Ace-Garageguy

New York City used to be somewhere I loved to visit, but haven't been back since my last ex ruined the Christmas trip we went on with the worst attitude I've ever encountered from a woman...even though we stayed in the Carlyle, went to a Broadway show, live jazz at Birdland, and took a helicopter ride over Manhattan when the World Trade Center was still there; there's just no pleasing some people.

On the way back from getting propane and stocking up on the fixin's for milk-and-toilet-paper sandwiches (snow's coming), I dropped into my favorite "antique mall" and found a complete, sealed inside 1/24 Fujimi 427 Cobra SC, for well under internet asking. I have everybody else's Cobra kits but have been holding off buying this one until I found a deal. Same seller also had a 6-wheel Tyrell F1 car for cheap, but the poor thing was missing all the engine parts off of the tree. Too bad. They also had an original-boxing AMT '36 Ford coupe that I almost bought for the box, but after seeing it was missing the chopped top and the wide-5 wheels...nope.

Well fellas, we got snow in the forecast again, so I gotta stock up on stuff to make milk-and-toilet-paper-sandwiches afore it's all gone.

"Fix it again, Tony" was the oh-so-clever refrain of folks who didn't quite understand Fiat's cars; same mindset brought us "Fix or repair daily" about Ford.

Morning has no relevance without black coffee.

It could still make a really cool model with a few upgrades, adjustments, and corrections. People have done some very nice work with this even older (1956) Monogram kit...

Looks like you're correct. I believe the side windows are a tad too tall as well...but it's still a great place to start, at the very least, and some body line and proportion issues don't bother the vast majority of car modelers anyway (from what I hear and read).

Mind-over-matter is actually a thing, in that a consciously positive and thankful attitude and directed meditation can have beneficial health effects.

The "headers" are cast iron, coated with black porcelain, basically molten glass. https://forums.jag-lovers.com/t/xk-engine-porcelain-coating-on-exhaust-manifolds/245599

Scalemates lists it as 1/21 https://www.scalemates.com/kits/monogram-pc57-1932-ford-deuce--265157

Looking really good. You also reminded me I've been wanting to get one of these myself. Thanks.

Canada has some beautiful sunsets.

What you have above is considerably bigger than the frequently repeated (online) 1/24, but I don't have one here to measure. I have, however, compared one to the well-scaled 1/24 Monogram '32 roadster, below, and the old coupe kit you have is a good bit larger. EDIT: Scalemates lists it as 1/21 https://www.scalemates.com/kits/monogram-pc57-1932-ford-deuce--265157

Slinky dresses for women run the gamut from understated sophisticated elegance to cheap, loud, and trashy

1/16 scale Imai Porsche Carrera 6. Initially it looks like typical Imai, kinda heavy-handed and toylike, and I can't make a judgement call about the accuracy of the body lines without doing a mockup with all the major panels assembled. I already see a fairly obvious discrepancy on the front bonnet, so who knows. It is 100% complete, including the optional electric motor stuff, and it does have the beginnings of a decent representation of the real car's tube frame, plus a lot of separate suspension pieces, and the scale is large enough to re-fabricate whatever is wrong relatively easily (maybe saying it should be straightforward rather than "easy" would be more accurate). Not cheap, but much more "reasonable" than most of 'em out there. If the body lines end up looking pretty right, I could get fired up about building this one up to show quality. I'd started converting one of the 1/16 Revell 356C cabriolet kits to a hot-rod 356A Speedster, and they'd look great together.

Lingering rodents are also a potential problem with attic model storage, as they'll test-chew just about anything (leaving cute little knawing tooth-marks on edges of plastic parts), they're not too particular about where they leave their solid and liquid waste products...and model boxes make nice warm nests to raise hundreds of littluns.

Shoes and never-worn clothes in some women's closets can number in the hundreds (and they're not cheap), but the same women have a problem with a guy's large model (or real) car stash?

I saw the Olds, may even have one, but I've never seen the Chevy.

Nail polish can enhance a woman's beauty.

The guy who owns the shop where I'm building the '66 Chevelle is the best bodyman I've ever known, and he learned from his father who opened the place many many years ago. He is the only one in the shop who does collision repair (my only involvement is as a subcontractor building the Chevelle). They had to let the last bodyman go because he'd shortcut things and didn't seem to be able to block a panel straight if his life depended on it. They've been trying for years to hire a competent replacement, or a trainable entry level guy. The "experienced" applicants have all been hackers with a wildly overblown opinion of their ability, and the kids have watched too many car-shop shows where nobody ever actually does any work, and some have even tried to tell us we're "doing it wrong", though they have no experience whatsoever other than what they've seen on YooToob. When the Chevelle and the '59 El Camino custom builds are done, they'll be closing down because you can't stay in business if there's nobody to do consistent, high quality work...and they will not compromise the quality that comes out to fit the skills of what's available now. And people shout me down when I go into the reality of the skilled trades today. Anyone who's ever done high quality bodywork knows it's different from many other skilled trades, as it requires just as much art as science, and to be really good at it, the motivation comes from inside. But the attitude many of the college-educated have towards the skilled trades, that if you don't have a degree you must be a knuckle-dragging chimp, and that any knuckle-dragging chimp can do any kind of physical work interchangeably, is largely responsible for nobody much wanting to pursue trades as careers anymore. Never mind that it's still possible for a good bodyman or mechanic to earn a 6-figure income, and a lot of the smug college-"educated" are unemployable as anything but baristas or dog-walkers.

BIG smile-maker right there. Very nice indeed.

Yup, very nice. I need to get one of these.

Mood of the 1940s saw the popularization of custom cars, but custom coachbuilders doing specials for the wealthy had been around as long as there had been cars to build bodies for.

Nice work. One of the coolest planes ever. Looks like a good kit too.

Yup. Back circa 2005, the last time I ran someone else's body shop, I'd write my initial estimate on older cars to replace what most shops would, to see what kind of money we were looking at overall. Then I'd talk to my guys (who were both pretty good old-school bodymen) about whether they were comfortable doing repairs where we could, instead of replace. Then I'd re-write the estimate at lower cost, but converting some of the saved parts cost to labor for repair. The insurance companies were always happy to save money, the bodyman made more on the job, and even though our total take on those jobs was lower, the profit margin was higher. Everybody won...and we saved more than one nice car from the crusher by getting the cost below the threshold to "total". But I always made sure everyone in the loop knew exactly what we were doing from the outset. Not only is writing and billing for "replace" but doing "repair" dishonest, dog help you if you get caught. Criminal charges and civil suits can be the result...and insurers will avoid your shop ever after. PS: The reason I was able to do this effectively, consistently, is because I'd done the in-shop work for years, and knew exactly what COULD be done correctly, and safely...and I oversaw my people to make sure everything was done right.