Walking on the hallowed patch ground that is Famoso Raceway it becomes easy to see why the March Meet is now in its 52nd year. People like this stuff. In our case a rekindled interest in drag racing and hot rodding started again around 15 years ago with a wiff of nitromethane and a flashback to the Coca-Cola Funny Car Cavalcade of Stars tossing up fiberglass down a seventies-soaked New England Dragway. Move the pointer to 2010, and the anachronism that is vintage drag racing is still largely intact. Freeze time around 1978, add a few thousand gallons of nitromethane, and never forget the associated junk and iconography. The first stop at every March Meet is always the swap meet at the top end of the race track. Exposure to all this goofball stuff started as a kid seeing a Funny Car supercharger bouncing on fire down the grass in front of the grandstands, liberated from its hemi thanks to the horrors of nitro. This of course led to launching the Mongoose and Snake Hot Wheels down what seemed like five miles of orange plastic track. And though we occasionally used to race down an actual drag strip with a ‘67 Plymouth Barracuda later in life, it was all the stuff that came before moved moved us in that direction in the first place. The exquisite junk that is still with us all.
For LIVE video coverage of March Meet drag racing action head to BANGShift.com
It might need a few new valve springs. The input shaft bearing in the transmission is whining a little. There’s a wobble or two here or there. One of the camshaft lobes may be in trouble. Clunks? Plenty. We’re really hoping the clutch cable doesn’t finally give out either. The good news is that even with 230-plus thousand miles on the original 4K-C engine – there are no recalls for the 1982 Toyota Starlet! We drove the Starlet down to Toyota Santa Monica in hopes for a new old stock replacement shift knob or some other eighties-era Toyota gem, but were told that the Starlet was free of any recalls by virtue of age and durability. A quick search over at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database confirmed that the Starlet was recall free. There is no entry whatsoever for the 1982 Toyota Starlet. Not to worry. We can personally assure the NHTSA that the Starlet is mostly trouble-free, and that the 50 or so horsepower from the mighty 1300cc peanut grinder engine under the hood presents no possibility of unintended acceleration.
From the internet meme department of repairs comes this quick and E-Z tech tip for those looking to find the amber lamps. In this case the two stock amber inboard headlamps for a 1969 Citroen iD sedan proved not only near-impossible to locate, but à prix élevé for the purposes of drivable restification. The inexpensive solution comes in a can for under ten bucks. One can of Krylon Stained Glass Color spray paint in yellow can convert standard sets of clear lens fog lights or headlamps into the amber lamps in a few minutes. The task of prying the lamps or fog lights out of whatever mounts they are fused or screwed into will of course vary by vehicle. Consult your service manual or favorite forum for guidance in removal without breakage. Once the lamps are out and ready for paint, make sure the lamp surface is clean and free of grease or crud. The spray-on finish is translucent and designed for use on glass. Apply the paint in thin, even coats. Better two thin coats than one heavy one to avoid light blocking drips and puddling. Additional thin coats will bring a deeper yellow-amber to the lens. Our Citroën driving man in the field provided these photos of his own amber lamp spray paint conversion. He reports unimpaired luminosity and no breakdown in finish after nearly a year of extensive all-weather testing and actual use. With a couple hours and about ten bucks you too can bring the amber lamps.
There were more Citroëns than drivers on a Saturday morning. The task at hand was a good one. Settle into the plush appointments behind the steering wheel of a 1969 and-one-half Citroën iD21F Safari Wagon and drive. The mission was to get all cars on the move to the Pasadena Art Center College of Design for a gathering of Citroëns, and subsequent tour of the Art Center automotive design facilities. After a few tries at a recalcitrant starter button and a couple minutes of warming up for the DX21 hemi-head engine, the wagon was up on its haunches and ready to swallow the road ahead. The wagon we were driving belongs to one Andy Takakjian, who would be piloting his other DS - a 1969 and-one-half iD 19 Series B Sedan in green that would lead the way on the first leg of the safari. Destination? Pasadena.
Most folks think of automobiles comprised of parts that are fitted together with no imperfections or miscarved lines to ruin the illusion of perfection. While this may be somewhat true of a car or truck made in the last ten years or so, it is certainly not the case of an automobile manufactured as recently as the eighties. Dip back into the sixties and things get even more agricultural. Getting a car straight at the robot-free factory circa 1969 meant people using hammers, shims, and spreaders full of molten lead. Bringing a fusty old Mopar that rolled off the assembly line fortysomething years ago back into line again after an accident involves drastic measures.
Crippling winter snow storms serve as a reminder that when the big snow or the Russians do show up, those all-season radials on that 1984 Plymouth Voyager in the driveway are not going to cut it. A snow shovel and some road salt might get the Voyager out of the driveway, but when you wake up to sub-zero weather and see Vladimir Putin doing shirtless chin ups on the kids swing set in your backyard, there had better be something heavy-duty out in the garage. The M-973 Cargo Carrier is equipped with not one but two sets of drive treads, a Mercedes five-cylinder turbodiesel, and can carry either 17 fully equipped troops or over two tons of supplies. 
Miracle liquids and magic pastes are usually sources of great skepticism for us here at Clunkbucket. While there are some things that might work, there are a lot more that don’t. When the folks from Rescue Tape handed us a roll of this promising tape-like stuff at the big SEMA Show last year, we already had a test for it in mind. One of heater bypass hoses in the Starlet had developed a small (and slow) coolant leak after twenty plus years of occasional contact with a chunk of under hood California smog equipment. We suspect the original bit of foam armor that protected the heater bypass hose from contact with the smog elbow disintegrated a few Presidents ago. This Rescue Tape is a self-fusing silicone material that forms a permanent water and air tight seal to resist everything save for an atomic bomb attack. A few wraps around the old hose and all would be well. Did it work? Why yes. It did.
From the West coast division of the Corvair shortening department comes this 1963 convertible dune buggy variant of the American air-cooled rear engine sports car. The car originally rolled off the assembly line as a factory turbocharged Spyder in 1963. An accident that buckled and creased both doors landed what was left the Spyder languishing engineless behind a gas station until 1971. What was left of the turbo convertible was purchased for 50 bucks to acquire a still complete dashboard. The catch was that the entire car had to go with the dashboard. Where it went began the journey of car shortening, engine transplants, and an orange paint job that lent the shrunken Corvair its name.
Garage talk concerning engine swaps or drivetrain transplants is plentiful. Thousands of instant message windows, forum posts, and Facebook updates are populated at any given second with declarations of Hayabusa powered mid-engine rear-drive Ford Festivas (or similar) with induction systems managed by MegaSquirt. And so on. Some folks actually go so far as to get the pieces. Far fewer fabricate the pieces into something that works. A 1969 Honda N360 is a perfect foundation for such great transplant ideas. How about a 60HP electric motor? Yup. Rear-wheel drive? Sure! Volkswagen GTI transaxle with limited-slip differential and Volksubaru Ground Control hybrid suspension? Oh yes. If your name is Forrest Koogle, you not only gathered all the required pieces, but are building this very car at Hectors Chop Shop. Forrest says that one of the their credos over at Hectors is that they can do anything. We believe it. These guys are well on their way to constructing a 100% electric rear-wheel-driver into the shell of a sixties front-wheel-drive Honda kei car. Fabricating the chassis and making everything fit is far more involved than merely saying it. Follow along with the ongoing transformation and unfolding story of Nikolai360 the E.V. over at the world of unforgiving tolerances.
As much of the world plunges into the sort of deep freeze that may be the work of a clandestine global super villian, the trusty snow and ice scraper seems the perfect mid-winter Ernst Starvo Blofeld edition of Tool of the Week. Growing up in New England meant carrying one or more of these handy tools around for nearly six months out of the year, along with a childhood chock-a-block with scraping and shoveling. The archetypal Clunkbucket was in fact a 1964 Volkswagen Beetle. The heat exchangers had corroded into nothing long before the car fell for 500 bucks into the hands of this freshly licensed driver, who was more or less as old as whatever German ferrous materials the Vermont road salt had not eaten away. The car came already equipped with a scraper. This bonus snow and ice scraper served well to remove frozen crud from the outside of the window in this heatless automobile. The three-inch wide miracle of plastic injection and space age polymer technology was also very handy for scraping ice from the inside of the front windshield. Especially while driving. Heating and defrosting systems have come a long way since the rusted 1964 Bug, virtually eliminating the need for in cabin ice scraping. Snow and ice scrapers have been improved to wider and brush-equipped telescoping handle versions as shown here. Odds are good that any used car glovebox in the Northeast will contain one or more seventies-style Plexiglas models, making the vintage tools not only useful but collectible.
