Ace-Garageguy

Interesting...

Sample question from the new, enhanced, everyone-gets-an-A high school graduation exam:

Speaking of which, I have several old high-end CD changers from the mid 1990s, including two 300-disc units that are exceptionally "smart" and can be "slaved" together to randomly play any track from 600 discs, or be programmed to only play from a particular genre (that has to be entered manually as each disc is loaded the first time). Cool stuff, and the sound quality through an ancient Fisher amp and '80s Fuselier speakers has to be experienced to be believed. Anyway, when one of the 100-disc changers jammed and failed, disassembly revealed an intricate plastic casting had become brittle and cracked. I was able to repair it with a high-strength epoxy, and reinforce it at the same time. It works to this day (ten years since the repair), but now I'm noticing a degradation in the functionality of the control input panel, and possibly the internal logic...rather like the total failure of the heat-AC-radio controls in my 1989 GMC pickup. A lot of this old stuff is repairable for someone who's motivated enough, by means of employing 3D-printing (or physical machining) to duplicate degraded plastic parts, or swapping in programmable logic chips that take over the functions of what's failed, etc....but it's a royal PITA to HAVE TO do it. A friend of mine has a fridge that's been running just fine since the early 1950s, and I have an office fridge my father bought in the late 1960s that's still going strong...but my big main fridge from just a few years back is already toast, and not really worth repairing IF I pay someone else to do it. I wish stuff was built to last, and to be mainstream-repairable. It's not, I understand the "reasons" why it's not, but I don't have to like it. EDIT: Change to make something better is great. Quantifiably, usefully, functionally better. But change just for the sake of change, to enhance something's marketing appeal to those who can't be caught relying on yesterdays tech, is, in my opinion, stupid.

A side note about VHS players and tape decks in general: I've found the single most common failure point of old tape decks is the rubber drive belt, and some decks have more than one. If you have one that's quit, or seems to 'garble' playback occasionally (slipping), before you toss it, check the belt. They're readily available.

NOTE: This is NOT my cat. He ALWAYS gets my jokes.

I've found a lot of the "remastered" stuff entirely destroys the character of the original...kinda like most "customizing" of cars is not an "improvement", particularly when the subject is something pretty damm close to perfect, like a '57 T-bird.

Started just now, can't advance past page one of the "Off Topic Lounge". EDIT: Cleared the cache, now it works.

Challenger I, Mickey Thompson's LSR attempt car, managed a best one-way pass of 406.6.

Enough power is when you can smoke the rear tires in top gear at 100MPH just by nailing the throttle.

80 degrees today, forecast 82 tomorrow. Might need to slip the leash and go for a hike.

Smoked a ton of Camels, Lucky Strikes, and Pall Malls have I...and Gauloises and Gitanes too.

"Ships of the desert" was a name for camels.

Far as 'old tech' goes, I have a Philco radio-record player my parents bought in the late 1940s. The wood cabinet is in fine shape, but needs refinishing. A few years back I found sources for electron tubes and needles, and as the rest of the parts in it were built of stout stuff indeed, it works and sounds like it did 77 years ago. I put a hidden input jack on it, configured so I can run recorded old-time radio programs from the web through the original amp and speaker. Time travel. It's kina fun when a relative youngster stops by and hears the ancient programming, and not knowing much about anything, asks how it's possible. I just shake my head, and say "I don't know, but it still seems to be able to pick up radio broadcasts from a long time ago..."

Band of Brothers is a series I really need to seek out to watch.

Two more to feed my greed: another one I thought I might as well get before they get any more expensive, a 1/16 AMT '55 Nomad. The Revell '34 and Minicraft '30 Ford drag cars needed something to tow 'em to the strip, anyway. And the last Accurate Miniatures Grand Sport Corvette I'll be buying. I snagged a bunch of the low-hood versions some time back, incredibly cheap, and later several sets of the brass PE parts that go with the high-hood version, but I had none of these high-hoods. Now I have one, easy enough to copy if I end up needing more.

Dead dreams still haunt my sleep.

My problem with PVA clear parts glues like Testors is that most of them have zero strength when they're wet. Something like a mirror glued inside a windshield will most likely require some kind of jig or fixture to hold it until the glue sets up. This isn't a problem when attaching headlight lenses to grilles that are lying flat on the bench, or closely fitting 'glass' windows that can be taped in place prior to gluing the edges. How you're going to manage a fixture for gluing a mirror to a windshield seems like a problem. Two thoughts come to mind: maybe self-closing tweezers carefully arranged prior to applying the glue, or a thin strip of masking tape. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

Nitroglycerine in small doses can keep your heart from exploding, oddly enough.

Yeah, quite a few black-and white films and color print and slide films are readily available. The old-school photography movement is going strong. Right off hand, I don't know if anyone still makes new VHS tapes, but there seems to be plenty of new-old-stock still out there. https://www.amazon.com/new-vhs-tapes/s?k=new+vhs+tapes

Exclaimed my house, cars, and all my bank accounts, yes she did.

Interesting thread, as model railroaders who painted their steam locomotives black discovered eons ago it just didn't look 'right'. Part of it was the fact most black locomotives weathered to dirty gray pretty quickly in operation, and part of it was interpreting actual colors correctly from early color prints and slides. But there are 'builder's photos' of brandy-new steam locomotives that clearly show them to be shiny black the day they rolled out of the shop. Far as gloss black goes on car models, I've never found anything at all amiss by just painting a model that's supposed to represent a black car...black.