In the past, I have brought you examples of what occurs in the area of the Venn diagram where technical aptitude, too much free time, and a total disregard for personal safety overlap.

This, however, will be hard to beat:

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When we last left off, the trailer was together, and only awaited a way to actually pull it…

That took the form of a Class I (wheelbarrows, Radio Flyer wagons, and kids on skateboards, age 10 and under) Hidden Hitch from etrailers.com, which goes under the part number 60887 for my particular Mustang. This same hitch is also sold as Reese part number 77029 and Draw-Tite part 24687, which says something about the stranglehold the international hitch cabal has on the market.

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The last PSCA race in Vegas convinced me that I needed a better way to get my stuff to and from the track, and lock it up while I’m there. I can fit my jack, toolbox, drag radials, helmet, jacket, and spare nitrous bottle in the trunk and back seat, but there’s not much room left for anything else, and once I’m there, a long chain threaded through everything and wrapped around a light pole is the best I can do for security while I’m actually racing. When KJ brings his rig out to Fontana, I can throw my junk in his trailer, but I’d rather not have to mooch a chair and cooler space.
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Woohoo! My article on upgraded turbos for diesels is on the newsstands….

One of the things I love about going down to JBA is that there’s usually something interesting on the dyno. Today, it was the Obsidian SG-One, a unique 1967 Mustang that, according to the builder, has $1.3 million invested. Speed shop general manager and tuning guru Bruce Tucker was on the laptop, tweaking the BigStuff3 standalone to dial it in.

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A while back, I brought you the Ken Block Gymkhana video that posed the question, “how many cars do you have to wreck to get this good?” Turns out the number is somewhere between zero and one, as you’ll see in the just-released outtakes:

(video after the jump to defeat the obnoxious auto-play)

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Another gem, courtesy of an email forwarded from my dad. This time, it’s vintage drag racing pictures and captions from an unknown source. You may have seen this email floating around - if you have info on where this came from, please pass it along.

Back in the day, anything was possible. How about an Offy with a side-mounted blower on Ed Donovan’s dragster?

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I’m old enough to remember back when every auto parts store had a big barrel full of Cherry Bomb glasspacks sitting up by the registers, like the world’s biggest impulse buy. Today, the merchandising is slightly more sophisticated, but the mufflers and the sound are still the same. Since I’m always looking for ways to screw up my perfectly good 2004 Mustang V6 coupe, I’ve had an itch to throw a glasspack on in place of the 2-into-1 stock exhaust. I had no idea whether it would work any better, or even whether or not it would sound like ass. But it seemed like an easy project, and the parts were cheap, so I dove in. Here’s how it went:

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Winter does funny things to people. All that bad weather, stuck inside, you might take it in mind to join the body from a kid’s ride-on F150 to an ATV chassis, or put a big gas engine on a Barbie Jeep. You might even discover your friends have all had the same idea…

At the Winternats in Pomona yesterday, former NHRA Sport Compact All Motor racer Scott Kelley made the first pass in the new SS/EX class. The class was basically created at the request of racers to give all the orphaned FWD N/A cars a place to race now that NHRASC and NDRA are dead. They’ll be offering the class at all the Lucas Oil points races this season, and some of the NHRA pro races. Cars must be naturally aspirated, full-body, FWD, methanol only, and weigh 11.5 or more pounds per cubic inch. The class index is a 10.20 at the moment, and Scott ran 9.687 on his first hit.

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Why settle for the metaphorical chariot racing of stock car competition when we could be watching the real thing? This is pure, condensed awesomeness.

Who are these guys? Why did they do this? Kudos for the period-correct driving suits, as well… Turns out it’s not exactly a new idea, though:

It’s not a good idea to wire around your bottle heater’s thermostat so that it stays on all the time. You WILL forget you left it turned on, and the nitrous bottle WILL overheat. If you haven’t abused the bottle with a torch at some point in the past, and you took the time to actually install a blowdown tube, all that happens is a loud whooshing noise, frost on the tube, and a trip to the local speed shop to get a replacement burst disc and a refill…

I can understand forgetting to put them on one. But all four?

