Ace-Garageguy

Finally got into my '92 Silverado that's been parked for several years. I thought she dropped a valve, and I'd just build her a new head (at least...and possibly swap a piston and rod), as I have 350 parts out the wazoo. I pulled the rocker cover on the noisy side, and the valves are still being held up by their springs...but one pushrod is down in the block, and another one appears to be kinda short. It looks now like she broke the cam into several pieces, and ate at least one lifter and pushrod. Won't know til I get the intake manifold off if the block is trashed, but either way, the engine needs to come all the way out. Really hoping the block is OK, as it's a 4-bolt and I only have 2-bolt cores. A 2-bolt will be fine really, but I'd like to stay 4 if possible...just 'cause. The good news is that the heads are probably OK, as she didn't actually drop a valve, which usually ends up destroying the chamber and piston. The heads aren't any big whoop, but they're the late-model EFI heads, and the EFI intake won't bolt to the early heads (of which I have many) without a little magic. She had well over 250K miles when she broke. I put a gearbox in her at around 200 (I bought her from a landscaping company that dogged the living hell out of the poor thing), and she was a good truck for over 10 years (after I fixed all the moron stuff the landscaping "mechanics" had bodged and buggered and rigged...which is why she was cheap). I figger with a fresh engine, she'll go another 250K...and will probably outlive me. She's also out of emissions, which means I can ditch the EFI and put a carb on her, like I did on the '89 GMC (after the EFI turned to smoke)...and which now runs great. She also needs a pinion bearing and seal, a driveshaft intermediate bearing, and a set of UJs. She oughta feel like new after all that.

I read a while back that some Texas legislators were trying to ban kit cars, retroactively too. That's all I've heard of, but I'd be interested to know the full story as well. I always thought Texas was one of those "leave you alone" states.

Yup.

Thank you, thank you. I held off buying one of those original issue turbines for stupid money...now very glad I did.

Agreed 99%. Every now and then, I hear one with exhaust tuning that actually sounds good...but the vast majority of them sound like enraged garden tractors.

I have a lot of questions about the continued viability and relevance of NASCAR in our rapidly-evolving-to-be-testosterone-free world. When you see the American automobile industry all but giving up on building cars, and GM's apparent intention to get away from consumer vehicles completely (in favor of Uber-esque on-call "transportation-modules" if CEO Mary Barra's predictions carry any weight)...what's left to race? In the short term, maybe Challengers, Mustangs, and Camaros. And if they were stock-platform derived (which they easily can be...monocoque chassis are hardly required for roundy-round), there might be a little more interest. But I really don't know. NASCAR seems to appeal to fans of drivers, not cars, and I frankly can't name one driver in the whole of that arm of the sport...so I'm hardly an "expert" on what would get butts in the stands. In the long term, I really don't see a bunch of Prius drivers, Uber-users, and passive self-driving-vehicle passengers following ANY kind of racing. After all...it goes against the "everyone's a winner" and competition-is-bad doctrines we're having hammered down our throats every day.

Some folks get mad when I say this, but I really don't care. I was a paid user of P-bucket from the beginning. Because I ran an ad-blocker to keep from having to listen to the intrusive drivel from the marketing mavens, and to speed uploads, I realized they wouldn't be making any money on me from advertising. So I got a paid membership. I never lost access to any of my pix, and it's still working just dandy. The moral of the story is: if you get something for free, don't feel cheated when it turns out to be worth exactly what you paid for it.

Yup... Yup yup. A lot has changed in the hobby, like the demise of the small hobby-shop (for the most part), and a few things I won't bother to criticize. Still, we're in a golden-age of modeling, ANY kind of modeling, with parts and technologies easily available that I could only dream of when I was a teen.

Beautiful. I really enjoy seeing well-built and finished stock-car models of the period when there was actually some "stock" left in the sport.

Exceptionally clean, well lighted and photographed, and as mentioned, staged. Combining all those, the first impression is of a real truck...always the goal, rarely achieved. VERY nice.

And here...

