Ace-Garageguy

Idiots, eBay seller AND eBay resolution people. We paid for TWO items. Idiot seller can't count that high, put ONE item in the package, but listed the SAME tracking number for BOTH ITEMS. Package arrived, sealed. ONE ITEM IN IT. POST OFFICE shows tracking number delivered...BOTH ITEMS. We only got ONE. So I contact seller, who LIES about "sorry, I gave you a refund for the missing one". NO REFUND. So I open a case. DENIED because the idiot PO shows BOTH items delivered, even though there's only ONE TRACKING NUMBER...ONE PACKAGE...AND ONE ITEM IN IT. Now I've appealed the decision. We'll see. This is the FIRST time I've ever come up against reading-comprehension-challenged morons at eBay.

Ask over on the truck forum. Lotsa those guys really know their stuff, and I KNOW I've seen a reference to the NAPCO conversions over there.

Depending on how much you like the car, you can probably keep it if you fight. A "total" loss usually occurs when the estimated cost to repair gets to be around 75% of the "book" value of the car. Book value rarely really takes into consideration that an older car might be very low mileage, in excellent condition, and not replaceable with anything other than a worn-out-piece-of-junk for the money they'll give you. In MY state, if you scream loud and long enough at the insurance company, they will pay you very close to that 75% figure and let you keep the car. You can then apply the money to repairing cosmetic damage, and pay the difference out of your pocket. I've retained SEVERAL cars this way, and have advised several other people to do this when they've had old but GOOD cars with relatively MINOR damage, but still enough damage to push the car into "economic total" status.

I've driven one. There were three main problems with the Cheetah that certainly would have been sorted had there been more time. 1) Because of the car's too-flexible frame. suspension tuning wasn't very effective. You have to have a dead-stiff chassis in order to set a car up with any hope of repeatability and predictability. 2) The front-mid-engined layout of the car gave it exceptionally good weight distribution, and because the center of mass is well inside the wheelbase, the car is VERY responsive to driver input, very willing to go where it's pointed. You can almost think it into a turn. But then the twisty chassis comes into play, and as the car is cornered hard, the suspension geometry is moving around as the frame flexes. This makes it twitchy, and not at all fun to drive close to the limit of adhesion...and prone to spinning if you're very close to the limit. 3) Because of the front-mid-engined layout, the headers run right next to the driver's feet. Extremely light-weight insulation didn't exist in those days, so the cockpit could be just dammed uncomfortable. It's hard to go fast consistently when the car is fighting you and your feet are on fire and you're being boiled in your own sweat.

That failure "simulation" looks NOTHING like what actually happened. Compare it to the actual video. Wear your critical-thinking hats while doing so. The thing did NOT bend in the middle as shown in the "simulation". The FIRST failure WAS AT THE SPOT CLOSE TO THE CRANE. It buckled at the TOP of the FIRST inverted V of the truss web, and subsequently bent / broke at the LOWER RH. END OF THE FIRST INVERTED V. This so-called "simulation" places elements and failures in the wrong locations relative to each other.

Watch carefully the top element of the bridge to the LEFT of the crane. Just before the collapse, the concrete, which would be in compressive load there...what concrete does best...bends visibly, then crumbles.

To center a round file in the end of a piece of round stock for fish-mouthing, I usually use a diamond file to cut a shallow groove first. Then your round file will stay on center as you work into the groove. I also hold the very end of the piece I'm working on between the tips of my index finger and thumb, and use them as an additional guide to keep the round file centered. Far as getting the angles right, on models, it's mostly experience. It's fairly straightforward to measure them on real cars, but there's such limited working room on models, it can be tough. I sometimes have to cut more than one piece to get it right. That said, I'll usually mark the center of where I want the fishmouth to be with a fine black Sharpie line BEFORE cutting the centering groove. Get one good fishmouth on a too-long piece of stock and fit it up to where it goes. Mark the end for a straight cut just a tad longer than the finished dimension. Mark the angle of the fishmouth relative to the joint, and centerlines as above. Then slowly work the end of the piece, fitting often as you file, until it fits correctly.

