Ace-Garageguy

Hearts and minds have roles in decision-making, but in the end, logic and rationality should always prevail.

Now is a good time to do something productive, so I think I'll sign off.

A Consul Capri perhaps...

Sitting all day isn't conducive to physical fitness and overall health.

Or just a couple of greasy-hands engineers who were conversant with failure modes of DRY belts. Anyone who's been around vehicles with "rubber" timing belts knows oil or even antifreeze contamination is death to them, rapidly accelerating their failure rates. Sure, these new "wet" belts are formulated to resist degradation while immersed in oil, but for whatever reason, whether non-spec material from "offshore" suppliers or something else, IT'S NOT WORKING. Also, one cited additional problem is that, as the belts degrade in the engine oil, the particles sloughing off of them form a sticky sludge that can plug up oil-pickup screens, leading to loss of oil pressure and catastrophic engine failure. This is a growing problem with ivory-tower engineers who have zero practical experience, think that if they can design something in CAD that's all they have to do, and who put 100% faith in artificially accelerated "testing" programs that simply cannot accurately simulate REAL TIME. And the push in engineering circles towards "zero prototypes", where no physical testing is done prior to releasing designs for production, with all design validation and testing done in "computer simulations" will make problems like this more and more frequent.

Anything worth doing is worth procrastinating about indefinitely.

Thanks fer the reminder. I need a set of those for a shelved project.

Kit-car builders, the full-scale kind, often use poor quality fasteners and other materials, and make questionable choices when solving relatively simple build problems.

Great to see one of these built well. Love that kandy too.

Shape-shifters can be hard to catch in the greased-pig contest.

"Valuable" is something most models built from kits will never be.

I agree. But the little fella they started off quoting really put me off. And the tendency for most people to live a TLDR existence should always be considered by any journalist. Get to the point early. EDIT: Far as the model train thing goes, there's been a lot of hand-wringing about the hobby being "doomed" for a while, and though it's changed considerably (the shrinking availability of kits, and an emphasis on pretty spendy RTR stuff, for one thing), with high cost and an ageing-out group of enthusiasts often cited as reasons, there seems to be a growing interest in buying cheap old broken RR models and repairing/upgrading them...something I started doing long before it was "a thing". I'm also kinda glad for the wide decline in interest in RR kit building, as it's allowed me to stock up on a lot of really cool (to me) vintage kits that had been getting into the stupid-money territory there for a while.

Lotsa things aren't understood by "outsiders". I used to entertain a lot, cook dinner for groups of people when I lived in a nice big house, and one lovely woman I was really interested in (I got over it) asked me "why do you have so many cars?". She'd never heard of people who had multiple vintage vehicles they loved to work on, restored, drove on different days, etc. She thought it was "weird". Cars to her were simply appliances, and nobody would be crazy enough to have 10 different kinds of refrigerators, would they? Another one saw bookcases all over the house and asked "what do you do with so many books?" Ummmm...read them? Refer to them for reference? Enjoy looking at the photographs and art? But of course having 50 pairs of shoes and a closet full of unwearable "designer" clothes or thousands of dollars worth of Beanie Babies or Hummel figurines, nobody bats an eyelash. I pretty much don't give a rat's backside what anyone thinks of anything I do, but it chaps my backside when some condescending little ignorant dwerble refers to someone's hobby as "rather sweet now that he is in his 70s". And nobody but my absolute closest longtime friends EVER saw the model shop in those days. I'm sure the average walking talking mediocrity would have thought I was certifiable if they had...or did today. Must be like everyone else, must be like everyone else, must be like everyone else, must be...

Beautiful beautiful beautiful. Just the job on the carbon alone is exceptional, but the whole thing taken together, with working features that actually work...and fit...is pretty d------ impressive.

I wonder how he's able to eat with that. Pretty good exercise in "adapt, improvise, and overcome" 'I'd say.

Humidity in the upper range encourages mold and mildew.

I have absolutely no idea.

Ummmmm...the immersed-in-hot-oil toothed timing and oil-pump drive belts have been a disaster waiting to happen from the git-go. Sure, they've been used for a while, but more and more problems are coming up, with belt replacement intervals needing to be more frequent. EDIT: And because these belts are INTERNAL, the cost to disassemble and reassemble enough of the engine to perform the required replacement is MUCH HIGHER than the cost to replace dry toothed belts...which still ain't cheap, and ignoring recommended replacement puts a LOT of otherwise nice vehicles in the junkyards. Polymers tend to absorb hot oil, swell, and ultimately soften/dissolve and fail. But it's not just crazy-old-Mr. Negative know-it-all-me who kinda notices the truth. EDIT: A wet timing CHAIN is usually good for 200-300,000 miles with zero maintenance other than normal oil changes. And it's not just Ford experiencing wet-belt issues:

Does it need to be sandable? If not, then possibly this: https://www.amazon.com/SEM-Vinyl-Paint-Primer-Aerosol/dp/B003HF0Q68 (note that it's often recommended to pre-clean with this: https://www.amazon.com/SEM-38353-Plastic-Prep-oz/dp/B00B3HXWFO ) There are various automotive-grade primers for flexible parts, some sandable, but it's really kinda necessary to know exactly what kind of plastic you're dealing with. In this case, it might be wise to research other people who have built the thing, if you haven't already. EDIT: SEM also makes a line of interior dye/refinish products that often work very well shot directly on soft vinyl parts. For example, I've used their off-white to make white model-T tires from black ones, and it doesn't flake off when you bend them.

Days of stumbling and bumbling and incoherence and word-salad served up regularly make for great entertainment, and that's only when I'm doing well.

I feed the strays/ferals here, and occasionally take one in if it's tame. My white cat Spooky lived with me for 14 years after somebody abandoned her in my old neighborhood. One can of tuna, she figured out she'd found a home. My current indoor cat was abandoned as a kitten 5 years ago. Another wild kitten whose mother was run over just as it was being weaned lives outside in a big cage so the raccoons won't get it, and I'll turn it in to the Humane Society for sterilization/adoption shortly. Another feral kitten whose mother was also run over has adopted me (his sister WAS eaten by raccoons), and is full grown now. He lives "wild", and is as tame as any housecat but avoids other humans. I'm on the fence about letting him inside, as I don't know how two adult unfixed males will get along. Only one way to find out, I guess... In general, our local outdoor cats have a hard life, and usually only live 2 or 3 years before getting squashed in the street, shot, poisoned, or eaten by coyotes. I had one of the sweetest ones...but not quite tame enough to bring inside yet...drag itself back here to die after some nice neighbor shot an arrow through its neck. So anybody who doesn't "approve" can go to h...armonica. EDIT: The ferals here have done an A1UltraPlus job of controlling the destructive rodents (I live on a large wooded lot in a semi-rural area) that used to get in the house, so we have a mutually beneficial relationship. There is also a genuinely concerned woman who live-traps ferals around town, has them neutered and rabies-vaxxed at her own expense, and releases them back into the social groups where she caught them.

...and rabbit stew.

It's a safety issue too, so the affected vehicles should be parked. In the meantime, you still have to make your payments, keep insurance, and arrange alternative transportation. This is idiocracy in action, pure and simple.

Corny jokes about the word "corny" aren't popping into my mind.

And I bet beautiful women line up for rides in it, too.