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While we’re off flashing our passports while crossing international borders and scarfing Tim Horton’s donuts here’s something to keep all you car spotters busy. A shot of a few of the cars assembled for the last night of the Monte Shelton NW Classic.
I can ID 16 out of the 19.1 cars visible.
Nick and I are heading to Vancouver BC. Wish us luck!
The above Maserati was seen at the 2008 New England 1000, being driven by the Rallymaster Rich Taylor.
In other news there will be no Jaguar pics tonight… I found out late last night that the JCNA slalom in Canada I intended to drive to this morning is actually going to be happening tomorrow. So today I’ll be doing all those things I planned to do Sunday. Namely make a batch of BioDiesel, fix our damn lawnmower (never. buy. Craftsman. ever. again.) Maybe cut the grass if successful.
At least it has cooled off. 61°F right now where as it was 90°F here yesterday.
I few weeks ago one of the guys in my small BioDiesel co-op dropped off a barrel of waste oil he collected from a restaurant. I was a bit taken aback when I looked at the oil as it had… some odd coloration. Usually a barrel of oil settles in a way so that the top few inches look like new. That is clear, bright golden-yellow oil. When I looked at this stuff it was sort of shocking orange, and very opaque… almost milky. I though perhaps it had been shaken up in transit and have left it sitting out by the barn for a few weeks to settle. My worst fear was that it wasn’t really oil at all. Next in line was that it had been contaminated with something. Water if of course the usual waste oil contaminant, but this looked… weird. So last weekend I took a 1-liter sample and made a small test-batch. The oil had settled and was mostly clear, but still VERY orange. The test batch is done at ambient temps so it takes a long time. I let it sit for five days and above is how it looks today. Still not “clear” (it is unwashed though) and still… very orange.
Next I’ll subject some to the 3/27 Conversion Test and see how it does. My gut feeling says it is “good” and that the coloration is just some artifact of whatever it is they are cooking. The oil comes from a Mexican food place, so perhaps it is excess paprika, or maybe Chorizo, which are the only Mexican cuisine items I can recall that are unusually orange in color.
If it tests out well I’ll mix it with the rest of my (normally colored) waste oil and make some BioDiesel from it. Maybe my exhaust will make people think of nachos instead of french fries now? We’ll see.
Speaking of Home Brew BioDiesel I figured I’d share one of the risks of this activity: Shoe dissolving.
BioDiesel is one of the world’s great solvents. It attacks rubber with the ferocity of a shoal of slow-motion piranhas. Exposure directly to vegetable oils literally makes rubber vanish. I only wear one pair of shoes when I work out in the barn around the waste oil and BioDiesel, and the above is a photograph of their current state. This is of course after many years of use, but I think it is time to retire them.
I’m headed north to Vancouver tomorrow for a JCNA Slalom event, my first of the year. Wish me luck.
I’ll post photos as soon as I can, but meanwhile enjoy the image above.
Stumbled upon this video today via a link on a news site in my RSS feed (love that Internet whimsy)… The Beat Farmers were one of my favorite bands in the 80s and early 90s. I deeply regret never seeing them live before the death of their key member Country Dick Montana (here on drums) in mid-performance at the Longhorn in Whistler.
Two of their albums “Tales of the New West” and “Van Go” are usually in heavy rotation on my “chuck’s favorites” iTunes playlist. Good times.
Here are two Country Dick Classics for you “Happy Boy” (the only Rock & Roll song to feature a Kazoo & Gargle solo) and “Big Ugly Wheels”
Yesterday I spoke about prominent things on car’s bodies that make aesthetic and functional sense, and the big center-mounted gas cap on the C2 Corvette is certainly Truth in Engineering.
We ran with two Corvettes in the 2006 GTTSR as they were driven by friends of my father/co-driver. These guys could never pass by a gas station. Thirstiest cars I’ve ever been around. Their tanks are bigger than the E-type’s yet they stopped twice as often for gas. The Jaguar is NOT a miser by any stretch but these plastic machines suck down the go-juice like there’s no tomorrow!