No Parking, No Guns.

Carthage Police Chief Dennis Veach presented his draft proposing a city ordinance at Monday night’s Public Safety Meeting in the Carthage Fire Departmen. The proposal would ban openly displayed and concealed firearms from city owned facilities. The ordinance is in response to the state’s concealed weapons law. The state law is currently on hold due to a lawsuit and a temporary injuction. The hearing is set for today in St. Louis for a permanent injunction. Chief Veach again raised his concern with the portion of the law allowing persons 21 years old or older, who lawfully possess a firearm, to transport it in the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle.

McCune Brooks Hospital CEO Bob Copeland, also attended the Monday night meeting. Copeland discussed the need to prohibit parking on the north side of Centennial in front of the hospital. His primary concern was visibility from the west, pulling onto to Centennial from the hospital parking lot. The Committee approved the request. Members include Committee Chair Mike Harris, Jim Woestman, Ron Ferguson, and Diane Sharits.

NASCAR to the Max

Sunday’s running of the Subway 500 from Martinsville (VA) Speedway could easily have been called the Jeff Gordon 500. Gordon and his team have hit upon a combination that is unstoppable at the .526-mile speedway. Gordon, whose only other win this season came at this same track, dominated multiple stretches of the event including extended sessions in the early and late going. Gordon started on the pole (first qualifying) position and went on to lead 313 of the 500 laps. In the spring race, Gordon led 190 of the 500 laps and also started that race from the pole. In the two combined races, Gordon led 503 of a possible 1000 laps.

The race was a typical short track crash fest with the caution flag being waved 15 times for 117 laps; over 20% of the race total. Though not a record number of cautions, the number of laps run under caution was an event record.

Gordon became the fourth driver this season to sweep both events held at one track. Kurt Busch won both Bristol races, Jimmie Johnson swept New Hampshire and Ryan Newman claimed both Dover victories.

Matt Kenseth lost a little ground to Kevin Harvick in the championship point’s race but still leads by a healthy 240 points. Kenseth needs to only finish 12th or better in the remaining four races to take home the Winston Cup Championship.

There is some rumbling to revamp the points system to place a higher premium on winning rather than consistency.

Ryan Newman has won eight races this season but crashed in several others and sits in fourth in the standings while point’s leader Kenseth has only one win on the season but has been more consistent.

From one of the slower tracks on the circuit the series now heads to one of it’s fastest, the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The 1.54-mile speedway will see straightaway speeds near the 200 mph mark. The track is one of Bobby Labonte’s favorites. Labonte won the spring race here and has 6 victories in the last 14 races at the track.

‘Course what a lotta folks don’t think about is the fact that it is perfectly legal in the State, though not necessarily in a particular community, to carry a fire arm on your person anytime as long as it’s not concealed. That’s what anyone out huntin’ is doin’.

In the small town where I grew up, it wasn’t unusual to see someone walkin’ outa town to do some target practice or huntin’ with a gun on the hip or rifle over the shoulder. But, accordin’ to the ordinance at the time it was illegal to carry a concealed sling shot.

As a kid I thought that it was strange that I couldn’t carry my sling shot in my pocket, but hunters could roam the streets with loaded shotguns.

I never shot out a street light, but I never was too good with a sling shot.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

by

Metcalf Auto Supply

Click & Clack
TALK CARS

By Tom & Ray Magliozzi

Dear Tom and Ray:

In your column about breaking in brake pads, you said that the pads need to be broken in so that they match the "grooves and ridges from the previous, say, 30,000 miles of stopping." That makes perfect sense to me. So why does my brake shop tell me it has to turn my rotors to eliminate all those "grooves and ridges from the previous 30,000 miles of stopping?" As I see it, unless the rotors are badly warped, the shop is just making extra money off me by turning my rotors, isn’t it? — Joe

RAY: Well, of course it is, Joe. They’ve got kids to send to college, too.

TOM: Actually, what it’s doing is keeping you from coming back and complaining about noisy brakes. While new brake pads will eventually seat to old rotors, they’re likely to make noise when you stop. And our customers really hate brake noise.

RAY: So actually, on lots of brake jobs we do, we just go ahead and replace the rotors. Like a lot of other shops, we’ve discovered some excellent, less-expensive alternatives to factory rotors. For example, we found some Taiwanese rotors that perform beautifully on Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas. And they cost about 20 bucks each. At that price, it doesn’t make sense NOT to replace them.

TOM: Sometimes we have extremely frugal (i.e., cheap) customers who are willing to put up with the noise. For those customers, assuming the rotors are safe, we’ll just put on new pads without turning or replacing the rotors. But we specify on the repair slip that stopping distances might be longer until the brakes "seat." And even after that, the customers might experience squealing brakes.