Russell C

Absolutely not, there's no visual interest to it. Spark plug wires, radiator / other coolant hoses, vacuum lines, air hoses, carburetor linkages, shift linkages, exhaust headers, air intakes, all neat to look at ... vs a basic cylinder or box shape with a few wires sticking out. From what I've read of that notion, it sounds like an uphill struggle that has a near vertical slope. The air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen with CO2 being far down the scale after argon. It's a struggle just to find it in the first place, and imagine the size of the vacuum cleaners for the task. On top of all that, the plants and trees need it for photosynthesis, so if it's reduced, everything starts to wither away. Commercial greenhouse plant growers add it into their buildings, it's one big reason why the plants are as fluffy as they are.

Has funny cat or squirrel videos on it, though.

Probably the key bit in his O.P. was the bit about "I did it for 20 years, but keep your day Job..." We'd need more info, but one question is, what did he do in his off time? Nothing? And what amount of detail did he put into the client models, and what price level was their cutoff? Most of us need to keep food on the table, a roof overhead, and bills paid, plus we need to keep our cars maintained, contend with relatives, deal with neighbors and school matters, fix broken household stuff, on and on. If I'm wanting a model built, I understand that I can't have it tomorrow, but I'd like to have it sooner than later, certainly not 6 months or a year from now. So, in order to expedite things a bit, the builder needs to forfeit some of those time distractions. What's the easiest one to skip? The job, so long as the wage is at least equal if not better, and as long as the employer permits vacation-style time off. How many modelers have jobs paying $20 per hour or less these days? Can a good model be done with basic wiring and polished paint be done in 8 hours? 2 days flat? A week? 40 hours at $30 per hour is a $1200 model. And technically, you'd still be at break-even for your time, compared to going to your $30 per hour job. If you have a particular build style that makes your builds distinctly separate, what do you charge for that premium? Keep going in that direction, and you enter the realm of the art world, where collectors will kill to have one of your creations, and hand you a blank check to fill in when you are done. I'd say that's where the profit can be made.

What ads? (For me, AdBlock seems to kill 'em all off almost all the time, but every once in a while, one tries to load at the beginning of a video, but they usually disappear before the load is complete)

But the suspension manufacturing was "good enough for government work."

Ditto. Back in the 1990s I learned of a guy with money who wanted top quality model buildups but had no time to build them himself. I thought I could make a small profit, but in each case, considering what I valued my time at back in those days, I could do no better than break-even. My '57 AMT T-bird in this thread is one of the ones I built for him, and if I remember right, I think I charged $350 for it, but I know of various areas where I could have done a better job (paint / windshield / more wiring), but the price would have kept on climbing. He really liked the buildup, but that was around his top end purchasing limit for each car, and I didn't see a way for me to do better without taking more time. And time = money. A expert craftsman could make money, but it would likely end up being a really small niche market where mega-cash guys like Jay Leno might see a particular model they want commissioned to be built, either as an exact replica of a really unique model the original builder doesn't otherwise want to sell but could replicate if you paid him enough cash (say, for example, "Hollywood" Jim Fernandez's Steampunk Mercury), or simply an exacting replica of a 1:1 car that shares very little with any plastic kits. If cost is no object for the buyer, that's where a builder could demand enough cash to not end up starving while building a really fine commissioned model.

Didn't see the front, but the tailgate said Chevrolet, so it's somewhere between '67 & '72, nice rumble to it. And then later, what looks to me to be a '51 Chevy.

Never been to the UK, it's a must-see goal of mine someday. If this is part of the route that takes 3-some hours, how long would it take by minor roads?

$148 parts & labor bill from my VW mechanic today, $100 towing yesterday evening because the emissions tester yesterday late afternoon somehow managed to yank my shifter out of gear while on the rollers and then get it jammed into reverse gear, disconnected from the rest of the linkage. My mechanic was totally baffled on how the guy could do that, and had to disassemble all the linkages to get it unbound out of reverse. New link today with that ball makes it shift more crisply, but the mechanic said the cracked ball wasn't the failure. Wish me luck that the emissions people will accept my protest that it was the tester's fault and reimburse me for the towing and repair costs.

Out in the shopping center lot after lunch today, a standout among so many late model vehicles ...

Wow, while those two photos look like you built a shorty version, that's actually some wild internet photo compression happening. I remember one of your old threads, but it looks like the photo bucket partly ate the photos there.

Only went as far as copying that photo trio composite out of the FB page, don't know anything beyond that.

Threw the words into a Google image search. Whoever the modeler is in this Facebook post, it looks like the overall idea was done already with a scratchbuilt unit.

Saw this trio, too. That teal color must have been popular back in the day since it was on a few of my older brother's models when I was a little kid, and also on the gluebomb Ranchero's interior and rear wheels that I restored & upgraded. I'm wondering if that heavy brush-painted teal coat would be sanded and polished to a flat surface. No doubt it wouldn't result in a monocrhome color, but might instead turn into either an interesting variation of close tones ...... or an awful appearance of teal-colored woodgrain.

The seller has an utterly unrealistic expectation on that. There are untold numbers of automatic aggregator websites that download and share photo on many varieties of items, and many of us download a photo or two from ebay listings to give readers a quick look at what the auctions are listing.

Prior posts mention the Jo-Han '63 Olds Stafire. From this eBay photo, it appears the green bled back a year further. I suppose the question might be, what Jo-Han kits weren't molded in green? Spotted this Revell 1/32 scale '60s Mustang 2+2 in tasty mint in a recent eBay auction, too.

Might flatten the competition, at a bare minimum. Imagine the sound - metal wheels, and an unmuffled V8, sparks flying from the burnout. But could the driver save it if it got into a skid?

Missed this from July. Demented kit bashing, I like!

Vehicle styling seems quite homogeneous these days ...

Where to start though?

Today's mail delivery was this parts pile I got from a cheap "make offer" eBay listing, which I temporarily propped back together for this photo. Rough, but it has the assortment of parts I need for another odd rod project.

Repeated for emphasis!

There are a few kinds of those 'non-car guys' out there. Way back when I worked as a shuttle van driver at a commercial offsite airport parking lot, a guy arriving home got in my van and said he'd lost the slip of paper for the row location of his car, and when we got to the lot, he said it was a brown one, maybe a Honda. And that was it. Hatchback? Sedan? Wagon? Distinctive markings or bumper stickers? Didn't know. So, what I was obligated to do was stop at every brown-ish / maroon-ish / medium gray-ish car so that he could get out and try the door key in it. 14 double rows, maybe 50-75 cars per double row, took us around an hour or more before he managed to unlock one, which if I remember right, did turn out to be a gray-ish brown Honda 4-door sedan.

From around a month right after that day continuing on to this day, I've had a composite photo (reprinted as it fades out) in the back window of my daily driver with the 9/11 date, the American flag, and the twin towers from a photo my parents took of them the prior summer. I have never forgotten.