Ace-Garageguy

Got an old dead fridge lying around? Make a compressor from junk.

10-15 MILLION doses contaminated and unusable? No wonder pharmaceuticals cost so much. Oh...but it's OK. It's just part of the way things are done in the industry. Maybe so, but I couldn't stay in business if I made errors on that relative scale.

Look to the "everyone's a winner" (and just-not-good-enough being acceptable) mentality that's been sneaking into education, and it's not hard to figure out the source of the problem. And I'm always intrigued amused by folks who try to pass off idiocy, slacking, excuse-making, poor quality, and failure as doing-the-job. I just got hit again using one of my current vendor's website, where their catalog repeatedly locks up while searching it, and nobody on the phone "tech support" is capable of telling me which of their own rack bushings fits one of their most popular steering racks. Crapola like this costs me literally hundreds of dollars of lost productivity...and INCOME...every month, WHILE I DO SOMEBODY ELSE'S JOB. EDIT: But of course, someone who's not personally responsible for turning out something tangible to a consistently high standard in spite of morons in the supply chain wouldn't grasp the frustration inherent in dealing with them constantly.

Most excellent. I'd intended to do much the same thing after I'd completed the series on compare-and-contrast the two kits I started here some time back. The real engine was a very tight fit in the car as well, and that's of course the reason Barris used the little Dodge hemi in the first place. No other hemi had a hope in jell of fitting. Nice work!

15 million vaccines for the-disease-that-cannot-be-named from Johnson & Johnson were contaminated during production and wasted. Big oopsie...but at least they caught it prior to distribution. Still, you'd kinda think they'd be more careful with something like this, wouldn't you? EDIT: I provided a link, but on second thought removed it, as it could be interpreted as "political" by someone who doesn't understand English.

I have some otherwise decent looking tenders that have either toylike trucks or none at all (a while back I was buying a lot of cheap, damaged HO equipment). These sideframes require drilling the holes to receive axle ends, and fabricating the rest of the structure though, so I'll have to look into that first.

1992 issue of Rail Model Journal, Freight Car Models Vol.II, Box Cars...Book 1. Also a set of 4 Pennsy 8-wheel tender truck sideframes, 4 modern Buckeye plain-bearing truck sideframes, and some beautiful fine-grain walnut sheet and strip wood

Card-stock has been a railroad modeling staple since the 1930s. And lack of stability due to fluctuating humidity has also been a problem. I've had good luck spraying card-stock structures and railcars with a clear lacquer. EDIT: Of course, you have to coat both inner and outer surfaces. NOTE: I also use card-stock extensively to mock-up parts and assemblies that I'll copy later in styrene...just like I use heavy cardboard, thin plywood and MDF to mock-up real car parts. It's much cheaper and less frustrating to get things to all fit together correctly FIRST.

I built this one in 1/8 scale specifically to see if I could come up with a "traditional" '32 Ford that had a different look than anything I'd seen previously. I've collected all the parts, and construction of the real one will start later this year. This custom Porsche 914 rebody I designed for a client and partially completed began as a 1/25 scale model back in the 1990s. This is a later concept sketch I provided for the client: Another Porsche, this 1/24 scale model was the basis for a stillborn project I designed for a client. When he ran out of money, I bought the whole mess (including the '74 911S Targa it's based on), and will be building it next to the '32. I'll probably back-date it to the earlier "long hood" bumper and rocker style for a lighter look. Last but by no means least, this original design full-scale mockup began as a 1/10 scale model (with the blue canopy, below)...another one of the three projects I'll be finishing first when I'm settled out West. https://contest.techbriefs.com/2010/entries/transportation/871 Oops...almost forgot this one, another one slated to be built full-scale: With a truly masterful concept development done for me by Chris Drysdale (Spex84):

Man...this is some great stuff. The more I see you guys doing such knockout work on old trucks, the more I'm getting interested in building some. Most inspirational. And isn't it amazing how real wood looks just like real wood?

I can certainly understand that...and two of the best full-scale builders I know in town here are also modelers. I well remember your presence there, and farther back, the efforts Hot Rod made towards introducing rodders to the idea that building in scale was a fun and affordable alternative to building large. Back when most of what was available to car modelers in kit form were the early Revell 1/32 scale offerings, there were numerous articles in HR pushing the idea that scale models could be employed for developing styling treatments for full-scale building as well. The idea is still relevant, and one I rely on often.

That's interesting. On the flip side, I've encountered a lot of real-car builders who look down their noses at model-builders, and tend to disregard the fact that some of us are highly skilled and technically knowledgeable in both fields, and that there's a lot of very useful overlap between the two interests.

The M/SP class was eventually merged with the "altered" designation, as M/SP cars had looser rules and permitted more mods than the "gassers". M/SP engine setback could be 25% of wheelbase, for example, while the "gas" classes only allowed 10% So where veteran cars actually ended up depended largely on the particular car, as there were a lot of M/SPs that weren't as heavily modified as the rules allowed. Here's a thoroughly researched build of an M/SP car...

