blunc

if we could make an electric car sound like your favorite gas engine but give you power and acceleration that would put your gas engine to shame...would you buy it?

I'm sensing something resembling "rivets"

nicely played sir.

nice work on the engine. on future builds the PCV hose should be connected from the valve cover to the intake manifold or at the very base of the front or rear of the carb.

love the roadster styling you've done on this build. moving the windshield forward and the new interior works well.

that was only the "parking brake". they may have upgraded to the granite parking brake but that is easily mistaken for the salt block parking brake.

we're gonna have a stoning? let me get my beard out.

Sometimes, without a clear "picture" (mental or actual) a build will stall when the idea that spawned the build has been accomplished or is forgotten. Sometimes a builder gets overwhelmed by tasks which are new or tedious. Do you keep magazines or photos on your computer of builds you want to do? Keeping notes or photos to reference helps me since I havemore projects in process that I can count on my fingers. Lastly, it's okay to not finish a build as long as you are not bothered by that.

Now, I'm not going to say "BAD Jamie, NO BISCUIT!!!", I am going to point out something that will have any lawyer tell you to take the plea deal. You posted your exploits on the internet...think about it...you can't erase your "confession", whether anyone rats you out or not, it can be found by anyone with average search skills. Where I live your parents would be liable for the damages you have caused plus any other legal fees resulting from investigations involved. You best bet is to confess and make amends, they will think better of you later.

Great photos, thanks for posting them. Especially the 1/43 scale '36 Ford, it's nice to see other builders exploring the dark...um...SMALL side.

I just keep using the "preview post" button till my photo shows up, then I forget what I did till the next time.

My condolences on your loss.

I know this may be "poking the bear", but bears are so much fun to poke... I'm a little disappointed to see mentioned by two people that IPMS contests may be ignoring the amount of modifications done to a model (no matter the local level or not). I feel that if the basics have been done well that the extra work should be considered by judges (at critically judged contests) and in builds where extensive work has been done that is not kit based, I feel that well presented notation should seriuously be considered by the entrant and that the judges should have the courtesy to read at least the first three lines in order to gage if they need to read further. I will use a build I have posted here as an example: a Pyro/Lindberg based 1934 Ford. ( which has survived about 30 years and several changes of residence ) 1. this kit has a multi-piece body, no chrome and all chassis detail is molded in, the hood does come as a separate 2-piece item but no engine included in this kit. 2. the engine was sourced from a Monogram Nova kit, spark plug and fuel lines added after filing and cutting various areas on the engine to make it look more like a small block chevy. 3. the hand stitched upholstered front seats sourced from a Monogram Charger kit as was the dash which had to be shortened to fit. 4. the hand stitched upholstered rumble seat was made from the kit bench seat but was shortened to fit the trunk area. 5. the doors were cut open and hinged, they do actually close all the way without binding. 6. the back half of the chassis was removed and replaced with the back half of the Monogram Nova chassis and 3rd member assembly in order to resolve the molded in detail problem. 7. the front suspension is also from the Nova kit but shortened to fit 8. the firewall was scratch built from evergreen and a master cylinder with the pigtail lines added. 9. the final change was the wheels/tires sourced from slot cars. Now, remember that all of the above was done in 1/32 scale. If you just happened to be judging a Small Scale class that was mostly open wheel race cars ( which are painted/assembled well), the above '34 Ford and maybe a well executed (out of the box) '55 Chevy snap together...would you honestly take the time to read the detail sheet and give proper consideration to the build or would you just give first place to an open wheel race car because you may like them more than street rods or give top honors to the pretty pink '55 Chevy because that paint job was AWESOME and '55 Chevies are your favorite car? Whenever I was judging a class that had serious competition and builds that may qualify for master awards I always tried to read notations for the build, if the class was lightly populated it may not have been necessary to read the notes in order to pick a winner. Even if you don't include notes so that the judges can know what work you've done, other builders may see what you've done and get inspired to try new things after they've seen what parts to use and how they go together.

the Rochester (GM) branded carbs tended to have anodized finish which gives the gold-ish coloring, some Autolite did this also but the Ford 2-bbl and 4-bbl were usually just aluminum finish.

that's a decent looking tranny on that engine, I'm gonna have to seriously consider getting some casting supplies and make a few spares, I get so tired of four speed transmissions in almost every kit I have.

I put an HEI distributor in my '68 Firebird, it's an ignition upgrade that gives a lot more "bang for the buck" than most people realize. I even figured out a way to use an HEI module and external coil on a Ford 2.8 litre V6, never have to worry about spark on that car.

fun stuff, amazing what can be done without a shop.

evergreen may have "channel" (kinda like half an I-beam) in their special shapes that you could use to make you hinges.

no warranty on this? that's some questionable customer service.

you may be able to purchase a recovery CD from HP that will only work with your model of laptop, I have done that before when I got a used laptop from an owner that lost items that came with the laptop. The benefit of this is that all the correct software for your laptop will have been loaded from the proprietary HP recovery disk, but you will then have to clean the crapware back off your laptop. most system makers these days create a "recovery partition" on the hard drive so the end user can "start over" after infecting their computer...that doesn't help much when the hard drive actually goes bad as you well know.

I build my own desktops so the only advice I have is to check reviews on what ever you see that looks attractive. If you decide on a refurb, you should be able to get an idea on problems encountered with that particular model number and decide if you can accept the risks.

so, I'm guessing the 30 yr old sheet I just found in my supplies won't be worth trying... I'll report back after I see what it does.

I think my wife's i5 performs well, it has win7-64 installed and I cleaned the BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH off before giving it to her. I don't know if a Dell i5 will perform the same as the HP Elitebook but the i5 processor is a dual core cpu and it seems to perform basic to intermediate tasks well. My Elitebook has the i7 in it (4 core cpu) and I find it performs well with 8gb of ram, I don't game on it since I feel that integrated graphics don't run the games I like well enough to enjoy them.

If you haven't run into this before, Dell OS software is usually "branded" to work only on the exact model of Dell computer that it shipped with.

I think you'll be much happier with a newer unit and you can still connect the monitor from your desktop if you want to work on a bigger screen. I got a refurb'd HP Elitebook 8440p for $300, it's about a 3 yr old corporate class laptop with an i7 cpu, it's faster than anything where I work so I use it there. I liked it so much that I got one for my wife (but her's is an i5 cpu). I suggest shopping for refurb'd corporate class laptops that have been returned from lease. At the Intel plant I worked at, they replaced laptops every two years so I'm guessing they leased them or got smoking deals from HP.