Ace-Garageguy

Batteries are NOT required unless one wishes to be completely off-grid. Solar produces power during peak demand hours, for the most part, can add it into the grid to take load off of existing generating plants, and evening demand is easily handled by the existing grid...UNTIL hundreds of thousands or millions of electric vehicles are plugged in at night to recharge.

Agreed for the most part. BUT...I intentionally arranged my life so I have a short commute. About 4 miles each way. My old beater truck gets about 12 MPG, and of course, as the energy density of hydrogen is less than that of gasoline, I might get 8 MPG on hydrogen. Seems to work OK. With a 20 MPG vehicle, it works just fine...with leftover fuel to burn. Unfortunately, we (not me, but humans in the developed West in general) have built our lives around stupidly wasting TIME and ENERGY commuting. That needs to change. NOTE: Honda's pilot project (rooftop-solar powered electrolysis) optimized as many factors as possible, and the results were said to provide enough fuel daily for an "average" commute in an "average" location.

It's an interesting idea, but there's much contradictory info out there. For instance, "non-bio" oil is purported to be found at extreme depths. The Russians supposedly claimed in 1956 to be taking "non-bio" oil from 30,000 to 40,000 foot-deep wells, but according to widely published records, the Russians didn't reach 40,226 feet until 1994, at the Kola Superdeep Borehole...NOT AN OIL WELL. AND...they found fossil remains of life at those incredible depths. In 2011, Exxon Neftegas hit 40,604 with the Z-44 Chayvo well. Far as I know, what THEY found is more-or-less standard biomass petroleum. Constantly "renewing" oil? I doubt it, but I'll keep an open mind until there's a body of verifiable scientific evidence either way. In the meantime, It's getting MORE AND MORE EXPENSIVE to retrieve oil, and at the current rate of consumption, it is NOT a sustainable situation. The technology HAS EXISTED for some time to run cars on hydrogen, with either fuel-cells or internal-combustion power. This hydrogen can be made simply and sustainably by solar-powered rooftop units converting wastewater...but does anybody really do anything about it? Honda proved the feasibility in the 1990s, but you don't hear much today. Kind of makes you wonder who's driving the bus, doesn't it?

You have a PM.

The SMER / Merit kit can make an outstanding model with some effort, but if you don't want it, I'll gladly take it, and pay the shipping. Here's what it takes to build the SMER kit well: http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Gal1/501-600/gal558-Talbot-Dalton/00.shtm

But they were lovely cars to drive. I worked on them when they were new, and naturally "road-tested" them as frequently as possible. When that little V8 ran, it was one of the sweetest sounding engines on the planet. Other than timing chains that stretched, junk distributors, emissions carbs that were finicky, poorly designed cylinder-head retention fastening, inadequate cooling for the North American market (including a not-great jackshaft-driven water pump design that was also located UNDER the intake manifold), steering racks that leaked, and window regulator mechanisms that failed early (and allowed the operating arm to cut an arc in the window), they really weren't bad cars. I built several over the years with smallblock Chebby engines (the strongest runner had a modified 365-horse 327...had to go to the cast wheels after it pulled spokes out of the rear wire-wheel hubs), and one with a Ford 302. The wheel bolt pattern, by the way, is identical to the 240Z. A handful of other people did similar swaps, but in typical hacker style, almost invariably cut a hole in the hood for carb clearance. For mine, I notched the frame rails (it is a unibody, but it can be done IF done correctly) and built custom headers that allowed the engine to sit low in the chassis...no hole in the hood.

Great weather, and I'd planned to take the day off, open the windows, work on some stuff around the house, relax, and see if I could squeeze in some bench time. SO...there's some kind of festival going on across the street, with BLARING music in a genre I can't stand. I don't play my Bach and Metheny and Coltrane and Floyd at ear-shattering levels, so the whole (bad-word) neighborhood has to listen to it...but I'm not afforded the same consideration. And due to the nature of the happening over there, I'm CERTAIN if I were to go complain, I'd be viewed as a "racist", rather than as someone who's entitled to peace and quiet in his own home. Local noise ordinances don't come into play until midnight, by the way. Guess I'll go in to the shop for a while after all. Boy, will I be glad to get out of this place permanently. 6 more months.

#1 is definitely first-issue Ala Kart / '29 Ford double kit. The giveaway is the little part at the upper right on the first photo. It goes on the hood of the Kart.

The resin box looks to me like an oscilloscope with two VU meters.

This is the chrome Chebby engine. The kit comes with a Potvin-style front blower, and a 2X4bbl carb setup:

Finally got an HO scale Walthers blast furnace kit. Most of the rest of the steel-mill buildings can be scratch-built fairly easily, but this would be more than I want to tackle. Got a nice little pair of HO IH Metro vans, too.

Picked up a few Revell kits that I've wanted for some time. Figured I'll get them now, before the speculators start jacking the prices.

I got a new build-battery, so I can get back to powering-up and testing my last three custom electrical systems for clients. This one is about 30% complete here, for a 572 Chebby-powered '66 Chevelle.

