Variations On A Theme

Meet Emma
She's a 1993 Toyota Tercel DX that we picked up for $895 after tax, title and licensing.

1500cc's of Electronic Fuel Injected Fury, pushing out a mind-boggling 82hp (28 more than Maggie)

The only drawback, automatic transmission (seats are surprisingly comfortable, although the car feels much more cramped than the Metro)

Pakistani Pride.

So far I've changed the cap, rotor, plugs and wires (because she idled like crap), my dad bumped up the idle, I changed the CD player, and changed the front tires (since the ones on the car were dry rotted and one had a screw in it, luckily the front tires on the Metro had less than 2000 miles on them and were the exact same size.

Emma may only be temporary for me, and then passed on to my sister, because my dad has his eye on a 1992 Saab 900 with a 5-speed that needs a new transmission for $400, but who knows.

You Learn Something New Everyday...

So at the Back to the Fifties swap meet yesterday, aside from an Apollo 11 viewmaster reel, the only thing I found of interest was the February 1978 issue of Homebuilt Aircraft magazine (Special Issue: Replicas!). The main reason it caught my eye was because it said "Woman Powered Aircraft" on the cover, and there was an article about a homebuilt Westland Whirlwind replica (my dad has a slide of the same aircraft he took at Oshkosh. He said the construction of the aircraft scared the crap out of him, because it was pop-riveted together). Anyways, after the swap meet we were walking around and took a break at a bench under the bridge into the grandstand, and I started thumbing through my new magazine. Near the back was an article called "Automotive Engines for Homebuilts" where I found this picture:
It couldn't be. 104 ci Ford Taunus V4's? For airplanes? No. Freaking. Way.

You may be asking yourself, why do I find this so cool? Because as you may know, I love old Saabs. And what engine did Saab 95's, 96's, Sonett III's and Sonett V4's use? The Ford Taunus V4. In addition to being used in Saab's and multiple other cars, the Taunus V4 was also used for many different industrial and agricultural applications, but I had never heard of it being used in an airplane. Apparently the guy who decided a Ford V4 would be a good idea was a guy named Fred Geschwender of Lincoln, NE. Unfortunately, I cannot find any details about the Geschwender V4 online, but the magazine does provide some details.

"The most promising of these small engines is the 104 CID Ford V-4 which has been selected by Geschwender as the basis for a family of light aircraft engines. The dimensions, weight and design features of this engine combine to make it a very attractive candidate for conversion to aircraft use. Dimensionally, the basic engine will fit within a 21-inch cube. The propeller reduction unit adds nine inches to the length, making the overall distance form the prop flange to the water pump pulley 25 1/2 inches, or approximately three inches shorter than competitive engines."

"Total weight of the normally aspirated 110-hp engine will be approximately 260 lbs while the high performance supercharged 150-hp engine will weigh 272 lbs complete. An internal gear-driven balance shaft ensures smooth, vibration free rotation of the V-4 throughout its operating range. For aircraft use maximum engine rpms will be limited to 550, although the same engine in sports car or rally tune can exceed that rpm by a wide margin."
"Propeller reduction ratios have been selected which can be accommodated in the cast aluminum drive housing. The deepest of the ratios, at 2.59:1 is intended for use by homebuilders of the very popular 1/2 scale fighter replica series, as it will allow the use of scale three or four bladed propellers turning a maximum of 2100 rpm. The fastest ratio, at 2.0:1, will permit the use of existing light aircraft propellers on the V-4 turning up to 2750 rpm."

Interestingly, the size factor is one of the big reasons why Saab chose the Taunus V4 to replace the inline 3, because it was about the only thing that would fit.