VIDEO OF THE COLLAPSE. The question here is WHY this thing was being worked on (apparently tensioning one of the tendons) WITH TRAFFIC ALLOWED TO BE UNDER IT. No matter WHY it failed, or how well designed ANYTHING is, there's always the possibility somebody made an error. It's BEYOND STUPID and criminally irresponsible to take a risk like this with the safety of innocent bystanders.

OK...first, I was mistaken in thinking this thing was a prestressed concrete structure. I've seen the design proposal drawings, and it was a POST-tensioned design...similar , but different. Same basic idea however, where steel tensioning tendons apply compressive force to the cast concrete parts. Still the same possible failure modes, including crumbly low-strength concrete not capable of withstanding the entire compressive loads, or a failure of the steel tensioning tendons (due to sub-spec material, some kind of as-yet unexplained damage during construction) or an as-yet unknown factor, or damage to the structure during moving it into position (apparently the positioning of the mobile platforms used to swing the thing and lift it into position differed from the design placement). Additionally, someone has reported hearing a loud CRACK noise prior to the collapse. The fact remains, the failure was due to human error somewhere along the line, and there were LOTS of well-paid professionals involved in this, many of whom are there to provide the kinds of checks and balances that insure failures won't happen.

Thanks. I want to stock up on some of his appear-to-be-the-best-in-the-business carbs, too.

I've been following the media reports, and there are potentially conflicting statements being issued to the press and through social media, which appears to be due to some ignorance on the part of the non-engineering types making the statements. Having grown up around construction engineering, I've seen my share of concrete in structural applications. The concrete rubble looks as though it crumbled like sugar cakes...not what you'd expect from the mix that would be typical for prestressed members. IF a non-spec mix was used (and IF that was the cause of the cracking) and / or IF it was still on the green side, and IF workers were putting additional tension on the tendons within the bridge span members (as has been reported in the press) to mitigate the cracking, that could have conceivably caused the concrete to crumble...especially IF the concrete used was lower-strength than what the engineering specs called for. It's going to be very interesting to see the investigation play out, to see who gets picked to be the scapegoat, or who gets to share the blame. There were a LOT of people involved here who could well have seen that something was amiss, and taken appropriate action. This was NOT an "accident", which is the word being used in several media reports. Things don't just happen. SOMEONE or SEVERAL PEOPLE didn't do their jobs correctly, and there are NO excuses. Engineers and builders have every bit as much moral and ethical responsibility for the safety and health of the public as doctors, and that means paying attention, getting the numbers RIGHT, and making a BIG noise when you spot something going off the rails.

From The Chicago Tribune: "Experts interviewed by The Associated Press were mixed on the significance of those reported cracks. Amjad Aref, a professor with the University of Buffalo's Institute of Bridge Engineering, said they should have been 'a big red flag.' 'Bridges are really very vulnerable when they are under construction, when there are just pieces," he said. "It's like still a flimsy structure. And when you see cracks, somebody has to raise really a big flag and say, 'We need to do something. We need to figure out what's happening quickly and do any mitigating actions to prevent further progression of damage and ultimately collapse,' as we saw here.' "

From The Washington Post: "A lead engineer responsible for a pedestrian bridge that collapsed near Miami left a voice mail for a state transportation official warning of 'some cracking' two days before the structure crashed, state officials said Friday night. The engineer with the private contractor FIGG Bridge Engineers did not consider it a safety issue, he said in the call. The message was not retrieved until Friday because the Florida Department of Transportation official to whom the voice mail was directed was out of the office on assignment, the state agency said. The message about the bridge being built to connect Florida International University with a neighboring city was left on a land line. 'Hey Tom, this is Denney Pate with FIGG bridge engineers. Calling to, uh, share with you some information about the FIU pedestrian bridge and some cracking that’s been observed on the north end of the span, the pylon end of that span we moved this weekend,' the engineer said, according to a transcript of the call released by the Florida Department of Transportation. 'Um, so, uh, we’ve taken a look at it and, uh, obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done but from a safety perspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there so we’re not concerned about it from that perspective although obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that.' "

Bingo bingo.

