YZ134

Today was a productive day. Got some domestic items done early in the day, ran some errands, blah blah blah.
Got home and spent some quality time in the shop. After all, the YZ cylinder wasn't going to walk over to the bike and bolt itself down, I'd have to get involved. And it is ice season!

Here's the top end as it came out of the box from Forward Motion. They treat their customers right!


I should have taken a 'before" picture, but I was too embarrassed. The center of the port had a lot of metal missing. I'm going to be a lot more careful with jetting this time around.


The patient..


Looking good so far.


Looking better.


I had to take a break for dinner and more domestic chores, so I went back out later and got the cooling system installed. Carb, bodywork, ice fenders to follow. Should be on the ice on Sunday.

More Military...

After looking at tanks and cannons, we drove over to the airport to visit the static display at the Air Guard. The Vermont Air National Guard has flown these planes, as well as some not pictured here.

T33 trainer


F94 Starfire


F89 Scorpion


F16A "Fighting Falcon", but no pilot calls it that. They call it the Viper. This thing looks like a model when it's parked next to the Cold War jets.


This is the famous Vulcan "gattling gun", built and tested right here in Vermont by our good friends at GE.


On the other side of the drive, some nice "reciprocating mass" powered machines. We tried to look this one up when we got home, and couldn't find it in any of my reference books. Looks to be a Douglas, but I could be way off...


This is a Beech 18 unless I'm very much mistaken.


Ever wonder what the firing order on a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Junior is...


Here's the answer, 1,3,5,7,9,2,4,6,8, as well as valve lash and timing info.


The best for last, 'cause this is my favorite jet. Even if they didn't design it with machine guns from the start.


McDonnell F4 Phantom II


Every jet should have a tailhook. And down swept elevators. And two big ass engines.

Military Displays

I just took a week off from work to do a little kitchen renovation with the help of my brother, Mark. We had a very productive week, so after the hard work, and sometimes harder celebrations, we took a day off to drive around and see what we could see.
I drive past Camp Johnson every day, and I've wanted to stop and look at their tank display, so this was a good day for it. Mark did a stint in the Army Guard and he's an avid war buff, so it's always great to tour these things with him.

Here, he's standing in front of an M1A1 Abrams Tank


This is the rifled barrel of the Abrams 120mm cannon


Standing in front of the M60 tank, which was replaced by the M1A1. Note how much taller this tank is than the Abrams.


155mm Mobile Howitzer


M46 Pershing


M7 Priest, a 105mm Howitzer mounted on a Sherman tank chassis. Called the Priest because of the "pulpit" right of the cannon.


There were several interesting vehicles that were not on display, just tucked away in a corner behind a building. We poked around these too.

This low green vehicle is a Soviet troop carrier.


This troop is about to gain ingress.


Ingress achieved!


This is a Quad 23mm Russian Anti Aircraft unit, captured in Iraq.


We couldn't figure out why the tire would say it in English, maybe it was made for export to a 3rd world country?

Harrington Half Mile

Here are some pics I took in the pits at Harrington. Sandy and I had been going to lots of races during the early '80s, IMSA, F1, SCCA, AMA Roadrace, Indy Car, even Nascar. We saw races all over the Northeast, Pocono, Trenton Speedway, Montreal, Lime Rock, Watkins Glen. I'd never seen any national event that seemed so homespun as this. But the racing was incredible. Somehow it didn't compute.

The weapon of choice for most..


A sweet Honda framer


A well sorted SR500 framer


Privateer Honda's


For some of the racing shots, go back to my earliest posts. I took photos of some slides and posted them. The slides were taken with my Minolta SG, I don't know what camera I used for these photos, maybe my Voitlander?

Englishtown New Jersey, Raceway Park!

I took these photos sometime in the early '80s. I think this might have been a Spring National event. I'll add some photos later. This was just before the track got a major overhaul to keep it's National status. New grandstands, timing and scoring tower, pit walls, all came shortly after.

This is the staging area before the water box. You can see a blue '55 Chevy sedan just coming off the line with the wheels off the ground. This guy was dialed all weekend!



Pro-Stock multi time champion Bob Glidden, in his hideously ugly/fast Ford Fairmont.



Classic match-up, Camaro vs. 'Cuda



Another hotrod Pinto.
And I just noticed, we have an Elvis sighting!



Here's a B/A "Altered" dragster. I never knew how they stuctured these classes. Blown/Alcohol maybe?



Love the Opel GT...

Watkins Glen

There was a time when Formula One was much more accessible to the average race fan. I'm sure we paid more than $5 to get in, but the camping ticket seems pretty reasonable.





Here's Jody Scheckter driving a Ferrari 312 T5 up the "boot" on the back side of the track.



After the race, they put these transport wheels on.



Souvenir

Wrack & Ruin

We had another strong windstorm blow through this week, gusts over 60mph were predicted. Came home to a substantial Oak tree blown down across the driveway. Got that cleaned up and cut for firewood for Seamus.

Then I took a walk in the woods today, and found that most of my single track motorcycle trail is now blocked by more trees. With any luck, the neighbor/landowner will take a lot of the damaged trees this winter when he logs the lot.