Ace-Garageguy

I can't imagine being so complacent that I'd pass up an additional $30-50K per year...unless somebody was already paying me so much that that was pocket change. Congrats on what must be a truly fabulous salary.

Wait...wait...I have to stop laughing. That must be why, when I reported a water main leak under the road adjoining my property to the Cobb County Water System, they said "thanks, but we're so far behind because we're only at 50% staffing, we have no idea when we can get to it. We have worse leaks all over the area that will have to take priority". An interesting conversation with the county Utility Maintenance Superintendent brought up the same quote from him I'm hearing everywhere: "We can't get anybody. I don't know how people are living, but nobody seems to want to work anymore". Hmmm, I says to myself. There seems to be a pattern emerging. This tallies with the fact that C.W. Matthews, the 70-year-old contracting company that does a large part of the road work, building bridges, etc. in this area recently had to send recruiters to Mexico, with promises of green-cards, to get laborers because they didn't have enough people or applicants to perform their existing projects. But we all know the most popular way to deal with problems today is to insist they don't exist...which works great for everyone who's not directly affected.

Absolutely beautiful. Nice work indeed.

I'd be more than happy to help you recycle some of that old cash.

Thanks for your interest. The model build never got much farther than the last mockup shots. That's when it struck me that this was the '32 I'd been looking for, and that I wanted to build it full-scale. The model was close enough at that point so I could start getting the parts together, knowing everything could be made to work and keep the look.

Thanks for the Edelbrock carbs-on-the-blower tip. Far as running a non-functional blower just for the look, that's just not me.

Thanks, and more thanks for the head sources.

Superman has shrugged.

The rise of midwits and spiteful mutants.

"Anymore" is tough to start a sentence with, if the word is used correctly anyway.

"Woman" is a word that used to have a very clear definition.

Funny you said that. I just made a deal for somebody's abandoned Ford 289 engine project. I'd intended to put a smallblock Chevy in the car because I have loads of parts, but the little Fords sound so nice, wind so tight, and are so light (30+ pounds lighter), I decided to go that way. Target weight is 1800 pounds max, so I don't need a whole lot of low-end grunt. There is still a good chance I'll run the Chevy just to be driving the thing sooner, but when it's "finished", it'll be Ford powered.

Try starting and running your own business that has to produce tangible, physical objects or results. Then you might have a real-world perspective. Working with people who care, who can do the work well, and who show up regularly, is the exception, not the rule...and it's a real joy when it happens. But in 50+ years of being mostly self employed as the owner of several businesses, primarily in labor-and-physical-skill-intensive occupations, I've seen primarily slackers and idiots as co-workers and employees. And I'm not talking "starvation" wages like that BS above. Somebody with 1/5 of just the automotive skills I have (mechanical or bodywork/paint or electrical/electronic repair and diagnostics or fabricator/welder or estimator/manager), can make a mid-5 to low 6-figure income, depending on his ability, working in a well-run shop. And we can't find ANY new hires who are worth the paper they're printed on. But then again, McD's and Taco Bell can't seem to get full crews locally either. EDIT: Snopes? Really? EDIT 2: In the 1980s, it was hard to find really great people...it always is...but it wasn't that hard to get people to get the job done to "industry standards". Now, forget it.

Forehead vertical expansion tends to affect men as life progresses.

I really wish Google's dweebs would put the functionality of the dammed search engine back the way it was, and stop the idiotic "did you mean..." bull exhaust. No, I DIDN'T mean bla bla bla. I MEANT what I TYPED, so show me the results FOR WHAT I ASKED FOR. But I guess when your primary mission in life is to shove a political agenda down every user's throat, you can't be bothered with delivering highly relevant search results too,

Be still, my heart. I loved those things in the wayback, still do. Beautiful, just beautiful. That's a lot of ammo cans.

Me too. Now if I can just live long enough to build the thing.

Career changes in one's mid-60s can be exhilarating or disastrous.

VERY nice stuff. I've been making some for my own consumption for quite a while, in .020" thick real fiberglass.

Of mice and men, the best laid plans often go all pear shaped.

Crisis management will be daily livin' shortly, if a few things don't change.

Wife material is getting pretty thin on the ground for me, 'cause I probably wouldn't want anybody who'd be content with an old geezer.

My understanding on one of them was that the '56 frame had been badly lozenged, from a hard impact on the end of one of the forward rails, and the rail itself was too badly accordioned to save. The local junkyard had a cheap '57 frame, but no '55-'56s, so the owner chose to save an otherwise nice car with the '57 unit. It's not as daunting a project as it would first appear to a non-fabricator, as the body shell floors are relatively flat through the cabin area, and sit on rubber bushings on top of fabbed steel brackets. Though the '57 wheelbase is 118", as opposed to the 2.5" shorter 115.5" of the '56, this is relatively easily dealt with by a skilled fabricator/welder. Measure, cut, jig, butt-weld, gusset, and box the area if it's a C-channel section.. This was back in a time when a guy with good physical skills but little money would readily jump into something few would even contemplate today.