Ace-Garageguy

Band of Brothers is a miniseries I still need to see...

He's a rebellious scofflaw, and needs social reconditioning ASAP.

I still do. Not dead from it yet. Go figure.

Model cars and the building thereof aren't specifically among the internet dating experts' endlessly rebleated top-ten men's hobbies that women find to be a turnoff, but veiled reference is made to "collecting toys" being a sign of "arrested development" and creepy old men playing with little trains in the basement.

That's why I quit washing mine, but it's been raining anyway.

PM'd

Friends don't let friends drive wearing paisley with plaid.

Accuracy with darts, throwing knives, and hatchets has always been elusive.

"Afraid" is something everyone feels, but bravery is when someone who's afraid does what has to be done anyway.

Big honkin' bolt. Looks to me like classic metal fatigue that probably started at a flaw at the junction of the bolt head and the shank. Google's AI actually gets this right: Fatigue is a process of progressive material damage caused by repeated cyclical stresses, even at stress levels well below the material's yield strength. When a bolt experiences repeated loads, a crack can initiate at a point of weakness, such as a flaw at the head-shank junction. The crack then propagates incrementally with each load cycle until the remaining cross-sectional area of the bolt can no longer support the applied load, leading to fracture. In essence, the combination of stress concentration at the head-shank junction and the potential presence of flaws makes this area a likely starting point for fatigue cracks that can eventually lead to bolt failure. A similar failure that illustrates crack propagation:

"Hungry enough to eat a horse" is pretty hungry indeed.

Forum is more than threeum and less than fiveum.

Very authentic. I'm old enough to remember when low-pay blue-collar workers...handymen, groundskeepers, landscapers, etc...actually drove and worked out of cars and trucks that looked that rough. They always had a couple of lifters ticking and left a trail of thin blue smoke and slowly dripping fluids, but they ran and ran and ran.

More whishkee, beertender; I'm not unconshush yet...

OEM NOS Delco Rochester 2G/GC multikit. Supposed to service most Rochester 2G carbs. The 2GC has a choke and is the standard 2bbl on many '60s GM low-performance applications. It's also frequently the center, primary carb on 3X2 setups...and is required for my fancy-dancy 3X2 manifold for my '63 394 Olds. The non-choke 2G is used for the end, secondary carbs on Rochester 3X2 setups. Sadly, the last aftermarket kit I bought from a "reputable" source had a plastic accelerator pump cup that turned to goo in less than 2 years. Apparently, ethanol MAY be the culprit, so I need to do further research before I build the carb. "Ethanol resistant" cups are available, but you never know what kind of bottom-of-the-barrel plastics our "offshore" manufacturing buddies will slip in to make a few more rice-grains of profit. The follow-through required to be a non-chimp mechanic takes experience, knowledge, thought, time, and effort, and it's no surprise so very few bother. I also sprung for the head set for the little Neon, and I'll start building her junkyard head, on the bench, on Friday. Though the head that's on the engine definitely has one or more bent valves, and between the two heads there are probably enough valves do git 'er runnin', my SOP is usually to replace all the exhaust valves whenever I do a head...but that practice came from my aircooled days. They're about $12 a pop fer the Neon (but there are 8), they're available overnight locally, and are relatively cheap insurance...assuming they're not Chinese potmetal. HOWEVER...since there are 8, I'll be looking carefully at the condition of what's in the junk head before I spring for noobies. I'd prefer to build the head 100% on the bench BEFORE I remove the head that's on the engine in the car.

I did something stupid that, while not terrible, is definitely going to take some non-billable effort to make right.

Defined delts are something I need to focus on, 'cause old geezers tend to get narrow shoulders if they don't work out.

These are the kind of folks who can't wipe their own backsides effectively.

Follows logically from John Wayne's misattributed quote "Life's hard. It's even harder if you're stupid".

Looks like a great kit, a lot easier than the mashups of available kit parts and repops I've been doing.

Nice build. Always liked these, wish I'd bought a real one when that was still a possibility.

Always good to see unusual power in period drag cars. These are what made the early days so interesting.

"Choice" meats used to be below "prime" in quality, but I don't know if anyone bothers with those classifications these days.