garethj

There were 8 different Uncle Jesse trucks, 3 were F100s. The rest were F250s. The first one was only used in Georgia. It is said to have been crushed in 1998. Fate - DESTROYED. The 2nd Jesse truck was the close up truck for the first couple of seasons. It was heavily damaged in a collision with a General Lee. They scrapped the body and used the chassis of this truck to build the Mean Green Machine. The Mean Green Machine was later blown up in a Fall Guy episode. Fate - DESTROYED. The 3rd Jesse truck first appeared in season 1 and made it all the way to the final episode. It was painted brown in the final episode and used as a bad guy truck. This truck is still around today and still has the brown paint job. Fate - SURVIVED. The 4th Jesse truck was used in season 2 and early season 3. You can spot it by it's yellow interior. This was the truck that rolled over in ENOS STRATE TO THE TOP. Fate - DESTROYED. The 5th Jesse truck was the close up truck for seasons 3-7. It was also painted brown in the Dukes last episode. This truck existed at least up until 1987. It was last seen in an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. It has the same dents, same twisted front bumper and the interior is kept white. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 6th Jesse truck was used in seasons 4-7. It was also painted brown in the last episode. This truck was last seen near the end of the final episode. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 7th Jesse truck appears in seasons 4-6. After the first few episodes of season 6, it is never seen again. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 8th and final Jesse truck was only used as a Jesse truck in 1 episode, COMRADE DUKE. It’s thought WB only rented this truck because other studios used it as well. Thanks to General Lee Junkyard on Facebook for all this, his geek-levels on this are far beyond my own.

There were 3 different Boss Hogg Cadillacs on the show, all 1970 models. In his book, Tom Sarmento said he believes the Cadillacs were scrapped. All we know for sure is that at least 1 Cadillac was still on the WB backlot in 1991. Fate of the 3 Cadillacs - UNKNOWN. The show had 6 different Cooter tow trucks. The first one only appeared in season 1 and was never seen again. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 2nd tow truck was last seen at the end of season 4. Fate - UNKNOWN. You might think continuity was poor with these two, but… the 3rd tow truck made it all the way to season 7. This was a fairly new truck. It was only about 6 years old when Dukes ended. Hard to believe they would scrap it, but who knows. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 4th tow truck was only seen in a few season 4 episodes. Both doors from this truck were donated to one of Cooter's GMC tow trucks. Does that mean this truck was wrecked and parted out? I don't know. Fate - UNKNOWN. The 5th tow truck was 1 of 2 GMCs used. The doors on this truck came from the Chevy tow truck. This GMC truck survived until 1998 and was blown up in an X-Files episode. Fate - DESTROYED. The last tow truck was another GMC. It was mostly used in 2nd unit shots. This GMC was probably scrapped, but nobody can be sure. Fate - UNKNOWN.

Ah, Saturday afternoon TV in the 80s, before the early evening tedium of game shows there was unspeakably exotic scenes of America and cars going very sideways. The Dukes of Hazzard was made for 7 seasons (series, as we call them) but when it ended, Warner Brothers sold 17 of their remaining General Lees and kept 2. But what happened to Daisy's cars and jeeps and Boss Hogg's Cadillacs? What happened to all the Jesse and Cooter trucks? Let’s explore. Daisy's 1974 Road Runner. There was only 1 of these cars used on the show. It last appeared in the season 1 episode LIMO ONE IS MISSING. We never saw it get damaged or jumped. They just stopped using it. Fate - UNKNOWN. Then there was Daisy's 1971 Satellite. The show had 2 of these cars. This was the first one. This is the one that went over the cliff in The Runaway episode. It was replaced by a white jeep. The second unit also had a Satellite, it was used for a few small jumps. Daisy had 2 Dixie jeeps, a manual and an automatic. These jeeps were loaned to the show by AMC. Manufacturers had seen what happened with the demand for black Trans-Ams after Smokey and The Bandit and wanted some of the same cachet. You can see the graphics are different on the side of the bonnet, these were replaced over the years as they got scuffed up. The manual jeep was totaled during the filming of season 7. The automatic jeep made it to the end of the series. When the series was over, a rep from AMC took the jeeps to a scrap yard in Long Beach and crushed them. Fate of both jeeps - DESTROYED.

