Over the past couple of months, Boston drivers have noticed the new lane design on the westbound side of Storrow Drive where it meets the on-ramp from Boylston Street. The section of Storrow Drive that passes under the Boylston Street ramp used to be divided into two travel lanes and has now succumbed to the great maker of traffic jams known as the lane-drop.

For the sake of getting out of town via Boylston Street, hopefully the new lane design has eased the backup that can occur on the ramp while trying to make your way onto Storrow Drive.

While waiting in traffic, I recently started to wonder if I should start taking the Mass Pike out of town in order to avoid the stop and go routine now present on Storrow Drive. Would I actually save money through less braking and clutching in my standard transmission vehicle by taking the Pike and paying a daily toll? The time that I travel these roads home is before peak traffic volume so taking I-90 west to the Newton/Watertown exit is usually met with little delay.

Would the decreased wear and tear on my car offset the cost of the toll over a year? My gut tells me no. Have you changed your commute since the lanes were redesigned on Storrow Drive?

Sometimes a rainy summer weekend gives way to a perfect combination of drag racing on an October afternoon. When the Cam Snappers Club show was rescheduled for October 25, it also coincided with the Street Fighter motorcycle races at New England Dragway which made for a wide variety of vehicles running the quarter mile on a clear, dry, 60 degree day.

My snack bar cheeseburger was still warm when this first generation Bronco made me drop the curly fries and grab the camera. Running a 347 stroker, no hood, and obviously no 4×4 gear, this truck ran in the high 10s all day. I didn’t get to speak with the driver but the quick look I got up close gave me all kinds of hope for converting my Jeep pickup into a quarter mile machine.

The lone racing AMC of the day was this Hornet wearing the factory colors:

Also fun to watch was this wheel-lifting VW rod:

One more wild one was this altered racer. There’s a little background info on this one at Piecrustmagazine:

A heavily modified, flat black, Y-block-powered Ford F-100 caught my eye a while back and I misplaced my notes on all the work the owner had done to build this super-low sled. Well, most of the body mods are obvious and if you like it low, this truck is for you.

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While looking over some photos from past cruise nights, I found a few shots of this neat (Correction sent in by reader: It’s a Chevy) Ford-bodied rod with a circa-1939 Ford truck grill.

Other neat components of this black-primered coupe include the handsome black, solid steel wheels with those wide, flat rear tires, the light-colored grill, firewall and rear quarters. The “when-is-the-last-time-you-saw-one” four single-carb’d V8 is the piece that hooked me in though - (Any idea on the make of this motor? I’m really not sure but I’d guess it’s from the 1940s-50s.) More than all of the fabricating, tinkering and assembly, locating and running a fifty-something year old mill tops the list of challenges when cruising an old car. Nice work.

Here’s a few very quick videos from the 2 p.m. round of truck pulling at the Marshfield Fair on Saturday, August 22. With a little fried dough in hand and shady seating in the grandstands, what could be better?

What could be better is me entering my truck in the street class next time. We’ll see. As in most motorsports, you’ve got to be prepared to break some parts and the time has got to be right for that kind of investment. For now, here’s a couple videos with a few more posted on my YouTube channel.