Ace-Garageguy

I gotta admit...I never even knew there was a 2-dr post, flush back window version of that body until today. Now I want one.

Nothing says Kustom like a hairy firewall.

This is another one of the best guys on YT. This particular clip illustrates the joys of working on electronics after another shop has done an incorrect diagnosis, and the customer installs the wrong part, buggering things in the process. The logic of his approach to getting this hot mess running is what you want to find in a tech...and very rarely do. Any wonder I've quit doing this stuff on old, nasty, unloved cars?

Amen, brother.

EDIT: The photos below show real '66 Chevelles. Anybody who doesn't see or doesn't mind the inaccuracies in the models...I'm OK with that....for you.

Yup...I've known a lotta those. "Ever since you worked on my brakes, my horn doesn't sound the same".

First impression is it's a kinda sorta vintage Amal side-draft carb. Look at some online photos, and we'll go from there. http://amalcarb.co.uk/ EDIT: EDIT 2: The velocity stack would almost certainly be a separate part, not cast in unit with the carb body.

There's something wrong with the noses on both the Monogram and the Lindberg kits. I haven't measured yet, but I bought 'em all to do a gift model for a client I'm doing a real '66 for, and as I look at the real thing every work day, the inaccuracies jump out at me. The Revell '66 Chevelle wagon looks better initially, and I've been looking at clipping the Lindberg version with the Revell wagon nose. EDIT: Seems like I mentioned this somewhere before; maybe in this very thread, though I haven't checked.

I'll have to watch for that. You've really piqued my curiosity.

Glad I could help, Ray.

Last drum brakes I did were on my Neon a few years back after one of the OEM shoes lost a bonded lining. I was in a hurry, it was my own car, and either I forgot or just didn't bother tapering the shoes. Little car didn't seem to notice...which is not to say it's not still a good idea. I'm right there with you an the AR thing, but I know what I can get away with on my own stuff, and take shortcuts and make rigs I'd never dream of doing on somebody else's machine. And boy...I've blown a lotta time this AM. I gots stuff to do.

I don't know what the shop policy is, or how good a communicator the service-writer or manager is (lotsa them are zero-hands-on-experience idiots; the best ones are usually ex- or retired mechanics, same as in the body biz), and lotsa times the shops don't want techs actually talking to the customers. Again, the shop policy is unknown to me...but the technical competence of this particular mechanic is obvious. There's no question the front brake rotors haven't been replaced in a long time, though the rear drums might have been. Stuff rusts fast in damp, salty Florida. But I always take everything any customer tells me with a grain of salt. Over 5 decades in the biz have taught me most of them have no idea what they're talking about, and you might as well listen to their parrot on the same subject. Case in point: I once had a guy bring me a Triumph Stag on the hook, popping, spitting, missing entirely on one cylinder, too feeble to get out the driveway. He said "there's nothing wrong with it; it just won't run...so don't try to sell me a lot of work because I JUST HAD EVERYTHING DONE". He shows me a receipt for a valve-lash adjustment, points, condenser, cap and rotor, wires, distributor rebuild, both carbs rebuilt, plugs, fuel and air filter...and again states emphatically "there's nothing wrong with it...it just won't run". So whatthehell am I supposed to do? Wave a magic wrench over it? Hold a séance? Call in a priest to drive the demons out? We finally came to terms, and I let him watch as I began going through a diagnosis starting with a compression test...which nobody had bothered to do previously...and get numbers that look like lotsa valves are either burned or adjusted WAY wrong. Plugs are fouled and gaps are wrong. Point gap is 1/2 of what it's supposed to be. So finally, he realizes he's been screwed, gives me the green to fix the damm thing, picks the car up in a couple days, and loves it. Point being: the customer isn't always right, but knowledge and open communication go a long way to solve most problems...and there are jerks who just won't listen because they think they know better than anybody about everything.

