Ace-Garageguy

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.

The best one I've seen as far as line and proportion go is the '56 Targa Florio version by Fernando Pinto (and his others that share the same shell). It's a very close scale match to my full-scale Beck 550. The Beck molds were taken from a real car that had never been squashed or modified. There are several variations, some visually significant, among the 90 or so real ones built, but I think the Beck version is by far the most representative, and the most attractive...hence the FP scale version looks the best to me. https://www.stuttcars.com/porsche-550-chassis-numbers/

Living in blissful unreality seems to appeal to some folks.

Places come and places go, but nowhere is forever.

Or you could bore one of the finger holes in an old bowling ball to just accept the glue bottle, and then put the bowling ball on a bowling ball holder... ...which you could 3D print if you were a really cool hot hip happenin' kind of fella... ...which you could put on the back of a trained giant turtle...

It's rarely an issue, but for doing things like fiddly little throttle linkages and springs that may require two hands, those infinitely positionable vises work very well. On the other hand, if you don't want to spend 40 bucks for one, these old kit-sourced engine stands work very well too. Put a no-tip metal or styrene base on one, then glue the engine to it with easily removable PVA. Or tape the stand to the bench so it doesn't move around.

Avoid eBay and you miss out on some really spectacular deals.

That's just reality from my perspective.

To still have the poor eye-hand coordination, nonexistent knowledge base, lack of common-sense, and general skills I had when I was 5 years old, but as an adult. EDIT: The real sadistic kicker would to be able to remember having had superior skills, but to not be able to get the hands to function with any kind of fine control.

"Rare" is the adjective of choice for selling on eBay.

Every kit made to Palmer or Premier design and scaling specs.

Ah yes...the turbine car. Very nice.

Hmmmm. I wonder if a cottage cheese or sour cream container would work. Weeks of intense experimentation and research to follow... Probably going to need to apply for some kind of grant though.

Nice work.