0
0
September 23, 2010
Caption Contest: This Week’s Winner!
By Rob Einaudi
Editor-in-Chief
This week’s win goes to GetTheClicker for “Now it whistles every time I’m on the highway…. Can you hear me now?” Tune in tomorrow for another high caliber caption contest!
Live Aid Camaro Time Capsule on Barrett-Jackson Today
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
The Barrett-Jackson collector-car auction is happening this week in Vegas, and one of the flagship cars that’ll be going across the block is this 1985 Camaro, signed by just about every artist who took part in the Live Aid concert for world hunger that year. Ozzy Ozbourne, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Run DMC, Tom Petty, at least half of the Rolling Stones, The Four Tops, Bette Midler, Carlos Santana, Robert Plant and Bo Diddly have all put their scribbles on it. A little acetone and some buffing and this’d make a great ultra-low-miles 3rd gen IROC. Whoops! I mean…
Speaking of ruining the hobby, SPEED is running a fantasy bid contest wherein you get to guess the sums that bidders will fork out for the Barrett-Jackson cars this week in the world’s most well-televised frenzy of automotive conspicuous consumption. Hey, you could win an iPad. Anyway, read about the Live Aid Camaro on the SPEED website, and see a ton more pics of it here.
Drift Office On My Birthday
Bick66
Tuesday was my big 3-0, and the guys at Drift Office in Auburn were kind enough to get me in in the morning for a few happy-birthday dyno pulls in my Corvette. As always, Drift Office had a ton of cool projects in the works, including a 350Z that they don’t know what they’re going to do with yet, and the front half of a JDM Lexus they had shipped in from Japan as a parts donor. As for the ‘Vette, it didn’t do all that great, having actually lost a few horsepower as a result the reduced back-pressure provided by my new Flowmasters. It looks like it’s time to call in Corvette expert Vince from Trifecta Performance for a refresh tune to help get the car all sorted out again. I’ll keep you posted.
The LeMay Museum: Why You Should Go
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
For some reason, I’d always been under the impression that the LeMay Museum was this high-dollar, wine and cheese, ultra-tweed-cap kind of deal–the sort of collection with gleaming white floors where you get herded through an over-mediated “experience” involving a series of interactive touchscreens and kids’ activities with a few impeccably presented display cars in the background. I might have been thinking of the new LeMay facility, currently under construction in downtown Tacoma, about which there’s been a bunch of hoopla. But what I found when I visited the old LeMay museum at the former Marymount Military Acadamy in Tacoma was one of my favorite things: multiple hangar-like outbuildings stuffed to the rafters with old cars. Read on…
Fireball Tim Redster Build Episode 2
By Fireball Tim
Movie Car Design Master
Here’s the second episode on our SEMA build!
Roadside Misadventures
HotRodHoney
Ever had one of those drives where your car will just not stay running and go where you want it to? It was a beautiful day at the beginning of the summer, and my boyfriend Dave and I decided to take my Mustang Ruby up for a cruise to Lake George. But no sooner had we started on our journey when the car started to act up. A few weeks ago she had trouble with her spark plug wires popping off of the distributor cap until they were replaced with MSD 8.5′s, so we were under the impression that the problem was solved. Boy, were we wrong. Read more…
Corvette Tow Package
Tampa Sports Car Examiner
Who knew that the late-model Corvette was capable of being a certified hauler? With a simple bolt-on hitch, this C5 is capable of towing a small to medium-sized load like the following tire and tool set. But how would the ‘Vette hold up under a heavier load, like a camper or car-hauler? Read more at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.
An Inside Look to How a Torque Converter is Built
powerTV Media
Torque converters are the component that made the modern automatic transmission possible, transferring power from the engine to the rest of the drivetrain without the use of a clutch. Even though we’ve all used them, few of us understand what’s actually going on inside or how they’re built. To answer those questions, we talked to TCI, one of the country’s most popular manufacturers of performance converters, and they were gracious enough to walk us through how converters are made, and how they do their job.
Before we spoke with the professionals, we did some research of our own. We discovered that although boat-loads of research and design have been dumped into the torque converter since its creation, it originally began as an option in luxury daily drivers in the late 1940’s. Check out the full story at Dragzine.
September 22, 2010
That Duesenberg Is Actually a Ford F-Series
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
This Duesenberg was built in 1983 entirely on Ford truck rolling stock, including the complete motor and drivetrain. The body panels, however, are exact reproductions made using the original Duesenberg factory dies–everything you can see from the outside could be bolted onto an actual Duesenberg. Not bad for a truck-based replica, though I suspect the build must’ve taken a fair bit of finessing–the car was massive, with a seemingly longer wheelbase than I remember on even the most extended versions of the F-Series of the day. Anyway, it was one of the many automotive oddballs on display at the LeMay Museum, which I visited yesterday with Chris. Stay tuned for a ton more photos!
