Ace-Garageguy

Dinner tonight is salvaged pizza, but tomorrow, oh boy.

Hey there Mr. Turkey...how 'bout you and me get together for dinner?

"Butt I gots ta have muh technology !!!!!!!!"

Not only in the rarefied atmosphere you're working in. I've been seeing the death of the skilled trades for many years, particularly the very highly skilled trades, and trying to make people aware of it everywhere I go, everywhere I post. People in general don't want to hear it, and though you may not want to hear it, much of the popular perception is that we're knuckle-dragging mouth breathers, no different from the guy who mows the lawn, too stupid to do something that involves a keyboard, so we end up working with our hands because we're capable of nothing 'more'. Never mind that 99% of the people who embrace this attitude don't have the innate set of talents (or the tenacity to develop talent into skill) required to do what we do, and simply could not do it if their lives quite literally depended on it. Where has all the talent gone? A lot has just walked away. Josh Mills, an internationally known builder working in his own small shop, quit and went to work as a fireman to get the benefits package he needed to support his growing family...when he found it impossible to get competent or even trainable help so he could grow his business. I saw his mounting frustration over the years I worked with him. It's tragic, as Josh was one of the best 'period' car builders out there, with an unfailing eye for proportion and line and what looks 'right', and a range of fabrication skills. He built this for himself: https://customrodder.forumactif.org/t2950-1935-ford-josh-mills-mills-co It looked like this when I met him. Note the flawless metal work and door fit on the chop: He built this for James Hetfield when I was there (I had nothing to do with it) and it was chosen as a contender for the AMBR: https://www.petersen.org/vehicle-spotlights/1932-ford-roadster-blackjack This is one of the other client cars that went through the shop during my time there (and again, I did not work on it): https://www.throttlextreme.com/danny-bachers-1931-ford-model-coupe-hot-rod/ These are not by any means typical hot-rods. They are all exquisitely turned out, engineered, and detailed automotive sculpture. And they run. And stop. Very well. They're fast and handle well for what they are, and they're reliable. Josh's '35 Ford was his daily driver for quite a while. I always wondered why there wasn't a line of young guys out in the paring lot trying to get hired just to sweep the floor, but there never were, and Josh, Gary, me, and the one young guy who did come in to train, were just not enough to turn out the volume needed to make buckets of money. So Josh quit. But because of the work I did there being seen by the owner of the shop where I'm doing the '66 Chevelle, I was hired immediately after leaving Mills, as they needed someone who could not only do metal fab and bodywork, but who could also do engine work, machine work, electrical, AN-plumbing, and integrate complex electronic systems...to world-class standards. But I'm old. I'm tired. I have health issues. And nobody has come in for years who has any hope of taking up where I leave off, but I'd dearly love to teach somebody what I've learned over the decades. The shop owner, though still relatively young, is well aware there's just no one available to help him carry on (as I've written above), and will be shutting the doors soon after the Chevelle is done. At its peak, the shop where I am now supported 6 full time bodymen and two painters, turning out collision repair so far beyond what's accepted as 'industry standard', it might as well be on another planet. EDIT: Ford's CEO recently announced the company has 5,000 openings paying $120,000 annually at dealerships, presumably for competent line mechanics. And no takers. Where has all the talent gone? Indeed.

On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed.

While looking in a Junque Shoppe this evening for an old paint pressure pot to use for resin casting, I came across a German-made Fleischmann HO scale Atlanta and West Point Railroad 40' PS-1 boxcar, lost, forlorn, and needing a home. It's a simple piece with molded-on everything except the doors, it's dirty and a little scratched, and has oddball mismatched European deep-flange wheels and truck-mounted couplers that aren't compatible with either Kadee or "NMRA"-style (horn hook) couplers. But for $3, I couldn't pass it up. With a little work and weathering it can look great, and it's an unusual road name I don't have another example of.

"Risqué bisque" was, believe it or not, a type of adult-themed porcelain figurine dating to the early 20th century, but could also refer to soup made from oysters harvested in months that had no "R" in them, but that would more likely be called 'risky bisque'.

Speaking of horror stories... EDIT: A client wanted me to do a Tesla powertrain swap into a perfectly good Jag XK120. Nope. If it was a gutted shell, I'd consider it. Better yet, one of the old fiberglass kit cars that can be had for around $10-15,000 (a real one, even a rat, is worth at least $30k, and this was a decent driver). But ya know, my thought was that the kind of guy who has zero respect for what a 120 is is probably the kind of guy who'd sue me after he found out the Tesla-swapped car was worth nothing.

Stagnation of yer pond increases skeeter population.

Stuff like this is not at all unusual. EVs are failing fast and furious globally, but we're not supposed to notice. Plus there are a host of other problems that only this guy and a few others who live in reality ever mention. As I've said for decades, EVs have a place in a rational vehicle mix...but they're not the be-all end-all transportation solution the proponents would have us believe, and frankly, the tech is no more ready for full-scale deployment than most commercial AI products intended for mission-critical applications. But humans tend to jump the gun whenever new-oh-so-mo-better comes along.

An unfortunately widely held belief/opinion now is "if you sound smart, you must think you're better than me". EDIT: This statement is NOT referring to people who try to use big words and convoluted word-salad thinking it makes them sound smart. It doesn't. It's about people who genuinely know what they're talking about rather than mindlessly rebleating the dogma-du-jour or what they 'heard somewhere' about (insert any topic here), being attacked by idiots who often equate 'tribal knowledge' or 'consensus' with objective truth.

A media "journalist" who doesn't understand the difference between "casual" and "causal". Really? And you get PAID???

The shop where I'm building the Chevelle primarily does late-model collision repair. They used to do a fair bit of custom work, and the current owner's father built several national-level touring showcars. The '59 El Camino they're wrapping up (that I made several custom parts for, and which is currently being upgraded to Inglese stack-type fuel injection), and the '66 Chevelle I'm doing (that the shop owner will paint) are the last two custom jobs that will ever be done there...because try as they might over the last decade, they haven't been able to hire ANYONE either competent or trainable to work to their standards. The shop still works for insurance companies, but the writer-manager is as tough as they come, knows the business inside out, and gets every penny it takes to provide as close to "undetectable" repairs as you can get. He's ex USAF and ex Lockheed, and isn't intimidated by insurance clowns. The shop owner is now the only bodyman (the best I've ever seen on normal production vehicles) and his BIL (who races SCCA and builds street rods on his own) helps him. The shop owner has a '69 smallblock Camaro he built and painted, it's gorgeous, and also has a matching multi-award-winning chopper built by a very well known shop for him. The collision painter has been working for them part time off and on for decades, and paints semi-full time since retiring from a career in law enforcement. He's also finishing up his own '66 Corvette coupe that is the straightest, best-fitting C2 coupe I've ever seen, anywhere...which he's done all himself except the engine build. They're all hard-core hands-on "car guys" with a very broad knowledge base, and I count myself lucky to have been able to work in a shop for a while with people who are ALL as quality-driven as I've always been...and people who know a lot of stuff I don't, but never pretend to know anything they aren't 100% sure of. I just sometimes wish I'd met this great crew a long time ago.

Branches of gubmint at the federal level in the USA were designed to provide for separation of powers, a system of checks and balances, and limit the disruption those howler monkeys can get up to if left to their own devices.

Life insurance won't do me much good when I'm gone.