As far as oil goes, the writing has been on the wall in big red neon letters since the early 1970s, and anyone with a semblance of a functioning brain should have realized it was a finite resource when the first oil well was drilled in 1859. But typical foot-dragging, head-in-the-sand humans have yet to get an electric grid in place that's capable of recharging the projected number of electric vehicles on the horizon, and many projections of electric vehicles' impact on the power grid are simply unrealistic. The widespread ignorance and unfounded beliefs as to the benefits of all-electric vehicles is staggering...even among many so-called "experts". Many studies are based on erroneous scenarios, and most consumers fail to realize that generating all the electricity necessary to recharge millions of cars will have to come from sources not currently available. Burning MORE coal and natural gas (which still releases carbon into the atmosphere), or building nuclear plants. Some hydro sources for electricity, like Hoover Dam, are drastically reduced now in the power they can generate, due to dramatically falling water levels. There's a LOT of work to be done if electric vehicles are going to replace the current petro-fuelled fleet, and there's far more gibbering than actual progress towards making the necessary changes reality. https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/study-electric-vehicle-charging-present-grid-challenges/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/how-many-electric-cars-can-the-grid-take-depends-on-your-neighborhood/

It's worth a look, and I do have both of those in stock, but... The Orange Crate is a '32 Ford, and as such, if it's scaled correctly, the width and shape of both the cowl edge and the radiator shell edge will be very different from a '29 Ford.

The way I see it, there are three things that are going to finally kill the US automobile industry. 1) Government. Passing arbitrary laws affecting things they have absolutely NO understanding of for decades. 2) Wall Street. The greed-for-unearned-wealth culture that is American investing now is just a bunch of clean-hands bean-counter-gamblers that force often illogical moves for the sake of today's bottom line, and (bad-word) the long term viability of a company. 3) Marketing. Allowing non-technical people to steer a manufacturing company, based on nebulous "market research" that's further based on opinions and wants of more non-technical people is just another ingredient in the recipe for disaster. The car companies were BUILT by car-guys: tinkerers, machine-heads, racers, and enthusiasts ...not the government, or uninformed investors, or ignorant consumers. Yet, these three groups have the final word now in how car companies are run. No real surprise, when looked at from this perspective, that the car business seems to be confused, silly, and chasing its own tail most of the time.

Very nice conversion work. You have a good feel for just-enough detailing, and a good color sense for weathering.

There are two ways to run a business. You can LEAD the market, be the guys who START the trends, and reap the sales if the idea takes off...like the original Mustang (where you also run the risk of creating an Edsel), or you can FOLLOW the market...perceived as the safer approach, which is what the vast majority of companies do, and which explains why so many bland look-alike vehicles are everywhere, and why you also get wretched-excesses of gimmicky styling trying desperately to set essentially cookie-cutter vehicles apart from each other. It probably WOULD make sense for the US makers to leave the small-to-midsize cars to the Asians, who do that end of the market VERY well, while focusing on their own established (recent) core strengths, with some REAL CREATIVE EFFORT put into coming up with the next "big thing". It would also help the US auto industry immeasurably to get the Fed out of the boardroom, but the whole camel is in the tent now, and there's probably no going back.

Somehow, I don't think ol' Henry F. would be all that impressed with how the company is run these days.

And of course, EVERYBODY knows that computer systems can't be hacked, right? And all electronic devices are 100% reliable too, right? There WILL be a day when a node of the self-drive network goes down, due to hacking, or terrorism, or just putting too many bad-word eggs in one technical basket. The results will turn a stretch of interstate into something like this:

PLEASE tell me you're kidding.

Unfortunately, none of the hoods from other kits are going to fit without some modification. How are your skills there? I've sent a few parts to board friends overseas, but we once had a problem with the English customs officer apparently not understanding US money, and charging the recipient import duty for $50 (50 dollars) on a part that was actually valued at $.50 (50 cents).

For the most part, consumers know nothing about cars. Zero. Zip. Nada. Marketing has created whatever "demands" the consumers are credited (or blamed) for. Neat little fun-to-drive cars that get great mileage aren't pushed. "Lifestyle" is what's marketed, and the lifestyle people are buying into when they opt for tanklike trucks and SUVs is largely imaginary. Showing tough guys driving trucks and cool-hip-hot-happening young people having great adventures in SUVs and crossovers implants a desire for that vision, and the boobs buy the vehicles thinking (well, not really thinking, but with a vague subliminal expectation) that's that's what comes with them. Just like cigarette advertising used to do. Smoking Marlboros made you an instant cowboy: tough, independent and self-reliant. Yeah, right. Manufacturers make the fattest profits on trucks and SUVs, so those are the vehicles that are marketed most heavily. Marketing works very well on a vast audience that would rather follow the Kardashians than actually THINK.

The old Maverick should still be running happily at 300K, with relatively minor expenditures up to that point. Both My '90s GM trucks are still going strong at 250,000+, with only electronics having been significant failures. Even the clutch and universal joints are original in the manual-gearbox truck. If they were entirely old-school, they would have been fine...other than the abuse they both suffered at the hands of previous owners and chimp "mechanics". The American public has been effectively brainwashed to see large vehicles as "safe", small, nimble and efficient vehicles as "unsafe", and the whole truck/road-crusher SUV thing is mostly a personality-deficit projection, rather than an actual NEED for a hauling vehicle. (I'm NOT talking about people who actually USE their trucks...whether for offroading, camping, or hauling; I'm talking about shiny clean mine-is-bigger truck owners.) But logic, knowledge and wisdom will never overcome the power of marketing.