Ace-Garageguy

On cars with independent front suspension, it depends on the design of the kit parts. Many kits these days have separate spindles, and in some cases. all you really have to do is not glue them to the control arms, and make up a simple tie-rod rig. On cars that don't have separate spindles and/or control arms, it gets more difficult, and requires scratch-building/fabrication. The old AMT wire-axle cars can be made to look like the wheels steer by simply bending the ends of the wires appropriately.

And the bee's knees. Very evocative.

Here's one...

This year, one SEMA exhibitor obviously asked the question "why pay a bunch of stuck-up, finicky, artiste prima donnas well into six figures to get some outrageously beautiful custom car built to draw attention to your product line, when for far far less money (and in the best everyone-gets-a-trophy tradition) you can buy a burnt-out hulk of what USED to be a $200k vehicle, slam a set of wheels on it, and garner just as much notoriety? If the idea takes off, and me-too me-too marketers all begin a-scurrying to copy it, we should see a SEMA show next year exhibiting a lot of the cars that burned in the California fires just recently. https://tiremeetsroad.com/2018/10/31/forgiato-wheels-brought-a-burnt-maybach-to-sema-so-i-guess-anything-can-get-in/

RE: INJECTOR MANIFOLDS The large photo above is NOT a period piece. It's a late-model (current) EFI manifold plumbed for mechanical injection. Those big square lumps on the throttle bodies below the stacks are the bosses cast in that normally get drilled and tapped for electronic injectors. The location of the holes where the fuel lines go into this rig is normally where the vacuum-signal hoses are plumbed for EFI, so the computer reads a relatively steady vacuum signal averaged over all the ports, rather than one single wildly pulsing signal from one port which would be useless gibberish to the ECU. The small photo appears to indeed be a period piece, but it is a little small to make out the details of the casting shapes.

One really sad part of this is that the owner, Gary Cerveny, bought the car as a diamond-in-the-rough after it had languished in the desert, abandoned and unloved, for many years. Cerveny was responsible for the restoration that managed to retain a large part of the original hand-formed Emil Deidt (the wizard from California Metal Shaping) aluminum body. I hope there's enough left to restore it again. My guess would be that the alloy body is melted down to slag, but that there just might be enough of the steel structure and running gear to rebuild her one more time. I hope so.

Thanks for your interest and comments. Like most of my builds, this one isn't intended to represent anything that actually ran, but something that could have run under NHRA class rules anywhere they were strictly enforced. There's nothing in the rules to prohibit a blown 409, and there were a few folks who ran 'em in other classes...

I agree with you on all points, but I wanted to make the model NHRA class-legal for the period, just so it could be a viable "what if" from anywhere in the country.

Glad you found something useful here, sir.

Sometimes I really have to question just WHY debilitating mantraps are illegal.

Yeah, it was 41 this AM, going all the way up to 49 this PM, with rain, more rain, and still more rain through Thursday. Not much chance of wildfires though.

It's really nice to have a wooded property, or to have trees close to buildings for shade or wind-breaks, but I swear, had that been mine, even if I couldn't get a dozer in, I'd have been out there with a chainsaw, dragging away whatever I could with a pickup if that's all I had...or trying to get at least some of the cars out of the building and on cleared ground, anything to try to save them. Of course, the owner may very well have tried. I've seen how fast brush-fires move. By the time the fire front is a mile away, it's kinda too late if the wind is blowing it towards you. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/california-fire-official-describes-historic-wildfires-front-59135543

Man...that is fine. Exceedingly clean, all the right parts in all the right places, sits just right. Yup. It was worth the wait.

Cool thing about those govt. agency vehicles 'round here is that a LOT of 'em got ordered as essentially police vehicles with wider, stronger wheels, heavy anti-sway bars, dual exhausts, upgraded alternators...etc. Then they'd get driven easy by building code or zoning enforcement, were well maintained, and never got the hard treatment cop cars generally do. Find one of those...and I've seen them auctioned off with less than 25k on the clock...and you have a stout old piece that'll run forever.

How's 'bout a Cobra wrecker, with really wide rear fenders over dually wheels/tires, and a tow rig in back? Or maybe a COE Cobra pickup?

Pretty freaky, Ray, but nicely turned out. Definitely good for a chuckle.

Tragic. Several other absolutely irreplaceable pieces in the collection besides the OP car. I don't know the circumstances, but I can see myself hiring a bulldozer when it started looking like the fire was headed my way, and clearing off everything that would burn within 100 yards of the building.

Happy Birthday Carl. Hope you have a good one, and lots more.

Look here... Combine that with what you see here, and feel free to ask any questions you may have...

I slept very badly last night, and now, after feeling kinda rough all day, I have chills, a fever, and a hacking cough. Bugger.

NS Savannah was the world's first nuclear-powered freighter; she was launched in 1959 and went to sea in 1962. https://atomicinsights.com/cover-story-why-did-savannah-fail/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah

I know it's a big Air Force, but did you ever happen to run across another guy flying 135s named Bob Gaines? Depending on when you were at Tapao, you might have gassed up another old friend flying F-105 and then F-4 Wild Weasels.

^^^ Thanks Ray. I'll be trying that.