Ace-Garageguy

Well, I used it when I was a kid and that's all I had, but man it takes a LOT of rubbing to clear 600 grit sand-scratches.. I see guys trying to just rub their orange peel with some 1500 for a few seconds, and then go straight to polish...which they wipe on like wax or glaze and wipe off...and then wonder why they still have orange peel. The absolute bestest "trick" to getting good looking slick shiny paint is to learn how to shoot it slick in the first place...on real cars or models. I can't ALWAYS shoot my models this slick every time, but man, when I CAN it really saves a TON of work afterwards.

Some days I feel 25. Some days I feel every bit of what I am. I prefer the former, and I've found that exercise, eating right, and consciously limiting how much I let stressful stuff affect my mood, the younger I feel consistently. But it ain't easy. It can be disappointing to see how slowly years of accumulated fat go away, and how long it takes to get back to where I'm even as fit as I was at 55. I've let myself go to total pot several times for a variety of reasons, and every time I decide to get back on the stick, lose the lard, and get fit again, the more it hurts and the longer it takes. But getting to the point where the exercise has quantifiable results as far as vastly reduced joint and back pain go, seeing the weight go down slowly but consistently on the scales, and looking in the mirror and not seeing a slab of overhanging-gut-lard makes me think this time, I'm going to keep with it. It's a whole lot easier to maintain a really healthy weight and fitness level than it is to get back to it if you've let yourself go. And it's a WHOLE lot easier to just chill on the couch pounding down chips and dip and beer. Life is choices.

At my ripe old age, I've known many people who have had cataract surgery, and they all, every one of 'em, experienced the same thing. Hang in there. Everything will be much better in not too long.

Drove my new-to-me '96 Blazer up to Blue Ridge just because. Booming touristy town now, much more developed than 3 years ago (last time I was up there) and the traffic was like rush hour most of the way. It used to be quite a peaceful drive into the mountains, but the yups have found it and now it's a constant stream of idiots in jacked up trucks and Lexi and Mercs and Audis going nowhere very fast. Blazer ran great, gets almost twice the highway mileage of my '89 GMC pickup, but there are a few small things I need to address prior to driving across the country. All in all it was a good little shake-down trip, but it made me sad for a variety of reasons I won't go into any deeper. EDIT: That thing that looks like a train in the middle of the shot below is in fact a sightseeing train (pulled by classic EMD GP units) operated by the freight shortline that runs past my house.

Went out this AM to feed the ferals and saw the mother of the abandoned kitten I'm taking care of dead in the street right in front of my house. She wasn't there last night at 11:00 PM when I brought in the food bowl so the raccoons and possums wouldn't get it. The street I live on in very lightly traveled, especially at night, and only by neighborhood folks and a few shortcutting between two major streets, so whoever hit the thing could have easily swerved or braked to avoid it...but I've seen some recent "new demographic" residents actively TRY to hit animals around here. In 60 years of driving, mostly too fast, I've NEVER hit a cat. I hate careless evil stupid people.

Vehicle dynamics is misunderstood or ignored completely by most self-described "car guys"...especially the donkers and Carolina squatters and nosebleed-high-front-end gasser crowd.

The AMT coupe is quite reasonably accurately scaled. It fits the Revell (Buttera sedan delivery and derivatives) tube-frame correctly. If the Lindberg kit is in the ballpark...which I don't know because I don't have one here...you're golden. Remember...a T is a little car, significantly smaller than an A-model or a '32.

"Show me the mommy" was my SOP back when I was looking for a lifetime companion and wanted to have an idea of what the girl in question would look like as she aged.

True...but there's a pretty decent one in every issue and derivative of this kit: There's an even better one in the Johan '70 (and later) Eldo...but the cost of the Eldos is getting up there. Still, the odds of the Eldo kit version actually getting used are kinda slim, so parts-sellers on feePay might be a good bet.

