My most current blog entry:
Entries in My Cars (5)
My Supercharged V8 Toyota Pick-Up Project
Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 8:17PM 
CLICK HERE for the full story of the build-up and dyno testing of my wild 600 horsepower street beast: A Whipple supercharged, Lexus 3UZ V8 powered 2004 Toyota Hilux Tiger Pick-up.
Road Trip USA: Oregon Camping - Silver Creek Falls
Wednesday, June 20, 2018 at 11:36AM 
Magnificent South Falls at Oregon's Silver Falls State Park.
Out and about on the back roads and state parks of Oregon in my little camping rig. Life is great.
Only 40 miles from where I have been staying near Keizer, Oregon is Silver Falls State Park.
The western slopes of the Cascades Mountains are extremely damp and lush.
It rains so much here there is moss hanging from the trees.
I arrived on a cool, but dry, afternoon in early June. After setting up camp I went out on my bicycle to explore the well maintained trails.
I have been all over the world . . . and this part of Oregon is by far the GREENEST! Ireland and Scotland are not even close.
There are many miles of bike paths throughout the park, which I rode on day two of my stay. This is the Ridge Trial. I love the look of the orange pine needles covering the trail. 
The Ridge Trail passed through some marvelous old growth forest.
A steep climb brought many views of this old forest.
In many places the forest floor was a carpet of ferns!
A new wonderment at every turn of the bike path.
Trees felled by storms lay about here and there . . . and will decompose to supply nutrients to the next generations of tall trees.
I found myself stopping often just to take in all the beauty. What a bike trail!
A damp stand . . . .
Layers and layers of greenery . . . 
After a long bike ride in the forest, the overcast sky began to clear, so I packed up my camp site and drove to the South Falls trailhead. Here, the view of the South Falls from above. I met a nice family from Thailand here. It's a small world.
The path down and behind South Falls offers many fine spots for photography.
A very beautiful waterfall.
The trail goes behind the cascading falls . . . a very impressive sight.
There were a fair number of tourists on this day . . . and we all stood kin silence under the falls listening to the powerful 'song' of the water falling from above.
The bright sun suddenly appeared along the path to the Lower South Falls. . . making the already green environment explode with luminosity. Incredible green!
The picture post card view.
Silver Creek.
A nice bridge view . . . there were many other photographers, most with big tripods, wanting to use the bridge as a vantage point . . . but they were all complaining that people walking on it caused it to shake.
The two-mile path to Lower South Falls followed Silver Creek most of the way.
A magical place.
The path rose for quite while before a view of the creek was visible again.
A steep zig-zag of stairs down to the fall's base.
After the winding and steep stairs down, I was rewarded with my first view of Lower South Falls.
The Lower South Falls through the trees.
A beautiful view.
Oregon!
The path here also continued behind the falls.
The roar of the falls became very loud as you neared it.
Another fabulous forest waterfall view.
I got a little wet behind the falls.
Through the mists . . .
Directly behind the falls.
My last glimpse of the Lower South Falls as the sun began to shine again.
Up the steep steps and onto the ridge for a view of the creek in bright sunlight.
I walked back up the path to my camper and left the park. I spent a wonderful three days in a beautiful place. The camping sites and facilities were first rate.
Hops for your beer: Oregon is a major world producer of hops . . . a very labour-intensive crop.
Oregon fields of grain.
This cooperative farmer stopped so I could take this photograph. Thank you.
A small road sign indicated 'Gallon House Bridge' . . . it must be very special, I thought.
And very special it was too. Gallon House Bridge is the oldest continuously used covered bridge in Oregon.
A perfect country road 'find.'
A very well-maintained old bridge.
To walk an Oregon country road in June . . . .
Oregon . . . good people, beautiful countryside.Hot Rods!
Wednesday, May 9, 2018 at 6:51AM 
Love My New Car: The Juke NISMO
Wednesday, September 18, 2013 at 3:48AM 
Another one of the wonderful things that came with the recent move to Abedeen, Scotland has been the acquiring of a new car. My 21st car.
And not just any new car . . . I ordered a special edition AWD Juke NISMO.
Yep, a Nissan Motorsport-tuned AWD Juke with 200hp, a brilliant interior, and outstanding high performance driving characteristics. I LOVE this car!
Dr. Jeff Harper
Oh yeah . . . my wife got a new car and we both got a new place to live!
My wonderful wife's new car is a 2014 VW Tiguan TDI SE AWD in the color Java. It's a fantastic piece of technology: over 50 miles per gallon.
The Tiguan looks good parked next to our new residence in a traditional, turn of the century, grey granite house.
The neighborhood is really sweet too: Old Europe.
Home Sweet Home.
We All Had A Favorite Car . . .
Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 11:12AM 
I've had a lot of vehicles in my life, but this one stands out as a definite favorite: a 1959 Napco 4X4 Chevrolet short wheelbase Suburban.
This photo was taken in Monmouth, Oregon in April 1976, a year before I sold it and moved to Kinshasa, Congo.
Yep, I sure loved that old Suburban.
Monouth, Oregon, April 1976. I painted the "crummy" (def. "A truck used to haul loggers to the forest and back.") a nice fire engine red not long after this photo was taken. It had a 302 Chevy small block, 4bbl, headers . . . . and those wonderful 9.00.16 military tires. Too Cool. I miss this car very much.
This is the only image I have of my old '59 crummie the way it looked when I sold it. It was a real show-stopper in its red paint and straight body. Nice.
In 1985-86 I was a crew member on the IMSA World Sports Car team of Paegasus Racing, owned by Oliver Kuttner. He had somehow acquired these unfinished "bodies in white" 1975 Iso Rivolta Lele that were left on the bankrupted Iso Rivolta Lele assembly line. Technically there is no such thing as a 1975 model . . . except these! He gave me one. I had dreams of making one into an NHRA Super Gas class race car . . . . but, alas, I stayed in Bangkok for 17 years and never even started on it. Oh . . . what might have been!
Dr. Jeff Harper
MY PERSONAL AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY:
My first car . . . technically. My grandfather, Claude Good, sold this (an identical one) to me for $50.oo as it had a connecting rod knocking. I took it into my high school auto shop to repair it. My shop teacher said I couldn't really just repair one rod that was knocking and that I would need to rebild the whole engine. Short on funds, and not fond of this year chevy . . .the '55, '56, and '57 Chevys were cool at the time, I sold it for $75.oo. I regret it to this day. It was in otherwise perfect condition: my grandfather owned a Chevron station and was a master mechanic. Dumb kid that I was . . .
My first car was a 1957 Chevrolet 4-door wagon . . . not exactly like this one (mine was white, but I can't find a photo on-line of a white one). I bought it at night not long after my 16th birthday with money burning a hole in my pocket. I soon regretted it: the 283 and auto trans were junk and the body was bad . . . but it had mag wheels . . . . what a fool I was. Bought in Calimesa, CA, 1966.
My second car was a 1964 VW Beetle, like this one, I bought from my brother Allen when he went off to the Viet Nam war. I put in nice speakers and a 4-track tape player (!!) and had many wonderful life experiences in it. I rolled it in Santa Cruz, California one morning then drove it back to L.A. with no brakes . . . and got it fixed in my driveway by itinerate, door-to-door Mexican body and fender men. Bought in Calimesa, CA, in 1967.
My next car was a 1967 Ford Mustang just like this one. Mine was a real bad boy street racer: 390 FE big block, Hooker headers, high rise manifold, Isky cam, Schaefer clutch, and "cheater slicks" on back. It was a 3-speed and 4:11 gears, which was its secret weapon: It tended to not spin the tires so much on the street as the the 4-speed cars, and the gear drop from 1st to 2nd also did not spin the tires much either . . . with all it's torque, it was a very fast car and often beat much more powerful cars on the street. I loved that car! I ran out of money and traded down (plus cash) for my next car . . . Bought in Redlands, CA, 1969.
I had a 67 Econoline panel van next . . . . with a Kon-Tiki interior of made of bamboo. It was a horrible car, completely unreliable. It caught on fire once at the drive-though window of a Der Weinerschnitzel in San Bernardino . . . but it still ran. I was once mistakenly pulled over by the CHP as a murder suspect in this van . . . very upsetting experience.
. . . another VW Beetle, this time a 1967 model, the last of the good ones! Mine was just like this, only it was perfect inside and out, and I kept it that way too. Hardly a week would go by that I didn't have somebody ask me if I would sell it. Bought in San Bernardino, CA, 1971.
My good buddy and car guy, Charlie, found a '61 Chevy bubbletop Impala (not this one, but exactly like it) for me for US$500.oo and I couldn't pass it up. I sold the VW for a profit. The 283 V8 smoked and ran on seven cylinders and the auto trans slipped and overheated, but it was a cool car. I had it only a few months before I bought a Ford pick-up and moved to Oregon. I got US$800.oo for it. I wish I had this car today!
I bought a 1964 Ford long wheel base narrow bed pick-up with a quilted aluminum camper shell for my move to Oregon in 1973. It had the 272 V-8 and 3-on-the-tree transmission with overdrive . . . and was a very pale pastel green with "Turner's Carpets, Yucaipa, CA" still on the door. I loved that truck too . . . and made a tidy profit when I sold it for university tuition a few years later. It was perfect inside and out. Bought in Yucaipa, CA, 1972. I sold the '64 Ford when a freind of mine told me about the 1959 Chevy Suburban 4X4, detailed above.
Then I had the aforementioned 1959 Chevrolet Napco 4X4 Suburban.
Technically not my car . . . but it belonged to my ex-wife, and I did drive it about as much as she did.
Even though I loved the '59 Suburban, I had left university and had a REAL PROFESSIONAL JOB in Salem, Oregon, a 20 mile on-way commute. The Suburban's gas mileage was killing me . . . . so on impulse on the way home from work one rainy Oregon day, I pulled into a Chevy dealer and bought a 1976 Chevy Monza 2+2, V-8 (4.3L - 262ci), 4-speed with only 5000 miles on the odometer. I liked that car very much . . . it had racing wheels (not those pictured above) and grippy tires. Lots of fun . . . and pretty fast. Bought in Salem, Oregon, 1975.
That Real Professional Job was filling up my bank account pretty fast . . . . and being a big NHRA Drag Racing fan . . . as well as being haunted by memories of fast cars past (the '67 big block Mustang) . . . I sold the '76 Monza and bought this perfect 1964 Plymouth Valiant from a Plymouth dealer mechanic (Really!). It had 45,000 miles on it and looked as new as the day it rolled off the assembly line. It had the slant-6 engine with a push-button automatic transmission. Perfect road trip car! Bought in Salem, Oregon in 1976. This change of car freed up even more money to be able to . . .
I actually found a photograph of my old 1949 British Ford Anglia. I bought it to . . . build my dream drag race car: a Super Gas drag race car. I found this like new '49 Anglia in the want ads, bought it and took it to Herold Ketch in Portland, Oregon to have a tube frame fabricated that would meet the tech for the just created NHRA 9.90 Super Gas class. Bought in Portland, Oregon in 1976. I had a small block and racing powerglide in it . . . . and it had lots of fiberglass body parts . . . and it was coming together as a first class, and hopefully competitive, drag race car . . . . until . . . . I had an opportunity to take a job in Africa! Kinshasa, Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) . . . so I sold the 85% completed Anglia to Herold Ketch . . . and boarded a plane for The Congo . . . .
In The Congo 1977, my employer supplied me with a made-in-Brazil 1976 VW Beetle . . . with a dual carb 1600 engine. It was a great car for the bad Kinshasa streets and the even worse country roads. I drove everywhere in that Brazillian Beetle. My third Beetle.
In 1980 my employer in Kinshasa supplied me with a 1980 Toyota Corolla (just like this one), my first NEW car. I drove this car across most of The Congo on the worst, and most dangerous, roads in the world: it never missed a beat! A great car!
I was given the use of another new Toyota Corolla in 1994, this time a white wagon . . . another durable car I drove all over The Congo . . . until I departed for London, England in 1996.
I did not need to own a car in London as the public transport was so good. For the first time since I was 16 years old in 1966, I didn't have my own car! But I moved to Singapore after two years . . . This gold 1980 Ford Cortina was the car I had for the one year I lived in Singapore (1988-1989). Amazingly I actually found a photo of this fine car. Because of the convoluted tax laws on car ownership in Singapore, I actually made a very good profit on the sale of this car . . . I traded it for Asian rattan furniture to be shipped to The States. I drove this car from Singapore to Thailand along the west coast of Malaysia: 500 miles of tropical beach and palm trees without seeing a single person! Wow! After Singapore I spent time living in Chiang Mai, Thailand being "movie star" (I had a five-week bit part in the horrible "Air America" movie while it was being filmed there).
In January 1990 I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and bought a nice black 1980 Chevrolet Malibu 2-door with a hood bubble. My Malibu had big tires in the back and Keystone Klassic wheels. It was a junky car with a weak V-6 an lousy interior. My old "race car addiction" reared it's head again. I never did much with this car . . . too busy getting my Ph.D. at the University of Virginia to do much else. I drove it a couple of years.
In 1994, in a huge rain storm, I traded in my lousy Malibu to an unsuspecting used car dealer in Richmond, Virginia for a 1986 VW Jetta Turbo Diesel like this with 70,000 mies on it. It was nearly perfect, but nobody wanted a diesel at that time in America. The Jetta regularly got over 50 mpg on the highway and purred like a kitten. Great car. I loved that car. I eventually gave it to my daughter when I moved to Bangkok, Thailand in 1996.
O.K., this wasn't MY car, but I was a team member on the Oliver Kuttner-owned World Sportscar class racer at the Rolex Datona 24-hour race in February 1996. I assembled this very BMW V-12 powered race car.
I actually had this 1990 Suzuki Caribbean before I arrived in Bangkok in July 1996. My old friend from Kinshasa, Duane Vogt, was living in Bangkok and knew a guy who had a "car you will want" with low miles, so I bought it sight unseen. It was perfect . . . only 15,000 miles on it. I drove all over Thailand, north and south, in this car without ever having any problems. However, I did have a very high-dollar car stereo system stolen out of it at a shopping mall in Bangkok when I parked next to the police sub-station . . . hhmmmmmm.
I bought this 2000 made-in-Thailand Ford Ranger when I stared to build may Harper Racing Drag Familia. This photo was taken in front of my trackside garage and office at the fabulous Bangkok Drag Avenue . . . sight of many wonderful evenings spent racing and hanging out with my racing buddies.
I finally got around to building and racing a "super class" e.t. bracket drag racing vehicle in 2004: the famous Harper Racing Drag Familia. It is a 1980 Mazda Familia mini-pick-up that was powered by a series of different Toyota engines over the eight years I owned and raced it: 1JZ and 1.5JZ turbo straight sixes, and a supercharged 1UZ V-8. It ran a best of 10.56 e.t. at 146mph. Yes, I loved this car. A full feature of my former race car can be found on this site at this link: My Former Race Car
I was part owner of this 1980 Maverick drag race car project. This would have been the nicest drag car in Thailand . . . built to pass an NHRA tech inspection for safety as an example for Thai racers . . . and, perhaps, the quickest "street" car in the country. Sadly, it was never completed.
My second brand new Ford Ranger, a 2007 double cab, towing the famous Harper Racing Drag Familia. The made-in-Thailand Ford Ranger is a great vehicle . . . over 30mpg on the highway while towing a race car. Am selling it before I move to Aberdeen, Scotland in July 2013 . . .
My 21st car: a 2014 Nissan AWD Juke NISMO. A totally awesome car for the cold, wet, narrow streets and roads of northeastern Scotland. I sold this wonderful machine and moved back to Thailand.
I'm back in Thailand again and bought this 'project' car: a 2002 Toyota Hilux Tiger pick-up. I have big plans to make this a cool daily driver. I have done extensive modifications on this car . . . chassis and engine - a V8!
The engine in my Toyota Tiger project is a Lexus 4.3L V8. It made 311hp on the dyno. I am very happy with the work done by the Mactec shop.
Although not really my car (it belongs to my brother), I brought it back to life and bought a Craigslist camper for $500.oo and lived in it on a 12 month road trip around the USA. A Great year! A 1994 Chevy 4X4.
After four years in Scotland we moved back to our home in Bangkok, Thailand. Soon after we bought this Ford Everest. It is a fantastic SUV. Diesel, auto . . . gets 40mpg on the highway. Rides and drives like a dream.
Completed now . . . runs great (and fast), looks fantastic. Adding a Whipple supercharger to the Lexus 4.3L V8 next . . . watch this space!
2019 Suzuki Swift . . . our new "city car" . . . excellent fuel economy, super low emission, quiet, comfortable, handles great, reasonable price. We love it.
