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 … [Read more...]
Rescue Tape saves Heater Hose
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 … [Read more...]
A Shrunken Corvair Named Kumquat
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 … [Read more...]
1969 Honda Electric Rear Driver
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. … [Read more...]
Tool of the Week: Snow and Ice Scraper
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 … [Read more...]