Ace-Garageguy

A wall in their Baltimore warehouse collapsed last night. Spokeswoman attributed it to "bad weather". 2 people dead. https://patch.com/maryland/baltimore/amazon-building-collapse-1-reported-dead

^^^ Only downside is the danged stuff turned into 'bout enough methane to drive from here to Tulsa. Desert wind indeed.

Oh definitely. Art critics could go on an on as to how it represents the corporate culture that drives mainstream consumerism devouring the common man in the name of ever-increasing profits based on producing things that are essentially unhealthy. You need to run with this.

Wow. EDIT: I'm sure if you were to mount it in some artsy way, you could pawn it off as postmodernist neo-expressionism or something equally profound...especially if you were to give it some cryptic title like "Jonah's Dream".

Yessir...THAT is a 904. THANK YOU. I saved it.

The hood scoop definitely looks cool, and technically there's no reason to remove it. It provides a positive source of air that's cooler than what would be under the hood otherwise, and cooler air=horsepower. A very loose generalization for a medium displacement V8 has it that every 100 F that you can cool the intake charge, you get about 1HP. Air coming through the radiator will be somewhere around 1600. If there's just a hole in the hood, this hot air will tend to flow out of the engine bay through the hole, bathing the carbs. Put a scoop over the hole, and as soon as you start moving, you'll be getting ambient air to the carbs. Even on a 900 day, this is still a 700 temperature difference. In theory, that's as much as 7 free HP. Bottom line is that the car WILL make a little more power with a hood scoop than without. Even 2 or 3 HP is worth the effort.

This is an intro blurb for an instructional video done by one of the best fabricators on the planet. He shows techniques a competent modeler could use in his own garage if he wants to start building something a little bigger.

Jus' had me 'bout the best gol durned bowl of cowboy chili ever. I don't mean no danged highfalutin recipe-book chili neither. I mean every dang leftover I had jus' throwed in the pot, and adjusted with cumin and onions and garlic and coffee and maple syrup and chocolate. Powerful good.

Yes...according to my possibly flawed memory. In actuality, it's essentially an acetate annual with extras. Note the body warp.

I think most...or some...of us are aware it's being used as a proper name of something, taken from a word that actually has a well-defined and very clear meaning in English, and doing an oh-so-unbearably-cute-and-clever play on it. The resulting implication is, however, that it's not a happy place. Frankly, I don't see the point. At all. But everyone knows I'm a card-carrying, terminally un-hip Luddite.

You are absolutely correct, sir. I had one as a wee lad, and my memory of the kit is imprecise. I also recall mine was molded in light green, but research shows it to have only been offered in white, light blue, and red. I wonder how many of these actually got "styled" with anything even remotely resembling what those cool clay rakes could do in the hands of someone competent. I DO know that the entire concept was beyond me at the time.

I would respectfully suggest that the context Ferry Porsche made that remark in might be something like "The most obvious aesthetic differences between this car and production 904s (to your basic man-in the street who's not really capable of analyzing and comparing/contrasting a styling drawing with a full-scale vehicle) are the air grills that appear on the rear bodywork instead of scoops. Also, the door contours are squared off". I've listed several of the other obvious differences below. Fact 1: The tail in the "Porsche" drawing is much longer than the production cars. Fact 2: The tail, in profile, on the "Porsche" drawing is very heavy behind the rear wheel arches, exhibiting a pronounced load-in-the-diaper look the production cars lack. Fact 3: The nose of the "Porsche" drawing is considerably shorter in profile, and the upper line is considerably rounder, than in the production cars. Fact 4: The shape of the headlight sugerscoops is also entirely different. Fact 5: The nose of the "Porsche" drawing does not exhibit the signature "overbite" in profile that's common to the production cars. Fact 6: The roofline of the production cars descends slightly towards the rear, where the roofline in the "Porsche" drawing is parallel with the ground line.

The concept that "words have meanings" is obsolete. Not relevant. Past it. Expired. Shuffled off its mortal coil. Gone. Deceased. Over. In short, it's an ex-concept.

