Saturday 18 May 2013 at 09:00 am
Alert posted on Hemmings, photo by FLariviere, courtesy Shutterstock
SonofaBitch! You turn your back on these EPA "savants" for just a moment & the next thing ya know, they're back to trying to screw up our gasoline again!
The consumer has repeatedly told Washington that we don't like this ethanol crap, but faced with the lobbyists of the Ethanol Industry, the EPA sneaking around with a new 30% proposal. The NY Times uncovered the EPA's deception in it's March report on lowering sulphur levels on gasoline.
NY Times
There is a glut of ethanol overcapacity in today's marketplace, due to the herd of opportunists that jumped on the idea that the Govt will force it down our carburetors. The OEMs & their customers have repeatedly voiced their concerns about the lack of any real testing by the EPA &/or the ethanol lobby. The bulk of the new cars on the road today are not designed to burn it effectively & our old cars accrue severe damage from the fuel's properties, even at a modest 10%, let alone 30%.
The EPA's love affair with ethanol totally baffles anybody in Engineering. The amount of energy (read that OIL) that is consumed in the manufacturing process to convert food into gasoline makes it a total "leaker deal" from a cost standpoint, let alone its overall pollution contribution. Factor in the damage done to the consumer & you get flabbergasted.
"E15 is the answer to the question nobody asked," said Mr. Woebkenberg, Sr Eng for Mercedes-Benz fuel policy in the United States & added that the EPA wants to "make the dog like the dog food."
For once, I agree with management.
Friday 17 May 2013 at 12:37 am
Lincoln County Sheriffs Office News Release
Self-Inflicted Gun Shot Takes Life of Racing Legend
May 16, 2013
Lincolnton, NC - Retired race car driver Richard "Dick" Trickle, 71, died today from an apparent self inflicted gun shot wound.
The incident occurred at 12:02 p.m. at Forest Lawn Cemetery on Highway 150 East in Boger City.
The Lincoln County Communications Center received a call apparently from the victim that "there would be a dead body and it would be his". Communications Center workers tried to place a return call to the number but did not get an answer.
The first emergency units arriving on the scene located the body lying near the victim's pickup truck.
Dick Trickle was a 5'-nuthin, tough as nails, chain smoking, beer swilling, old time hero of the short tracks. He was almost unbeatable on the northern tracks in the mid 60's & 70's. Despite having to race on a shoestring budget, he was one of the "winningest racers" of his day. Rusty Wallace called him every Monday morning for advice on track setups.
Trickle started Cup racing late in his career, at age 48 (and a grandfather) he become the oldest driver in Winston Cup history to win Rookie of The Year! Despite over 300 starts, Trickle never won a Cup race, but he never gave up either. NASCAR had their hands full with this old boy.
Legend has it that he always had a Cigarette Lighter installed in his race cars. That probably came from the fact that the in car cameras on occasion, caught him enjoying a cigarette during the caution laps. He typically had his smokes taped to the crossbar of the roll cage & drilled a hole in his helmet to let him smoke while racing. (lol).
GodSpeed Dick, you lived & died on your own terms.
Saturday 11 May 2013 at 07:52 am
Starting next weekend, the Gilmore Museum will be host to the The WORLD'S LARGEST public museum specifically dedicated to all things related to the Ford Model A!
The grand opening ceremony is to be held on May 18th in Hickory Corners, Mich., from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This new museum came to being through the heroic efforts of the Model A Ford Foundation Inc's membership, who raised more than $1 million to build this replica of a 1930's dealership on the grounds of the Gilmore Museum.
It's going to be an exciting day, I can't wait to wander through this display.
Seeya there!
Friday 29 March 2013 at 2:55 pm
April Fool's Day 2013, is when I fly to Denver to take possession of my new summertime daily driver. a 1962 Chevy Impala. This is your classic "little old ladies' car", that you hear so much about. This particular old dear, bought it brand new in the summer of '62, in Corpus Christie, TX. I bought it off this little old lady's son Art, in Colorado about a week ago, based on only a few photos & the quick inspection of a couple of buddies out there. About 4 or 5yrs ago, Art's sibling drove it up to his place in CO from TX, but it really hasn't been driven much since then.