Ordered some tyres which actually grip the road, which will be a refreshing change from the Chinese death rings on there now. Kleber Quadraxers are apparently half a step down from Michelin Crossclimates for 2/3 the cost so a set of 4 isn’t going to break the bank. A tiny 10 gallon tank and petrol instead of diesel means filling up every 400ish miles (the BMW would do 750 miles to a tank) so I’ve had a few opportunities to measure fuel economy. 48mpg seems about it, the trip computer stating 50-52, but that seems ok for a car that’s only doing 22.5mph per 1000 revs in 5th. The Sport is even shorter geared!

Imagine seeing Jeeps barrel rolling off pipe ramps disguised in bushes wherever you go. https://www.facebook.com/groups/moviecarsreplicas/permalink/6702420659794718/?sale_post_id=6702420659794718

Cheap car is cheap, shocker😀 Unlike motoring journalists who think you can tell everything about the quality of a car by how the plastics feel, I’ve worked for automotive suppliers for years and know the feel of the plastics has nothing to do with how well something works or how long it lasts.

Back in my late teens, I thought I was a Volkswagen fan. I had several Beetles, a T3 Fastback and a 412. Yes, Volkswagens for me alright. Somehow, probably because of the rear engine, I then had a Suzuki Whizzkid - it was like a go-kart but without the refinement. A few years later I had a Suzuki Cappuccino, another Whizzkid (with lots of other cars in between) and a Baleno GSR. Was I actually a Suzuki fan? I’d deny this vehemently, while admitting to you that I’ve just bought this. It’s a Swift GLX No, a GLX. It means alloy wheels, which I don’t care about, a 1.5 engine instead of the GL’s 1.3 and aircon, which I really do care about. This one has been in Cambridge for years which means it’s got various little dents the size and position of bicycle handlebars, and to save me the bother of scratching it, it comes pre-scratched. It’s also a 3 door, which looks much cooler than the 5 door and I can convince myself makes up for trivial things like the cheapest tyres I’ve ever seen and a clutch that’s not going to survive many more drag races. I tried to convince the kids that one of these would be a good idea for them, on the basis that they must be tough to be a hire car at the Nurburgring, and they look quite good. Obviously they ignored me, so I bought one for myself. Shall we crack on with making it habitable? I really need to be able to stream music and podcasts from my phone, one of these gadgets plugs into the CD changer port on the back of the radio and as a bonus I can load music onto a USB stick which acts as a 99 disc CD changer. First job, remove the glovebox and plug… oh, the glovebox catch has snapped. Time to look on YouTube, and by jiggling an Allen key I could open the latch and remove the glovebox. A new latch was a fiver, which I’m happy with. Reaching around while on the floor is a highly transferable skill these days, and allowed me to plug in the cable, fixing the little controller thing inside the glovebox as per the picture. Bangin’ choons achieved, luxury next. I didn’t realise how lazy I’ve become and how nice it is to have an armrest. Not until driving this as it doesn’t have one. EBay to the rescue and the Yinshi Manufacturing Company in Shanghai. A couple of self tappers and I’ve got an armrest that’s adjustable for position, has two storage trays and a fucking cupholder built in. Marvellous. First trip was to Wales and back, just short of 400 miles in a day. A win 👍 It’s also a hoot to drive and when child #3 (I forget their names) learns to drive next year, I can actually afford to put her on the insurance.

I’d bail out at 20,000 feet. Nasty, odious, insecure wankers.

Black Range Rover with BO55 numberplate. An utter cunt in every way. If you were sat next to them on a plane journey, you’d happily get out halfway through.

I think the film makers put it in to get a crash on the screen for shock value. It’s kind of tied in to get into the bus at the end, if you stretch credibility a bit. Looks easy to me

I bloody love these Ignis Sports. I’ve dropped increasingly unsubtle hints to the kids that something like this would be great but they just sneer at me. Phoarr https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115906958150?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=a59djB0iTF2&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=y9xs1hiVQ9O&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I’m racking up the miles on this, it’s incredibly comfortable and looks good enough for my teenagers to approve. This is about peak economy, purely around the doors it’s doing about 45mpg so a mix of long commute and short trips gives about 48mpg. Obviously it’s up for sale tomorrow 🙄

I believe the thinking was that you had to have a Cooper to catch one.

