Russell C

Just learned today of an outfit that uses "AI" to somehow record really long, boring court- or state administrative-style hearings and turn the transcripts into nice short summaries. A guy I know who's somewhat famous across the country for offering technical expertise alerted me to this, where in a particular public hearing the summary described him and what his expertise is all about. Except the guy was never at the hearing. Period. The "AI" that was used to summarize this hearing was guessing who the expert attendees were, and not in a good way.

Yep, it'll be a bit of a challenge, and it could be there's a leftover vestige of the frustration I had with my own self when I was 10 or so and my custom vehicle ideas were beyond my skill level. Did this kind of thing once already with the '62 Ranchero speedster gluebomb I resto-modded. Sold it on eBay actually for just break-even a while after displaying it at the GSL contest, but the nicely reassuring thing there was the guy who bought it said he was glad to add it to his 'survivors' where the twist was that it was ultimately finished to the skill level the original builder wished to have. I see the same way forward in saving the two others I got last year, the '60 Buick shorty and the even more comically shortened Mercedes 190.

I tear apart dead electronic devices before I toss them out, to see what can be repurposed inside 'em as model car parts. I forget what kind of ink jet printer / pen plotter this particular one came out of, it's too big to be a toothed belt for 24th / 25th scale dragsters and likely too small for 1/8th scale. But any kind of printer that has a moving printer head may have real rubber toothed belts or smooth v-groove ones that could be the right size. Companies probably sell replacement belts for such printers, too.

Part of what I thought made this gluebomb "so-terrible-it's-adorable." That, and its tri-carb Ford truck V8. I've scraped off the body decals, but the irony about the perfect circle decal being so far off-center on the spare cover makes me think I should keep it that way and make some kind of extended bumper to hold the spare, using one of the custom bar bumpers out of the old AMT '40 Ford kits. The reverse side of the cover has a V raised emblem and it seems small in diameter, perhaps the size of the old AMT Ford Falcon or Corvair wheels. Meanwhile, I also had a pair of Fujimi 24th scale Porsche 911 headlight buckets in my parts pile since forever. At first I thought they were too small to correct the Palmer walleyed housefly oversized headlights problem, but what I have may not actually too unusable small (ignore the blue masking tape stickies behind 'em). Not going for sheer scale perfection in this simple project, just some kind of nice improvements while keeping the two main elements that the original kid builder wanted.

Aforementioned eBay purchase, posted this over in our Show your Gluebombs thread. For a size comparison, I set my old Honda CRX / 911 Porsche next to it, which makes me think the Palmer company didn't have a good grasp on scale, either, if they were aiming for 1/24 scale. From some digging into MCM AMT engine posts, the long-ago builder here may have used one out of a 1960-ish AMT Ford pickup?

$1.50 off eBay + shipping - this gluebomb is what led to my "What's up with the engine block in the 1/25 scale Palmer Porsche 356 kit?" thread. Since the eBay seller had no idea what scale this thing is, my guess was it might be 1/25 scale, judging from how it looked like some kid long ago wanted to do an outlaw version with an AMT 3-carb V8 in the back. I figured if it really was 1/25 and not 1/32, I could see a way to salvage it with spare parts I have and still take it in the direction the kid builder was headed. The Youtube video I link to in my other thread showed how this ancient Palmer kit actually came with not one but two V8s. So, it's possible that the long ago builder thought an AMT V8 version - outlaw or otherwise - was simply better looking than what was in the Palmer kit. Looks better after a good scrubbing. I'm thinking the leftover 24th scale Fujimi "Koenig Specials" Porsche 928 underside (reversed/shortened/minus exhaust) that I've had in my parts pile since the late 1980s, along with much better wheels/tires, can help save this thing. Jury is out on whether I'll put on the 928 Koenig wing, and if I should widen the back fenders (like our MCM man Ron Clarkson showed here). I'll likely keep the kid's engine for the rebuild/mod, a bigger opening in the deck lid with a clear panel cover could show it off more. Continental spare is likely a keeper too, since that was sort of another signature item for this old buildup. Save the gluebombs, and use up all your accumulation of spare parts!

Done that myself with the various plates in my decals pile. FYI, back then since the populations were so small, the first numbers on the NM plates were the individual county designations, according to NMplates. "6" is Doña Ana right above El Paso, Texas.

When I was 6 to 8 years old in New Mexico, 1970-'72, we had what was probably an early '50s Crosley wagon out in our woods laying on its side (mom ultimately dictated it had to go to the dump at the end of that span), so this one evokes some memories with its NM plate. What's the backstory for the plate choice?

