/1

I don't remember ever seeing a car squat this much... that's some crazy amount of weight transfer!


a nice 1970 BMW 2002, skillfully converted into a pickup truck.


https://www.theautopian.com/a-bmw-2002-makes-a-fantastic-little-pickup-truck/

someone converted their F50 from Berlinetta to Barchetta

 

someone is going all out in Tokyo on this Hakosuka GT-R, with carbon floors, roof, fenders, doors, quarter panels, bumpers, and has made basically a full dry carbon KPGC10 time attack car


what 6 years, a blank check, the Mopar engineering dept, and Speedkore can accomplish in 6,000 hours


doors, hood, floor pans, body panels are all Carbon Fiber. Frame and rollcage are steel.

eight-speed automatic transmission,  345-section rear tires 

The suspension is sourced from Detroit Speed for the front axle double wishbones and the rear is a custom four-link solid-axle fabricated by SpeedKore itself. Penske dual-adjustable coilovers, with the front and rear swaybars also coming from Detroit Speed.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/carbon-fiber-1968-dodge-charger-hellucination-packs-1000-hp-v8

The hood would look cooler with a Super Bee six pack lift off hood, and the windshield is too tall. 

Subaru just did something very cool! They put ruler marks on the 2026 Outback's taillight!

 https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-2026-subaru-outback-has-a-ruler-built-into-its-taillights

and we learn about this Easter Egg just days before Easter! Neat!