A couple of thoughts on this video: One, this is why I always wear a helmet, even in a fifteen-second car, and two, are the retaining walls in New Mexico made from drywall or something? A faster car would have gone right through…

So today, my mom was going through old photo albums, and came across a couple of pictures that I didn’t even remember existed. I’ve told the story behind them so many times that some people I’ve never even met have heard it, friend-of-a-friend style. The photos have inspired me to repeat the tale one more time, with visual aids…

The year was 1986. It was no longer cool for a man to own a pair of checkered pants, or have a perm, but you know how dads are. One way my dad differed from yours, though, was the fact that he had a koi pond in the back yard - still does, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately for the Japanese carp living in that pond, various suburban wildlife would try to make a meal from them on occasion, and that summer had seen some successful predation from cats and possums. To put an end to the neighborhood animals using the pond as a fishing hole, my dad put out a live-capture trap baited with peanut butter, the idea being to humanely catch and relocate the worst offenders.

The first few days came up empty, but late one night, he heard the sound of the trap door snapping shut, and went outside to investigate. Not a cat. Not a possum. A skunk.

The only thing worse than a skunk in the backyard is a skunk in a trap in the backyard. What do you do with it? My dad approached cautiously, steering clear of the business end, to try to figure out what to do. As he got closer, the skunk seemed completely calm, and my dad worked up the confidence to try picking up the trap and moving it. When this didn’t set the skunk off, so to speak, he took it around to the front yard, got some string, and tied the handle of the cage to the passenger doorhandle of his ancient Volvo 122S. With the skunk lashed to the side of the car, he drove to a canyon a few miles away, untied the still-placid skunk, set the trap down, opened the door, and backed cautiously away.

Much to his relief, the skunk ambled out of the trap and into the bushes without incident.

A few days later, on a Sunday morning, the trap was once again full of fresh skunk. Brimming with confidence based on his previous experience, my dad approached the trap, picked it up, and tied it to the door handle of the car without getting nuked. Since the first skunk episode had happened late at night and nobody had seen it, he took this opportunity to let the next-door neighbor, who was getting ready for church, come out and see it. She had the good sense to grab a camera, and got this photo:

Then, she suggested that my dad get close enough to be in the picture as well.

Literally moments after the shutter closed, it happened. The neighbor (in her Sunday best) got it, and my dad got it. Some in his beard..

A hasty retreat to the garage was made, where he stripped off and bagged the clothes he was wearing (not a moment too soon), and decontaminated himself as best he could with canned tomato juice. Returning to the car, the skunk was once again calm, and my dad, with newfound caution, got in and drove off to release this one as well. On the way, he came up to a stoplight with another car on his right, and the driver kept looking at my dad, then at the skunk, then back to my dad. With great presence of mind, Dad reached over, rolled down his window, and said, “Hey Mister! Want a kitty?”

The story has a happy ending, and a lesson to be learned. My dad released the second skunk without further grief, put the trap away and covered the pond with netting instead, and passes the following advice along to all of you:

Skunks don’t mind being trapped, tied to the side of a car, having their picture taken, or driven five miles to be released - just don’t try to pose with them!

The car - a 600-horsepower Group B Audi S1 Quattro.

The driver - Walter Rohrl

Any wonder why this class only lasted from 1982 to 1986?

It’s just a small preview of the rainbow-powered unicorn factories and strawberry-scented welfare checks to come over the next four years, but on Inauguration Day, Krispy Kreme is giving everybody a free donut to celebrate. No word on whether you’ll be required to dip your finger in blue ink to prevent cheating…

Two days late for April Fools’ Day, it will arrive:

Will the combination of product placements (note the NOS Energy Drink signs in the trailer), action set pieces lifted from other films (anybody remember the first scene of The Matrix?), goofy stunts (gotta time it just right to get under the burning tanker!), unlikely street racing, and the original cast blend? Yes, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker reprise their unconsumated cryptohomoerotic relationship from the first movie, with Michelle Rodriguez, fresh off of “Lost” and a Hawaiian DUI, once again cast against type as a woman, and that chick who played Diesel’s sister in the first movie who’s name I dare you to remember is back again as an unconvincing beard for Walker’s character.

