Russell C

Might be just me, but I'd prefer if it was sectioned a bit and if the grille was opened up a bit ...

Not everyday a person sees a supercharger connected to an engine via a driveshaft with u-joints .... or a car with its own supersize welding torches .... 🤩

NOT rolling the clocks back…… Got up at my usual time of 7am, according to my cheap AA battery-powered clock, did a whole bunch of assorted pre-breakfast stuff, then flipped on my livingroom TV to see what the weather was going to be like, and noticed my plug-in clock (with its ability to get a signal to always be at the exact right time) said it was only 7:25. For a few moments, I was amazed at how much I accomplished in such a short amount of time. . . . . . until it dawned on me the thing did the "fall back" automatically, which we don't do in this area of Arizona.

Those are great! In my patio where I'd prefer them not to be underfoot or on my outdoors workbench, I coax them to jump onto my hand so I can give 'em a ride to one of the nearby plants or bushes so they can eat whatever vermin insects I'd rather not have in my patio area at all.

Yes, they are! Perhaps one of those giant Detroit luxo-barges from the late 1970s would be a more soft pillow ride for the wide open expanses of travel across the American southwest, but I'm thinking if something like a U-Hauler's stray couch falls off their flatbed trailer suddenly onto the freeway, a sudden steering input in a barge would do little more than cause the barge to lean slightly sideways into the couch as you hit it, as opposed to my stiff suspension / quick ratio dinky car jinking right around it like it was an F1 chicane. If I had more money to afford another set of tires, I'd have way too much fun autocrossing this thing! But the guys in the paddock would be saying, "we really need to get a donation drive going for you, so you can put a new coat of paint on it...." 🤣

A positive development today resulting from my Oct 28th irk where the county emissions tester had (inadvertently) trirf to let my car run away off the dynanometer rollers — I definitely have the attention of the subcontractor administrator running the facility for the county today. I politely worded a letter to the country supervisor a few days ago to only ask if the guy testing my car was qualified to drive a stick shift .... and if the cable restraints were hooked onto the front of my GTI to prevent excessive side-to-side drift on the rollers. The subcontractor administrator replied this morning to say the tester guy was qualified, and that in some cases, cars that don't have front tow hooks or other means of putting on the cable restraints don't get the cable restraints. His mistake was to say if mine only came with one in the spare tire tool kit, a single hook can't be used with one front cable restraint. I replied right away with the photo below to say mine most certainly has two hooks welded to the frame, they are quite obvious to see when anyone bends down to look for them, and that the reason why I really don't remember roller drift happening with my car is that diagonal cable restraints were put on those two hooks in so much of a regular routine way over the last 20 years that I never gave much thought to it. In the subcontractor administrator's reply after lunch, he basically all but admitted outright that the first tester guy never bothered to look for the hooks, and the station manager who had to take over for him didn't either. I gather that the subcontractor administrator reminded the work staff - there's a more obscene way to describe such a scolding - that cable restraints are absolutely to be used on front-wheel drive manual shift cars when there are tow hooks / tow holes available. And if testers don't undertake that safety effort, they're in a wee spot of trouble.

Yep, that Dutch Fotki account is quite a treasure, I've had it bookmarked for a few years as a go-to site for model truck stuff. I missed this 2012 thread when I signed up a decade back, but shared my own long-ago bits of Owner Operator fame in this other thread:

That's actually the sorta solution to "this cannot be a Camaro" problem. Forbid the placement of those letters / logo on it and replace with any others that wouldn't raise an eyebrow anymore these days - Kia / Lexus / Plymouth / Nissan / Lincoln / VW / Daewoo .......

While it was expected that he'd ask what year my GTI is, it wasn't a good sign when he next asked if it was front wheel or rear wheel drive, and when I put it into the rollers, he said to put it in "Park." He was definitely not a car guy, that's for certain. I did tell him it was a short-shift 5 speed, but from all the prior years where I only saw the one tester veer abruptly to the side and panic stop my car cold (who somehow got the shifter stuck in reverse!), I'd never seen any of the others overcorrect the steering on the rollers that much as the first guy yesterday, so I didn't think to initially tell the guy my car also has close ratio steering. The second tester guy clearly understood what that was without me saying it and only put in the smallest of corrections to keep it straight in the rollers. I checked afterward to be certain, both front tires were inflated equally to the proper amount, and when I drove it the prior week to & from New Mexico in a 900 mile round trip, it ran perfectly straight on the I-10 freeway, I only needed occasional nudges with a fingernail to keep it dead-centered in the lane.

