Merchand Brothers Garage

07/31/2026

07/30/2026

Carbon neutral?

A Finnish YouTuber's dad has been driving a 1983 Chevy Fleet side square body with a 5.7 liter V8 exclusively on wood gas for over 62,000 miles. The gasifier behind the cab converts wood chips into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which gets filtered, cooled, and fed into the engine without a single drop of gasoline and the truck just went to a closed airport runway and set a standing mile speed record for wood gas vehicles.

The catch is it burns 81 pounds of wood every 60 miles, needs a 5–10 minute startup ritual involving lighting a newspaper and checking chimney gas quality, and has to stop every 43 miles to reload fuel, which is either a dealbreaker or the most hands on driving experience available in 2026, depending on your personality.

07/29/2026

Big block 496 will make you 😊

07/25/2026

Right to Repair sounds like a niche wrench monkey issue until you realize it's actually about whether you, the person who bought the car, get to decide where it gets fixed, because automakers have been quietly locking diagnostic data and repair information behind proprietary firewalls, turning routine maintenance into dealership only errands at dealership prices.

The fight just got messier: The "freedom to fix" memo only covers emissions parts and deliberately sidesteps the real issue, Ford and GM backed a new bill that stripped out the telematics data provision, the part that would actually let you and your mechanic access your own car's information, before it passed committee, and Jim Farley somehow managed to argue that cars are too complicated for you to fix while his own factories in Mexico and China are outbuilding his American plants on quality. Cool.

07/25/2026

06/27/2026

Talk to your legislators! The right to repair is not only crucial to our business, it’s also protecting your investment

06/13/2026

More here ➡️

The president finds the fight 'strange' and says the federal government is going to do something to help owners.