Should be fun. I’ll watch it…

What must it be like to be internet superstar Tom Dixon, of “Will it Blend?” At least he’s got good taste in cars, as shown in this video, where he straps a crash helmet on one of his überblenders and takes it for a spin in a GT-R…

What can stop an out-of-control Jeep from plowing right into a gas station? America’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F150, that’s what!

You may recall the video of Rhys Millen trying to kill himself practicing for last year’s aborted truck flip attempt. Well, this year he did it. Sort of.

ProTip: When your sponsor puts their logo on the underside of your vehicle, it’s time to rethink your profession.

How many cars do you have to totally destroy to get to this level of skill?

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A couple weeks ago, I got the itch to make some beer. I used to homebrew with my dad all the time, but it’s been years since we’ve made a batch. So I called him up and asked him to dig out all the equipment. In amongst it was the notebook he kept when we first started - the opening entry was dated 1992! So anyway, we got the ingredients, and set to brewing…

First, the steeping grains soak, until the water reaches 170 degrees.

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One of my co-workers, the intrepid David Wong, came across this scene of misfortune just a few blocks from the office. From the looks of it, the folding end of the lift broke off, and the car slid bass-ackward onto the pavement. The poor delivery guy apparently left in the back of an ambulance after riding the Aston to the ground.

Nitro-powered RC helicopters are breathtakingly expensive, noisy, hard to fly, and dangerous. So why not add a wireless video camera and a .45-cal 1911A1 pistol on the front?

It seems like you’d be better off with something in a smaller caliber with more magazine capacity and less recoil, like a 9mm Glock or even a .22LR, but I suppose that when one is working on a project like this, one uses that which is just laying around the shop at the time…

The next logical step here is to make this thing web-enabled so people from all over the globe can log in and fly it remotely!

For those who weren’t at the 2008 NMRA awards ceremony at PRI (or those who were, but want to see it again), here’s the video we shot:

When I was a kid, I used to beg my dad to hit stuff on the freeway, like cardboard boxes, styrofoam coolers, and so on. His response was always, “What if that box is filled with concrete?” I took his advice to heart, and I steer clear of the many ladders, patio chairs, hollow-core doors, and abandoned shoes that litter Interstate 5. But not everyone feels the same way. I don’t know if it was a case of Jeep owner arrogance (”I have a 4x4 and can drive over anything!”) that started it in the first place, but driving until the leaking gas tank finally forced this guy to stop and address the problem is definitely just stupidity. In any case, here’s what you get when you run over a mattress on the freeway…

From WranglerForum.com

In Australia, it’s not good enough to just get the tires hot with a burnout - you gotta rub the sides of the Ute on the pavement, too…

What do you get when you combine time-lapse video with a tilt-shift lens? Real monster trucks and demolition derby cars that look like toys…

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo

Tilt-shift lenses, which are commonly used in architectural photography to correct perspective and make parallel lines look straight, can, as the name implies, tilt and shift relative to the plane of the film or image sensor. They also have the interesting property of being able to simulate a very shallow depth of field, which is what makes everything look like a model in the video.

For more videos, visit Keith Loutit’s website.

Has it really been three months since the last update? I suck…

Well, actually, I started a new job on September 10th (good timing there, eh?), so I’ve been pretty busy settling in to my new position while wrapping things up at my old job. Now, the problem isn’t money, it’s time.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some parts ordered from Summit, and I finally got around to coating all my exhaust bits. For the sake of those contemplating following in my footsteps, I’ve listed all the part numbers and costs (as of November 2001) below.

Old, stock distributor on the left, shiny new MSD Pro-Billet unit on the right…

MSD Part #8367 - $289.95 (ouch!)

It’s so gorgeous, though… I carried it around the house like a scepter all night after it arrived. "I am the King of Spark! Bow before me!" That went over real well with the wife and pets.

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Somehow I doubt these two morons ended up getting a second chance at their failed flip…

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Last New Year’s Eve, Rhys Millen was supposed to backflip a truck on live TV. One problem - he broke his spine in practice. He’s going to try again this year, and to promote the stunt, Red Bull has released a one-minute video that shows, in sickening clarity, what went wrong last year. Enjoy!

The glacial pace of this project continues… I haven’t done too much in the past month for lack of finances, but here’s what little is new since the last time.

