Ace-Garageguy

Cats really enjoy helping humans...

Thunderbird was the go-to vino for impromptu urban gatherings.

Thigh meat is one of my favorite parts of a bird.

Rigby, (Figby, Puddin' and Pie), lived with three cats in an old pigsty.

Worse has a bad habit of becoming worser and worserer.

Cool 72 right now at 07:46. Trying to get my lazy backside motivated to do an early hike.

Ice in a Coke melts pretty quick in 100 degree heat.

Wrong information and a lack of critical thinking ability leads to wrongheadedness.

Bars used to be my homes-away-from-home, but that all changed around the turn of the century.

But how well does it work as a food dehydrator?

David Gilmour...

The SRT-4 version was a screamer. With 230 HP it was good for about 150 MPH on the top end, turning a 13.8 second quarter mile. If I come across a totaled one, I'll swap its guts into mine. https://www.motortrend.com/features/dodge-neon-srt-4

Margarita, come see the pretty horsey.

Attention Deficit Disorder is the claimed basis for the skyrocketing prescription of drugs like Ritalin.

Exactly. They were really pretty good little cars, and with the mission-critical timing belts seen to as recommended, they will just about run forever.

OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! I guess I better sell it or better yet scrap it ASAP because...why? What killed the Neons and most of the PT Cruisers (down here in the sunny South too) wasn't rust. They got so cheap that the inept dregs that bought them second-or-third-or-fourth hand couldn't or wouldn't spring for the kinda spendy timing belt replacements. The belts stripped, the engines stopped, they went to the crusher. This illustrates the fallacy of "the repair or maintenance procedure costs more than the car is worth". Well suh, replace that ol' timing belt before it fails and does catastrophic damage, and the car will most likely run another 80,000-100,000 miles (the factory recommended interval is 102.000 miles) with only minimal other maintenance and repairs required. Then replace it again. I have a PT with well over 250,000 on the clock because I made the previous owner do the timing belts as recommended, before they failed and cost a LOT more to put right again. Whole lot cheaper than buying multiple used cars to get the same travel distance. You can lead used-car buyers to logic, but you can't make 'em think.

I'm just SO sick to death of these ignorant AI "authoritative" documentaries on stuff they actually know nothing about. And the legions of little techie dwerbiges that click their little mousies to get AI to produce this garbage don't even know enough about the topics to edit the stuff the AI gets WRONG. There's one on yootoob now that states the heads and block of the classic smallblock Chevy 265 were "cast in one unit". It's full of other mistakes and omissions and uses the word "shocking!!!" too, but that's the most glaring. And the self-proclaimed World Guardian Against Misinformation, youtoob, does nothing. There's a generation that's going to swallow gibberish like that whole, and a whole new class of internet "experts" is emerging. Western civilization is doomed, not by artificial intelligence, but by artificial stupidity.

Vibrations from Him may manifest as earthquakes.

Some really impressive stuff made in the USA comes from Motion Raceworks. It's not cheap, but it's gorgeous quality AND they get their prototypes 100% functional in reality BEFORE they commit to production. I'm using their breather/catch can setup on the Smeding Performance / Grumpy Jenkins "Signature" 750HP BBC in the high-end '66 Chevelle I'm wrapping up. This catch can... ...and these internally baffled breathers... 100% correct, but you have to CARE enough to find out what's right if you don't know, and the interwebs offer a LOT of bad information. And if you can't afford good parts...especially life-critical bits like front axles...you really shouldn't be trying to build cars. There are plenty of places on any build to save money, but low-end suspension parts made from inferior material isn't one of them. EDIT: Some of the Mopar pickups I know have forged aluminum front control arms as OEM equipment. Lowball aftermarket garbage is cast. Now THAT is scary.

Walking out the door on the way to the shop to start rebuilding the junkyard head for the little Neon in the relative cool of the morning. Pretty exciting, huh? The earlier idea was to engine-swap it with something interesting and make a sleeper, but at this point I don't have a long-term plan. Still, I like it, it's fun to drive, and it handles better than many "sports cars". https://www.facebook.com/thedrive/posts/it-wasnt-even-an-srt-4-just-a-four-cylinder-with-a-three-speed-auto-httpstribala/1021378313196748/ It gets great gas mileage, is comfortable, and has a huge trunk too. It may see some long road trips later in the year.

Welcome.

Fireworks are legal here, and I'm used to them. So is the cat. No hay problema. And luckily it's been wet enough the past few weeks so there wasn't much danger of idiots setting fire to the neighborhood this year (it's happened before). BUT...as I live with my windows open most of the time and use a big exhaust fan to cool the house on summer evenings (gets it down to the 70s, thank you), about midnight I started smelling burning plastic. Had to go out and check everything to make sure there wasn't a fire on MY property (I have had fireworks land on my roof before, still burning, so that's not as much a Karen move as folks might think). Never did figure out where the stink was coming from, but by 02:00 it wasn't. Explosions started in again at about 05:30.

My guess is that the sledge hammer would be quite sufficient on its own.

And which few even comprehend today. The popular use of the term "forged carbon fiber" to mean low-pressure-molded chopped goop is evidence.

And being poor quality cast iron, it'll break again almost immediately.