Most excellent. Thanks. Maybe I'll cast a few "Culver City" Halibrand back plates to fit a late-model Frankland or one of the other currently available QC rear ends...

I had one about a bazillion years ago, molded in light blue with hard plastic tires. Decent place to start from if you just use the body shell and fenders. EDIT: Found one...

Two biggest problems with the Latham were 1) it was very expensive to make the impeller with all those little vanes that had to be quite accurate and 2) they just didn't make much boost at lower RPM. Otherwise, they're pretty cool.

I figger that's why they calls 'em "smart" phones. You musta had a dumb camera...

"Disaster Management and Remediation" is my middle name.

Yup, I bought one new way back when. I liked it so much that years later I bought a couple of 'em used to keep in the big-car shops. My billing for clients includes extensive photos of work performed, in excruciating detail, to justify the exorbitant money I charge them.

Well, that right there ought to tell you something, right? Apparently the temps are high enough and the humidity low enough now that your paint is drying and literally turning to dust before it reaches the model.

Holy moly. That thing is beautiful. I had to go back and look more carefully to overcome my initial thought it was a real car...and I build real cars for a living. Man oh man, that is one sweet build.

Slid into HobbyTown on the way home from a hike and picked up an AMT 2021 Bronco, specifically to backdate it with a 289-302ish SBF and earlier underbody guts. Looks like a nice kit, but why they molded it with an open hood (I'm glad they did) is anybody's guess, as there's not even a top-plate to go in the engine bay. We had a real one in the shop a while back, and the fragility of the suspension is appalling. An impact on the right rear tire...that didn't even hurt the rim...bent the rear axle housing and the rear Panhard bar. You could SEE the camber on the RH side of the rear from the bent housing, and the entire axle was displaced an inch to the left. And if that wasn't enough, the inertia of the huge spare on the rear gate bent the hinge mounting points for the gate. Offroad vehicle, huh? Lookit meeee!!! mall crawler is more like it. -------------------------------------------------- Also got a Moebius '67 Ford pickup with the service bed. I had a '67 smoothside with a 352/C6 and it was a great truck, but it came to a sad end. Anyway, I bought the kit mostly to backdate the bed for a '53 service truck, and will most likely swap the stepside fenders from the '53 on to the '67, and fab up a longer bed. No chance these will get started any time soon, just a little retail therapy.

I can see how one could come to that conclusion, but there are so many functionality issues on eBay now that HAVE to be the result of sheer widespread incompetence, I kinda doubt it.

"Can't", I'm very sad to say, has become a once very capable old friend's constant response to everything adults have to deal with daily.

Life continues to prove to me every day that "you can't fix stupid" is true beyond doubt.

Very nicely done.

One old rule-of-thumb when I was painting dinosaurs with lacquer was "the right viscosity is about like skim milk". After a while it became second nature to thin paint products correctly, and I could even "hear" from the sound of drops leaving the stir stick hitting the paint in the cup, and tell if I needed more thinner. Today, with most professional refinish products requiring quite accurate mixing using graduated containers, there's little to no guesstimation. But the OP's problem is yet another reminder why we harp on TEST ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN A MODEL to figure out what you need to do to get a good finish with a specific product or equipment. And believe me, though I've been painting real stuff, expensive stuff, for more than 5 decades, when I shoot anything on real cars today I sure as h. don't go in the booth and start blowing paint without first dialing in the gun for whatever material I'm using...on a scrap test panel. EDIT: most excellent splellchuck has never heard of "scrap" and wants it to be scarp or scrape or scrip. It doesn't like "dialing" either. How do the people that program this garbage get jobs?

Understanding of the physical world, things like exactly HOW electricity is generated, is way beyond many folks, and things that used to be "common knowledge" are now arcane.

Yup, a lot of truth in that, and one more reason I'm really beginning to despise eBay. It's maddening to have to dig through idiot listings that have pretty much nothing to do with a search...and it's not just car parts. Whoever designed how their search interprets search criteria and displays results pretty obviously knows nothing about anything.