Here’s what the exhaust crossover looked like before and after a trip through the blasting cabinet. You figure out which is which…

The exhaust manifolds get the same treatment, both to clean them up and to give some ‘tooth’ and open up the pores for the coating they’ll soon receive. I made sure to mask the machined surfaces of the manifold in order to keep them as flat as possible and hopefully prevent leaks. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to use gaskets or not when I put it all back together, though.

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Most of the time, the links my dad sends me are, well, the kind of links your dad sends you. Occasionally, though, my dad sends me gems…

You might assume at first that this is a video of a model airplane. It isn’t. There’s a guy in there. A very lucky, very cool-under-pressure, very talented guy.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a job where wearing a pair of pants with a built-in tourniquet in each leg is a good idea…

Blackhawk also makes a matching shirt, which is handy for the tactical needle drug enthusiast, too.

Take your pick - the pants and shirts are $90 each at Blackhawk.

I’ve recently wasted a lot of time in a flame war (pun intended) on Yellow Bullet about heating nitrous oxide bottles with a propane torch. For the uninitiated, a cold nitrous bottle screws up your tune-up, because the pressure in the bottle is dependent entirely on its temperature, and a cold bottle will make the engine run rich when the system is activated. To bring the pressure up before a run, a lot of racers apply heat from a propane torch. It’s easy, effective, and probably the most dangerous thing you can do to a nitrous bottle short of drilling a hole in it or whaling on the valve with a hammer. The problem is that it’s very easy to accidentally exceed the temperature at which the aluminum bottle is permanently damaged, leading to eventual catastrophic failure of the sort seen in the photo above. It doesn’t happen immediately, and there’s no way to tell that you’ve pooched the bottle until it actually blows up.

I’ve been told that “everybody does it”, “I’ve done it and never had a problem”, “pro teams do it all the time”, and even that it’s just my “opinion” that using a propane torch is a bad idea. Since I have a feeling that this topic will come up again on YB, I figured it would be worth spending some time to spell out the facts. That way I can just link to this post and go on with my life, instead of typing it all over again.

These are not matters of opinion. These are facts. As for opinion, well, there’s a word that perfectly describes the kind of person who risks other people’s lives and well-being for no reason, other than being cheap, lazy, or stupid - that word is “asshole”.

While perusing Dan Rutter’s blog he introduced me to the glory that is DealExtreme. If you want to kill a couple hours looking through all the crazy stuff, just follow the link. It’s kind of hard to describe the mix of stuff - everything from novelty items to USB-powered gadgets and RC airplane electronics. I’ll give you a little taste of a few of the items…

How about a nice Personal Cell Phone Signal Blocker?

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I know I keep posting video links (the lazy man’s way to blog) but doing real work has kept me pretty busy lately. Until I get some time to generate some actual content, please enjoy the following…

In California, even minor car-to-car contact is reason enough for everyone involved to stop right in the middle of the damn road and discuss the situation in great detail, while traffic backs up for miles behind the crash.

In Germany, you just keep driving, apparently…

More importantly, would you buy it from Sears? Sure, it’s “Accurate to +/- 1% of reading from 20% to 100% of wrench capacity. Operates in up to 7 common torque units including in-lbs, ft-lbs, in-oz, Nm, cNm, mKg and cmKg. Allows 99 preset torque values to be programmed into the wrench and manually or automatically advanced during use. Stores up to 1,000 torque readings in memory for extended use before download of data is required. Alternately, the data can be downloaded continuously to a PC during use.” But $2500? And Sears? I’ll stick to “a quarter turn before it strips.”

Update: It’s possible to spend even MORE money on a torque wrench from Sears…

How about a little straight-up F-35B STOVL porn?

The clip’s title is almost certainly a lie - I find it unlikely that you’d make the first test flight in such a demanding regime, taking off in close proximity to obstacles (instead of in the middle of a conventional runway, with nothing around to run into for miles, for instance), then landing while perfectly silhouetted by the setting sun. But we can dream, can’t we?

So the geniuses in San Francisco have decided that the solution to the 30-plus suicides a year from the Golden Gate Bridge is a giant net. Not just any net, either - a $50 million plastic-coated steel boondoggle, and that price tag is just for parts and installation. The best estimate is that the net, which will hang 20 feet below the deck of the bridge and extend out 20 feet to either side, will cost an additional $78,000 a year to maintain (no word on whether that cost includes the labor and equipment involved in fishing jumpers out of the net, or if that’s extra).

