Ace-Garageguy

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.

I'm reasonably sure I have that one, but I better get one just in case...

Still cool for this time of year...86F...and rain's kinda headed this way again, but if the trend the NWS radar is showing continues (system sliding off to the northeast) , we'll only get a little sprinklege here. Let's see if my forecast is more accurate than their 60%-70%-60% chance of precip after 5 PM.

"Care" is something I hear a lot about, but see little real evidence.

War is THE MOST STUPID thing supposedly "civilized" humans can engage in, and there's just NO valid reason for it today, anywhere on Earth.

Beautiful, but even the little one is somewhat beyond what my wife would let me spend on a toy. WAIT...I don't HAVE a wife!!! Yipee!!!!!!!!!!

Be good swap material when the engines start hitting the junkyards, which, if history is anything to go by, ought to be a couple of days after the first one is delivered. EDIT: Hmmmmmm...seems like it's been around a while in milder tune versions, and is already available as a crate engine: https://www.streetmusclemag.com/news/hurricane-powered-dakota-blows-down-the-9-second-e-t-barrier/

Enforcement of the tiniest HOA regulations by women named Karen is absolutely essential to the well-ordered operation of civilization.

Great trick. Thanks for posting the idea.

Monkey hear "camber make car handle better". Monkey do "more camber, more better". Monkey have no concept of contact patch or vehicle dynamics in general...and don't care anyway. Monkey must look like other monkey.

"Normal" always seemed to imply "boring, unimaginative follower afraid to show any individuality or think for oneself" whenever I heard the word.

Yup. First instance I encountered of "new" parts being defective was in the early 1990s. Replacement cylinders (made in China) for a Porsche 914 engine were so porous, you could hear air puffing through the cylinder walls when you rotated the thing by hand on the stand. My first thought was that my guy had somehow failed to get a good seal at the top of the cylinder where it plugs into the head, but I found the real problem when we tore the engine back down. Next time was in the early 2000s. '86 Ford pickup, brake master cylinder, made in sunny Mexico by highly skilled, smiling workers. Seals were put in backwards, just like they were in the next three I got from the parts store. Last one I got, I just took the seals out and put them back in the right way...after which it worked as it should. Had I known what I'd be facing, I'd have just bought a rebuild kit and fixed the old one, but of course that was around the time parts stores stopped selling rebuild kits for brake parts. Next one was a couple years later, a new radiator for a 2001 PT Cruiser was so poorly made and out of spec, I had to spend half the day partially reengineering it so it would physically fit the vehicle. And yes, multiple trips to the parts store to double-check the part number and physically compare it to another one they had in stock, and one we ordered. ALL MADE WRONG. (Trying to save the owner some bucks by not buying a factory part, so who got hosed? Me.) And it's been going downhill from there. I buy OEM parts when I can get them for repairs these days, whatever the cost, but that's no guarantee of decent quality anymore either.

PM'd.

That's pretty much the way it works now, and it doesn't work well at all for anything that actually takes some knowledge and insight to diagnose. Self-diagnostics and scanners only point a "technician" in the right direction, and there are literally millions of instances where shops replaced every single part the car "told them to" and it still didn't function right. I've been in the business over 5 decades, it's badly broken, and shows no sign of getting better, ever.

What he said. Pretty fine indeed.

Laughing when things go horribly wrong can get you some odd looks though, and possibly make companions, friends, and acquaintances question your sanity.

Heljan repopped a number of excellent HO structure kits originally tooled by Revell in the early '60s as well...

Vids of people losing their tow vehicles in lakes or rivers on boat-ramps and even in the surf abound on YT too. Hard to believe that level of ineptitude is so common, but then again...nah.

Monkey no think. Monkey do what other monkey do.

Language skills are important, especially your native one.

One part stuff is fine for thin fills if allowed to dry completely. It dries by evaporation, so if it's recoated with anything with solvents, it WILL swell and then shrink again.. But you can't do heavy fills on heavy mods with it in one application. Modelers used the one-part stuff very effectively before the two-part catalyzed fillers became widely available and accepted, and I still use one-part for pinholes and very minor imperfections. But using one-part putty for heavy fills takes repeated thin applications to prevent excessive shrinkage and cracking. The two-part catalyzed stuff can achieve a very heavy fill (for a model) in a single application, saving a lot of drying time and inter-coat sanding in the process. This is not opinion. It is actual observed and repeatable fact. EDIT: Don't even think about trying something like this with one-part filler

We haven't had "safety" inspections for decades, but we do have increasingly stringent emissions inspections. The "safety" inspections were, frankly, a joke...so why bother?