Category: Uncategorized

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Product Review Meguiar’s Plastic Headlight Restoration Kit

For quite some time on my POS daily driver the headlights have been an issue.  They have become so fogged and yellowed that at times it’s hard to tell if they are on at night.  I really hate spending money on this truck, because it’s not worth anything.  I bought it Memorial Day weekend in 2006 for $900, and have spent little money on it.  A new battery, front rotors and pads and a fuel pump, that’s it.  45,000+ miles later, it still runs good and gets 27-28mpg on the highway.  

The lack of illumination has mostly been an annoyance but of late it’s hit a tipping point.  Over the last few months I’ve seen a few products advertised on TV and magazines that are supposed to clear up yellowed and fogged headlights, and I’ve been curious to see if they would work.  Earlier this week I was at the parts store to buy some new wiper blades and saw this on the shelf, I figured I’d give it a shot.

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Shelby Car Show At Ford World Headquarters

Sunday, May 31st there was a car show put on by the local SAAC (Shelby American Automobile Club) that happened on the grounds of Ford’s World Headquarters.  Out time was short there, but we were able to put this video together.  Make sure to click the HD button to see it in it’s best format.  If you’d like to see the individual pics have a look at them on out Flickr page

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Dale Junior’s Latest Fresh Start

The news that everyone knew was way past due came this week when Tony Eury Jr. was replaced as crew chief of the 88 team.  If you’ve spent more than ten minutes watching Nascar, you know the history there.  And if you didn’t FOX and SPEED are sure to run at least thirty minutes of packages and vignettes over the Dover weekend events to dramatize them.

To say Junior is loyal to a fault to his family is a massive understatement.  Eight times out ten that’s a good quality to have, but like now when it interferes with your performance, well, sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and your friends and family is find a soft landing spot for them, and that certainly happened with Eury Jr. as he is moving over to JR Motorsports full time now.

By the way when did Dale Junior become a Brazilian soccer star where he’s just known by one name, Kaka, Ronaldinho, Pele, Dida, etc., then again Brazil’s affinity for nicknames might stem from the country’s historically high illiteracy rate. As such, shortened spoken names are typically used more often than longer birth names, not that I’m drawing any correlation to the Nascar fan base, :rolleyes:

I don’t think anyone who reads this, nor I who write it, can understand the level of pressure to perform and live up to the legend that was his father.  For that alone it’s understandable that Junior would place himself in a protective bubble surrounded by friends and family where he feels safe.   There in may lie the problem.  The Junior entourage, and no I don’t know who’s Turtle and Johnny Drama etc., enjoy the good life and may not want to upset that gravy train.  The only person we know for sure that maybe giving Junior an unfiltered opinion is Rick Hendrick.

Hendrick has been more than patient with Junior, letting him pretty much have his way in how the team was set up, staffed and run.  At the end of the day though Hendrick had to put his foot down and say enough.  In a crappy economy he has sponsors who are paying him at 2005 levels and not even getting an acceptable return for that time frame, let alone 2009!

With someone new on top of the pit box and in his ear, Dale Junior will be forced to come out of his comfort zone, and that maybe just what he needs.  Will it have the desired effect, no one knows for sure, but as the old saying goes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

The move to Hendrick was a “Fresh Start” and “Clean Break” from DEI and was suposed to kick off the era of Junior domination.  We know how well that worked out.  Lets see if this “Fresh Start” works out better.

Finally we want you to check out this interview with Junior from Thursday while he was in Detroit promoting the upcoming race at MIS.  Out friend Larry Henry (twitter.com/DetroitVoice)condcucted most of the Q&A, it’s pretty reveling about how hard this move hit him.

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RumblestripRadio #95

Time for a little cross promotion.  It’s been a while but a new episode of RumblestripRadio is now posted.  It features and extend conversation with Chris Jonnum, the Editor of Road Racer X.

Check it out at www.rumblestripradio.com remember to subscribe to the show via iTunes or your favorite RSS reader.

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The Bathurst 1000

If you were to make a list of all the important car and motorcycle races in a year, all over the world, and make a list of all the great tracks in the world, would the Bathurst 1000 on Mount Panorama make it?  Well it should!  In the land of Oz this is their Indy 500, their Monaco GP, their Assen and Mugello.

You can spend hours on YouTube watching videos of V8 Supercars turning laps at this place.  The track looks like a mix of Spa, Road America and Laguna Seca.  This TV package gives you an idea about the history of the race, the track and it’s importance to the motorsports culture of Australia.

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1000 Frames A Second Top Fuel Drag Racing

Finding cool stuff like this is why I like Twitter.  @SummitRacing posted this today, Top Fuel Funny Cars and Dragsters, Pro Stock Cars and Motorcycles launching, and the absolute violence of it.  All captured in what’s called X-Mo, or super slow mo of 1000 frames a second.  Your standard TV picture is 29.97 (in North America) frames a second, film is 24 frames a second.


