If you ever run out of gas, beware. The Shell gas station at Laurel and Pacific Coast hwy (San Diego) charges 15 bucks for a 2 gallon gas can

why is it marked up so much at the Shell station? To make an obscene profit off your misery and desperation. That pisses me off.

This gas can costs 8 bucks online http://www.drillspot.com/products/573120/midwest_can_company_2300_2gal6oz_red_plasgascan so I recommend not giving your patronage to Shell to protest this outrage.

I was there to grab a coke. Those are priced the same as everywhere else, because we'd never put up with paying 2wice the normal price for a Coke, we aren't desperate for a 200%marked up Coke.

Hope you don't mind me venting, I'll have something entertaining posted soon, but every now and then a public service message to help you all out is not a bad thing.

Instead of paying 15 for the gas can, and then 30 cents a gallon more than all the other gas stations in town that aren't located next to the airport, car a friend for help. Your friends like to help you out when you are in a jam, and you'd like to owe them a favor anyway.

Blogging, Facebook, Youtube... now more accessed on the internet than porn... Generation Y now outnumbers the baby boomers

Lupus, a disease so rare, a drifter is using her race car to raise awareness of it.

Christine Seprish is using her race car as a way to raise awareness of systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic, inflammatory autoimmune disorder that affects the joints, kidneys, skin, lungs, heart, blood, blood vessels, nervous system and brain. It occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue.

She’s a drift racer.

Her father was a race-car driver. Her three brothers raced. And she raced anything she could — cars, trail motorcycles and even bicycles.

Today, she is the only woman racing in regional pro and amateur circuits of “drifting”.

Read more: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/oct/05/racing-against-lupus/

"Bring a Trailer .com " gets national magazine feature

http://bringatrailer.com/ has been on my recommended website and blogs list since I started listing my favorites to recommend to you, if you haven't checked it out yet, get a moment of guilty pleasure at work ( I think that is where most people are looking at this blog at)
Page 17 of the Nov 2010 Automobile Magazine has a full page Q and A, or read it right now at http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/1011_bringatrailer_editor_in_chief_randy_nonnenberg/index.html

Sports and muscle cars are a better investment than the stock market

Hagerty's is a really cool car insurance company, this was part of their newsletter. Click on it to make it full size and easier to see what the various colored lines represent, and what cars comprise the group that the blue line that is out outperforming the stock market

Chris has posted a thorough comparison of a variety of car by their drag coefficients

I had no idea that a Ford Probe, a Vector, a Chevy Lumina APV (mini van), and a Jaguar XJ220 all had a .30 drag coefficient, remarkable!

But the 1948 Tucker was just .28! and the '35 Tatra was .21, better than the new Mercedes Benz CL E Class Coupe

go check it out http://chrisoncars.com/?p=1854

A list of blogs that are both helpful and resouceful for car restorers

http://www.satellitedish.org/blog/2010/50-essential-blogs-for-restoring-classic-cars/ in their own words "Here are 50 essential blogs for you to read as you embark upon or continue your journey to restoring the car (or cars) of your dreams"

I'm of the opinion that this site is only making lists to drum up traffic, and I thought about that in terms of sending people their way when they are not in this vehicular realm of websites... it's offputting that they are just trying to pump up their stats... but I leave it up to you. The list is fairly complete in including the go-to auto blogs, but it's also obvious to me that they aren't readers of these blogs, and when you read how they describe the sites you are already familiar with.

(#19) http://olragtop.blogspot.com is great, and on my recommended list for sheer enjoyment of John's musings and writings and enjoying life, but it isn't about VW's,

(#13) http://gti-rides.blogspot.com/ is only about 7 pages deep, has nothing to do with restoring or restoration, and is only informative about BMW M30s and a half dozen other cars

Things left in rental cars and found by the clean up crew after the vehicle was dropped off at the rental car place

3 million cash... drug deal that was interrupted by cops who then confiscated the vehicle, but didn't throroughly search for evidence

an Uzi... Secret Service sorta dropped it and didn't notice it, rental car company called them up to let them know they'd "misplaced" somehting important

a kilo of cocaine... DEA rented a vehicle to transport a large haul of confiscated coke... and "misplaced AKA lost" one kilo. Under a bench seat, somethign like that, who knows.