In another article in the magazine, "Half-Scale War Planes", all about the W.A.R. replicas (which my dad actually looked into building at one point), there is more talk about V4's. The first W.A.R. replica was of a Focke-Wulf FW-190, which was initially powered by a 1600cc Volkswagen engine, but later used a Continental O-200. The article then says "A Honda Civic engine had been tried in a W.A.R. FW-190, but more recently Fred Geschwender has developed an exciting new Ford V-4 conversion of a powerplant made in West Germany for SAAB and for farm machines." It then goes to on to talk about specs on the engine.

Then it talks about Mr. Geschwender looking at two options for engines for W.A.R. replicas, either a 500ci Ford V-8, or the V4. The article says that "Second, he took a hard look at the smaller V-4 and heard loud noises of approval from W.A.R. replicators. It wasn't long before Ken Thoms put the word out that Geschwender V-4's would be available as of November '77 for one-half down ($1,600), and the balance on delivery."

"Either flat-opposed engines or V-8s can, however, fit nicely inside round cowls, and the V-4 seems made to order for the W.A.R. replicas (particularly the P-40 version), and the prototype P-51 Mustang, such as the one Bill O'Keefe is now building from W.A.R. plans at Hermosa Beach, Calif." It later talks about how mister O'Keefe planned on having his W.A.R. Mustang ready for Oshkosh '78 and was planning on a blown V4 of 150 horses to make it "get up and go".

It would seem that in the late 1970's, the Ford Taunus V4 was ready to set parts of the homebuilt world on fire, but I've never heard of a V4 in an aircraft. What happened?

The world may never know.

Or maybe I just need to start emailing people. Whichever.

Back To The '50's

I went to Back to the Fifties with D-Monee and Dustin today. It was alright.

Power Wagon

Austin

Indian Minibike

Morris Minor

Cool IH Pickup

Dwarf 4. I can't find any information about it.

Auto Union DKW JR

R-R-R-Rambler

'rod with a Mark VII grill

The general consensus was that Falcons are awesome.

TR-4

Aftermarket A/C Unit

Apparently, I r a smart kollege stoodent

From a letter I got today:

"Dear Conrad:

Congratulations on being selected to the John D. Odegaard School of Aerospace Sciences Dean's List for the 2007 Spring Semester. The registrars office has informed us that you are one of the 60 students on the deans list receiving this honor."

Cool.

Top Three All Time Aviation Scenes In Movies...

So last night I was thinking what my top three favorite aviation scenes in movies are, and I came up with the following list:


#3: Coffman Starter scene in The Flight Of The Phoenix (1965)


Quite possibly th best scene in the Flight of the Phoenix is when after the Phoenix is built, they try to start the cantankerous radial engine. Note: spoilers dead ahead. The engine uses a Coffman starter, which uses blank blackpowder cartridges to turnover the starter on the engine. The big disadvantage to this system is that for each starting attempt, you needed a cartridge. Run out of cartridges, and you cant start the engine. In the Flight of the Phoenix, the pilot Frank Towns (Jimmy Stewart), has seven cartridges with which to start the engine. If the engine does not start, they will all be stranded and face certain death in the desert. Towns quickly uses up four cartridges trying to start the engine, at which point the designer of the Phoenix, Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kreuger), starts yelling at towns because he believes that he is wasting the cartridges. Towns then says that he is going to use a cartridge with the ignition off, to blow out the cylinders, to which Dorfmann starts yelling "I forbid you!!" over and over. Towns blows out the cylinders, and then uses the sixth cartridge with the ignition on, after which the engine finally starts.

If you haven't seen the movie, do yourself a favor and rent it. And don't rent the sucktastic 2004 remake with Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi. About the only thing better about the remake is that the Phoenix in the remake looks more like a plane cobbled together in the desert.


#2: Bridge scene in part one of Piece Of Cake (1994)

Piece Of Cake is a six part Masterpiece Theater mini-series based on Derek Robinsons book, Piece Of Cake. It's about a Spitfire Squadron at the beginning of WWII that gets sent to France. In the first part, a character Moggy Cattermole sees a small stone arch bridge over a river in the French countryside while on a patrol, and then claims he has boiling oil. The leader of his flight says he should head back to base, at which point...

