Ace-Garageguy

Very nice. I really need to build one of these.

Power corrupts, and even minor positions of power are often abused by small-minded men.

Yes, the RH servo, pan shape, and the tailshaft housing and flange look OK, but I've never seen a ribbed bellhousing on a TH350. But smooth the ribs off the bellhousing, it could pass.

Good grief, Charlie Brown.

The white one also looks kinda like a mid '50s Fordomatic...

That's a reasonable guess, as the ribbed bellhousing and the tailshaft housing are both C4-ish, but the servos aren't right.

I'd say the silver one is sposed to be a Mopar 727 Torqueflite, judging from its characteristic one-piece bellhousing/trans housing shape and other details (servos, pan shape), but it's a pretty poor rendition, lacking a separate tailshaft housing and indentations in the bellhousing perimeter for bolts.

Well, there is that. But any road-racer is aware that there's a very fine line between finishing a race and ending up in a pine box. Which tends to raise one's general awareness. When the awareness of the possible terminal nature of the sport begins to intrude too much, it's time to hang up the string-back gloves.

Yup...one of the last real sports cars, with an absolutely wonderful high-winding engine.

Around 1400 pounds. And there's no more structure next to you than there is in a Europa...fiberglass door shells and pillars. Though the Beck has a tubular steel chassis just like its real Porsche granddaddy, as opposed to the folded sheet-steel backbone of the Europa, none of the steel is anywhere where it will do you any good when some mommy in an Excursion drives over you. EDIT: The dry shipping weight on my Seven when I brought it over from England was listed as 843 pounds on the bill of lading. Driving hyper-light sports cars has a lot of the same attraction as riding motorcycles, but it's different somehow. I don't personally find it to have anything to do with "danger" per se, just a much more intense and visceral experience.

My long gone Lotus 7 would challenge that title...and my current Beck 550 Spyder runs a real close second. EDIT: Though I gotta say that driving tiny fragile cars these days with the increased population density and the vast majority of dozy incompetent drivers multitexting makes me a little more "uneasy" in traffic than in days of yore.

Agreed...though I do wear a seatbelt simply for better car control.

I managed to acquire multiples of all of 'em when they were relatively cheap...except the notchback, which I stupidly assumed would remain in production until I got around to it...

Cookies-and-milk is a treat I still indulge in occasionally...but rarely.

Stuff your turkey with Spam for a meaty treat.

I spook too soon. Forecast down to 12 in the not too distant future.

Meatballs can be made with Spam, or corned beef hash.

You can make very effective spreaders from .030" or .040" styrene sheet stock, in any shape you need. They can be reused indefinitely if you remember to flex and scrape the bondo off of the spreader as soon as it jells.

Yes...you do need to thoroughly roughen the plastic surface for good adhesion...and not just a couple of swipes with fine sandpaper, either. 80-180 grit is best, worked carefully enough so there are no shiny spots showing where you'll apply filler. This is basically just common sense.

Rigamarole is a kind of pasta, isn't it?

First "funny cars" I saw run were the altered wheelbase match-racers that evolved from the A/FX cars...before anybody called them "funny cars". "Loud" doesn't do justice to the blown flopper glass-bodied cars that came later and sounded like top-fuel rail jobs...though the full bodies tended to block some of the far-side exhaust noise.

Yup. Yup yup. Yup yup yup. And I do a lot of heavy bodywork.

Man...I haven't had a broken rib in a long time, but I sure didn't feel like building models for some time afterwards. You sir, are a true hero. Looking good. The leather effect on those seats is particularly realistic.

It almost never goes below about 20degF here, but all those things happen to a lesser degree. The most concerning is the pretty-much worn out engine in my '89 GMC, causing a lot of prolonged piston slap during warm-up. It makes me cringe thinking of how easy it would be to shatter a piston skirt if I revved the poor thing when it's stone cold, like a lot of folks I see. Doors freeze shut after a temp drop post-rain too, and it's not uncommon to see people here dump hot water on windshields and side glass, with cracked windshields and exploded side glass being the result.

There's no "chart" that I'm aware of, but a few image searches on google will turn up anything you need to know. Try search terms like "Mert Littlefield blower" (which are based on GMC designs), "GMC 6-71 blowers", etc. There are hundreds of combinations of blower housings, front drive setups, rear bearing plates, etc., so it's pretty hard to go wrong on a model if you understand the function of what you're looking at.