Ace-Garageguy

Very nice. I sure wish that kit came with the old-style staggered-lug military tires though...

Doing something I very rarely do, which is waiting for a subcontractor to do something I could do myself, but would take a lot longer because I'm not really set up to do it. Anyway, in the interim, I've been digging into the mystery boxes of HO stuff I bought last week. It just gets better and better, including three more almost-new medium-quality all-wheel drive locomotives, a GP18 and and two F7s from different manufacturers, and an older deep-flange 2-axle-drive low-nose GP38-2 (Life Like?)...also in excellent condition. There's also a couple of partially built-up (very well done) structure kits, including a vintage Atlas passenger station and a long Pola 2-stall engine house.

I'm about 97.827756 % sure I've seen 'em...but that still leaves room I could be wrong.

I find this kind of stuff to be highly conducive to working if I'm in the right frame of mind...just high energy, nice chord progressions, no head-banging, no lyrics that make you listen, and repetitive but not overly so...

Something smells like it's not an actual sentence.

It's about time somebody does. For a company that makes so much noise about "community standards" on YT and their other platforms, it's all so much empty hypocrisy when it comes down to how THEY behave. A multi-billion dollar class-action suit might get their attention, or serious scrutiny by whatever toothless gubmint agency is supposedly overseeing big-tech on the web.. But I'm not holding my breath.

Type "demographic" into a reasonably smart AI search, and you get something like this: "Demographic refers to the statistical characteristics of a human population, such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, and geographic location. While demographics can be used in political analysis to understand voting patterns and inform political campaigns, the concept of demographics itself is not inherently political. It's a tool for describing and analyzing populations across various disciplines, including sociology, economics, public health, and marketing." ...which is an accurate definition. (EDIT for anyone who's as pedantic as I can be: Yes, you CAN incorporate a quoted paragraph into a sentence and it still be a sentence, if you do it correctly, though my punctuation here is not technically correct.)

Fools and their money, eh?

The Ideal version isn't too hard to find. I bought one years ago, being taken in by the claimed "1/24" scale by the seller. It ain't. The body proportions aren't terribly bad, and as I've never seen two 166 Barchettas that were identical anyway, it could certainly be the basis of a nice shelf model with appropriate upgrades I like your "ITS ACTUALLY: SCALE FLUID". That's pretty funny. EDIT: The Ideal kit refers to it as a 212, which was skinned by several coachbuilders as a Barchetta-style "roadster", a more "civilized" convertible, as well as a coupe.

I really appreciate you guys who were or are in the business, and have had to deal with this in real life, chiming in. Years ago when I first began mentioning the problem of deteriorating parts quality, particularly stuff not made in the USA, I was routinely shouted down by "experts" who said it must be due to my incompetence, or that I was making things up for attention, and was even repeatedly called the dreaded "r-word" if I specifically mentioned the country of origin of said garbage parts. While I acknowledge that there are indeed good quality replacement parts available, even some manufactured in China, it's become a roll-of-the-dice whenever I or anyone in the two shops I subcontract to buys any kind of part for anything...even from previously trustworthy sources who have apparently not been doing any ongoing QC with the stuff that comes out of a container. "Made in USA" is no longer the semi-guarantee of quality it once was, and poor availability of many crash and mechanical parts from the OEMs through their dealers kinda makes the point moot anyway. Problems don't go away if nobody mentions them, or pretends they don't exist. So maybe, hopefully, the prevalence of this topic now on YT and other platforms will wake some people up.

I have the kit with the blue car on the box posted by Leo64 above. Unfortunately it's missing both wheels and tires. I don't remember where I got it, but it probably came in pre-cherry picked with a bunch of other models. However...I'm almost certain I had another complete set in a "to trade" box, but where they are now is anybody's guess. I had moved a ton of parts and kits to AZ back in 2021, and they're still there...maybe. I'll keep looking here.

Three hours and 39 minutes of pure sweet heaven...

I'm old enough so they don't bother me anymore. Can't have geezers croaking in the jury box.

Or they install the part themselves, wrong if there's any possible way to do it wrong, then bring it to you saying "there's nothing wrong with it now because I put a new part in that the man at the parts store sold me after checking everything with his ($25) scanner, so all YOU need to do is MAKE IT WORK !!!" And they think we're morons because we have multi-thousand dollar scanners and still can't magically pinpoint the problem in 30 seconds. Yeah, I hate the repair business now, which is why I only build custom stuff.

It's an inline six. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis_Hurricane_engine

What about the Glenlivet?

Country life always had a lot of appeal for me, but what used to be out-in-the-country 'round here is now suburbia, with a whole new demographic.

After the electrical debacle last week that killed my beautiful old amplifier, I sprung for a fairly inexpensive 100 watt Sony unit. Just now set it up. I wasn't expecting a whole helluva lot, but I'm impressed. It sounds as good as my old tube amp, interfaces easier with the later-model sources I'm using, and includes a phono input. Next trick is to replace the woofers in both speaker cabinets. I've had them for a couple of years, but never got around to swapping them in.

Experienced mechanics don't let friends use cheap "offshore" parts that are "just as good", 'cause they almost never are.

I'll have a look in the Revell '32 5W and let you know. AND...I'm pretty sure I have a set of those wheels somewhere, but where is anybody's guess. If I can find 'em they're yours. Anybody else can help this man, don't wait around for me, 'cause it might take me a while.

It's amazing what those guys'll do to eke out a few more rice-grains of profit. EDIT: It's also pretty funny to see all the apologists for this kind of thing, citing differences in measuring systems being the problem rather than incompetence or greed.

^^^ Apparently Earth's much prophesied fiery death is upon us finally... Guess I shooda bought that electric car before it was too late.

Laughter will really wake you up if you have a couple of broken ribs.

I thought something similar...and then remembered I DID get a set of aftermarket shoes for the rear of the Neon that had linings that were in fact too thick to allow the drums to go on over them....yes, with the pistons fully compressed and the parking-brake adjusters backed all the way in and slack in the cables. Happily for me, the shop had an ancient Ammco Safe-Arc machine, so I was able to correct them. And I was the only guy in the shop who even knew what the thing was at the time.

Cool build. I've seen one of the Olds tenders. Yup, there are more than one.