Christmas Eve, 2009. Driving from Houston to Tulsa. The forecast is iffy on the timing, but there’s a big winter front coming and it’s probably going to ice in Oklahoma.

Choice of car was a problem - my F350's tires were well past their sell-by date and did not have adequate tread depth, while the ‘99 Mustang Cobra…

Worst car I’ve ever driven, period: A severely rusted 1974 Chevrolet C10. Interestingly, the truck had lived its entire life in Oklahoma, not in the Rust Belt, but those Square Body GM pickups of ‘73-’87 were horror shows for rust.

This one had basically no exterior sheetmetal below the tops of the wheel openings, the…

Additional data points:
- The only Miami GA area with any kind of view of the track was on the upper deck of the stadium looking out (i.e. the opposite way the seats faced), and you were so high and so far away, my pal who got my guest passes (I am one of the Flag Chiefs Team at US F1 races) stayed home Saturday/Sunday…

I’ll be surprised if the total of the 3 shown adds up to more than $20k.

There might be enough useful parts between the 3 (maybe more?) to make 2/3rd of one good car, after you put another $100-150k into the effort (just doing the interior trim correctly on one of those things is a $10-15k affair assuming you can get…

TX2K is an Entire Thing Unto Itself.

Well, well, aren’t we Mr. Renaissance Man, professionally-skilled in every aspect of vehicle design and construction from smelting the metal alloys and synthesizing the polymers to dissimilar-metals welding, precision machining, sheet metal fabrication and finishing, all manner of mechanical and electronic assembly,…

My primary “comfort” here is that the weapon of choice for street takeovers and flybys has shifted to Hemi-powered Chargers and Challengers instead of Mustangs.

I’ve not seen many reports of stolen cars being swept up in the police shutdowns, though during TX2K (the local equivalent of H2Oi outside of the sanctioned…

Just in this one metro area, there are 2 road courses, an outdoor kart track that’s hosted autocross and drift events, and a dragstrip/paved oval track. Expand the territory to a 3-hour radius and add in 2 more road courses and several ovals of various surfaces. Go out another 2 hours and add 3 more road courses, a…

Street “takeovers”, “flybys”, ego-burnouts leaving car shows, and general dumbfuckness in the presence of other humans with 3000-4000 lbs weapons needs to stop.

Maybe I’m old now. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent almost 30 years working in motorsports safety in some capacity or other. Maybe it’s because I’m aware that…

I see it every time I go into my garage. 1965 Mustang A-code 289, 4-speed coupe. I got it in 1983 when I was 15, and a year and a half later, drove it “for real” for the first time. Worked on it with my grandpa, uncles, cousins, and a couple of pals.

It needs some work again, but there’s a LOT more than money invested…

I grew up in the family auto repair shop and then became an engineer and went to work in the auto industry. Oh, did I catch hell from my cousins.

Jesus Cluny Frog, Andy. Maybe do a little research before sounding like a 20-something that just discovered this “car hobby thing” didn’t just spring into existence with the Fast & Furious movies and GridLife.

Yeah, a couple of good friends of mine in the Portland, Oregon, area are dependent upon these services and roughly 8 times out of 10 one leg or another of their scheduled trip is either late enough to cause problems with keeping appointment or just a no-show entirely. They’ve both been left stranded miles from their…

I stand by my original opening statement: “There’s ‘committed to the bit’ and then there’s ‘David Tracy’.”

I worked there from 1999-2002 and it was an amusingly-disjointed building to work in. The route from Point A to Point B often took you through Points C, D, E, F, and G.

The vacant lots east and west were employee parking. There was also a few support buildings in the southern part of the west lot, like a car wash and a fueling station. This image does not include the (former) shop space to the north of the building, where were test labs and prototype vehicle shops in its later days.…

Also, I feel ya, Dave. This is a matter of Professional Pride, Dammit. The kids of *this* cobbler are going to have good shoes!

Well. Hm.

Not really with coolant. It’s basically dishwasher detergent + anti-foaming agents + some corrosion inhibitors. The idea is that it lowers surface tension thanks to the surfactants and somehow better follows the nooks and crannies of the interior casting surfaces.

But when mixed with an EG/W mix, has negligible effect,…

You never replaced the water pump, did you? Low-speed cooling issues that get better with revs are often because the impeller is eroded and the vanes aren’t their original height anymore.

Signed,

Former cooling system engineer to the stars (or at least the Detroit 3 and a few others) and 38-years-owned ‘65 Mustang 289…