I didn’t know that Speedex was created by Jen Marsh. Speedex is about the coolest name for a car company though. A few pictures that popped up on my Facebook today. “For everyday use”😳

Do you look at cars with 1 NCAP star and think they look too safe? Have you pretty much settled on aircraft engines being viable in road cars? If Scrapheap Challenge was made in 1928, would you be on it? If the answer is yes then don’t wait another minute - pick up the phone and get professional help immediately. Or buy this 12 litre supercharged V12. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/268833615921801/

Also the 2.5 V8 Tatra produced similar power to the Daimler 2.5 V8 and the Tatra 3.5 V8 made the same power as the Rover / Buick V8. It’s all to do with breathing, not how it’s cooled.

That’s a slightly unfair comparison, I think. Plenty of water cooled cars didn’t have air blending heaters right into the 1980s. As far as I know, aircooled heaters do blend the air - the heat source is always on full and the control is how much cool air you mix with it. That’s what the VWs and Tatras do. The drawback is that the amount of heat isn’t very consistent; if you’re trundling along at 1500 revs the engine isn’t putting much heat into the exchanger and on many aircooled cars, because there was no booster fan, the airflow was poor too.

Petrol heaters were a common option in colder climates but rare here, except on Type 4 cars when they were standard but the timer was an option. Lovely to see all the cars in the street covered in snow except for the Volkswagen which was completely clear and had steam coming off the roof 😀 My Tatra 603 had a petrol heater which worked well and the 613 had two of them, one for the cabin and one for the windscreen. That was like a fucking dragon’s breath.

From the late 1960s, VW offered a booster fan for heaters on their aircooled engines. On Beetles and Type 3s, it was located in the scuttle distribution box and sucked warm air through when the engine fan was turning slowly. On Type 4s the fan was in the engine bay and pushed the air through. Both were very helpful and brought heaters almost to 1970s standards, but of course the heat source was still 10 feet from where it needed to be. Water cooled cars bury the heater matrix right inside the dashboard, with good reason.

We had aircooled VWs as family cars in the ‘70s and they were serviced at the local VW garage using genuine parts. The heaters were always reasonable and they could easily cook your ankles if you had it on full blast. As ever, compare with other cars of the 1950s and early’60s and their heaters. Oh, that’s right, they didn’t have one, or it was an option and a feeble one. The problems with VWs heater design were that there was no fan assistance so if revs were low, heat output was low. Also the heat source from the exhaust is a looong way from the people, especially the windscreen and it’s not insulated so not much of the heat warms you up. Add to this that most people have only experienced aftermarket heat exchangers which were about half as efficient and it’s not great news. I’ve no experience of something like a Citroen where the aircooled engine is in the front but I imagine because the heat source is closer to the people, they should be ok. Add a booster fan plus quality heat exchangers and it should be effective. A slightly waffle way of saying that half the problem is that the engine is in the back, not the fact it’s aircooled.

Oil cooling is very efficient, the thing that helps efficiency is the air to boil ratio. If ambient air is 30C and a water cooled car boils at 100C, that’s an air to boil ratio of 1:3ish. On an aircooled car, oil boils (or at least breaks down) at closer to 150C which for 30C ambient is an air to boil ratio of 1:5. That’s why a water cooled car has a massive radiator and an aircooled car has a relatively small oil cooler. Air does some of the cooling too (no shit?) but it can be efficient. Just not very precise.

Excellent work! I visited suppliers for work in Korea in the late’90s or early 2000s and these things were everywhere. I did hundreds of miles in the back between hotels and various factories, one of them was the place that made bumpers for them. It was winter and they had the doors open for trucks to pick up finished parts, the snow was howling in and covered everything. A brilliant little car that just kept going.

True, but it’s all relative. I don’t think the average car engine of the 1950s or early’60s was getting near that, without spending a lot more money.

Good point, well made, but those are mostly aftermarket exhausts which don’t fit well and don’t do a very good job of silencing. If it fits well (and is fitted well), a standard VW engine is fairly quiet and unobtrusive. A but like judging all Cortinas by the jacked up rear suspension, wheels that were too wide and a furry steering wheel cover. Generally the manufacturer did a pretty good job of most things, aftermarket stuff and owners too thick to know the difference isn’t a fair comparison.