Mercedes... so damn classy, that the spare tire kit int he trunk, has a pair of cloth gloves so your hands stay clean. Damn. That is corporate style.

- by Be For

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Back in the 70s and 80s, long before vido games and internet, entertainment and education could be found in the Guiness Book of World Records

Do you remember the worlds biggest twins? The McCrarys, Billy and Benny

After a case of the German measles messed up their pituitary glands, they went to 20o pounds each by age 10, 600 pounds each by age 12

They were sponsored in a cross country endurance feat by Honda to prove the durability of the motorcycles.

http://goodsparkgarage.com/the-motorcycling-mccrary-twins/

- by Be For

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Road Check 2015 will be June 2nd, 3rd, 4th

Each year during the 72-hour blitz, 10,000 CMV enforcement officers, from Canada to Mexico inspect approximately 17 trucks or buses every minute.

During the 2014 Commercial Vehicle Safety Association inspections, 72,415 driver inspections were conducted. 4.8% were found with OOS violations, and 825 seatbelt violations were found.

73,475 buses and trucks were inspected. Of those, 49,656 were subjected to a Level 1 inspection. A Level 1 inspection is a 37-point inspection. A Level 1 inspection is ” an examination of driver’s record of duty status and the safety of the vehicle. Drivers are required to provide items such as their license, endorsements, medical card and hours-of-service documentation, and are checked for seat belt usage and the use of alcohol and/or drugs. The vehicle inspection includes checking items such as the braking system, coupling devices, exhaust system, frame, fuel system, lights, safe loading, steering mechanism, suspension, tires, van and open-top trailer bodies, wheels and rims, windshield wipers, and emergency exits on buses,” the CVSA states.

A total of 5,738 hazmat vehicles were inspected. 919 were found to have OOS violations and 172 hazmat drivers were found to have OOS violations.

http://cdllife.com/2015/resources/roadcheck-2015-coming-soon/


According to a press release from the State Highway Patrol, Patrol officers and motor carrier enforcement inspectors inspected 1,237 trucks. Of those, 280 trucks and buses and 40 drivers were placed out of service during the 72-hour blitz.

In 2013, Last year, Ohio State Highway Patrol and CMV enforcement officers inspected 1,566 vehicles. OSHP and CMV enforcement officers placed 363 trucks and 65 drivers OOS.

http://cdllife.com/2014/featured/ohio-state-highway-patrol-releases-roadcheck-results/

- by Be For

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top 7 cars you should avoid buying

Fiat 500 - Least reliable. 16 times more problems than the most reliable car, the Scion xB. It's 219% worse than the average car

Jeep Compass -  Lowest owner satisfaction. Only 43 % would buy another.

Mitsubishi Mirage - Lowest scoring on handling, noisy and excessive engine, underpowered, and poor rating on the crash overlap test

Toyota Tacoma - Lowest scoring truck. Clumsy handling, rough ride, mediocre stopping distance

VW Passat -  highest ownership costs over 5 years

Nissan Altima v6 - worst value midsized sedan, when factoring overall road-test scores, predicted reliability, and five-year cost ownership.

Nissan Armada - Worst gas mileage 13 mpg overall

https://www.yahoo.com/autos/10-cars-youd-be-foolish-to-buy-115305847262.html

- by Be For

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Cities that truckers refuse to stop in

Fontana Ca.

First 3 exits off the interstate say NO TRUCKS, get off at next exit and you end up in the left lane. The sign for the truck route is on the right side of the road hidden behind all the traffic.

One block up the cop sits and writes no truck tickets all day long.

 Then you drive 300 miles to be there for the court date(and notice all the trucks in the parking lot), and that day is to set a date for court, not the actual trial.

And then you find that the time to ask for a trial was the 2 hours before court started during the ask for a trail phase.

 If I had the last truckload of food and Fontana was starving, I would park the truck on the overpass and burn it to the ground.

West Valley detention center(the jail) has over 20,000 excessive use of force complaints. However, when the attorneys subpoena the footage from inside the jail, the cameras weren't working that day.

Only thing worse than the Fontana PD are the San Bernardino County Sheriffs. They once took like 45 minutes to respond to my call of an attempted rape in progress on the side of the road.
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Lodi CA has the same setup in town and at the I5/HWY 12 interchange.

 1 st time i got pulled over was at the hyw12 interchange, cop said no right on red, there where no signs on the off ramp, tried to fight it in court with pics/proof, nope. $712 fine and $200 in "fees".

then i got pulled over 1 month later on the east side of hwy12 near 99 and was told i was doing 49 in a 35, show up on court date with everyone else busted by the same cop, guess what? everyone had a 49 in a 35.

 think the courts would dismiss it? fucking nope. got nailed with a $500 fine and another $672 in "fees". no lawyer would fucking touch it. miss a payment by a day? ohh there courts where on that shit and had your licence suspended by the next day with no notification besides the DMV sending you a letter that didn't arrive till 3 weeks after it was suspended.
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Waldo and Hampton, Florida, there were tons of official "Speed Strictly Enforced" warning signs and even horizontal striping painted on the road with increasingly narrow gaps so you'd feel like you were driving faster than you were and want to slow down.

There was a town like that here in Indiana. Completely reserve police force. My former boss worked there part time. Was told explicitly to target out of state and counties as far away. If they got caught giving warnings to cars from more than an hour a way, they would get written up for "dereliction of duty" .