I went to a couple other rental car places, and they enjoyed hearing the stories, but wouldn't share any of their own unless the corporate office gave the OK ... seems everyone is on a gag order, no telling any stories because of lawyers and "confidentiality" legal mumbo jumbo.

If any of you want to share stories like these, I don't print names, dates, locations, or companies... so use the comment thing, or email me and I'll add them to this list. jbohjkl@yahoo.com

Penetrating Oils Compared

Machinist's Workshop magazine is reported to have tested penetrants for break
out torque on rusted nuts. (I'm waiting for vevrification)

Significant results! They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrants with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from a "scientifically rusted" environment.

Penetrating oil ..... Average load

None ..................... 516 pounds
WD-40 .................. 238 pounds
PB Blaster ..............214 pounds
Liquid Wrench ...... 127 pounds
Kano Kroil ............ 106 pounds
ATF-Acetone mix... 53 pounds

The ATF-Acetone mix was a "home brew" mix of 50 - 50 automatic transmission fluid and acetone.

Note the "home brew" was better than any commercial product in this one particular test. A local machinist group mixed up a batch and all now use it with equally good results. Note also that "Liquid Wrench" is about as good as "Kroil" for about 20% of the price.

Harley models by letter designation, correlated to year and type

Model Years Description
D........... 1929 - 1931 45" SV
DL ........1929 - 1931 High Compression 45" SV
DLD..... 1929 - 1931 High Speed 45" SV
E ...........1936 - 1950 Medium Compression 61" OHV
EL .........1936 - 1952 High Compression 61" OHV
F ...........1941 - 1950 Medium Compression 74" OHV
FL......... 1941 - 1965 High Compression 74" OHV
FLE ......1955 - 1965 Special cam police 74" OHV
FLH..... 1955 - 1965 High Compression Sport 74" OHV
G ...........1937 - 1963 Servi-Car with tow bar
GA ........1937 - 1963 Servi-Car without tow bar
GD ........1937 - 1941 Large body Servi-Car without tow bar
GDT...... 1937 - 1941 Large body Servi-Car with tow bar
R ...........1932 - 1936 Low Compression 45" SV
RS......... 1932 - 1936 45" SV with Side Car
RL......... 1932 - 1936 High Compression 45" SV
RLD ......1932 - 1934 High Speed 45" SV
RLDR.... 1935 - 1936 High Speed Race 45" SV
U............ 1937 - 1948 Medium Compression 74" SV
UA......... 1939 - 1940 Low Compression US Army 74" SV
UH .........1937 - 1941 Medium Compression 80" SV
UL .........1937 - 1948 High Compression 74" SV
ULH...... 1937 - 1941 High Compression 80" SV
V ............1930 - 1936 Standard Compression 74" SV
VHS....... 1934 - 1936 Medium Compression 80" SV
VL.......... 1930 - 1936 High Compression 74" SV
VLD....... 1930 - 1936 High Compression 74" SV
VLH .......1934 - 1936 High Compression 80" SV
W ............1937 - 1952 Low Compression 45" SV
WL.......... 1937 - 1952 High Compression 45" SV
WLA....... 1940 - 1945 and 1949 - 1952 US Army Low Compression 45" SV
WLC .......1942 - 1943 Canadian Army Low Compression 45" SV
WLD........ 1937 - 1942 High Speed 45" SV
Via: http://fucdatbirth.blogspot.com/2010/09/useful-harley-model-chart.html

Why I don't have advertising

A lot of people have asked why I don't have any advertising.

Two reasons,
1) I don't like car insurance
2) I'm not selling out my clean and straightforward blog for less than an annual income I can live off of

I was just informed by some Image Space Media - "Image Space Media, the nation's leading In-Image ad network." - that they can make me alot of money. - "Now serving display banner + rich media ads Ads served through our partnership with AOL + ISM's direct advertisers = bigger payouts!"


Any guesses how much they figure my blog of about 500,000 annual page views will make me in a year?

one penny per thousand hits. Thirty bucks a year. THAT is not worth all the clutter of stupid ads no one is interested in looking at