Some questions occur to me.

I have no idea what the projected lifespan of the net is. The bridge itself has stood for 70 years, so assuming that the net has a similar longevity, and the net is 100% effective, taking fatalities from 30 a year to zero, this has the potential to save 2100 people from themselves. At a cost of $55,460,000, or $26,409.52 per life saved. Seems like a bargain when you break it down that way, when you consider that what this really amounts to is a PR campaign. Let’s say that the net really does work, in the keeps-you-from-hitting-the-water sense. It doesn’t really address the issue of why you wanted to jump in the first place, and if we’re talking about planned suicides, as opposed to “what the hell, I’m here, so I might as well kill myself” impulse jumpers, won’t people just go someplace else? Maybe San Francisco would be better off just offering $25 grand in cash to those willing to agree to leave their hearts (and other body parts) elsewhere…

A friend over at Ford sent me some pictures and a video link of the new FR500CJ going through its paces at Milan Dragway, and I thought I’d share. More pictures and the video after the jump…

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Three arrests (two drivers and a flagger) for street racing, 184 citations for watching an illegal activity for the spectators, 47 juveniles popped for being out after curfew, more than 70 cars impounded…

According to KTLA, “More than 100 officers from 12 agencies, including the Ontario police department, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Riverside Police Department and California Highway Patrol were involved in the arrests, which took place at 12:45 a.m. on Airport Drive west of Etiwanda Avenue. The officers were part of a task force targeting street racing in different cities.”

Ok, this has nothing whatsoever to do with cars, but it’s still absurdly cool. Dolphins might not have all the same tools to manipulate their environment that we do, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t found interesting ways to keep themselves entertained. Watch the following clip to see a group of dolphins creating and playing with bubble rings, then click over to Snopes.com for an explanation of what’s going on.

So I’m watching an old episode of Top Gear, and I discover something I had never known - you could get second-gen SVT Lightnings in the UK with the steering wheel on the wrong side! Clarkson, being Clarkson, hates it…

I know I have a Syclone I have shamefully neglected. And yet, I was filled with a desire to find an original RHD Lightning, or convert one myself… Unfortunately, a little research reveals that the conversion appears to be an aftermarket job, rather than Ford OEM. But that same research also turned up this website:

How much fun would that be?

So I came across this website for a company in Kansas called Fannin Fabrication that makes rollover simulators - they take the cabs of old S-10 pickups, bolt them to a rotisserie mounted on a trailer, and power it all with a hydraulic drive system to spin it around. The idea is for public safety agencies to use them to demonstrate the importance of seatbelts. I got all excited until I read the part about the company not providing the crash test dummies to be used in the demonstration - here, I thought they were actually putting volunteers in there and twirling them around like a hillbilly carnival ride. Oh well…

If this doesn’t fit the “Batshit Insanity” category, nothing does. Let me set the scene for you: Twin sisters from Sweden, walking down the center median of the M6 in England, are approached by cops in a patrol car. So they do the sensible thing, and hop the guardrail straight into traffic, where both are immediately struck by cars, though neither is seriously injured. When more police and paramedics arrive to treat their injuries, both once again run into traffic, and get hit AGAIN. Think that’s the end of the story? Not even close. Well, fortunately, the whole incident was captured on Britain’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras and by a BBC crew.

The real victims here are the poor bastards these crazy broads stepped in front of…

First up, a 650cc-powered cart:

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Let’s say you’ve never, ever been on a dragstrip before. What better car to pop your 1320 cherry than a brand new, 420hp, all-wheel-drive Nissan GT-R?

On Sunday, me and the rest of First Round Racing were out at Fun Ford Car Weekend, and amidst all the domestic iron hitting the track in the bracket class was a fresh, new ‘09 GT-R. As you can see by the level of help the track staff had to give the driver, he’d obviously never taken the tree before. It was also obvious that the car and driver weren’t legal for the 11.60 dial-in on the window. God loves drunks and idiots, though, and a redlight in the other lane gave the win to Godzilla despite a slow light and leisurely launch. Photos after the jump…

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