Ace-Garageguy

"Me too !!!!!" shouted the little fella who'd never had an original thought in his life, but wanted to make sure everyone knew he agreed with them on everything.

Paint on a cowflop doesn't change the fact that it's a cowflop, any more than lipstick on a pig makes it something kissable.

"Challenged" is what the restorer of this Bug would be...

Heat from a central HVAC system would really be nice right about now.

Three more attempts from the same source this morning already. Kinda hoping the new admin will do something about internet fraud...

Sorry...you can't say that. It's "dimensionally exaggerated" or "differently massed" or something like that, anyway.

But possibly in some other universe.

Victoria's secret was that she was a...sorry...it's still a secret.

Posting this at 8:28 AM Fri. 2/21/2025 Apparently FedEx can time-travel now... Fri, Feb 21 11:12am On FedEx vehicle for delivery KENNESAW, GA 30144 Fri, Feb 21 11:10am Arrived at FedEx location KENNESAW, GA 30144 Fri, Feb 21 11:09am At local FedEx facility KENNESAW, GA 30144 Fri, Feb 21 2:26am Departed FedEx location ELLENWOOD, GA 30294

The 1960s issue Red Ram in the Ala Kart and subsequent AMT '29 Fords is scaled correctly. The "new tool" version of the Red Ram is an underscale joke. Engine shots side by side are in part two...

Agreed 100%. There are minor things wrong with my daily drivers that are nothing but inconvenient or a little irksome, but not safety-related or anything that will make them fail. I'll fix the mechanical issues on the Blazer (the O2 sensor heater quits intermittently and the water pump weeps) and I'll fix them when they get worse.

Jarheads are some of the best guys I've ever known.

Please just...oh, never mind.

"Customer is always right" is one of the stupidest concepts ever foist off on humankind.

Language is a powerful tool in the hands of a fluent user.

Doghouse heaters need to be installed so there's no chance ol' Fido thinks he has a new chew-toy and lights himself up like a Christmas tree.

Cooler than cool. Cold in fact. Much fun. Thanks.

Built models, if well done, are interesting historical artifacts, and if poorly done are challenging but rewarding subjects for rebuilding and modification...just like full-scale junkyard rescues.

Finding a shop isn't easy these days. CV joint replacement is a relatively simple straightforward job, but a ham-handed monkey can cause a lot of problems...besides the dealers' SOP of hiring $15/hr "technicians" and charging well over $100/hr in most places. Finding a competent independent shop will take some research, reading reviews, talking to other Asian car owners, etc. There ARE online sources for OEM old-stock Toyota parts (usually bought from dealerships when they dumped "obsolete" stock), and as far as aftermarket parts go, in general, if you can find parts made in Japan they're usually much better than the Chinese "equivalents". Buying aftermarket online can be a roll of the dice though, 'cause there's no shortage of re-boxed bottom-of-the-barrel garbage, and sellers often lie about part country-of-origin. Good luck. EDIT: Though it may sound pretty bleak, that little car is definitely worth jumping through a few hoops to keep it running, and it will run a long, long time with good people working on it.

I've encountered several vehicles that have idiot TIPM issues too. And again, as these vehicles age, they become "not economically viable to repair" in many cases. An old friend was going to junk her PT cruiser, literally, because at 203,000 miles, lots of small things were failing, and she trusted idiots, hackers, and crooks. Even though I'd saved her thousands of dollars on the little car over the years she owned it, she still took it to a shop that told her it needed a new transmission. So she bought a clean low mileage Celica for 10 grand and called me to help her dispose of the PT. I suspected there was nothing actually wrong with the trans internally, and there wasn't. So somewhat chagrined, she ended up just giving the PT to me, and I've since fixed everything but one (probably) TIPM-related problem. It's a great little car otherwise, FAR from being mechanically worn out, starts, runs, and stops fine except for the one problem I'll finish sorting out when the weather gets a little nicer. Between incompetent engineering, planned obsolescence, and lousy dealerships and shops, it's amazing anyone gets anywhere in older cars at all.

Grade school should turn out students who are proficient in basic arithmetic, able to read and comprehend sentences, paragraphs, and easier books, able to write coherent paragraphs explaining what they've read, who know how to look up information in dictionaries and reference books (not just google everything), and who know basic geography (like where Europe is and the countries it encompasses) and basic science (like fire is rapid oxidation, what the periodic table is, and the different kinds of energy).

Anything that used to be "common knowledge" isn't apparently being taught much these days; I vividly recall having learned how an internal combustion engine works, how a wing makes lift, how electricity is generated, and that the Sun is a star all by the sixth grade, and I've encountered a lot of folks fairly recently "educated" who know none of that.

If it's intentional and not simply incompetence, the evil goes deeper than that. Assume, in this case, the fuel pump relay lasts well into the second or third ownership. By that point, the vehicle may very well not be "worth" putting a $4000 repair into (and few "mechanics" today have the ability to pinpoint a problem, thoroughly understand it, and devise a cheap work-around like this guy), so the vehicle gets scrapped, taking an otherwise perfectly serviceable vehicle permanently out of the used pool.

A veritable heat wave.

Lunches be hanged, "trades" are frequently looked down on by the college "educated" today, those elite personages who couldn't change a tire or their own oil or cook a meal if their lives depended on it, and who believe any mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging chimp can perform any physical task equally well, from scrubbing a floor to building an automatic transmission.