peteski

LOL! No way! I quietly accepted his advice. If I was cheeky and talked back, he could have still failed me. I wanted my license!

Cale, if you know the rules of the road and you have done some driving with your learner's permit (and you survived so far), you'll do fine. After my test was over my instructor told me that I drove like a cowboy and that I should take it easy and go slower! I'll never forget that. I still passed it and got my license.

Well done! It has that metallic "steel" look. If you wanted to make it super-realistic you could also dull the areas which are not in contact with the brake pads. Maybe even make them look slightly rusty? I suck at weathering.

This can happen in the 3D-printing world we live in.

Wow, you did take a sharp left turn in Albuquerque! Very cool and creative! I like it!

Yeah, good story! We sure have some interesting participants on this forum!

But alcohol has less energy than gasoline, so the ethanol blends give you poorer gas mileage than a pure gasoline. I don't think that the lead additive had the same effect.

Thanks Bill. So there is really something to this Summer Blend stuff. I don't recall price of gas dropping when going back to the Winter Blend. Also, info from those websites seems to confuse things even more. One of the sites states: The difference between summer- and winter-blend gasoline involves the Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) of the fuel. RVP is a measure of how easily the fuel evaporates at a given temperature. The more volatile a gasoline (higher RVP), the easier it evaporates. The other one states: In order to reduce pollution, summer-blend fuels use different oxygenates, or fuel additives. These blends, the EPA claims, burn cleaner and also help compensate for a limited oil supply. Which is it? Oxygenates or RVP? My car uses the lowest (87) octane gas with up to 10% Ethanol (alcohol) in it. That should be super-cheap! I also thought that the lead in gasoline (which was called "regular gas" after unleaded gas was introduced) was not to increase the octane rating but to lubricate engine's valve seals. That is why cars with older engines should run on today's unleaded gas with lead additive added.

Bill states that all these adhesives are chemically same as the Elmer's white glue. But doesn't' the Formula 500 glue adhere much better to smooth surfaces than Elmer's? Elmer's can easily be peeled off smooth surface. Elmer's when dry is not crystal clear. It has slightly milky look, while Formula 500 dries crystal clear and glossy?

You can also use cardboard boxes like the ones used to store promo models. Either get them from Spotlight Hobbies, or use ones meant to store baseball cards. Spotlight Hobby boxes: http://www.spotlighthobbies.com/one-dozen--12--spotlight-hobbies-model-car-boxes.html Baseball card boxes are available is different length. Here is one example: https://www.blowoutcards.com/supplies/550-count-cardboard-storage-box-50ct-bundle.html

Yes, it is a good idea to have very basic analog or even mechanical gauge backup system in an airplane. Unlike in a car, you can 't pull over to the side of the road in an airplane is some fancy digital readout dies on you. I hope that they always keep a mechanical fail-safe instrumentation on airplanes. Although is seems that they got rid of those fail-safes on some airliners with glass cockpits. This one still shows the blanked out circular openings where I suppose those analog gauges would reside.

Nice! So what is it? Bare Metal Foil?

That wasn't directed at you personally - you are not responsible for the Summer-blend gasoline production. It was a generic rant towards the big-oil companies.

Those are renderings of analog dials on a computer display. Virtual gauges. But yes, those are easier to read than digital ones. Funny that many cars have mechanical analog gauges but unlike in the old days, where the speedometer and some older tach were mechanically linked to the transmission and driveshaft, the pointer is actually rotated by electromagnets which are driven by the on-board computer (which is digital).

You brought up something that really irks me! In the Spring gas prices are going up because of the switch to the Summer Blend. In the Fall gas prices go up because they are switching to the Winter Blend! WTF! What exactly are they blending into gas (other than the 10% ethanol which is ruining gas already)? Do we really need all those custom blends? 40 years ago nobody ever heard of seasonal blends. Even if they were doing that already, the price fluctuations were not blamed on the blends. It is all just a bunch of malarkey if you ask me. Ethanol (alcohol) started getting added to gas I think in the '90s or early 2000s (when the oil prices went through the roof. But now with th eoil prices back to reasonable, they should stop adding ethanol to gas - make it pure gasoline again for better gas mileage. Yet another silly think is that with 10% of alcohol in gas nowadays why would anybody buy and add "gas dry" or "gasoline anrifreeze" additives, which are just alcohol too? The 10% ethanol gasoline is already pretty immune to freezing up due to water int he gas.

Cool, but now you will have to change batteries in it every so often. Good old analog is still the best in my book.

This is where this grade-school level math comes in handy. The stuff we didn't think we'll ever use.

Yeah, American chocolates don't compare to the European ones (where most have at least some alcohol). Fortunately there are many places in US where you can buy European chocolates. German Deli in Texas is one of them. They have online store. I always place a large order there around Christmas. Wake up your taste buds with these: https://www.germandeli.com/Sweets/All_Liquor_filled_Chocolates I also have a small local store with Polish goodies (including chocolates). Good stuff!

I like it!

Well then, it looks like age and taste in cars have nothing in common. Even the curretn Corvette was a bit too much for me, but it sort of grew on me (but only in certain color combos). What I found interesting is that it appears that the Swiss front license plates are made as a mirror image (so they can be easily read by the driver in the car in front of them)?

A bit too wild and cartoonish for my tastes. Too much. But I hang with the "over 50" crowd.

I also agree that this would be a very smart thing to do. Who knows when PB will go "Photobucket" on us again. It would be nice to have Harry's photos hosted here on the forum. At least then they will last as long as the forum does. I'm never going back to PB. I left my free account alone so all my photos might show up in the old treads, but I'm not uploading anymore there.

They sure are great looking cars. And they run pretty well too.

Well, in my model club it is just the opposite. We have put up a model contest for over 25 years and we had pee-wees and juniors classes. For the last few shows there were no juniors entering that class so this year we decided to get rid of the juniors class. Of course, since we got rid of that class, this year will have half a dozen juniors show up with models for the contest. I actually hope so.

That is basically what the Testors Liquid Cement is (in the glass bottles). The stuff discussed here is a bit thicker - it has some body to it, and it doesn't evaporate as fast. It is like Testors Mixed their Liquid Cement from the glass bottles with some of their old-fashion tube cement.