Ace-Garageguy

The funny thing is that wherever a vehicle is made these days, the vast majority of it is built by robots anyway. When you buy an American-built vehicle, you're not getting American "craftsmanship", any more than you're getting Mexican "craftsmanship" on a vehicle built down south...for the most part. What really differentiates the quality of one manufactured THING from another is primarily the quality of the engineering and design that are in it from the beginning, and how well the specs are followed from tooling fabrication through production...and the level of post-production quality control that's in place. Specification-drift, shoddy materials, building-to-a-price, and poor this-side quality control is what damms so much of the offshore crapp we get shoved down our throats today.

Or a team of stripey superheros.

He probably puts his shoes on the wrong feet, and damm handy they make Velcro so he won't have to deal with laces. What's REALLY sad is that apparently 30% of the audience didn't know the answer either.

According to my calculations, one llamathrust is roughly .48 horsepower. And then there's this...

That's pretty. I actually love snow. I don't mind shoveling it, I don't mind driving in it (assuming I have chains and posi), and I don't mind being cold outside...hiking, cross-country skiing, etc. I still think it's fun. I'm just getting a little tired of always being cold inside.

Cool. But I bet the factory would have a tough time finding the tooling for the rubber mats and crank window hardware...

A friend of mine bought the little bugger new to replace an aging Fiat 124 Spyder that was deteriorating faster than she could afford to pay me to keep it running. We ran the Geo on synthetic oil, and she ran with pretty much zero other maintenance for 160,000 miles, when she burned a valve. I did a clutch at about the same time. Then it was hit and my shop fixed it under insurance. When it got hit again, it was an "economic total" for less than a grand in damage. We fought with the insurer, and retained the salvage. I bought it, did a Q&D repair, replaced the top and rod bearings (which had just gone through to the copper) and when I drove it out West to be an "airport car", it had close to 250,000 miles on the clock. The top's rotten again, as are the tires, and rodents have been lunching on the engine bay wiring. But she'll be back, and most likely still be running the day I die (and I have an early MR2 drivetrain that I think would be pretty cool in the back "seat").

Yeah, it doesn't take much to have stranded or wrecked vehicles everywhere down here. It seems the DOT doesn't even bother with much road sanding any more, either. I used to get a kick out of going out and driving around...because I could...but the population density is so high now, and there are so many fools who'll go barreling down an icy road like it's a warm spring day (and get all surprised when they crash) I just park it and wait for the thaw. We're all the way up to 17F here, sun shining. A previous "renovator" moron put a heat pump in this place, and it's useless in these temps, especially with the ancient shredded paper insulation in most of the walls. With all my space-heaters going flat out, I can only hold it at 55F, and it drops into the 40s at night.

Soon to be back on the road...

And people get offended when I say that a lot of "techs" these days are incompetent.

Yeah, kinda like the testosterone-free dwerbs who move into housing developments close to airports, and then sue about the noise levels. There's too many people in the world, and most of them just get in the way of people who actually DO things. The back of my own house is about 70 feet from a a short-line railroad that's prosperous because it's busy. The trackage has been in more or less continuous use since around 1870. There have been multiple ongoing complaints and suits about da big bad meany twainmens bwowing dere howens for the street crossings...so far to no avail. Just imagine how the dwerbs would sue if the train DIDN'T blow the horn, and some ditzy texting moron got squashed. Don't like the noise of bad smelly dangerous machines? Don't CHOOSE to live close to a railroad or an airport or a racetrack.

2 inches of dry powder last night. Dry snow doesn't stick to tree branches and take down power lines, so everyone's warm, but everything's closed, almost zero traffic out. Today's high is only forecast to be in the low 20s, so there won't be much melting, and what does melt on the roads will refreeze. This is the first time I recall more than one snow "event" with any accumulation in any given winter since I got here in 1969.

This is the .012" beading wire I favor. For production car wires, it's tough to beat, and looks the part quite well. This will be blackened to represent the old Packard wire once the lengths and shaping are completed. It can be bent into sharp curves (which it will hold) but also makes a nice smooth curve if that's the look you want.

Good to see all of those on one page. I think the Ram has the most pleasing proportions and overall lines, and the Nissan just barely edges it out as far as having the best-integrated details.

Agreed. I've always had a soft spot for the subject, but the kit needs a lot of extra work if you want a really nice model.

Good looking race car !

Hey...if you can't outsell 'em, copy 'em.

Excellent, Mr. Snake. Here's the text for anyone who's interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings

Not to worry. Being able to read and comprehend will soon be entirely unnecessary for people anyway... Computers are getting better than humans at reading http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-alibaba-microsoft-stanford/index.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

I think this was the high point in Mopar's truck styling in recent years. It's big, aggressive, but clean. It looks like it can get the job done, knows it, and doesn't need a bunch of useless crapp everywhere.

I'm with you there, but I haven't been able to link enough of the cues to any one vehicle.

I like it much better than GM's offering. Though I think the Ram is over-styled too, all of the design elements work together better, and everything looks like it goes with the same truck. If I were in the market for a new pickup, I'd buy this just on looks alone...though I could really do without the crease down the center of the hood.

In some cases that's all it is, but if it's the right diameter, so what? I have a 50 foot roll of it I got for about $3.50, and it's a light gray (opaque) coating. It's easily colored with Sharpie or paint (and REAL ignition wire is usually only seen in gray, red and black anyway, plus the yellow Accel stuff). Let's see...3 feet for $5 or 50 feet for $3.50...but I have to color it. Hmmmmm...I wonder which is the better deal?

The origination of that basic premise goes back to 1866, and various versions have been attributed to Mark Twain, among others. The original made fun of a society where the members made their livings by doing each other's laundry. The central idea, of course, is the economic fallacy of a viable economy being based entirely on trading services. Manufacturing is essential for wealth creation. Service-trading just moves money around, but doesn't provide a foundation for the value of currency. Humans seem to have forgotten some of the most important principles that were once obvious to anyone with some common sense.

I agree with most of that in principle, I like McQueen, and I like the film. But I've just never understood the whole "tribute" or "special edition" (with somebody else's name on it) motivation. Anyway, it looks good in green (though I'd like it better with as-cast, raw-alloy-looking spokes on the wheels) and it seems Ford has made the current Mustang a very competent car.