Camden County sort of did this. The Camden PD was so awful it was disbanded and Camden is now 'patrolled' by Camden County police. Except there are streets the cops won't even respond to without like three cars.


https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2ryla3/truck_drivers_of_reddit_what_city_or_town_do_you/cnkkjhw

- by Be For

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the evolution of the Peugot lion was well done on retrovisiones.com, from 1905 to 2015

I like the brass era the best, but the rest are at http://www.retrovisiones.com/2014/12/la-evolucion-del-leon/

- by Be For

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In Queens, NY there are 9 intersections and 28 corners of 60th and 60th

Image cropped for size from the original at The Land of Maps.

From http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2015/03/lets-meet-on-corner-at-60th-and-60th.html

- by Be For

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The Durand-Lesley Propeller Collection

Fifty of the propellers are currently on permanent display in the Terman Engineering Library in the Huang Engineering Center. Others were sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C

The hand carved Durand-Lesley propellers in the Stanford Engineering Terman Library at the Huang Engineering Center are the surviving artifacts of a famous experiment in early aviation history which defined a process method in engineering research still in use today.

The work created a comprehensive methodology that was widely used by engineers but little studied by historians, until Walter G. Vincenti wrote about it as a case study in his book, “What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History” (1993).

The studies at Stanford systematically altered parameters that defined the shape of propeller blades, and two others - the speed of the airstream and the speed of propeller rotation, to determine the best performance of various propeller shapes.

The history of aeronautics at Stanford began long before the actual founding of the Aeronautics Department and is almost as old as the university itself. It all started with the appointment of William F. Durand in 1904 to the chairmanship of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, only a year after the first flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

A pioneer in the fields of aeronautics, naval propulsion, and engineering research methods, William Durand remains one of the most revered names at Stanford more than a century after he joined the faculty in 1904. A picket-fence display of his hand-carved wooden propeller designs, each a unique specimen, graces the wall of the Terman Library at the Huang Engineering Center.

While at Cornell University, Durand's research concerned boat design. He published the classic text Resistance and Propulsion of Ships in 1898. When he came to Stanford he began to study the then-nascent field of aviation. Working with Professor E.P. Lesley, Durand built one of the first wind tunnels and embarked on a rigorous study of propeller design that provided airplane makers with the means to choose the best propeller for their airframe designs. The study was notable for its results, and for bringing a more scientific approach to engineering research.

In the early 1930s, Durand edited the six-volume series, Aerodynamic Theory, a major reference in the field. Durand also shared his scholarship through public service, both as chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - a precursor of NASA - and during World War II, as a leader of a program to advance the development of jet engines.

His first professional assignment upon graduation from Annapolis was as engineering officer on the U.S.S. Tennessee, a full-rigged wooden ship with auxiliary steam power.

http://lib.stanford.edu/lotf/readings?page=0%2C450  and http://engineering.stanford.edu/2010-stanford-engineering-heroes

- by Be For

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Bangshift just did an article on the greatest cheating methods in racing

Some that impressed me,

Wimpy springs that would put the car on the bumpstops for the race and change the cars rake affecting the air dams position relative to the air flow over the car

someone in the stangs with a garage door opener remote that activated a mobile weight in the car that would move from one side to the other to increase traction in the inside of the turns

Smashing the race vehicle into the wall to make it narrower

Filling in a radio with lead to get the car up to weight

filling the frame with Mercury and having a transfer system so the car was level weight during tech, but all left bias during the race

James wrote in with a very vague "How bout the ole’ “nitrous system in the hood” trick. Leave the entire system mounted to the inside of the hood and use the hood pins to supply power and ground. Or a certain big name NASCAR team using seven cylinders of an eight cylinder engine on the restrictor plate tracks. They’d use the “unused” cylinder as an airpump to supply air to the remaining seven cylinders."

Tim Richmond’s team using a helmet filled with lead to go through tech and “forgetting it” in the hauler just before a race when a crew member would run back to get a real, lighter one was pretty clever.

Mopar super stock teams in the sixties would weigh the car with water filled tires and change tires before and after the race.

One NHRA drag racer was caught red handed with a small bottle of Nitrous Oxide http://www.caranddriver.com/features/blowup-feature in 1997

http://bangshift.com/general-news/bangshift-question-of-the-day/question-of-the-day-whats-the-strangest-way-to-cheat-in-a-race-that-youve-ever-heard-of/#comment-115475

- by Be For

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1971 Challenger

there were only 250 with a 440 6 pack, no 440 4 barrels were installed in 1971 Challengers

Challenger Deputy was the base model, and came with engines from the 198 to the 383

 The low priced Challenger Deputy (Option Code A93) was a mid-year introduction (March 1970) and continued until the end of 1971 model production.

 This version of the Challenger was unique in several ways.
 The car was similar to the base Challenger hardtop with the following exceptions ;
 The rear quarter windows were fixed in place by leaving out the regulator and bolting the track.
The rear window winder was deleted and the hole plugged with a chrome button.
The standard engine was the 198 6 cyl. with the 225, 318 and 383 (2v and 4v) optional.
The seats were the cheaper standard Plymouth Barracuda seats in black or white only.
The steering wheel is coachman grain like the Barracuda.
Things like dual horns, cigar lighter and night/day rear mirror were optional.
There are only six Deputys known to have been built with the 383 4bbl engine.
Three with automatics and three with 4-speeds
http://www.cuda-challenger.com/cc/index.php?PHPSESSID=2a80dff8f346cedac1f470c0fa864e74&topic=48961.15

- by Be For

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just one year of collected nails from one road.

Found on http://cynthiashidesertblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/road-kill-and-blast-from-past-by-bill.html

and in 2012:

- by Be For

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