Ace-Garageguy

So...is this stuff supposed to be "black chrome" or "trim black"? They're very different things.

Fascinating, captain. I've never seen that, and await the answer with bated breath.

Definitely positively beautiful, and a fascinating story. Also fascinating is your depiction of how she was built to be worked on, with the swing-out leading-edge supports for the under-engine platforms, and I assume built-in wing hard-points for the engine sling. Pretty thrilling situation to be doing a big radial engine change in, most definitely.

Components for vintage stereo systems are among my other interests.

While much aftermarket sheetmetal and other body parts (like lighting assemblies) aren't up to spec in material or fit or function, though the insurers insist they are, that sounds more like an installation/finish issue than a bad part. If it's rusting where the skin is rolled over the frame, the repair shop probably neglected to seam-seal it properly prior to paint, and moisture trapped inside is having its inevitable way...or, the primer/paint on the edge of the roll is simply too thin to provide adequate protection. Both of those are common problems I see constantly on fairly recently-repaired vehicles...as is paint blistering and flaking with subsequent rust, or early clearcoat failure. The fact is that even the worst aftermarket steel part will be adequately rust-resistant IF it's prepped and painted correctly. Still...poor quality shop work is another hallmark of the industry now, with insurers skinning every last dime out of every repair, shop managers who push every job through as fast as possible at the cost of quality, and techs who will cut every corner to get more billable hours in every week. The body shop I contract with to do their last-ever hot-rod build is family owned, the second-generation actually in the shop doing the crash work right, and they've built their reputation for quality first over decades. The manager will fight insurers to get paid exactly what every job is worth, and sends the ones who are just too cheap on down the road. And we never have a shortage of work...ever...so anyone who blames "the system" and insists that you HAVE to cut corners just to get by these days is simply full-of-it. EDIT: Actually, our biggest problem recently has been getting OEM parts from dealerships for current-production or quite new (3-4 years old) vehicles, and is one of the many reasons the owner is working towards closing the doors soon, selling the property, and retiring early. Atlas is shrugging, and not just in the car biz.

"Whatchamacallits and thingamajigs" are the greasy icky things that many of the "tech-savvy" think only mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers are dumb enough to know the actual names of, understand the functions of, and repair when they fail.

Yup, one of the best builds of the AMT Willys I've seen yet...especially nice job fitting the flip nose that nobody ever gets right.

Models draped over exotic cars figured prominently on lotsa guys dorm-room posters.

Holes in the road can ruin your alignment.

"Lax" is what I sees a lots most places that aren't run by martinets.

Dang. Looks gone. If it is, that's a real blow to anyone interested in the history of drag racing.

Going by TECHMAN's numbers, the biggest engine for the class would have been 335 cu. in., so the factory 312, a smallblock Chevy, a 324 Olds, a Dodge Red Ram hemi, DeSoto Firedome hemi, or even a Chrysler Firepower 331 hemi...or several other interesting engines are all possible. The 312 Ford had kinda odd stacked intake ports and didn't flow as well as some of the engines listed above, so it would have been easier to get power out of something else. And it's heavy. Just for an example, the '57 Olds 371 J2 factory 3X2 setup offered 312 HP, while the best factory Ford 312 2X4 engine was about 270 IIRC. While the J2 3X2 manifold isn't a direct bolt-on to a class-legal 324 Olds, it can be made to work...and with more cam and headers (which your photo car obviously has) well over 325 HP should be obtainable. For another option, the hot factory 2X4 bbl 331 Chrysler offered 300 HP...stock. Though it's also a heavy engine, the allowable engine setback in M/SP could help considerably, and again, with a lot more cam than stock, plus headers and all the other tricks, a whole lot of power and torque would be there. M/SP allowed more mods than the gas or production classes, including, as mentioned, significantly more engine setback, so you have a lot of latitude to build your fantasy while "keepin' it real". EDIT: A cost-no-object build might be a bored and stroked Chevrolet smallblock with Hilborn injection and lots of engine setback. It'll fit under your photo's hood.

Nice fix. Amazing to me that it was done that way by the kit designer, for absolutely no apparent reason.

A good man, and a good friend. I'll miss him.

"Now" will be "then" by the time I finish typing this line.

Dinners of boiled rock broth and cardboard won't make you fat.

"Happens" is often preceded by "stuff".

Are there any hamsters who can find Europe on a map, figure 3-cubed in their heads, and read and comprehend anything more complex than "see Spot run" ?

PM'd

Testing is usually a good measure of how good the one being tested is at taking tests.

Idiosyncrasies are those things they put in manual transmissions to help folks who can't drive a crashbox.

Men wearing bermuda shorts with wingtips and sock garters...probably...aren't going to be scoring trophy wives.

Yup. I'm finishing up my last two client builds, but I'll still be building my own cars, mostly the old way, with OEM junkyard bits or quality NOS parts I've been collecting for decades. It's sad that most people not in the business realize...or will even listen when you try to tell them...how so much has gone downhill since the offshoring of everything began, for nothing but a quick buck and expediency, and that there's little to no quality-control before all this garbage is sent to market. There still IS quality out there, but it's always hit-or-miss whenever you buy anything you're not intimately familiar with, and a product that was decent last year may have been re-sourced this year, and may now be 3rd rate trash. Having to constantly re-engineer defective parts, or find some other way to cope, has taken the satisfaction and much of the profit out of the profession and caused pricing for quality, reliable repairs to skyrocket. I buy OEM parts if at all possible, but that's not always an option, particularly as the remaining stashes of NOS parts are almost entirely gone. And there's nothing to blame but short-sighted American corporate policy and price-first prioritization on the part of consumers. So they all got exactly what they set themselves up for...shiny and cheap and useless. And most people have no clue, nor do they care.

"Obsolete" on the interdwerps is any post more than a few minutes old.