Drag Racing Filmed at 1000 fps – Watch more Fast and Furious

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Interviews With Sherif Marakby & Wayne Gerdes

Last week when we were in Alexandria, Virginia for the Ford Fusion Hybrid “1000 Miles On A Tank” event, we had the opportunity to sit down with two people who were very important to the event.

First was Sherif Marakby.  Sherif is the Chief Engineer for Global Core Hybrid and Propulsion System Engineering for Ford.  He not only quarterbacks much of the development for the Ford hybrid systems, he also drove over 10 hours as part of the team in the event.  Sherif stated that there were many reasons for not only doing the event, but doing it in the shadow of the nations capital.  Ford were out to make a statement that (a) they ARE a different kind of car company and (b) that CAN compete with the worlds best on the world stage.

Ford took a car off the dealership floor and with no other special prep than inflating the tires a bit higher than than normal and removing all the stuff from the trunk, they went for it.  There was some neutral coasting, but no key off moments.  He also stated that the metric of how long they could go solely on battery wasn’t a major issue for them.

Have a look at the video portion of our interview:

Next we spoke with Wayne Gerdes.  Wayne is a legend in the hypermiling community and was brought in by Ford to lead the team for this event.  He spent time with all the team members training them in his way of driving to maximize milage, and drive them to reach for a higher goal than even they had looked to achieve.

Here is the video portion of our interview:

After 10+ years of interviewing people you think I would learn my lesson, but I’m sorry to say that after we stopped rolling the video portion of the interview we spent twenty minutes more talking with Wayne, getting to know him, and I didn’t record any of it! DOH!!!!  

It turns out that Wayne is a big proponent of modern clean diesel technology, even though he “made his bones” with the hybrids.  Wayne is a hardcore enthusiast, just in a different manner than we would normally associate that term with car people.  He is as hard core as the guy who drive a high 8 second street strip car with a .750+” solid roller cam on the street.  It takes a special kind of person to do that since many times it’s not the most comfortable ride, but you are doing it to prove a point.

You can find out more about Wayne, his adventures and his cause at www.cleanmpg.com

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An Interview With Jean Jennings of Automobile Magazine

Much like yesterday we are featuring an extended interview that Mark Charmer and Joe Simpson of the Movement Bureau conducted on their recent trip here to the US.

Mark and Joe spent about 25 minutes talking with Jean Jennings the Editor of Automobile Magazine about a variety of topics from the design of car interiors to how cars of the future will be utilized.  This is a longer interview, but well worth the watch.

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Something For Earth Day

I’ll be up front an honest here, most of this “green movement” is bogus!  There I said it.  I don’t want to be the way out wacko guy here, but take a minute and look at the people pushing the hardest for this agenda, they are looking to profit greatly either through investments they have in companies, or in gaining political power.

That said there are some good and common sense things that everyone can do to reduce needless waste.  Ford has been doing something about this for a few years now with the “Living Roof” on the Rouge Truck plant.  Mark and Joe from Re*Move (who I had beers with last night and I have to say are some really great people) put this video together on a trip to visit with Ford.  Have a look.

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A Lap Of The Ring

In the past few years the measuring stick for how big and bad assed a manufactures car is has become a lap time on the Nordschleife circuit of the Nurburgring.  This is the legendary 28.265Km/17.5 mile track in Germany that for many years was the home of the German F1 race.  This is the track that Niki Lauda had his famous crash in 1976 and was almost burned to death.

 It’s said Nissan’s goal with the GTR was to go quicker than a Porsche 911 around this track.  Porsche has in the past shown in it’s TV ads engineers doing laps at the track testing the 911.

One of the great things about the track is that it’s open to the public and for a fee you can take your car or motorcycle and do a lap.  This is the reference at the end of the Porsche ad when they go to the ATM machine for more cash so they can do more laps.

The cost for driving a single lap of the Nordschleife is €23 for each car or motorcycle. Multi-lap tickets can be purchased for a lower per-lap price, such as 4 laps at a cost of €76 (€19 per lap). Additional multi-lap prices are 8 laps for €146, 15 laps for €251, or 25 laps for €391. An annual ticket with unlimited laps, valid from January to December, can be purchased for €995.

Since the closest most people might ever get to this track is their XBox or PS2/3 I thought we should take a lap around the track with the legendary Hans Stuck.  Stuck is an ex F1 driver and winner of the 24 Hours of LeMans twice.

Stuck takes us for a lap in the BMW M3 GTR.  If you are a sports car nut and the audio of this clip isn’t enough for you to get your rocks off then you should just quit now.  The motor on the over run and on the down changes of the gears is just wonderful.  Add in just how fast he’s going, flat out in 6th gear on multiple occasions and it has you reaching for your passport and your cell phone to book the next flight there.