This is the first of a multi-part series the BBC did on Fred Dibnah, an old-school steeplejack who restores steam tractors for a hobby. Made back when England was still the England I used to know, it shows a smart, funny, warm-hearted guy who has a very practical approach to life. The series is definitely worth watching if you like some actual reality with your "reality" TV.

What...no Sharon Stone??? Or Kate Winslet ??

Kinda wanted one of these ever since I found out it existed, finally pulled the trigger. Waiting to see what the actual quality is of the white-metal parts, and whether or not I'll need a plastic Cobra donor to get it really righteous. Also need to do some careful dimension checking on the body shell. This one fills the hole in my collection where old racing-sports cars live, other than for a couple of Cobra roadsters.

Just finished this, published in 2015. 304 pages. Thoroughly researched (including first-hand tours of mills and a fascinating trip on one of the few remaining Great Lakes ore boats), and well-written by a guy who obviously has feeling for the subject. Quite poetic at times, even when speaking of slag: "When the Earth formed, it must have looked something like buoyant burnt rock floating on a pink liquid-iron core, slightly astir and flaming at the places where rock masses imperfectly shifted past one another. The men and women who make steel can look down on this miniaturized replay of Earth's creation every day, peering upon the formation of worlds". The book traces the development of the technology, the industry, and its decline in America after WW II due to mismanagement and greed on the part of executives and unions both, government intervention, and changing global social and economic conditions. Highly recommended.

First time I saw Christina Applegate, she definitely made my heart beat faster. Still does, actually. And still a beauty.

Interesting. The proportions and lines in the drawings provided by afx, Gramps46 and Matt Bacon are significantly different. Small wonder kit manufacturers have such an apparently difficult time getting things right, when published "reference" material is inconsistent, at best. The bodies of the actual "production" 904 cars were fiberglass, taken from the same molds...so there isn't the oft cited issue of hand-formed individual bodies muddying the waters, at least on the series produced cars. The car from the Bacon-sourced article, with the little grilles in the rear quarters, is very early. I wonder if the drawing was made from a set of pre-production dimensions, because it doesn't look like any real 904 (or clone) I've ever seen. I've been up-close-and-personal with a fair number of these cars, and reproductions made from molds pulled from real ones. The Gramps46 drawing represents the cars fairly accurately, as I've experienced them anyway.

Good to know. Made my day, in fact. Thanks.

Another part of the planned layout is an old-school integrated steel mill, set in a time when America was still a major "smokestack" industrial power (and before we outsourced most all the difficult, dirty, smelly jobs). An "integrated" steel mill does everything from smelting raw iron ore in a blast furnace, all the way through to rolling finished steel sheet and shapes. A coking operation onsite would be a part of many such mills. So...these kits comprise a crusher, conveyors, storage tower, coke ovens, larry and quench cars, and a quencher. These go with the blast furnace and rolling mill I got some months back. All out-of-production kits that may very well never be re-run.

Another box full of HO scale locomotive shells, motors, power trucks, wheelsets, gears, driveshafts, couplings, pickup shoes, flywheels, frames, etc. Included was an almost complete EMD SD45, a clean, unpainted Baldwin RF-16 Sharknose shell, and a virgin EMD GP9 shell. Between this mess of goodies and several others I've acquired, I should have just about enough parts to repair the fleet of cheap bodged, broken and generally unloved HO diesels (mostly interesting steam/diesel transition period units) I've put together. As an important part of the planned layout is a model of a fictitious vintage-diesel rebuild/modification/repair facility, having a variety of mixed road-name motive power makes sense. Any units that don't run can quite realistically populate the adjacent yard while waiting their turn.

I've got Vigo Black Beans and Rice in the cupboard. I'll try that next time. Actually, I have Vigo yellow rice too. The Vigo stuff is OK, not great. My real rice came out fine, and when I could actually cook beans, they cost almost nothing and get nice and creamy. Lately I've been doing something wrong. We have some Goya products down here, but mostly canned goods.

Chicken (leftover) enchiladas with roasted tomatillo & chili salsa, yellow rice. Was gonna have black beans too, but they just never got tender. I've had a run of hard black beans. Must not be living right. Probably dump everything leftover from this (way too much for one person) into a big pot of chili for the weekend.