Ace-Garageguy

Try TS-50. I started shooting a Ferrari hot rod with it, and it wasn't what I wanted at all...but I was struck by how much it looked like the blue on Attempt. EDIT: This renders exactly as the actual color on my screen, for whatever that's worth.

This time, sunset looking out the back door of the new shop out West...

Every time I see great looking aftermarket parts like this, I think I really need to start building big trucks.

Couple weeks back, we had a fairly late-model something upmarket in one shop, a Lexus I think, and you had to pull the intake manifold to get to the plugs on the driver's side. Of course you have to replace all the manifold the gaskets too, or the thing will have vacuum leaks out the yinyang. You just have to wonder what kind of clean-hands little dwerps thought THAT was a good way to design something. Again, of course, since plug replacement now is at around 100K mile intervals, it's another out-of-warranty, who cares? situation.

2CELLOS do AC/DC's THUNDERSTRUCK

Just passing the time while the OP cleans up Revell's little messes.

I'm havin' almost as much fun watching this go together as if I was doing it myself. Loved the reference to stone-age CAD too. One of my favorite techniques on the real ones as well.

That actually looks like you spent considerable effort making the major contours and shapes conform pretty well to the OEM design. That's so far beyond most of what I see having been done by "professionals", it's not even in the same star system.

And that, boys and girls, is what happens when people who don't know diddly about diddly run the world...and businesses roll over without a fight and let 'em.

I did a good friendamine's '09 Corolla front brakes at 65K, not because she really needed 'em, but because I wouldn't be in town to do them for 6 months, and she was just starting to get the tiniest pulsing from warping rotors. Unnoticeable to anybody but a machine head who hears them talking. Rear brakes looked practically new, needed nothing. I have a 1993 Geo Metro out West I bought from the same person, after I'd maintained it from day one. 230,000 miles now, one front brake job (didn't need rotors), one clutch, a burned exhaust valve at 160,000 miles. Nothing else but maintenance including oil (Mobil 1) and filter changes, and timing belts at specified intervals. I dropped the pan to look at the rod bearings back in 2011, and they looked like they'd go another 60K easy. I replaced them because I had 'em.

Some time back, GM's mo' better vision of the future was to get out of the sales of vehicles entirely, providing an "on-demand transportation experience" utilizing self-driving pods instead, for either a monthly fee, or a per-mile charge. "Mommy...can I go pway at Biwwy's house? Wi' you take me...pweese?"

And perfectly reasonable if you're working on a daily driver that isn't going to be subjected to "restoration" scrutiny.

In short: out of warranty, out of mind.

Agreed. Both my Jags are mid-'80s, last of the '48 XK-engine-design powered cars. Equipped with EFI and other mod cons now, they're easily backdated to run-forever carbs and ancillaries, and one's slated for a SBC with a 5-speed stick.

Unless you're a skilled mechanic. I couldn't afford my Porsches and Jaguars when they were new, but in my hands now, these old beasts are everything I would have expected them to be then...or will be again fairly shortly...and when they inevitably break, I'm not going to be held hostage to the "fix it, mommy" mentality. EDIT: Looking farther back, it occurred to my tired old brain that I've ALWAYS bought older cars (except once), even when I was a callow young white-collar fella. I realized pretty early I could get WAY more in image, appearance, and performance than if I bought new, and it was beyond worth it to me to learn how to fix 'em...and what ultimately lead me to get into the dirty-hands end of the car biz.

Not surprising considering what I think of the personage in question. But to me, that's as ludicrous as saying you don't own the function of the metering jets and circuits in a carburetor, or the advance curve in an old-school distributor. My examples are functions of parts that exist in physical reality, and are governed by well known physical laws...and the car couldn't operate without them, hence would have no marketable value. Likewise, a convincing argument can be made, if stated properly, that information programmed on to a chip, including an encoded sequence of operations and logic paths, the "software", has existence in physical reality. And the functioning of the vehicle is determined, just as it is in the older version above, by repeatable actions of physical matter, in this case electrons, governed by physical laws. The 1s and 0s that are the basis of any digital system don't just magically exist in the imagination of the code-writer, or the ether, or something equally non-material. They exist as physical states of matter, or electrical charges, that have real existance...no matter how infinitesimally small. Again, an electronically-controlled car couldn't operate, and again, would have no marketable value without these "parts" functioning in the physical realm. You buy the car, you logically own the software that gives it functional value too. I rest my case, your honor.

That's kinda close to the truth...but there usually are ways to bypass all the insane electronics when they fail permanently, assuming the basic mechanical elements are reasonable. I already had to retrofit my early EFI-equipped GMC truck with a 60-year-old 2-barrel carb design...which works fine...but now every other electronically controlled function on the thing has quit, the most currently annoying being the controls for heat and AC, and the wipers work when they feel like it. But no heat all winter. I have a set of old-school slider controls saved from something the client wanted "upgraded" to all processor-controlled stuff from Vintage Air, and soon as I have some breathing room, she'll get fixed...permanently. In this hemisphere, many Cubans have already had to improvise heavily to stay on the road when parts for anything US-made weren't available for other reasons, so keeping things running in spite of (insert reason here) has quite a history already. But I don't want anything built after about 2005 or '06. Just too much to do to rationalize 'em.

There's a related issue in litigation with John Deere regarding "right to repair", stemming from the manufacturer trying to lock out non-corporate techs from servicing the machines. I haven't checked lately, but that outcome should be interesting...at best establishing "legal precedent" when similar cases inevitably come up against other OEMs.

There was a time in the military when failure to maintain adequate standards of proficiency had significant consequences for both officers and the men serving under them. The consequences to a civilian shipping company will become an inability to get cargos, as insurers refuse to accept the risk inherent in poorly trained crews.

Contrary to a lot of rebleated misinformation, manufacturers are not necessarily required to maintain stocks of parts for vehicles that are out of OEM warranty. (EDIT: though they are required to keep parts "available" for emissions-related systems). Many electronic modules and devices are simply not available from the aftermarket currently, and those that are are frequently of poor quality and don't last long. The car in this vid is going to have to go to a Jag dealer because of so many interrelated trouble codes, and due to the age of the thing, the owner may be SOL. I've seen the estimated cost of repairs on newer vehicles exceed the value of the vehicle by a significant margin. EDIT: Those fancy "multi speed (8+)" automatic gearboxes are particularly expensive to replace, and many necessary repair parts are just not available anywhere. This is a dose of reality for everybody who truly believes newer is automatically better. Unfortunately, this is very typical of what we're seeing more and more frequently...and some manufacturers are adding additional layers to the computer interface so that independent shops can't even talk to them AT ALL.

Early in my career, I wasn't too picky about using exactly the OEM gage metal to repair rusty floors...though seeing diamond-plate stick-welded into cars kinda chapped my backside...but as the value of old cars increased and my skills improved, I found I derived a lot more satisfaction, and made more money, if I limited myself to working for clients who'd pay to have things put back like they were originally, even when no replacement panels were available and everything had to be hand-fabbed. That was around the time I got involved in doing composite repairs too, and an offshoot of that was finding an epoxy-based material that could be used for making matched press-dies for sheetmetal, made by a local chemical company that also supplied the Lockheed plant here.

..."sheetmetal from a refrigerator"..."cool"...

Most likely that depends on who's picking up the tab for the losses. Insurers can bring a lot of power to bear on changing regs that potentially endanger their profits.