Russell C

I'd think it's fair to say that if a person has achieved the pinnacle of success in career and personal status, but is suddenly seeing a 500mph airliner aimed at or below the office window and is now facing dim survival prospects, that person has at the very least something to complain about. Me, I haven't achieved my goals, and my surroundings are less than ideal, but tomorrow will be no worse than today, and it might even be better in a land of freedom and opportunity. So, I have no real complaints. That's my perspective at a rock bottom level, and I don't forget it.

I get various weird ideas for altering cars (some I 'sketch' out but probably won't build). What bugs me about some of my ideas is that after I get them all planned out in my mind, then I go searching for the kits I need, only to discover they are a form of Unobtanium costing between $70 and $150. I lucked out here after lengthy waiting and found this within my +/- $20 budget. Too bad about that 'demolition dent' on the front passenger side, but no worries, I already have a parts pack AMT grille to fix it, and the ground-off hood/fender is easy to fix.

Interesting overall. But would do better if it was sectioned a bit more with larger rear wheels & wheel opening back there?

Begs for reinterpretations, like Scott Colmer's "Uncertain C". I'm trying to visualize how it might be turned into an Uncertain Taxi or a front-engined Uncertain Moon Mixer.

Round 2's Pinto re-release a bit of a stretch? http://round2corp.com/product/1979-ford-pinto-wagon-pony-express/

I'd suggest a cowl-forward variant for those who want to do a school bus or Brinks-style armored truck.

Could it have something to do with the advertisements? On the weekends when I use my late father's PC at my elderly mother's house, whatever ad blocker it has on it makes the site seemingly run smooth as silk. But the iMac I have here with the identical Firefox browser (no ad blocker) bogs down like crazy sometimes. I haven't seen those obstinate non-opening black rectangles where non-loading ads used to be. When I hit the X on those to stop them when they were there, the pages behaved better.

Breaking the law since I did not see these today but instead Tuesday last week when I was on vacation, my excuse being that I didn't have internet access to post, and didn't get around to fishing out my photos 'til today. Anyway, coming over Red Mountain Pass in Colorado in a guided tour, I got the first over-the-shoulder pic below of what was probably a dozen or more Cobras parked in a line for a photo shoot (I think). Later in Ouray, I spotted some driving toward a hotel and snagged a pic there. And the following morning, I caught one leaving down as I was heading in the other direction on another guided driving tour. Can't find any web site explaining this, apart from an Instagram pic with a Superformance hashtag. Not shown, but among this mob was also a Cobra coupe and a Corvette Grandsport. Some kind of kit car club mountains drive, no doubt.

Link for the Google Translate version in English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.autoinscale.com%2Fviewtopic.php%3Fid%3D2456&edit-text=

For a different angle, this outfit offered retro '55 Chevy-looking add-on taillights. But unless my search skills let me down, no company put out a particularly spiffy looking retro custom headlight/front fender swap. Might beg for some kind of clever design work.

If it weren't for the camera focus in some of the photos, you could say it was a full size truck and nobody would question it. Very nice!

Clearly a Palmer Cobra.

I was using the free Tinypic.com for my first several Under Glass threads, those pics still work fine. No account to maintain, it just creates a url address to post the images Then I created a gallery here for other threads where I uploaded pics straight off my desktop, but when that crashed a while back, I ended up rather laboriously re-uploading them after the whole system got fixed. Just drag your pic to the area in the reply box where the paper clip is, and then place your cursor in the text where you want the pic to appear, then click the plus sign icon on the pic itself. Why use any image hosting service at all, especially one that charges money?

Thanks! The giveaway in the 1st alteration is the way the highlights in the trunk area are identical to the highlights in the back of the roof. Spotted one big line glitch in the Milner rod, so I fixed that and did away with the beltline doing its downward curve at the rear. Still other photoalteration evidence in it, though.

I can be evil sometimes. Guilty as charged, it is the Sidney Allen Victoria that was in HotRod and other mags, snagged the original side view from this page. Cut the upper rear part of the roof and some of the foliage in my obsolete CorelDraw program and pasted it right back in place, and then used the skew tool to make it more of a parallelogram. Then I plopped the same back edge of the roof down to make the trunk. At first I thought I'd say that the bustleback Milner rod in American Graffiti is a version I'd like to see ..... but then everybody would have accused me of living in the alternative reality I'm in right off the bat. =)

How 'bout a bustle back version?