My 39 year old daily driver GTI failed its emissions test by .03 in nitrous oxides (NOX) while passing by more than double in the two other test areas, hydrocarbons / carbon monoxide. Gas cap passed its pressure test. I'd have to look up in my receipts how old the O2 sensor / catalytic converter are, probably a bit overdue for replacement. That's not the biggest irk. All of that testing results came only after the second tech guy got in to run it on the rollers and go through all 5 gears properly in the required two run-throughs up to highway speed. The first tech guy almost veered it sideways off the rollers and panic stopped it midway through the runs not once ... not twice ... but three times, and then the test facility supervisor had to bring over another guy who appeared to have some semblance of understanding what a set of short-throw shift linkages is for, and that hotrod hatchbacks like mine have quick ratio steering. In the county I live in, 1967 cars or earlier are exempt from emissions testing, which is why I give serious thought to buying a daily driver that's pre-'67. Four years back (testing is every two years) the tech guy began veering off the rollers, and in his panic stop, he broke my shifter in such a way that it was stuck in reverse, and none of the guys at my VW mechanic's place could figure out how he managed to dislodge the ball roller part of the shifter clean outside of its parallel gate panels that keeps it in place. The testing facility had to buy me a new shifter that time, waive the testing fee, and pay for the tow truck to haul my car to the VW mechanic. In all the other prior test times dating back to 1998, every one of the tech guys knew how to shift manual transmissions and never wavered an inch on the rollers that I ever saw.

Funny - you've seen my 1:1 GTI - the Albq Model Car Club member who sold it to me built that same kit but as a killer street version painted refrigerator white because (if I remember correctly) he said the thing looked like a refrigerator laid on its side.

Out here in the vast open spaces of the American West, we have no such thing, so I had to look it up. My sympathies, glad I don't have to deal with it. https://www.e-zpassiag.com/about-e-zpass

My 39 year-old 1:1 daily driver VW GTI runs again! Last weekend, while swapping in new plugs / wires, I broke the coil wire connector part on the distributor cap (don't ask; it's embarrassing) which of course then let the sparks run wild inside the cap instead of going exactly where they are supposed to go. New cap & rotor arrived in the mail today, Best to put those in no matter what, because when took out the old ones, both really had been in the car too long and looked to be close to the end of their usable lifespan. Engine fires right up again and purrs like a kitten.

Ditto. Anybody have something a bit north of $2 mill I can borrow next Wednesday? https://bringatrailer.com/listing/porsche-singer-dls/

When I moved into this overglorified trailer park, my teensy backyard (those bumpy blocks are my property lines) was just a bunch of flat gravel. My sister suggested adding visual interest to it via some fake turf grass, decorative rocks, stepping stone pavers, a birdbath. This morning, courtesy of the long strip of tropical storm moisture vacuumed out of the Gulf of Baja Califorina, now I have my own .. temporary .. personal little lake.

Cone shaped metal studs for leatherwork? https://www.etsy.com/listing/629379849/silver-uk77-cone-studs-bulk-discounts Electronics for dome-shape really durable chrome pieces / sidewalk trash for cone shapes? The shapes on top (from my eclectic non-automotive plastic parts collection) are what the push buttons out of a junk DVD player look like when the machine is disassembled. I found the busted kid's cheap plastic bracelet on a sidewalk somewhere. Looks like the sort of thing a quarter vending machine of little toys and trinkets might stock.

Did not know about that 1:1, had to look it up. http://67fso.com/

Accomplished a quick fit-together today that proves a Monogram '41 Lincoln Continental chassis (from a separate glue bomb project where I only needed the Lincoln body) will do nicely for my Edselized Fairlane caricature dragster. Handy blank area for the rear axle / traction bars, good open front frame area (will be minus the fender liners) for the straight axle and tallblock doublestack supercharged engine. Just need to remove that hangy-down radiator support area on the Lincoln's chassis ....

For my caricature dragster, I accomplished making header extensions today. I remember reading somewhere that you can bash ball bearings into aluminum tube to make end flares - cut a short length, stand it up on end, balance a ball bearing on it and give it a few whacks. Never tried that before, I was a little too aggressive with the hammer on the first attempt, plus I figured out that if I polish the tube with it spinning at high speed in my mini lathe before I cut it the length I need, that works out better. I'll have to try this for velocity stacks in another project someday ...

My initial guess about my Edselized Fairlane caricature dragster was that a short block from my engine parts pile ought to be fine. But in seeing my mock-up today and how the headers must have more clearance over the fenders, I will need - forgive the pun - a tall block.

Too late.

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.