That's not CG. That's an actual Supermarine Spitfire being flown by Ray Hanna under that bridge. Simply Awesome. Again, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the whole series.


#1: B-17 buzz job in The War Lover(1962)

The War Lover stars Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner, as pilot and copilot of a B-17 based in England. McQueen's characters Buzz Rickson loves war, and after a mission dropping leaflets, he is frustrated and decides to buzz the airfield:

Again, no CG, no models, no R/C planes, no blue screen, no nothing. That's an actual pilot (John Crewdson), in an actual B-17, beating the hell out of the field.

When this movie was made, there were no B-17's around to be used for film work. There is a very good book written by Martin Caidin called Everything But The Flak all about the adventures in finding three B-17's, repairing them, and ferrying them to to England to film the movie. There's a passage in t he book about the buzz job: "But most of all, John Crewdson remembers the buzz job he did of the airfield where the cameras were located to catch his low flying. This is an abuse of the expression, for John beat the field into scenes of men making frantic dives for cover-and they weren't made for the movie."

"In the scene he was coming in for a landing. But before the airplane touched down, John whipped the wheels and flaps up, firewalled the throttles to full bore, and went howling straight for the control tower."

"'For the next five minutes,' John told us just before we saw the rough film footage, 'I beat the hell out of everybody and everything on that field. The director said he wanted close-ups of the staff in the control tower reacting to the sight of the B-17 roaring straight at them-and then screaming by at a height below the tower, with the wing only inches away.'"

"'That's what the man wanted and what he got. I asked the old girl for everything she had, and she gave it to me. I pounded along inches away from the tower and nearly scraped the ball turret off on the runway. Pulling up was out of the question a few times, so I flew between the hangars, and I understand that several people fainted.'"

"'It was the most exhilarating flying I've ever done...'"

"If only we had a camera secretly aimed at John when he saw the first rushes of the film. The sight is absolutely terrifying, and John unknowingly came bolt upright in his seat. In his mind he was back in that cockpit, and his hands were again on those controls...because when the lights went on, John Crewdson was soaked with perspiration, and his hands were white where he had gripped the seat armrests in the theater."

Awesome.

On The Hunt...

Used car shopping sucks.

Ever since Maggie died, my dad and I have been hunting for a new car for me with little success. The first car that sounded promising was a 1986 Saab 900, rust free, with 140,000 miles and owned by the son of an Andrews Of Princeton head mechanic. My dad called the guy, car sounded good, we mulled it over, and decided to call the guy tomorrow to set up a time to go see the car. The next morning, I go to find the phone number from the craigslist ad, but it's disappeared. No worries, our phone has the numbers of the las people called right? Wrong. My dad used our calling card since it was long distance. Fuck.

Next we spotted a 1984 Saab 900 for $750, with "high miles". My dad says, "hey, for $750 you cant go wrong". So he calls the guy and leaves a message. We head out to Owner to Owner Car Mart, and on our way back, dad gets a phone call from the guy. Turns out the car has 240,000 miles. My dad expresses concern at the mileage, and the guy says he doesn't understand why he should be concerned about that, and hangs up. O.K.

Then we spot a 1994 Geo Metro 3-Cyl 5-Speed 5-Door down at a dealership on Concord, with a few obvious exterior problems, less rust in critical areas than mine, and 160,000 miles for $750. This was a Sunday, so on Monday we go back and take it for a test drive after the dealership jump-started it. First problem: you cant open the passenger side door from the inside. Second problem: it pulled to the left. Hard. Next: there was a sick sound coming from the engine ("runs great" said the dealer). Fourth: the brakes were making horrible noises ("we just redid the brakes"). Fifth: the transmission felt like it was slipping bad. Might have been that the car was low on gas, could have been a misadjusted clutch. Who knows. Finally, it was impossible to downshift from third to second. So we take it back, and tell the ladies at the dealership that it wasn't the car for us. They asked me what was wrong with it, and I started listing off those problems, and when I got to the slipping transmission, one of the ladies said"no, that's not a problem, it's got an oil-type clutch". Ok... They asked us if we wanted to take a look at anything else, but I declined and ran like hell away from that place.

