Rodent

Stolen from Tarzan

I ate at a two-story KFC in Osaka. I doubt this is the exact one, but it is similar. Little postage-stamp lobby where you ordered the food, then you went upstairs to eat it. I suspect that Taco Bell is doing this so they can fit a quadruple drive through on a small lot. C

My "local" WalMart is one of the smaller footprint stores and is about 1/3 groceries. I doubt they have models either. I might take a drive to one of the larger stores just to see if they have anything.

Amazon makes it very hard to complain about delivery drivers. A couple of years ago, a driver made several deliveries on my cul de sac. As she was leaving, she was going a little fast, and the intersection of my cul de sac, another cul de sac, and the through road is uncontrolled and kind of blind. She blew through the intersection and narrowly escaped being t-boned by a Forester. Amazon wasn't interested in the least little tiny bit.

There aren't any on eBay right now, but Paul Hettick makes a 4-door trans-kit for this. In case you want to build a 1/25th scale 1959 Imperial showroom diorama....

Around the world without leaving Ohio!

Except for this, I have been fortunate to have not had any poorly packed/wrapped eBay purchases actually be damaged in shipment.

strip bingo games

Our parent company forbids me from publicly posting details about who I work for and what I do. But.... we aren't an Etsy shoppe that makes logo throw pillows for your Phord or Shevvy. The OEMs know who we are. The licensing arrangements are interesting to say the least. I have no clue what the licensing arrangements are for diecasts and model kits, but I suspect they go through the same channels that we do.

I am not sure that a Boss 429 or a 427 SOHC would fit in a 49 Merc without some major changes to the frame and front suspension, in 1:1 or 1 25th scale. The stock upper control arms are pretty close together and I don't think there would be room for headers/manifolds. I attempted to fit a Coyote into an AMT '57 Ford and the cylinder heads were resting on the upper control arms in that case as well. Michael, Dave's point on the oil pan is valid. An FE with a front sump won't fit because the front crossmember is designed for a rear sump. Pan and crossmember can't occupy the same space at the same time. You can just glue the pan on backwards and say that it has been modified to a rear sump.

It may be an old wives' tale, but I have heard that "back in the day" when they built 8 Trans-Ams, they agreed to pay SCCA $5/car. I believe they began regretting that deal when they started selling ~100k units/year in the mid-late 1970s. I don't do our OEM licensing, but I work closely with the colleague who does it for North America and work a little bit with the colleague who does it for Europe. All I can say is that some manufacturers are easier than others to work with, and some of them can get really greedy when it is time to negotiate. Some of the OEM reps are amazingly nice folks, some won't give you the time of day.

The company I work for is a licensee of most of the major auto manufacturers. It's not so much "getting" a license as it is negotiating what you want to pay vs. what they want to make from it. Some of them don't directly deal with it, they use an outside company for license negotiations. I realize that is apples and sauerkraut when it comes to SCCA, but everyone has a price. Maybe theirs is just too high to make sense for a model company's ROI.

Why won't Chaz get #209?

in the restroom

My daily is a 2016 Mazda3 S Grand Touring 6MT that I bought new in January 2016. My daily commute (was) 30 miles each way until COVID has had my department working from home since March 2020. I just turned 81,000 miles last weekend, it would have well over 100k if I was still driving to the office every day. Oil is changed at 5k miles, except the last change was done at one year because of not driving it. Plugs at 75k. Still has original coolant. Battery in 2019. Original concrete Dunlops replaced at 65k. Rear pads and rotors at 70k. Nice Bose stereo, has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. It's kind of a hoot to drive, and I just put together the second front strut. Hopefully by the weekend the Koni Special Actives and Racing Beat springs will be installed. I totally love older cars, but "fun" appliances for daily use FTW. Keep the classic cars in the garage and drive them for fun! I think of the maintenance schedules of some of our revered cars and shudder to think of how that would translate into today's world.

Personally, I find it easier to work on post-1996 cars, even the newest stuff with CAN systems than working on some of the garbage we got dumped on us in the late 1970s until the beginning of OBD-II. The GM offerings weren't as bad, but good grief I don't know what some of the other companies were thinking. I used to know someone who has a small car collection of "interesting" cars that Faust would salivate over. One was a "Fuel Dejected" 1981 Imperial and another was an early 1980s Mercury Colony Park with EEC-III. Easily two of the worst examples of being impossible to diagnose drivability issues that I can think of. I LIKE plugging in a scan tool and seeing what sensors and modules are doing from the comfort of the driver's seat. A scan tool that I can use on almost everything post 1996 on the road.

I debated not getting the clear, but the Presidential Blue is going on a resin body and I didn't want to add another variable to the equation.

I took the plunge and ordered paint for a couple Mustangs in my backlog. About 2 hours after I placed the order, I remembered that I wanted Emberglow and GM Tripoli Turquoise too, but they will just have to wait. Any tips or tricks with this stuff other than or in addition to what is printed on the bottle, I am all ears. I have an H3 Paasche and it never gets very humid here. It's 59% outside my front window right now

Just saw this at the LHS on Friday. Might be worth trying.

Check it out or get it checked out. It certainly may be something less catastrophic.

Not sure about the 2010 but is is certainly common on the somewhat earlier ones. They use a scroll compressor, and when they die, you pretty much need to do a "firewall forward" replacement to get all the shrapnel out. Parallel-flow condensers and hoses with mufflers cannot successfully be flushed. I have seen photos of holes blown in the side of the compressor when the scrolls ingested shrapnel floating around from a previous failure.

Diverted to Tennessee

I was in traffic yesterday with a Delica. It is the only one I have ever personally seen in the USA, but they seemed to be as common as Camrys with dented rear bumpers when we last visited British Columbia. Not sure where his temporary registration was from. Not California because we A. Have a tag that goes where the license plate goes. and B. These aren't legal to register here.

What did you thin the X-22 with?

Baby Ruth floating