CLUNKBUCKET

Roasting days mark the unofficial beginning of summer radiator replacement season. One can see the season’s early victims on the first wicked hot weekend of the year. There they stand on the side of the road holding up their hoods while their cooling system makes like a steam engine. This mighty 1969 Dodge Polara did not overheat, but did do something equally unacceptable. While ascending the infamous I-5 Grapevine with four people and the air conditioning on full meat locker setting, the Dodge heavy put the 383 big-block into the slightly hot zone. The solution was clear. Full radiator replacement and upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »

Just in case you were wondering what to drive on the Ventura highway to the West Coast Citroën Rendezvous this weekend, we are proud to present this 1979 Citroën CX Tissier as a public service announcement. The stretch versions of the hydropneumatic pride of French modern motoring achievement were used for everything from ambulances to hearses – with countless towing, bread van, and delivery variants in between. This turbodiesel powered beauty appears to be for sale at the bargain price of about 28 thousand clams and change. Our German is a little rusty, but the translator tells us that the engine has been completely overhauled with nearly everything else that can go wrong on an automobile that employs internal combustion, turbocharging, pneumatics, hydraulics, and has six wheels repaired or improved. The interior is of course, brown leather. Enterprising customizers in dire need of a Citroën CX Tessier might save some bucks by duct taping a couple salvage title Ford Transit Connects together and replacing the stock suspension with airbags and hydraulics.

Check out the CXBASIS for more information and images of the 1979 Tissier. Southern California Citroën fans are advised to head to Ventura this weekend for the SoCal Citroen Club West Coast Rendezvous. Thanks to bread-baking beer-brewing near-future Citroën owner Jonny Lieberman for the Tissier tip.

From the back to nature desk of our renewable resource and sustainability division comes one of the more versatile and useful items in the Clunkbucket Arsenal of Tools. Wood. Countless blocks, lengths, or chunks of wood make it onto the tool carts and work benches of the world as proof that necessity is the mother of invention. Can’t get the car high enough with the floor jack? Block of wood on top of the jack. No parking brake? No problem! Wooden wheel chock. Firewood works especially well in this case for those so equipped. Seal driver kit not equipped with a big enough round to seat the rear main seal on a Mitsubishi Astron engine? Precision cut wood, with hammer. Battery hold down corroded to nothing? Wood wins again as an economical and corrosion free substitute. Sticky starter? A few well-placed raps with a cut-down wooden broomstick and away you go. The block of wood can be used in combination with any number of hammers for non-marring blows or convincing of fancy-finish parts into the right place. Wood used to keep Revolution four-spoke wheels from rolling into the neighbor’s expensive land yachts during cleaning, prevents unwanted litigation, and pays for itself a million times over. Any worthwhile tool cart or box carries wood of varying shapes and sizes collected from the light bulb moments of mechanical genius. As we’re certain there are myriad uses for wood not mentioned here, additional applications of wood for automotive repairs and/or parts are welcomed in the comments.

Thrifty use of wood as a battery hold down.

In celebration and hope that most of America made it through the Independence Day weekend without starting a conflagration or losing a finger, we bring you this last in long line of American longroof family chariots. This 1990 Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park station wagon represents the beginning of the end for purebred full-size American wagons. As hard as it is to believe looking at the acres of genuine simulated woodgrain and plush burgundy leather luxury therein, this last of the Grand Marquis station wagons was lighter and smaller than its predecessor. It wasn’t enough. The Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park wagon was the first of the Iowa-class longroofs to cease rolling off the motor city assembly lines in 1991.
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On this Independence Day it is time to celebrate the ingenuity that makes this country great. This endurance racing kart was built and driven by Duffy Livingstone, a man considered the father of the modern Go Kart. Like so many other forms of mechanized mayhem that later become motorsport, karting started with castaways and discarded junk combined with a crazy idea. Before there was Go Kart, Livingstone was looking to improve his Ford Model T road racer and increase disdain among Maserati and Ferrari drivers out on corners. Since his buddy Art Engels worked for Curtis Craft, Duffy thought a trip to the Curtis Craft shop might give him some ideas for a new tube chassis car he was thinking about. What Duffy saw up on a bench there changed everything. Art had got a deal on some castaway lawnmower engines, one of which was bolted up to what looked like a smaller than quarter-midget race car. Read the rest of this entry »

It was just a few years into living that we gained knowledge of modifying electric cars for more power and increased velocity. Digging through the Clunkbucket Collection, we found an original Aurora Thunderjet car that was hopped up as a father-son project to beat the guy in the other lane. From what little we can remember, this procedure involved hand wrapping more copper windings on the electric motor armature, and soldering a few wire bonds in between the pickup shoes and motor brush plates. The passage of time and later assaults by the GI-Joe with lifelike hair and Six-Million Dollar Man combined armies were not kind to many of the original Thunderjet cars in the Clunkbucket Collection. Somehow a few survived, along with the memories and chronicle of performance modifications. Looking at this HO scale electric car more than 40 years after it was modified has got us thinking that genuine electric automobiles that haul around expensive heavy batteries and then have to stop for recharging are fraught with inherent problems. We have a solution. Now is the time to turn shovels on the Joe Biden Atomic System of Interstate Electric Roadways.

This heavily modified Aurora Thunderjet Ford XL500 was probably made in the late sixties, and is on permanent display in the Clunkbucket Collection of fine automobiles.

For those who ponder how aftermarket parts and performance upgrades are available as soon as an automobile hits the market, this Honda CR-Z measuring session is the answer. The Specialty Equipment Marketing Association, or SEMA, brings the big car makers together with aftermarket gurus far enough ahead so that the good stuff is ready for action as soon as the automobile is. The three 2011 Honda CR-Z hybrids shown here are being measured for everything from seat covers to supercharger systems. Constructing a 2700 or so pound production automobile that has an electric motor, an internal combustion engine, multiple batteries – and survives the NHTSA giant mechanized robot gorilla and evil steam shovel gnashing of cars test is a feat in itself. The new Honda sporting hybrid is a departure from the usual drab green automobile formula. This joint Honda-SEMA measuring session means the titans of the automotive aftermarket are already at work, and that Honda CR-Z owners will have a choice of suspension, brake, wheel, and engine modifications ready straight away. Now if Ford would finally build the Nucleon, we could hop up the on board atomic reactor with some hot control rods and exotic fissile isotopes.

Thanks go out to Honda and SEMA for letting us peer into this top secret session. Archive imagery courtesy of Honda. Look for the 2011 Honda CR-Z in late August 2010.