Ace-Garageguy

You'll do fine.

Man, that can get to be an expensive hobby.

Sir, that is some beautiful chow. Last time I put even that much effort into a single meal was when I had a full-time significant other. She's long gone, and my current abode just isn't set up to cook much of anything imaginative. II'll spare you the details, but my repertoire is limited to what I can do on one gas burner, a microwave, and a toaster-oven; happily for me, I should be in new digs with a real kitchen by November or so.

Well, we don't have Taco John's here. Even Del Taco left this market years ago, and the newly opened one is too far to drive for mediocre garbage food. The "real" Mexican joints (the ones with real illegal immigrants staffing them) are all mostly 10 or more miles away too. Of course, my food tastes run from the sublime to the plebeian, and I can be just as happy chowing down on a bag of Krystals with a side of chili-cheese fries as I am in a 5-star snooty place where the parking attendants look at me with suspicion because my Jag is too old to be valuable, and too new to be really valuable.

If your desire is to build anything even remotely realistic (resembling something that has a hope in Hades of being technically correct)...well, this kit misses the mark by several miles. The frame is a joke, reflecting the tool designer's utter ignorance of basic engineering principles. The toylike suspension, though it's "working", isn't much better. If you want to build a GOOD REPRESENTATION OF A REAL CAR, and you're an accomplished scratch-builder with a LOT of experience in and knowledge of chassis and suspension design, this kit is a jumping-off point...barely. I had high hopes for it, but after seeing the contents in MY OWN kit, I was supremely disappointed. The body, engine, wheels, tires, and a few miscellaneous bits have some value. The rest just doesn't have any...other than as stuff to make other stuff out of.

I'm makin' a run to the border: Seriously, I'm the best cook I know, and I used to entertain a lot (though some of you guys probably have me beat now). That said, when I'm in the mood for greasy semi-Mexican that tastes good and I don't have to mess with, it's hard to beat the Bell.

Yeah, that's pretty typical, sadly. The relatively frequent belt changes were required mostly because rubber timing-belt tech was relatively new, and still in the development phase. Those old belts had square shoulders on the teeth for one thing, and were more prone to failing at the junction of the tooth and substrate than the newer round-shouldered-tooth belts are. At one point, Ferrari used the same belt design, and a 308 owner's manual stated specifically "don't even try to start the thing if the temp is under 15 F". Apparently somebody had had the same problem you experienced, and Ferrari elected to pass the warning on. I'm still amazed that today, with rubber timing-belts being pretty much industry standard, so many cars get junked because the owners are blissfully unaware of the roughly 100,000 mile belt-change intervals, and then blame the CAR when the things finally let go at 130,000 miles (this is one reason the junkyards are full to overflowing with Neons and PT Cruisers). Actually, I'm not amazed at all. The old joke "What's the least-read printed material in the English language? A car owner's manual" is 100% true. PS. In the South, we didn't have too much of a rust issue unless the owners were in the habit of leaving the tops down in the rain. PPS. The British cars of the period were notorious for electrical problems, as you say, and though they were relatively minor for the most part, they could be frustrating. The electric fuel pumps needed hammering on occasionally, and the Lucas alternators weren't the best. Add to that really ancient-design of connectors in the wiring, and switches that weren't up to handling the loads run through them, and you either learned about electrical repairs quickly, or stayed in shape by walking home a lot. Interesting that John Z. chose rather a lot of Lucas junk to build his DeLorean with. I'm building a custom harness for one now, and the factory version is garbage (and it's been "repaired" and modified heavily by several "experts"). The Brit cars rusted worse down here than the Fiats, as the tops leaked so much in the rain, the carpets stayed wet constantly, and the floors rotted out from the inside. I always wondered about the leaky English tops too. You'd think a country that had a rep for rain would get something like that right.

There's one in the Slingster as well:

Really cool to see the pink pig livery back.

Some of you will understand instantly. Others won't. But please try anyway.

Gots to gets me some of these. So glad I didn't spring for the $100+ asking-prices before they went back into production. Now I can get three for about the same money. (Oh boy, at least two more kits I'll probably never get to. )

Use a paint made for vinyl car interiors, something like this...

I agree with Lee about the powerplant for your Fairlane. Stick a Vortech-style blower on the Mustang. A 427 Ford would seem to be a natural for your '37 gasser. These can be had pretty cheap, and come with a blower. They build up into beautiful engines. Chevy LS engines are the natural (and very popular in reality) engines to swap into your Elky. The LS1 engine and entire drivetrain swapped from a cheap (but excellent) Corvette C5 (Revell) kit would work well. There are a lot of LS engines going into old Firebirds too these days, though I think the Firebird would be a lot cooler with a back-dated 3X2 carbed Poncho engine. In many jurisdictions, the cars no longer have to comply with emissions regs, so the old hi-po engine could be perfectly legal...and fast. Again, the Revell parts-pack engine has you covered:

I've worked on, owned, raced and loved a fair few Fiats. The cars had what was (to me) an undeserved reputation for unreliability over here, because it was primarily due to them failing to get the admittedly more regular maintenance than contemporary American cars required, by owners who just didn't bother to ever read the manuals (what else is new?) and incompetent "mechanics" (same old-same old). ALL the little cars had very small carb jets, and the most common problem across the entire line was little bits of FOD getting stuck in a jet. Once you became aware that this was a brand-wide problem, and put in a high-quality inline fuel filter, the problem was solved. The cars with point-type ignition systems also had very small distributors, and small points. The necessarily small rubbing-block (distributor cam follower) made more-frequent-than-some-cars point gap adjustment necessary to maintain correct ignition timing, and ham-handed "mechanics" had usually stripped and buggered the small adjusting screws before the cars were a year old, making stable adjustments almost impossible. The engines needed periodic valve lash adjustments, and the overhead-cam engines (the 128 had a SOHC 4 cylinder, and the 124 Coupe and Spider had DOHC-4 engines) required cam-timing belt replacement ON TIME. Failing to adjust the valve-lash (which is a relatively simple procedure, though in both OHC cases requires a small special tool) would result in eventual rough-running and burned exhaust valves. Failure to replace the belt at specified intervals would result in engines stopping in the middle of the road, and a whole lot of bent valves. That pretty well sums up the old Fiats weaknesses, and the cars that got good maintenance would get you wherever you wanted to go, using very little fuel, and in the case of the 124 sports types, in style.

You'd think Batman would have AAA.

Mine looks exactly like this...

Probably my nerdiest pursuit is tinkering with low-budget AI. Since the mid-2000s, I've been working on something based on Robert Medeksa's "Hal" chatbot, as time and resources permit. I'm close to installing the current personality in her own dedicated host computer, already purchased.

Thanks to all for this thread. I have a soft spot for Oldsmobiles. I've been stretching a 1/26 no-name Chinorama diecast into a decent 1/25 representation of a '55, but these look like a much better option...and won't take the rest of my life to finish.

Exactly. This is what I tend to think of: though there are, of course, many possible patterns.

Further confirmation of my oft-repeated opinion that most people who work on cars are morons or crooks, or both.

And it ain't nuthin' new... http://www.environmentalhistory.org/billkovarik/about-bk/research/henry-ford-charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

You guys must have some pretty radical lawn-tractors up there. This thing sounds exactly like a full-tilt-boogie racing 4-cylinder from the '60s-'70s.