An Illustration I bookmarked dating back to 2010, not likely ever will have time to build it - while the illustrator has it labeled as Ford, my mind's eye sees more of '63-'65 Chevy "Li'l Red Truck Express."

At least they were high beams. Wintertime snowbird resident here two winters back had his Harley trike trucked in from Nebraska ... and I'd swear his regular beams main headlight and two smaller lights were the moral equivalent of aircraft landing lights. Glad he didn't come back last winter. Shoulda took a photo of what the street looked like at night when he turned into the far end of it, like a solid strip of white.

Short by 5 letters, but still maybe as tall as a big pickup, longer, pretty much a box -- a Vixen-21? https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1989-vixen-21-se-motorhome-not-quite-an-ultra-van/

For sheer contrast, the website for the HOA community I live in says it has a bit over 1700 house units. I would easily and quickly lose count over a hundred+ places here that minimally need door trim repainted, along with a lot else. Call me 'pleased' today that I don't have HOA people walking around with magnifying lenses.

Yep, if I didn't know any better (and sometimes I don't), I'd swear the front axle for this 356 has a differential pumpkin right in the middle of it.

"Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"

Wow - I was distracted enough by the sight of the white V8 and my subsequent search for some mystery Porsche 1:1 engine, I completely missed the "bonus V8" in this kit. No offense to the Youtube builder, I always mute the sound in these kinds of videos and speed-watch through most of them, but I sifted through it again a short time ago, and there it is. Near as I can tell, the guy never said a word about it .... Edit: Oops, at the 13:19 point for barely over a second, he waves his finger over the black-molded engine and says "look at that." But that was it.

Ditto - I thought that button was some kind of page enlargement thing, since it is right next to the "Size" word. Sheer force of habit on my part, I've always used keyboard shortcuts to enlarge/reduce web pages.

Did not know that. Ya learn somethin' every day. https://www.thebrassworks.net/products/1930-1931-ford-model-a-radiator-quail-cap

Palmer kits being a riddle wrapped in an enigma when it comes to the various design aspects that went into them. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist bidding on a cheap eBay Palmer 356 gluebomb which I won for $1.50, should arrive in a week. I'll share photos of it in the Gluebomb thread when it arrives. But in an effort to try to figure out what scale it was, I ran across this Youtube video of a guy trying to see if a decent box stock build of it was possible (seems there's no hope of success on accomplishing that). What has me puzzled is what the kit engine block appears to be, before the 1-piece blob gets put on top. Is that not a V8 engine block that's utterly incorrect for the car? Or did Palmer engineers halfway replicate a rare 356 engine that wasn't a flat four? Or replicate somebody's outlaw V8 conversion, and the Palmer people didn't know it was custom?

Referencing back to my Aug 6 parts pile for my daily driver '86 VW GTI, my super backlogged mechanic specializing in Audis & older watercooled VWs finally had an open slot today - works by appointment Saturdays which I hadn't caught before. Gas leak in the OEM plastic fuel pump swirltank housing had gotten way bigger from my last weekly drive to the grocery store, so I was pleased as punch today that he got that fixed with the all-metal aftermarket replacement housing, and also had the time to do the radiator swap with all the new hoses put in. No more gas or coolant leaks!

Not technically on the road, but just off the street right by my VW mechanic's shop, somebody's 1970s Datsun Chinook project (less commonly seen than the Toyota Chinook campers). On the freeway going back to my house, a '50s F100.

Native more or less just to the Arizona Sonoran desert and on down into northern Mexico / Baja Peninsula. They're one of the birdies that create "saguaro boots," but when I looked that up just now, I learned that it's a long range planning thing, where the pecked-out area lining within the saguaro doesn't harden up for at least a year to provide a nest area to live in.

From this afternoon, Gila woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis) has figured out how to land on the hummingbird feeder for a sugar water snack.

Seems closest on the front. Could be a decent amount of '36 Lincoln Zephyr on the back, but squashed quite a bit. Or, while digging through Google's images for Zephyrs, the back end might be borrowed from this guy's '39 custom or other similar treatments.

I'm thinking minimally there's some amount of '37 / '38 Ford in the front end, Deluxe version of the '38 particularly. Bought a Blackforce off eBay for cheap several years back only for the wheels, but within the last month came up with some further customizations for the front and better looking taillights, which I'll put into a WIP thread here sometime soon ...

Me, too, looks better than some of the sheets I rounded up from somewhere years ago. Search yielded this result among others: