Ace-Garageguy

Day to day aches and pains sometimes make me wonder if the monster under the bed beats me with a baseball bat while I sleep.

Music is very important to me, and not just as background noise.

Cool. There have been several modelers on this forum who've posted really impressive scratch-building work using the Cricut to form parts. Definitely worth a search...

Truer words were never spoken. Which means stay away from the really cheap plastic Chinese junk. Most of them are toys, and are incapable of delivering any kind of consistent accuracy. I'd owned a full-size lathe and mill for my business since 1995, but when I decided to get into miniature machining I started with a used but excellent late '60s Unimat, and in early 2024 added a used Sherline that came with a bunch of tooling for an incredible price, though the machine does seem to have been used by a chimp at one point. Deals are out there on excellent used equipment if you have patience, but be prepared to spend at least $500 and up today to get something you can actually make parts with. If you're not already familiar with machine work terms and procedures, you'd be ahead of the game if you did some reading on machine work in general and miniature machine work in particular, so you'll have an idea of what the various machining operations entail and what additional parts and tooling you'll need besides just the basic machine.

Studio musicians don't always become stars.

Based on a recommendation from member stavanzer on another thread...thanks Alan.

My own bad attitude today, more than anything. Need to work on it...

Interesting idea, well integrated styling. I like heem.

Tonight some still don't seem to grasp what a sentence is, so this should probably be renamed "string of words that convey an idea game".

As I sit down for lunch outside, it's 87F with 59% humidity and a light breeze. Beautiful blue sky, lotsa puffy white cumulous clouds...reminds me of full-on summers when I was a kid in the Midwest, on the East Coast, and down South, in a world where most people could survive just fine in temperate climates with no AC. For all my involvement with "grossly-polluting, planet-destroying" old cars, I'll wager MY "carbon footprint" is MUCH less than the vast majority of the self-righteous climate-crisis crowd. The fact that my home is tree-shaded and I force-ventilate it at night when temps are in the 70s, then close it up during the daytime, means it's usually still at least 10-15 degrees cooler inside than outside when I get home from work, and I pay HUNDREDS of dollars LESS a month for electricity than the average US house this size consumes. So who's REALLY "saving the planet"?

Still the pretty standard summer weather pattern here, and forecast over the next 7 days: daytime sunny, hot (mid to high 90s) and humid (70%+), afternoon popup T-storms. For all the doom and gloom and "existential threat" and "OMG heat!!!" whining going on, this is exactly the typical summer weather pattern I've experienced here since 1969. Exactly.

"Ring around the collar" was a dreaded scourge of housewives in the USA in the late '70s, according to a laundry detergent ad.

I don't know how to interpret this ScaleMates timeline... https://www.scalemates.com/kits/italeri-3624-mercedes-benz-190e-23-16v--1413201

Got 56 PSI in the FI loop with the new pump running in the DeLorean, which is dead on spec. No leaks, and she only bled down to 32 PSI after sitting for several hours. I ran a hot mix of FI cleaner and non-ethanol gasoline through the loop for a while, to try to clean...or at least loosen...whatever deposits and varnish have formed from sitting so long. It's basically a Bosch CIS system, and I'm hoping to not have to go through it...though I've already replaced several sensors and chimp wiring. By the end of the day tomorrow, I ought to have been able to start the engine and idle it long enough to see if the new cooling fan control circuit will cycle the fans as intended...but first I have to jumper in the stock instrument cluster to monitor coolant temp and oil pressure, minimum. The aftermarket fans in the thing are unfortunately some supposedly whoopty units the DeLorean guys like, but they're silly little bee-fart jobs that just don't move much air. Any fans that come with 16 gauge wire pigtails are a joke, ya know? One of the reasons for DeLorean cooling problems is under-gauge wiring and crusty connectors from the relays to the fans...all of which I've already corrected, but I don't have much faith in these silly little twinkie fans getting the job done. Getting closer to making this nightmare mess go away...but now he wants me to re-engineer the controls and ductwork for the "showcar" HVAC system (that's totally chimpified) to actually function...

Matters rhymes with hatters and batters, and is not the same word as "'maters", which kinda reminds me that I need to make a thick mater n' mayo sammige before my maters rot.

Thank you VERY much. I'll most definitely look into that.

I'd just about quit buying any new models of anything, but when I saw these for what seemed to me to be a good deal, I popped. I missed the Chevy coupe last time around, and had no intention of missing the wrecker.

If it's so modest, it shouldn't be hard to figure out what the per-member ad revenue averages out to, and give the option to people who hate ads to pay that amount not to see them. I'm hardly a website or forum specialist, but I have encountered websites and forums where ads are not displayed if a viewer/member satisfies one or several criteria. You would, of course, have to come up with a way to block access to anyone who isn't paying and IS running an ad-blocker...because people cheat. I have no idea, naturally, if your site software can support anything like this.

"Also ran" isn't where you want to be in the race results.

IIRC, the Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim is quite similar in architecture to the one that just burned, but always seemed to me to be significantly more crowded.

Conditioner for hair is something I've never seen the need for.

Yup, the Bean Bandits were legend even way back in the early days. I've never seen one of their cars up close, but remember frequent articles in Hot Rod and other publications featuring their accomplishments. I sure wish I'd been born early enough to have lived through that era of racing first-hand.

Bought a light button-front cotton-blend shirt (made in India) that seemed like it should be great for hiking. Didn't notice it in the store, but when I got it home it smelled like it had been pickled with essence of Vietnamese stink bugs, one of the smells I hate most on the planet. Maybe it'll wash out, as I'd kinda like to get more if it turns out to be as breathable and quick-drying as it seems like it'll be. I've had similar-weight 100% cotton Indian-made shirts before and I really liked them, but this is a polyester blend, so who knows...

Pork barbeque with sides of beans, potato salad, coleslaw, pickles, and an icy cold beer sure slow you down on a hot summer afternoon.

Same old same old. Forecast high 94F, which means it'll be well over 100 in the shop this PM. Popup t-storms also forecast, probably just enough to drive the humidity way up with little to no cooling. This is standard summer here...no better, no worse. I need to go back to getting to work by 06:30, but it's not as easy to do as it was back in 2011.