This is a pretty spartan car by today's standards, no AC, no power anything, & it has the base 6-cly engine with a "3-on-the-tree" manual trans. My plan is to fix a few big things like the Exhaust System & Water Pump, do a quickie service on the car, put on a new set of skins, a Mexican blanket on the front seat, & then drive it to the Lonestar Round Up in Austin, TX.
Hmmmm, a 2,600 mile test drive all across the southwest & then back to the midwest, in a 51 year old car that hasn't run much in a few years...
"What could POSSIBLY go wrong???"
Follow this misadventure in our FORUM
Monday 25 March 2013 at 12:28 am
We want to apologize for the FORUM being down for over a week, like many other sites lately,
we got HACKED! Happily, the FORUM is back up & running today, thanks to the work done by our server & our web-guy, Keirol.
As a safety precaution, our Australian server (1&1) nailed everything shut when the hacking was detected on the 14th. Keirol thinks they got in thru the Calendar function, so that bit's still shut off on the site until further notice.
Our Zen-Cart store uses PayPal & does not process credit cards, so there was no danger to customers, but it did put us a couple weeks behind in processing orders.
Thanks for your patience, it's been a colossal pain in the ass...
Saturday 16 March 2013 at 4:27 pm
We're sorry that the FORUM's down, but apparently some @$$H*LE hacked into the site & was spamming like mad. Thankfully, our Server's Abuse Dept has shut it down while we all work to fix the problem.
Son-of-bitch Spammers, may you ALL rot in Hell!!!
Thursday 28 February 2013 at 10:28 pm
We knew it!
The grumpy bastards here at
Singlefinger Speed Shop have long been praising the virtues of cynicism, but according to new research, published by the American Psychological Association, people who see the glass as half empty & harbor low expectations for the future are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than their optimistic friends.
"Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade," says lead author Frieder Lang, a professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, in a recent press release.
So, stick THAT up-your-happy-go-lucky-arses...
Read more at the
Huff
Saturday 23 February 2013 at 02:16 am
Who Was Kilroy?
(A bit of trivia - even if you never heard of Kilroy before.)
He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington, D.C. It's back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it.
For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history.
Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. We didn't know why, but we had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose with his hands hanging over the label.
So who the heck was Kilroy?
No one knew why he was so well known, but we all joined in!
In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.
Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.
Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed.
Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice.
When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.
One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that Kilroy realized what had been going on.
The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.
Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.
Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.
His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.
Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first."
As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived. Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon).
As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!
In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.
So, now you know the rest of the story.
Monday 04 February 2013 at 7:58 pm
Detroit lost an kool-as-hell artist, historian, & hot rod mentor last weekend, when
Mike "Gator" Gaydos passed away on Saturday morning. Gator was a crazy young biker, a hot rod hooligan, a pinstriper & monster artist, but mostly Gator was a kind hearted gent that seemed to help everybody.
Gator worked at Hollywood Automotive's stores in the 60's & 70's for my Uncle Fred & his partner Norm. I 1st met him at the Dearborn store as a kid tagging along with my Dad's trips to get parts. When Hollywood closed, my family lost touch with the guys that worked there.
I re-met Gator when I was searching for photos & memorabilia from the Hollywood stores. Gator offered to let us Singlefinger bums scan images of the hot rodding scene in Detroit from his personal collection, which we posted as a video at Autorama for everyone to enjoy. Like MANY others, the Singlefinger Crew will miss him.
As Gator always said,
"Keep your flame lit!"
Hollywood & Gator
Monday 04 February 2013 at 7:12 pm
Andre Cassagnes is not really a household name in the USA, but 100 million people around the globe know his famous little sketching machine.
When Cassagnes was working as an electrical tech in the late 50's, he got the idea for a toy that makes erasable drawings when he noticed that marks in a coating of aluminium powder could be seen from the other side of a translucent plate. He perfected the mechanics of his toy by adding two simple dials to control the cables that moved the pointer under the glass.
You can see just how badly the aluminum powder sticks to everything inside the toy & how the complex cable system works to move the cursor. The aluminum beads help keep the powdered aluminum flowing smoothly when you turn the device upside down & shake it to erase the screen.
The Ohio Art Company spotted the invention at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959, and the next year it became the top-selling toy in the United States. This toy was manufactured in Bryon, OH until the stinkin', bean counters moved production to China in 2001.
Andre Cassagnes lived most of his life in his native France, designing competition kites in his later years.