And here's the latest. No definitive evidence as yet whether the crack actually DID play any role in the collapse, but it's starting to sound a little like the O-rings on the shuttle Challenger engines. "FIU says it was aware of crack on bridge before it collapsed" "FIU said in a statement Saturday that the University had met hours before the fatal accident with engineers and the state’s Department of Transportation for two hours to discuss whether a crack on the structure was a safety risk.The meeting concluded there were quote 'no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge.' "

I'll give you that point, but only to a point. Any engineering company worth having the word "engineering" in its name has to have some kind of "engineering oversight" to make certain the design specs are followed. That was actually my father's job for most of his career...looking over everyone's shoulder to make certain things were built as-designed. I remember vividly when he had the masonry contractor tear a wall down on a press building because it looked like it was built by a bunch of drunks (I was working as a draftsman for the mechanical contractor on that project, while I was still in school). He had to deal with his share of corruption, too. Imagine building a brewery in Newark in the 1960s.

Saw a reference to this kit (which I didn't know existed) on another thread, and just had to have one. 1/24 de Havilland Beaver. Originally made as a promo display model for Canadian Mist, apparently, and quite simple, but well proportioned, with a ton of potential.

One good thing in that Monogram 1/24 kit is a louvered hood. It's too long and too wide at the rear to work on a 1/25 body, but shave the rear end of it to the correct length, and the width slots in pretty close to correct for 1/25. The 1/24 Monogram body proportions are really close to some of the stretched "32 f'glass bodies that have been built, and ALL of the Revell 1/25 '32 Fords are on the same frame, so mix-n'-match is easy. The downside to the Revell 1/25 kits is that they all have 4-link front suspension (the 5-window has optional hairpins) and a tubular front axle. They also have a coil-sprung 9" Ford rear end. Takes some work to get an early or "traditional" car out of any of them.

Wow. Sweet indeed.

I have multiple '32 Ford roadster builds going right here on this very forum. This one is based on the ancient AMT kit. The best of the 1/25 '32 roadster kits are from Revell. This is still readily available from about $30 to $50. They have separate frames. There's a Monogram kit listed as 1/24. No separate frame, but well-proportioned and much cheaper at around $25 shipped. As Mike said, the Lindberg version is absolute trash.

You guys are killing me. Found one, figgered it would probably be the only one I'd ever see, so I kinda let it follow me home.

A continuing condemnation of sloppy engineering and lack of necessary and critical internal oversight in place on the part of the company that built the bridge is in order. It appears a 90-ton segment of a CAR bridge they were building collapsed DURING CONSTRUCTION in 2012. BOTH structures appear to be what's referred to as "prestressed" concrete, a construction method that's been well understood for MANY years. My father was an engineer on civil and industrial projects, and he introduced me to the way prestressed concrete beams are supposed to work when I was a little kid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestressed_concrete MANY of the bridges a lot of us travel over every day are built using this material. It works GREAT when it's designed and fabricated CORRECTLY. Also, the Florida pedestrian bridge was intended to be supported additionally be a network of suspension cables. WHY the main span was not supported until the suspension members were in place is anybody's guess. Being an idiot is not an option for engineers, but it seems to be a characteristic that's creeping in to the profession.

It's an oblique reference to something that was said on the old Newlywed Game many years back (that's been denied, but I've actually seen the clip). Naturally, the meaning is "most definitely", but spellcheck wasn't certain as to the correct spelling of the mispronunciation.

Second choice...

Having spent most of my adult life as a hard-core sports-car kinda guy, and having only recently returned to my hot-rod roots, I find I prefer a car that combines the attributes of both: something that brakes and handles as well as it accelerates. Wish I had seen THIS back in 1959 when it was first built... https://carbuzz.com/news/unique-of-the-week-one-off-1959-troy-chevrolet-street-legal-racer