CLUNKBUCKET

Skid Plate racing rules are straightforward. Any 1980 or newer four or six-banger front wheel drive car with a 90-inch or longer wheelbase is OK. No secret reinforcements or buttressing allowed. No added weight. Hitting the buffet a few times to add weight to the driver before the race is OK. A Skid Plate Race car must be stock at its core. If you are going to run a V6, two of its cylinders must be disabled. The key to Skid Plate racing are the rear wheels, and absence of rear tires. Mild steel flat plates welded onto stock rear steel wheels are the only racing-spec part. The skid plates are available from the House of Irwindale, and cannot be modified. Auto Soccer and Demo Derby Master of Mayhem Robert Rice created and tested the rear skid plate wheels for use in this unique to Irwindale style of 1/3 mile banked oval motor racing. Bolt the rear skid plates on, attach the safety chains, pull up the parking brake, and it’s time to go racing! Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note – The man known only as Wrenchski provided this from the Barcalounger and love seat roundup of the 94th running of the Indianapolis 500 in exchange for one mint condition still-in-plastic California Masons Erase Drugs pencil eraser.

The lascivious Mrs. Brady does the national anthem justice online as Jewel does it for the TV audience. WTF? At least it didn’t get hip-hopped. We all wait for Gomer Pyle to bring us back to Indiana. The more things change the more they stay the same. Who let Musburger in here? Somebody besides me knows something as one of the live driver camera feeds is Tony Kanaan, and he starts dead last. Shouldn’t use that word. Mary starts the engines. Wonder if Robin Roberts driving the pace car will make Lone Star JR wet his pants a little. Jack Nicholson in the flag stand. Can he handle the truth? Green and Helio checks out as Davey Hamilton crashes his Indy dreams and those of the supermod set. We’ll restart. Five laps later and Tony Kinnan is up to 24th. 23rd. 21st. Stop showing the the whiner and show Kanaan! 19th.

Crash for Bruno, and Sarah’s team is down another car. Tony Kanaan has sliced through half the field. Two yellows have re-bunched the pack so the leaders don’t get away. SCREW the track feed, I’m switching to the Tony Kanaan in car. More TV about the Whiner. Is no one on the TV team watching the scoring sheets? From 33rd to 17th in 11 laps? E.J. Viso finds the only way to pass an Andretti is in the grass. Kanaan to 16th behind another Andretti – Marco, who won’t even let you pass gas no less give up a position. Marco passes Justin Wilson and leaves him in the Kanaan crosshairs. Will Power brings out a caution in the middle of pit stops by leaving with the half the fuel nozzle still in the car Grandma at the Stop ‘n Save. Whoever told Power to go will be WORKING at Stop ‘n Save after Penske gets done with him.

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Despite the maelstrom of news surrounding Toyota this year, there are still a great number of people that pledge allegiance to the brand. A good lot of these folks showed up to participate in and be witness to the 15th Annual All Toyotafest on May 15th 2010 at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. In the end it was Robert Co of Vallejo, California that took Best of Show with a gorgeous stock-modified 1975 Toyota Corona. The win was a real photo finish. The AZN Motorsports crew put the final touches on the car just one day before the show. Robert told us while he had the car itself for only a few years, it had been a over ten years since he first laid hands on the original and complete HKS turbocharger system that was bolted up to the 18R-G twin cam engine under the hood. Robert and his Corona joined Celicas and Scions alike for the premiere Toyotas-only event on the West Coast. Read the rest of this entry »

The snow is mostly gone. The mud is getting a little drier. The sun is higher in the sky. With the weather warming up you’re realizing the only thing holding that old bucket together was the ice frozen into the holes left by rust. All of it adds up to one thing. Swap meets all over the place! One of the biggest swaps out here on the left coast happens in Pomona. It’s no secret that we love going to any swap meet or junkyard, so it comes as no surprise that we rolled out to the San Gabriel Valley and forked over a few bucks to walk around the big swap in Pomona a few weeks back. Everything from mostly complete cars and trucks to disassembled project trucks with five-gallon buckets full of parts in the bed were for sale as long as you had the money. If you can’t find that Chevette horn cover at the Pomona Swap Meet you probably need to get another car, or get out there earlier. We’re still looking for one of those old school oil-filled dash compasses, as the one we picked up from the 99 Cent Only store reads exactly opposite of the earth’s actual magnetic fields. Maybe there will be a super deluxe at the next swap meet.