This is the answer to "what do you get when you cross a VW Beetle with a Citroen 2CV?"

The area of grass at my apartment complex goes crunch when I step on it. The trees and shrubs look so sad. I hand water mine out front (apt. managers are cheapskates on turning on more water in times like these). Also entertaining to go get the late afternoon mail one day and then just two days later muse how 108 degrees feels more pleasant than 116.

The reason why I'm following. Fabulous work.

From this April ebay listing, this guy's choptop idea had me thinking of a Bonneville Salt Flats version, if the kit was available for cheap .........

Define "simple" -- Brizio style. One of your previous cars ended up being a fairly simple chicken coop. =)

It was one of those afternoons today. Sure is nice in the fall-winter-spring here, though.

If you are poor but have the requisite tools and scrap material, you can make 1/25th scale '70s-era General Motors window cranks with this method. Or at least something which looks somewhat similar to those, anyway. The ingredients in the photo below are, left to right: 1) spent (or unused) aluminum rivet rods that are a bit over a 16th of an inch in diameter - I simply eyeball these things with no particular precision for dimensions 2) scrap insulated wire, preferably a light gray which has aluminum spiral-wound wire within it, where the insulation looks like it would be the same diameter as a window crank knob 3) a motor tool 4) a file 5) pliers with parallel-closing jaws 6) a #70 drill bit 7) a pin vice 8 & 9) not shown - an X-Acto blade or razor blade, and a hard smooth surface The procedure: Chuck the rivet rod into the motor tool, and file the end into a slight dome shape. Then use the pin vice to drill a starter hole into the side of the rod as close to the end as you can get it. The rod is soft enough that this is easier than it sounds. After that, use the motor tool to drill the rest of the way through the rod. You'll need a pliers like the one shown since the small bit of rod will heat up enough that you can feel it if you only hold it in your fingers. At this point, I used a sharp pair of wire cutters to cut off the rivet rod to about 3/16" in length. Don't lose it in the carpet. For the crank end, use a razor blade/X-acto blade to score the insulation, and strip a quarter inch or more of it off the wire. Then dip the exposed wire into some diluted Elmer's glue or touch a small drop of super glue to the exposed wire to keep the individual strands from unraveling. When that's dry, bend the still-insulated part of the wire at the point where you stripped it to a 90 degree angle. Now use the blade against a flat surface to cut off the rest of the wire - that will leave you the smallest amount of insulation on the wire, at a right angle to the bare wire, which is the rotating knob at the end of the crank. At the far right of the photo below, that's the itty-bitty result. Put a drop of glue at the center of the knob's surface to prevent it from popping off the exposed wire. Now thread this into the rivet rod piece, to a length that looks appropriate for how long the crank end should be, and touch a bit of super glue into where the wire goes through the rod. Use your wire cutters - mine are the really small fine type for jewelry work or small electronics - and snip off the excess wire. Drill holes in your interior panels the same diameter as the rivet rod and install. The finishing touch is a drop of silver paint (or other appropriate color as needed) into the center face of the knob. If all has gone well, you will end up with a window crank that looks like this: Not super perfect, but for my use in an upcoming muscle car WIP thread, it'll do, since the kit had zero window crank detail in the interior tub. An alternative way of making the crank end would be to use fine aluminum or silver colored wire which you could stuff the stripped insulation material onto to create the knob, and then crimp flatter with a small needle-nose pliers. There may be photo-etched cranks out there, but no offense to the sellers, they still look like flat layers of metal glued together.

There is a way around this, with some work, if you take the custom route. I always thought Big Horns were really tough looking, but the cab was too short and maybe the hood was a bit too tall. So what I did was to do a photo alteration (seen at my 'no time for these project ideas' thread) where I sectioned the lower part of the hood and made the cab taller. Wouldn't be a real Big Horn, but it might be an entertaining custom.

Another option when web sites don't have a built-in translation feature is to copy the website address and drop it into: https://translate.google.com/ What usually happens is you get a clickable link in the 'translated' box, and when you click on it, it gives you a reasonably well done job, but sometimes it can't figure out certain words or phrases.