The car we've got a lead on now is a 1996 Dodge Neon with 140,000 miles, AT (blech), and previously owned by a Master Technician (sounds suspiciously like Master Carpenter), for $1,800. According to the guy my dad used to work with, it's super clean, surprisingly peppy, and gets good mileage. So who knows, my dad says he's got a real good feeling about this one.

I personally have a real good feeling about the 1963 Corvair Monza for $995 on craigslist.

Cause Of Death: Cancer

Huh, my wheel looks like it's pushed back pretty far...

Oh Snap!

And the other side.

So yeah, I really had been having a pretty good day. Tips were excellent (I ended up with $52, a new record for me), and at two o-clock I saw the flyover from the WWII memorial dedication flying back into Fleming Field (11 AT-6's, 1 BT-13, 3 B-25's, and 3 P-51's).

My troubles began with my first delivery of the day, to the Postal Workers Credit Union on Robert St., which has a very steep entrance ramp. I didn't realize just how steep it was, until I hit it at about 20mph, scraping the radiator brace on the pavement. When I got back to the store, it looked like the right side wheel had a lot of negative camber. Then, about an hour later, I backed out of a parking spot and rode the right wheel up on the curb. Shortly after that, I noticed that my car was pulling hard to the right, and I had to have the wheel cranked about a half turn to the left to keep it straight. At around 3:10, I had to make a delivery to the Sherwin Williams Paint Store that's next to Hollywood Video and Big Dollar. Then I cruised through the parking lot, over three speed bumps, and then I turned east on Marie Ave. and I got in the turn lane to go north on Robert St.. When I hit my brakes, it felt like the steering wheel broke loose from the column. When I tried to take off again, there was a horrible grinding noise from the wheel. And now you know the rest of the story.

Sidenote: my dad called a friend of his who works as a mechanic at a Chevy dealership, to see if he had any leads on any cheap cars. When he said the words "suspension problem" to this guy, he apparently said, "oh, did the a-arm mounts rust out?"

Meanwhile, I'd like to remember Maggie in happier times...

At the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY, 1,016 miles from home.

A Moment Of Silence Please...

At approximately 3:30 PM CST, Maggie, my 1996 Geo Metro was pronounced dead at the corner of Robert St. and Marie Ave. in West St. Paul, with a rusted out suspension mount connecting the right side a-arm to the car, which in turn pulls the axle out of the transmission whenever the wheels are turned or the car goes above 5 miles an hour.

Damn. I was having such a good day too.

Funco!

I was looking through my shelves filled with reams of paper, trying to find all my old airplane designs (success), and a ballad I wrote in the ninth grade (no success), when I found this:I thought I had gotten rid of all of my old Funcoland price sheets long ago. This is actually, I believe, the last month of Funco price sheets ever give out, July of 2001. I used to go and get a new price sheet at least once a month, if not more, and I still remember the day I went in to get a new price sheet, either late July or early August, and there weren't any stacks of them on the counters. I asked the guy what the deal was, and he said that they weren't going to have price sheets anymore, and that I would have to look up prices online. I believe it was shortly after that that Funco turned into a Gamestop, and they fast slid downhill. Some of the prices on this sheet are pretty funny, like Dragonball GT for the Playstation would only set you back $129.99. Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt is only $0.01.

One of my best (worst?) memories of Funcoland is when my dad, my brother and I went in to trade in our NES, fifteen games or so, and a few controllers. They were going to give us around a dollar for most of our games and our controllers, I think two dollars for the NES itself, and I think $10 for Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.

Yeah, my dad decided not to trade it in.