Ace-Garageguy

There's an art gallery in town I've talked to on and off about representing me, but frankly, I kinda like my art so much I don't want to part with it. HOWEVER... I'm going to tape a banana to a piece of latex-roller-painted masonite, and stencil on it "meeee too !!!!!!!", and price it at only a paltry $1 million. I think that's a pretty good deal considering the first one brought $5.2 million. Even if they beat me down to $50 thousand, I'll walk away smiling.

I'd quit using "blue" tape. I know...everybody does it, but it was never intended for solvent based paint on smooth surfaces. It's primarily a "low tack" tape made for masking walls and mouldings and woodwork in houses. Solvents in some hobby or hardware-store paints can adversely affect the adhesive, causing exactly the problem you're having. I use automotive-grade tapes on models and never have any adhesive residue. BUT...we use blue tape in the big-car shops to protect chrome and other bare metal surfaces during handling and assembly. The adhesive gets hard and crusty over time, and it can be the absolute devil to remove if it's left too long, often requiring a variety of solvents to remove the residue from bare metal. 3M green automotive masking tapes, on the other hand, usually release just fine from everything, with no adhesive transfer. 3M makes the best stretchy fine-line tapes I've ever seen, as well. Y'all can use anything you want, but after 5 decades painting real cars and models, I know what works for me. There's a reason professional car painters do not use "blue" tape for actual masking.

Want all you want, but if you don't work for it, you probably won't get squat.

Care and feeding of practically priceless Ferraris includes actually driving them, according to Nick Mason.

Upon further consideration, we find we're going to have to revoke your license to breathe.

Geez...I forgot probably one of the best ones, driving my first Jaguar home. I found a forlorn '58 XK150 FHC on the back line of a small car lot outside of Braselton, Ga., in 1970. It had obviously been sitting for a long time, was covered in bird exhaust and tree sap and moss, and didn't run. The story was that it had broken down years previously, and had been pretty much abandoned by the couple passing through in it because no local mechanics knew anything about "them ferrin cars". I'd been working on my own VW Bug all the previous summer, and had learned a fair bit about old cars in the process, so after much cajoling, I finally convinced my parents to let me try to save the old Jag...which I bought not-running for almost nothing, and made a deal with the lot to let me come up and work on it on weekends when I didn't have much studying to do. Anyway, armed with a Glenn's Foreign Car Repair Manual, and with a new battery, fresh gas, cleaning out the carbs, cleaning and filing the points and plugs, and beating on the electric Lucas fuel pump with a light wooden mallet, I finally brought her coughing back to life. The 40 mile drive back to Atlanta was relatively uneventful, with only two tires going flat, one popped brake hose, a little overheating, and several stops to get out and beat on the fuel pump some more. PS: One of the stupidest car-related things I ever did was letting her go, but that's part of another very long and sad story...

M E E E E T O O ! ! ! ! ! ! !

That's crazy wild. I like heem.

Afternoon on Thanksgiving is likely to find me hiking, so I can have more turkey and stuffing in the evening with a relatively clear conscience and not a lot of excess poundage.

Hilarious isn't the word I'd choose for a toxic gas attack.

Flustered and flummoxed states of mind sometime lead to nervous flatulence.

Turkey Day has become fashionable to hate on in some circles.

That could very well be several things having nothing to do with fuel. A slightly slipping fan belt can do it, or an intermittently sticking thermostat. A worn fan clutch is most likely, just not spinning the fan fast enough at low speeds to pull sufficient air through the radiator. Rust and gunk buildup within the cooling system is another likely cause. 5th on the list of things I see remarkably often is a deteriorating water pump impeller. I've seen impellers rust away to not much more than stumpy nubs incapable of circulating coolant...but you usually get constant high temps in that case.

I REALLY like seeing posts like this because most people seem to forget these were all NEW cars at one point, entirely reliable and drivable on long trips in their time period, and that IF returned to as-new condition by competent mechanics, they're STILL reliable and usable transportation.

The "art" buying community seems to me to be the ultimate expression of the mindless-rebleater gene, and/or the desperate attention-seeking and trying-to-be-cool-at-any-cost mind viruses. "Representational art bad" (though to do it really well takes tons of talent and highly honed skills), "interpretational or expressionist art (of any flavor that can't be understood by the common man, inspiring loads of self-important critical gibberish in praise of it) good", because it brings equity into the equation, where any talentless hack can be a great artiste...with no skill whatsoever. 🚽 PS: And everyone is afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes. https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/605/the-emperor-has-no-clothes

In my experience, most everything Chinese can be found as cheap going through feePay as buying from some Chinese site. It only takes a little effort...and I'm STILL having to use feePay much as I hate them because a lot of what I need simply is not available from American suppliers, and when it IS, it's just marked-up Chinese stuff anyway. I DO like feePay's and PayPal's buyer protection schemes, so if what I get is substandard garbage or just never arrives, I get my money back.

Having always had interesting "old" cars as a matter of choice, I've driven them all over the place. Longest trip was here to AZ in a Geo Metro convertible. Kinda slow on the long climb up to Albuquerque. A round-trip to Texas and back in a '74 Fiat X1/9, later the same trip in a '74 Malibu wagon, then back in a '63 Olds. Up to the Outer Banks in a '69 Fury with a girlfriend, all over the Southeast in a rubber-bumper MG Midget with another girlfriend, etc. Multiple trips to Chattanooga and north Ga. in my '86 XJ6, multiple trips to Savannah and Florida in a '72 Gran Torino, to Sebring for the 1970 12-hour in my '62 Bug before it got the Porsche engine, and lots of 100 milers in my first Porsche, a '58 356 A coupe. Etc. While most of 'em weren't old enough to be "classics" at the time, they all were well past the age when "normal" people would have wanted...or trusted...them. Never had AAA or an issue with any of 'em other than having to replace the fuel pump in the Fury. Took a couple of days to get it from the "mainland", an hour to put it in. Oops...and some minor machine work I did in an actual blacksmith's shop in Texas on the Fiat. Almost forgot.

Study after study indicate that humans are not particularly good at "multitasking", contrary to popular opinion, so the intrusion of smartphones into the driving environment is likely the primary cause. Almost without fail, when I see somebody driving erratically or missing turn arrows or failing to yield etc., a look at the driver reveals his/her attention is focused down at something in the car and not what's going on around it.

Saltwater Taffy ran a little business under the boardwalk down at the beach.

Yup.

What people pay for Pollocks is a load of boll....

Les is there with more. Oh wait...this isn't the word game.

Roundabouts are becoming popular over here with "traffic engineers", and lotsa drivers seem to have no clue how to negotiate one.

Nope.

"Off with their heads!!" must be almost as much fun to say as "put 'em through the wood chipper!!"