Ace-Garageguy

Ribbons are available from several sources. Here's one: https://www.typewritercollector.com/collectible/ribbons.htm

"Participate at your own risk" said the sign at the entrance to the amateur sword-swallowing competition,

Fascinating, beautiful model. You, sir, know more about a lot of this stuff than I'll ever hope to, and I thank you for participating in this forum, sharing your vast wealth of knowledge.

Yeah, that was the standard I/O form back when I had programming classes at Tech. And before this goes off the rails with the typical "old man shouting at clouds" memes, just let me say for the hundredth time I think much of today's technology is great. At the level of computing represented by the photo above, it would probably take a building the size of Lockheed's largest assembly area to house the power of one modern smart-phone...and it would run a helluva lot slower. Today's tech lets us do some stuff quicker and more conveniently than was even imaginable in those days, but it's also led to an over-reliance on machines to do a lot of our thinking for us, and makes it possible to get so inundated with the trivial and the just plain stupid, that we're losing much of our face-time with the real world and each other...while often sneered-at physical skills that are necessary to keep 'civilization' functioning simply disappear. Some of the thinkers among us have realized the wisdom of "all things in moderation" since the beginnings of recorded history. They just might have been on to something.

Yup, and you can push-start a mag-equipped car with no battery anyway...

Yup.

And ban the production of petrochemicals the plastics in the replacement devices will need to be made from. A brave new world is coming...

Can't you just fix sewers and stuff with a phone app?

Me thinks string-cheese and string-theory must be related somehow...

My guess is the idler pulley is simply a way to tension the water pump drive belt in the absence of a generator on an adjustable mounting. I don't know if this particular car even had a charging system, but running in an 'altered' class as opposed to a 'gasser' class, some equipment associated with a streetable vehicle wasn't required.

"Well...like...if you have any tech over 2 years old you're just an old fossil living in the past anyway, and you should just die and get out of the way so all the cool hot hip happening folks who make everything better can get on with saving the planet and destroying all the oppressive systems like actual physical work and personal responsibility that have made Western Civilization a living hell." EDIT: Seriously, none of this stuff was ever really built to last. The disposable consumer society has been a thing for as long as I can remember, and though my parents' generation railed against "planned obsolescence" when I was a kid, it's gradually been accepted as the core business practice that keeps the economy humming along. I've been angered at the deterioration and failure of random plastic bits under the hoods of vehicles and in many of my older electronic devices, but it's just the way it is. Plastics are employed in many applications they're simply not suited for over the long term, but again, nobody ever expected anyone to try to keep any of this stuff running forever anyway, so you get what you get. And electronic bits, capacitors in particular, tend to deteriorate and fail over time. Nothing new there, and I've had to replace innumerable caps in all kinds of machines over the decades. But there was a time things were manufactured with repairability in mind, and that concept is rapidly becoming as dead as the dodo.

How many trained seals does it take to change a light bulb? None. They all just sit in the dark and clap when their keeper tells them it's fixed.

Yonder Land o' Lakes butter took the picture of the Indian maiden...oops...Native American woman...oops...indigenous owner of two X chromosomes off their package in 2020.

Boys who look like...ummm...probably better not go there.

Sure can't argue with that, eh?

A few sets of Watanabe 16" 4-bolt 8-spokes for the Loti and Alfa acquired recently. Not Minilites, but close.

Builds of 'what-ifs' that don't represent any particular real car, or models that are representative of an era, or generic representations of specific race car designs (not particular cars) are what mostly float my boat.

Guess I need to search 'em out if I'm actually going to build all the historic race cars I have planned. Geez...it just never stops.

1994 was 10 years after 1984, but 1984 didn't really begin to become reality until 20-something.

No. It takes a while to get to know even the basics of these old cars, and it's a never ending learning experience...and nobody knows it all unless he's spent pretty much his entire life immersed in one make of car. I only know enough to know how much I don't know, but in general, where to go to get the answers. And that's why, for the most part, there are no "stupid questions". There are a lot of very knowledgeable people willing to help and to share what they've learned. There's no shame in not knowing something, but there's plenty of stupid in pretending you know when you really don't.

"Permission", in the form of a signed-in-blood consent form (or a DNA-sampling device) detailing very specifically what's allowed in terms of personal interaction, needs to be obtained at the door when you pick up your date these days, and needs to be continually updated through the course of the evening.

What a lot of people who are newish to old-school hot rods miss sometimes is the fact that the 1928-'29 bodies are entirely different from the 1930-'31, including the firewall stampings, which don't interchange. Don't feel bad. They're similar, and the chassis and engines are really almost identical for all 4 years of Model A (except for somewhat esoteric technical details). The '28-'29 cars look more T-like, with a pronounced 'coach line' detail on the cowl ahead of the door... ...while the '30-'31 cars are getting to look more modern, closer to the one-year-only '32 "Deuce", with higher body sides and hood line, and more sweeping, more deeply molded fenders. EDIT: The general design of the stock '28-'29 firewall is a very different beast from the '30-'31 shown in the OP's post above.

Arid-zona hasn't been all that arid the past year or so; much of the desert is in bloom.

Wow. THANK YOU sir.

Way down south in Dixie's where I'll be escaping from shortly.