Ace-Garageguy

You're going to have to be the judge. In my experience, most rattlecan paints are pretty forgiving of high humidity conditions, within reason, but it usually takes some experimentation to find what works best in any given situation. In high humidity or lower temps, my biggest problem is how long it takes primers to dry.

TLCR (too long, can't remember)

Simply put, because the air is already burdened with water vapor, things will take longer to dry from evaporation in high humidity. Color coats, particularly lacquers, may "blush". This is a whitish or milky appearance on the surface of the paint. But it's not a serious issue. Most blushing will easily polish off the surface after the paint is dry.

Very interesting. Railroads and bearing manufacturers have been working to reduce required maintenance, and even the expense of bearing lubricants, for many decades. Roller bearings were a great improvement, dramatically reducing the incidence of "hot box" problems. The fairly recent trend to permanently sealed roller bearings further reduces maintenance and amount of lubricant required. One unfortunate side effect of sealed axle bearings we see on cars is that, as there's not much lube inside the sealed housing to start with, if the seal fails, it doesn't take much time for the bearing to run dry, overheat, and fail completely. The old-school tapered roller bearings on older road vehicles will last many hundreds of thousands of miles if they're cleaned and re-greased at appropriate intervals, while those on older live rear axles receive plenty of lubrication from the gear oil in the housing, and tend to last almost forever as well. But on later model cars with sealed-for-life axle bearings, we often see failures well before 100,000 miles, sometimes as early as 30,000 miles, and depending on the source, aftermarket bearings frequently don't even last that long. (One project I consulted on was the aftermarket conversion of the DeTomaso Pantera rear hubs from failure-prone sealed-for-life ball bearings to serviceable Timken and SKF tapered rollers. One thing I really enjoyed about working as an engineering "consultant" was the frequent exposure to problems I wasn't very familiar with, and the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of mechanical and electronic subjects.) Back to trains...with the push to constantly reduce railroad operating costs by cutting personnel and maintenance, it would be good to have more capable bearing temperature monitoring systems than are apparently the norm, as it could be argued that a railcar axle bearing is the single most mission-critical part of the entire train from a safety standpoint. But hey...I'm just an old know-it-all. https://evolution.skf.com/the-evolution-of-railway-axlebox-technology/

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, spent some of his money on really cool stuff, like funding Burt Rutan's (Scaled Composites) SpaceShipOne. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites

Planet Earth is a nice place to live.

My understanding at the moment is that thru '64, starters mounted to the bellhousing, and in '65 in the big cars, the mounting was changed to the vertical holes in the block. Also, apparently some earlier blocks had the holes drilled for the vertical starter mount bolts (even though they didn't use them), and some didn't. And also apparently, if you swap a non-drilled block into a car with a trans not designed for mounting a starter, there's no place to put a starter without drilling and tapping the block...and I've seen a few references to an adaptor that can apparently mount a starter to a later gearbox. Also, apparently, auto trans starters won't fit manual gearbox cars, and there are references to other possible engine/gearbox/starter swap problems. None of this has anything to do with models, but I think it's interesting there appears to be such a potential can of worms regarding old Poncho V8 starters.

Artifacts from ancient civilizations have often defied complete understanding.

Flies lay eggs in dead things, and the eggs become maggots.

Coca-Cola imbibing to excess for 40 years was probably partly the cause of my friend's late onset type-2 diabetes.

Well, at least you won't have to worry about hot-start problems from the solenoid being so close to the headers...

Apparently, Pontiac starters can be a real PITA to get the right one for a particular engine/gearbox combo. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/pontiac-bell-housing-interchange-post-65-vs-pre-65.1225164/ Something I'll remember if I ever work on another one. See how much real-world stuff you can learn from building models? Anyway, here's another solenoid up installation.

Just a thought...apparently, according to a little Q&D research, there's not a lot of one particular Pontiac starter around. I just don't know what other GM starter housings could put the solenoid on the bottom. I just do not know.

Weird indeed.

I agree...but every now and then you'll see an oddball.

Yes, I had to find something else too, some unknown parts stash bit. I also had to modify that engine block considerably to look more like a real one, particularly the oil filter arrangement, and the casting ears on the lower rear. But most of what I did won't show once it's in the model.

Just FYI, it looks like the starters were bellhousing mounted thru '64, and the solenoid was up. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/pontiac-starter-question.1231889/

'64 GTO, solenoid up.

AND: IIRC, there are two different possible starter mountings, depending on year. One has the unit bolted to the bellhousing with horizontal bolts. The other mounting has vertical bolts that go up into the block, like a Chevy V8. But either way, it's solenoid up.

I noticed that in the kit as well. I'm mounting it solenoid up on the 389 in my Pontiac-powered Ferrari 250 GTO build. Photographic evidence: '65 389 tri power engine. Starter with solenoid heat shield '64 Bonneville

Pretty much have 'em all, but I continue irrational buying to feed my insane greed...though I would really like to snag all the HRM kits...and a few Modelhaus and AITM...I missed.

Working lovely now...with no effort required on this end. Nice job.

Acceptable is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Just to get a rise out of you, Rob. And it works every time.

Glad to see such cogent, reasoned and articulate reaction, pretty much on time, just as expected.