Ace-Garageguy

All 16 valve seats in the Neon head lapped in beautifully, as did the 8 old original intake valves, but the exhaust valves were just too pitted to clean up without grinding. I moved my valve grinder to AZ in 2021, but I was able to locally source new exhaust valves wearing the Melling brand locally for $25 each. Hopefully they're not rebranded off-spec offshore garbage, because exhaust valves lead a very hard life. Anyway, I'm one big step closer to having the Neon back among the living.

"Sawhorses" was what little Johnny answered when he was asked what he'd seen at the Equine Museum.

Forget what I said about buying a new Aston if I won the lottery.

Averaging around $2.85 in the Atlanta suburbs.

Once you're on the highway and the torque-converter is locked up in top gear, the ten-speed silliness has absolutely NOTHING to do with mileage. It's only contributing to increased mileage around town, where it is intended to keep the engine in the most efficient rpm band during constant off and on acceleration.

"Water has no effect on fake flowers"

"Be careful who you let on your ship, because some people will try to sink it because they can't be the captain."

Someone once said "you can't learn how to drive in a parked car".

Bear with me here: "smarter than the average bear", posted immediately above, is NOT a sentence.

I believe the most significant "bad" chemical missing from the non-toxic plastic glue is toluene. It was what made the old tube gloo popular with the sniffer crowd, and could cause permanent nervous system damage. Other solvents found in "toxic" glues for polystyrene include methylene chloride, methyl ethyl ketone, and xylene. If they're not on the TDS (technical data sheet) or SDS for the non-toxic stuff, they're not in it. These nasty solvents are what make regular plastic cement actually work, by dissolving the styrene to literally weld parts together. The non-toxic stuff doesn't even come close.

I used to call these, and especially the '60 models, "carrier deck Oldsmobiles" because the tails were so long and flat.

Forehead o' mine seems to be getting taller all the time, but as I become more and more "highbrow", why don't I seem to be getting smarter?

^^^ This is great. But what many don't realize is that people like this...engineer-it-to-the-best-of-our-ability, build it, test it, see what breaks, record and analyze the results, fix what broke, test it again, find the next weakness and fix that, etc., etc., etc...developed the numbers that CAD and CAE and CFD programs use to help engineers design things today. This points up the disturbing ongoing push in bean-counter-driven engineering towards "zero prototypes", where designs in the computer go straight to production with no physical-testing phase. Though CAD/CAE/CFD are absolutely wonderful tools, the data they run on is not complete for every possible situation, and even the best of the best of the best data-driven computer simulations should never be taken as the final proof that anything complex is fully developed. Reality can ALWAYS come up with something the simulations and the people running them never dreamed of.

Apparently at least $75 tariff on $3.50 worth of paint from this particular seller in Poland? Might want to check the math on that. And speaking of a topic that is already getting "political"... EDIT: And I'm sure any attempt on my part to explain the rationale for the tariffs would be branded as "political", so I won't bother.

Nice '59 land yacht. A little busy for my taste, but I could learn to love it.

This section is called "The Off-Topic Lounge". If I'm still capable of understanding what words in English mean, that means this section isn't about model cars. If endless posts about celebrities dying and friendly squirrels and what somebody had for dinner and what griped or pleased everyone don't interest you and all you want to be exposed to is model car talk, there's a pretty simple solution. Don't scroll down this far.

Though rhymes with "doh".

They're very good. You just have to pay attention and work carefully.

By way of illustrating a much less awkward sentence that expresses the same thought, allow me to respectfully present "By the Time I Get to Phoenix was a hit from days gone by, sung by Glenn Campbell in 1967".

By now one would think that the non-sentence above would have been made into the following sentence: "Meet the Beatles, 1964, had a song titled It Won't be Long, good music from days gone by".

It's political here though, as not all parties share the same opinion. And last time I looked, this site was based in America. If you don't see there's a contradiction there, then we'll just have to disagree. Nor can I understand how one can even think about 9/11 without questioning how such evil is possible in a "civilized" world, and remarking about it. Seems like a perfectly natural conversational segue or digression to me. But it's not my call.

I can tell you one thing right off. The line over the side glass is way wrong. Look at the real car shot; the line is straight, almost dead parallel with the line at the top of the doorskin. On the model, that line over the door glass starts sloping down almost immediately. The discrepancy is not a camera or lens artifact. It's just wrong. There are other issues, but that one jumps out and does indeed make the roof look too low...though it may actually be too low even at the front.

Yup, real pretty.

That, sir, is really really cool.