Google? Facebook?

The simple solution that has always worked for me is to contact eBay after their "estimated delivery date" has passed. There's a resolution procedure that only requires a few mouse clicks and writing a coherent sentence or 3. That said, eBay's functionality continues to deteriorate. Their apparent reliance on out-of-work 4th-rate emoji designers to do their IT "upgrades" is having an obviously negative effect on most interactions now.

If by "body lift" you mean were the bodies raised relative to the frames (as on some "lifted" trucks, and of questionable functional value even there), the answer is unequivocally NO. The "gasser" frames were raised relative to the ground by suspension mods.

Yup. Having been in the real-car resto and hot-rod biz for decades, I have to deal with unacceptable results on a continuing basis. A shop that was my go-to for years can no longer deliver the goods. Another shop that opened fairly recently (becoming increasingly difficult with all the knee-jerk...but largely meaningless... "environmental" regs in many places) did a few knockout pieces for us, but now everything comes back horrible...if they don't lose it. To finish up the high-end '66 Chevelle I've been building since 2016, I'm working side-by-side with yet another shop. I do the metalwork (which insures there are NO WAVES, and it fits properly), they put a heavy layer of copper on it, send it back to me, I block the copper, send it back to them for more copper, and repeat as necessary. When the copper is perfect, it goes to nickel, then chrome. It's a royal PITA, as there was a time when there were literally hundreds of competent plating shops. No more.

Just keep in mind that "chroming" plastic model parts is an entirely different process from chroming metal real-car parts. Entirely.

Yup. The technology is out there, with prices for the equipment ranging from $2,500 to over $80,000. Step right up, kids. https://www.marcacoating.com/pvd-coating-equipment/vacuum-metallization-equipment FOR MORE INFO GOOGLE "VACUUM METALIZING"

Good. The "really nose high look" is generally favored by folks who know nothing about vehicle dynamics or drag racing history, and believe the endlessly rebleated wrong information on the interdwerbs. One of the winningest, most consistent, and most famous gassers of all time was the original Stone-Woods-Cook '41 Willys, and all its later incarnations. If you want to build a model of a period gasser that's set up right, this is the stance you want at rest:

Which is why some people believe the most idiotic stuff...mindless rebleating. Contrary to what some folks apparently believe, saying something 100 times doesn't make it true.

Mr. Snake pretty much nails it. "Much of the impression of the high front end is false. It was common back in the day to run magazine pics of these cars leaving the starting line, where/when the front end would be rising on acceleration making it look like the front end was higher than the car actually sat at rest. Also, it was common back then to photograph the cars in "features" from low angles from the front quarter, which also accentuated and exaggerated the high nose. Not that there weren't nose-high cars in those days. There were. I'm just saying that the effect has been a bit WAY exaggerated over the years. The NHRA rulebooks of the day specified that the cars should sit level, or with a slight "rake" (front end lower than back), and said that the lower line of the body could pass no higher than the axles' centerlines (or lower than the lower edge of the wheels). I concede that not all cars ran by NHRA rules, and even some that did didn't follow this rule, which doesn't seem to have been strictly enforced except maybe at NHRA national events, or if records were involved. You'll also notice that as cars started running much above 140 mph, the front ends started dropping for aerodynamic reasons at the top end. You saw this happen with the funny cars, and then with the gassers, the Pro Stocks, the MPs and Super Stocks, and on down into the Stock classes as the cars went faster and faster and aerodynamic drag became more important." TWO ADDITIONAL NOTES: 1) Because of the tendency of idiots to try to stretch the rules to improve weight transfer at launch, the NHRA imposed a new rule that specified the engine crankshaft centerline could be no more than 24" from the pavement with the vehicle at rest. Check the rules for the specific reference, and when it came in. 2) When the trap speeds got up around 140, as Snake mentions, noses began to drop. But "drag" wasn't the main factor. Lift on the front end could be so severe that the vehicles became dangerously unstable. Anyone who's ever driven fast will be familiar with the phenomenon on even relatively low and slippery cars. At 140, a DeTomaso Pantera is one jell of a handful, dancing all over the road.

My sincere best wishes for you going into the future. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to deal with what you have to, day in, day out. You should be an inspiration to all of us.

That's the problem with internet searches. If you don't know a pretty fair bit about what you're searching, and you're lazy, you're going to believe mostly wrong information. I've had more than my fill of instant "experts" who read a couple of articles on the web and all of a sudden know vastly more about everything automotive than I do after my 5+ decades of first-hand, hands-on experience. And that's just the way it is today. First-hand real-world-derived knowledge has very little value to a certain abysmally ignorant...and just plain stupid...segment of the population who believe the first gibberish Google vomits up. EDIT: Of course, the upside is that there's a wealth of correct information available on the web like never before in the history of Man. But you need to have some basic knowledge and possess good critical-thinking skills to benefit from it.