I dunno, Ray. I'm older than you, and I don't see any need to start offing things I'm attached to yet. Hell...I'm not even completely retired, still have to move everything I own out West, and plan to be building real cars and models for as long as I can pick up a hammer...and see what I'm hitting. Being attached to things is entirely normal for folks who love machines or models or whatever. Don't question your involvement. I have acquaintances who just can not comprehend my love for models, old cars, fast cars, trains, airplanes, tools, etc., and why I still want to do the stuff at my "advanced age". But my real friends understand completely...except the ones who don't, but accept that my love of this stuff is an integral part of me. If you still enjoy your collection, why get rid of it? EDIT: Maybe do something like go through your collection and make a list of everything you've got, so if someone else needs to liquidate it, the hard work is already done. Maybe number each piece unobtrusively too, and key the number to the list, with a realistic value noted as well.

Check out this thread for a lead on the crew-cab Dodge...

I posted the video made by the YouTube "ding dong" in an effort to make people aware that there are a lot of scams and disreputable people out there in greenie-land, and to suggest that before buying or committing to some lease-scheme, they do just what you advise...do your research, and think long term. It should be pretty obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that purchased solar panels would add value to a home. The video is primarily about the downside of getting involved with some pay-forever BS scam that's difficult or impossible to transfer to a new owner.

That's just freakin' cool. I didn't know that existed. Guess I'm a little behind the curve on some things...

Who will fix them if they break? Simple. A smarter, more productive class of human than the one sweeping the floor and standing around the rest of the time. There's always several things to consider. US car manufacturers, for instance, replaced assembly-line humans in large part because the greedy unions wanted more and more and more money for doing less and less work, and doing it poorly. One reason US car quality got to be so nasty (1/4 inch gaps between panels were completely acceptable in the '70s on many US automobiles; half of that is common today on robot-assembled cars), was the slipshod approach to building them on the part of assembly workers, too. The thing is, sadly, it's not that humans CAN'T do as good a job building cars as robots...it's just that, for the most part, they WON'T. But there are already MANY things that machines do vastly better than humans...so why not let them do boring menial and repetitive tasks that they will do all day long with no complaints, and encourage humans to aspire to do something more satisfying?

Here's a nice selection...https://www.lampsplus.com/products/under-cabinet-lights/type_battery-operated/

Nothing...repeat NOTHING...will "dissolve" the old tube glue, as was the OP's question. Yes, there are multiple ways of disassembling heavily-glooed models, but they ALL involve some kind of damage to the separated parts. I've bought dozens of "rebuilders" (primarily rare kits that would be stupid expensive if pristine). Most can be disassembled and saved, but some have so much gloo slathered on them, and so much subsequent damage and distortion (like Bill Geary's photo above, but much worse), that they're lost causes, usable only for a few parts. It's always a roll of the dice, and no matter how "rebuildable" the seller may claim something is, you never really know until you have it in your hot little hands. So far, I've only had about 5% turn out to be too bad to repair.

Google "battery powered LED under-cabinet". Hundreds.

...or stand around with it's head up it's social-media apps all day, every day.

I'd wager that as far as "stupid" goes, the average Walmart shopper has the robot beat.

Might wanna think twice about that...

Yup. Ahem...I started to post a bunch of pix of folks photographed in Walmart who are a lot scarier than a robot, but figgerin' that came too close to "abusive" behavior again, I'll just let y'all search for yourselves. Personally, I vastly prefer robots to most humans.

Conventional wisdom back in the dim recesses of time was that the Hilborn system, being pretty much an idle-or-full-throttle setup, couldn't be run on the street. This was generally true, and you're correct that the stock fuel pump would not be sufficient to operate it. HOWEVER...at least one wizard tuner WAS able to tailor the intermediate fuel delivery curve and get decent street performance from the Hilborn setup. There's even an article on the tricks he used to do it in an old issue of Hot Rod. The constant-injection Rochester setup on the early Corvettes and the CIS system Bosch made for lotsa cars in the '70s and '80s were quite like the modified Hilborn rig in some aspects of their function. You're also correct in thinking that engine-mounted fuel blocks for carbs aren't the best possible idea, for exactly the reason you're thinking...vapor lock. Again HOWEVER...by mounting an electric pump as a pusher close to the tank, feeding the mechanical pump (or not), with a pressure regulator and a T fitting allowing fuel to flow back to the tank in a return line, vapor lock could be pretty much eliminated. Sometimes, simply fitting small return line could be sufficient, but an electric pusher pump is just about 100% insurance. EDIT: If you're concerned about where you can drive a Hilborn-type injection pump on a street engine, one easy solution is an angle-drive under the distributor or mag.

No American Stock-Cars Actually Racing.