Check out the Pomona Swap Meet for upcoming junkfests, or head on out to the San Gabriel Valley this Sunday for yet another Swap Meet at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale from 6AM-3PM.

Pomona Swap Meet Junk and Treasure

We know what you’re thinking. Ferraris? Porches? WTF? There is no cause for alarm. Not one of the cars shown here is an actual Ferrari or a Porsche, they only sort of look that way. These automobiles are the handiwork of the Association of Handcrafted Automobiles – or AHA. This gathering of fiberglass craftsmanship and Fieros as Ferraris took place at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona, California this last Saturday. While some may not like what most commonly associate with a Kit Car, there is one key point to remember. The essential difference between a Kit Car and a Handcrafted Automobile seems that a Kit Car comes in many pieces and is rarely finished. These Kit Cars can be seen languishing in backyards poking through sun-torn tarps, or for sale in pieces and five gallon buckets full of parts on the internets. Handcrafted Automobiles as shown here were mostly driven into and away from the show. They may have started as kits, but were finished as cars. A great number of the cars at the show from companies like Superformance are finished and turnkey from the get go. But don’t worry. We can almost guarantee the only time an actual Ferrari will appear on the pixels of this fine publication is when someone puts us behind the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GT Breadvan Drogo for a week.

For more on Replicars visit the Association of Handcrafted Automobiles.

Kit Car and Replicar Handcrafted Automobile Photo Bonanza Gallery

Being number one is not necessarily the best. Just ask any Mopar fan. Number three is far better. Maybe existing as the underdog of the American big three had the Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth collective working that much harder to come up with something groundbreaking and innovative. Perhaps being a little smaller allowed for more free thinking and resulting nimble action. Whatever the case, the number three American automaker produced some of the most enduring American cars and trucks of all time. What does Mopar stand for? That depends on who you’re talking to. Each spring and fall Van Nuys is the place for almost a full week of Chrysler Performance West Mopar hosted celebration. The 2010 Spring Fling proved once again that for a growing number of die-hard fans, it is Mopar or no car. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of Earth Day we present a car made largely of wood and glue. The 1967 Marcos GT is comprised of a sandwich of plywood and fiberglass that forms its gorgeous monocoque body. The resulting lightweight sports car is underpinned by conventional metal suspension bits, and what we can only assume is a powertrain that employs sophisticated metallurgy instead of Douglas Fir or Mahogany. This is not the first time the British have used wood in the construction of high-performance machines. The World War II de Havilland Mosquito twin-engine bomber was made by skilled craftsman using Ecuadorean balsa wood and Canadian birch along with a then new technological breakthrough called plywood, all bonded together with milk-derived Casein glues. This Timber Terror was so fast that it went out on bombing missions unarmed, as no enemy aircraft were fast enough to catch the Mosquito in the early part of the war.

Constructing airplanes during a war from materials derived from trees and milk was good thinking on the part of a resource strapped Britain. As history would have it, Marcos co-founder Frank Costin worked building Mosquito Bombers during the war, and brought with him the skills required to make automobiles in the same manner. The lessons learned during conflict carried over to the early peacetime Marcos GT cars, which tipped the scales just over 1000 pounds. Sadly, the Marcos GT wood and fiberglass construction formula was abandoned in the late sixties in favor of steel tubing in order to speed up production and allow for more powerful engines. Since wood and glass are renewable and recyclable resources, constructing lightweight sports cars of wood laminates made from toothpick trimmings and fiberglass spun from RC Cola bottle glass cullet may be an idea whose time has come again.

Made largely of fiberglass. Engine in front with drive wheels out back. Not just one, but two flip-up fuel fill caps. Styling that hatches theories of Richard Teague getting a call from MI5 with a request to report to Norwich, UK in secret with the original plans for his 1968 AMC AMX GT concept. This is the Lotus Elite in all its 1974 splendor. Only about 2600 or so fiberglass-bodied Elites were made over the four year production run. This one belongs to one Dag Midtskog, who picked up the car in less than elite condition from a pal who had already parted the Lotus of a few spares for his own Elite. What Dag got was a transmissionless Elite missing more than a few parts. He’s spent the last five years locating a set of factory aluminum wheels, trim bits, missing glass, and a new-to-him transmission that’s currently bolted up to the original engine with only 38K miles of use. Read the rest of this entry »