Ace-Garageguy

All I have to say is you sure as jell can tell the fools thinking that making Daylight Saving Time permanent is a good idea have never been the ones leaving at 0-dark-30 to go to work in the middle of winter. Making "standard" time permanent, like in Az. would make sense... ...but this is idiocy.

Looks GREAT !! Looks SO good, I'm convinced I need one.

Entertaining guy, 53 years actually fixing cars, tells it like it is.

Exactly...and people who know little to nothing about how cars operate are at the mercy of every moron, jackleg, thief, and shyster who calls himself a "mechanic". In the days prior to electronically-controlled everything, it was a helluva lot simpler for the average car owner to understand enough of the basics to at least have a clue as to whether he was getting hosed or not, but not so today. And it's just going to get worse. Couple that with idiot designers who do insanely stupid things like "internal" water pumps, and unnecessarily running EVERY vehicle system through the central ECM...jeez. After 5 decades, it's hard for me to believe how bad things are in the car biz now...and everyone wants to argue about how wonderful all the late-model stuff is. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

I really appreciate your interest and wish I could show some progress, but it's exactly the way it was in my last photo post. I'm spending every minute I can finishing up two real-car builds here, and getting packed and ready to move the rest of my stuff to Az. ASAP. Every now and then when it looks like I might steal a little bench time, something real-world comes up. Maybe by Thanksgiving.

One Chinese container load.

I feel for you. 3 years after I bought my place in Az., largely because it was far enough from town to be pin-dropping quiet at night (important to me, 'cause I sleep with my windows open), the industrial park down the road expanded massively, including some company that sounds like it's shredding boulders all night...and a water treatment plant that has droning pumps going all night. It's nowhere as bad as my place in Ga., where the interstate traffic moans constantly in the background, but it's not what I was expecting to retire to. I hate some people's mindless need to encroach on the rights of others in the name of "progress".

Most of the plastic tanks can not be repaired anyway...at least using technology available to most shops...though there are cost-effective ways. The tank almost always has to come out though, so it's simpler to replace and insulate your shop from lawsuits when the chimp does the repair wrong and babies get incinerated. Yup. There are a very few shops here that can, and even one that can make up a gorgeous custom aluminum unit, but boy, are they rare. In general "twow it away, mommy; it bwoken."

How do we do it? Volume, volume, volume.

Funny, but in actuality it's a poor comparison. Hearts are routinely stopped for valve-replacement surgery. And an argument can be made that it should be quite possible to replace the valves in one head of a V-type (or other multiple-head) engine when it's running (with support equivalent to what a surgeon has), but why anyone would want to do it (maybe on a combat vessel at sea?) is a good question. ALSO...when I was in composite aircraft repair, one client was an orthopedic surgeon. He was interested in understanding the processes involved in repairing the structure of a plane he'd be trusting his life to at up to 7 G. After watching complex structural reconstructions requiring multiple, precise techniques and steps, his reaction was "you do pretty much exactly what I do, but in my case, all I have to do is get the parts stabilized in the right place, and they grow back together; you have to create and complete the "healing" of everything, from bone to skin". Nice to be recognized by someone with intelligence that some of us do more than smear goo or bang on tools while we breathe through our mouths and drool.

Or maybe if you'd gone to a competent independent. Up until fairly recently, OEM-level technical info and diagnostics have been available to any independent smart enough to access and use it, and it's still available for a whole lotta stuff...but OEMs are increasingly adding "security" features to the computer interfaces to lock out non-factory-authorized repairers (which we've touched on before here).

And the cost of a new tank plus labor, because repairing them safely is WAY beyond the capability of most shops.

Have to blame somebody, that's for sure. Next to diddling on the phone all day, blaming someone else for everything is today's number one activity.

NEWEST TREND: Drilling holes in gas tanks to steal the fuel. The method of choice for chimps too inept to work a siphon hose, apparently. No phone app, ya know? Guess which state it started in...

Lotsa people still don't know what it is, so why not just let it run?

Welcome to business-as-usual in the 21st century.

About $30. Not too hard to find.

Always one of my favorite drivers. Saw him in both the sucker Chaparral and the Shadow CanAm cars, among others. Yes, he had a good run.

Thanks gentlemen. I appreciate the responses. The one I'm looking for would have to have been released well before 1962. The Cessna fits the timeframe, but though I built planes as a kid, I don't remember ever having that one.

Kool Kustom with capital Ks. There was a Corvette customizer named Bob McNulty back in the wayback who built real cars in similar styles.

Exactly. Glad you kept at it. It was certainly worth the effort...and now you know you can do heavy mods. Onward and upward.

Little disappointment, as I'd kinda thought I'd get some bench time yesterday and today, first opportunity in months...but we had 35 mph winds all day Saturday that did some damage and kept the house too cold to really enjoy modeling (never got it over 50 degrees inside), and I've been working all day today fixing things and clearing deadfall. Guess I should be glad nothing fell on any of the cars. One particular fall could have totalled the 911.

Nice project. I always enjoy seeing working truck builds.

I think it looks great, especially in light of the difficulties you called out. Did you adjust the stance a little too? Seems to me it sits better (ride height and relationship of tires-to-wheel openings) than a lot of these I've seen built.