DUMB GUY DOUBLE-POST

I agree with you for the most part. BUT...I haven't seen shoes come with tapered ends for a long time. I don't know why. I still do it to the stuff I work on out of old habit, but apparently it's not considered necessary anymore. I haven't seen anybody arc shoes to match drums much in the past few decades either (though we did at Mills hot-rod shop). We have the equipment to do it all in the vintage car shop, but everybody there is pretty much a parts-changer, and the sad little machines sit covered with dust. It's among the vintage tooling I'm going to try to buy when I leave...like the distributor machine, the '60s vintage Sun machine, etc. On the wheel tightening thing, he usually uses the impact just to snug the nuts or bolts down (which I find to be acceptable if the wrench power is turned way down) and in a more-or-less correct cross-pattern. He'll often show going back with the car on the ground, final-tightening the fasteners with a click-type or old-school pointer torque wrench. One aside...recently I had to buy a new-fangled $800 electric impact to do a front hub bearing job on a friend's Corolla. The peak torque of the thing is astounding, but the precision of control over tightening torque values is pretty impressive too. On most street-driven cars, I'd be pretty OK with tightening wheel fasteners with a high-end unit (which his is) adjusted to a reasonable torque limit...though I always use a torque wrench on alloy wheels, and never final-tighten anything with a power tool. But yes, sometimes he does final-tighten lug nuts with the impact, and it makes me cringe. I said above that I think he "slings things around" a little much for my taste, and the wheel fasteners come under that heading. STILL...finding a mechanic today who understands what he's doing and how systems work, well enough to explain in simple terms, is extremely rare. That's where this guy really shines. Somebody really smart once said that if you actually know what you're doing, you can explain something complicated in simple terms; I find this to be true.

14 at last count, one bike, and 2 trailers. One car is already there. Only 2 here are really running at the moment, should improve to 4 in a couple months. For the logistics of the move to work as I'd originally planned, I need both trucks, the Neon, and the PT to make it across the country on their own, the Neon several times...but that's subject to re-think. I have lotsa work to do.

Very cool. And with a little love, it'll still be running fine in another 50 years.

I didn't know that. I stand corrected.

Yup. As he was doing it, he kept saying the book must be wrong...but in the biz, if that's what the book says, that's what you usually charge...unless it takes longer due to genuinely extenuating circumstances like rusty fasteners snapping off, etc. Any competent mechanic can make a very good living, as it's routinely possible to "beat the book" by 50% or more on straightforward work and still do it right. Turning 80 to 100 billable hours in a 40-hour week didn't used to be unusual. My personal best was something over 30 billable in one day. Diagnosis, on the other hand, is a whole 'nuther animal...and the vast majority of techs today are either idiots, crooks, or both. One thing I'm not crazy about is that this guy kinda slings stuff around more than I'd like to see, and isn't as fastidious about making "tool marks" as I tend to be. Still, when you're working on things that customers have no emotional investment in, see as semi-disposable appliances that they helplessly depend on but don't understand, and who want to spend a minimum to stay mobile, it doesn't make much sense to be too anal-retentive.

Sounds like a great guy. Glad you and he had each other as friends. People like that don't really die; they live on in the hearts and memories of those who they touched.

And he's fast, and he understands everything about what he's doing. That's unbelievably rare in the business these days.

That right there is pretty funny. Most of the time when he's actually working on a car...not driving... he either has a camera on a tripod or on his head. Anybody who actually works on stuff can see he's using both hands in most of the work shots, but hey...criticize away. I've seen him do a job that book-times for 7 hours in 45 minutes, then give the customer a big discount because of it. 99.9% of guys would take it all. And most of the dwerps I'm lucky enough to have worked with recently spend large parts of their days on their phones WATCHING YT videos because they have no clue how to do the work, or how anything functions, or why. Final point: techs like this work on commission. They're not paid salary. They're paid for what they actually accomplish, and if he wasn't turning a decent number of hours every week, he'd be gone

Yeah, I love those things. Some of the last best cars ever to be built in the US. Every time I drive one I'm really impressed.

There are trainloads of bozo "mechanics" on YouTube that I wouldn't let work on my ex-mother-in-law's lawnmower. There are also a few I'd let work on something I'd drive...which is just about unheard of. This guy is great about explaining how things work as he goes through the motions of fixing typical daily-driver cars. He's smart, funny, articulate, and always entertaining...and if you watch enough of his videos, you're bound to learn a thing or two.

I found a local company that can move up to nine of my cars to Az. in one shot. Yippee.