Structural Integrity of a Pop Can

And that if you get in a fender bender with something like this you’ll probably end up a quadriplegic.

It may only be a small car, but 57.5mpg sounds quite optimistic for an engine made out of cardboard and discarded Meccano, based on a 1950s design. No fuel injection here!

Was this a real car, that required a real car license to drive, or was it another weird thing classified as a motorcycle, so much cheaper and could get by with a restricted license?  (I really don’t know much about Reliant other than that the Robin was a tippy piece of crap.)

Charles Barton’s excellent book Howard Hughes and his Flying Boat covers the development of the plane often called the Spruce Goose, a name Hughes hated. Barton interviewed people who actually worked on the project. While the plane itself was a failure, techniques and technologies developed in the process of building…

I actually care not how we lost the Flying Boats today. I care about the missions they are uniquely suited to perform over other methods. In Search And Rescue situations (SAR) time is of the essence. The Russian’s Beriev Be-200 Altair is an outstanding water-bomber for fighting fires, and can get to a location at sea…

I thought that was implied...

to be fair, David Tracy is a really bad influence on all of us. His DIY articles should all be prefaced with “Do not do this.”

If all the cars in this country were pink, we would be a pink car nation.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!

I mean, how do you not have 3-4 half-empty cans lying around?

Is that you Hank?

Same reason I love the Honda Element. The Element is a slightly smaller version of the Aztek. Good, non-abused used examples are holding their value very well. Finding a 5 speed AWD that is beaten to death is the Honda Element Unicorn, preferably one with the painted fenders.

She’s cooler than I’ll ever be!

She’s a character, lol.
She’s 5'2", been teaching kindergarten for 33 years, drives a Javelin, and also has a Harley Sportster that she rides around. Cracks me up.

Your mom is officially awesome for owning and driving an AMX Javelin

My then-17-year-old daughter helped me fix a bunch of stuff on her Mini, and from that point she was always wanting to help work on the vehicles when I had things to do. We did full brakes, fluid changes, spark plugs, EGR valve on my vehicle, among other things. She’s far from a tomboy, too — she’s a tall, lithe model…

My dad was a geek, before the word geek was invented. Very technically-oriented, numerate, practical. He fell in love with an old Rover, which (by virtue of being an old Rover) needed lots of difficult repairs on a regular basis.

Bond? More like “Quit fucking around, roll the winter tires over to me and hand me those lug nuts”.

I have the same opinion of “aerospace grade” metals. It’s plain-jane 6061-T6 most of the time. Milspec just conforms to a military standard. It isn’t good, it isn’t bad, it’s just consistent.