smoketrailcharlie

Hey R.C.Ken do they still drag race in Duncan?. I had a Brand new 60 Chev. Super Sport with 348 engine 3 2 barrel carbs Duntoff cam.Turbo Glide tranny. Whoo it was Bad.Couldn't afford to put trannys in her every month so had to part with it.Oh yea Ken Forgot to mention last post I also had a 4.2 mortor section in Korea.Duct tape the Handymans secret weapon,Keep your stick on the ice.Smoke trail Charlie

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Yeah, I had seen that video yesterday. Makes me shiver every time I see it. I have no clue how (or why) people live in climates like that. I simply can't do it. I have a nerve that goes from the bottom of my feet to my brain, and when my feet get cold my brain shuts off. When I was a PFC in the Army back in the 80's I spent $300 on a pair of Gortex Danner boots to wear for our field problems to keep my feet warm. Best investment I ever made. I am still using those pair of boots to this day!!!!

I didn't know that the guy who bought out weird Mike had a lot of inherited money, but that explains a lot now that I know. I had heard that he was building a new shop though.

I don't know if they still drag race or not. That was never my thing. I had an even more expensive habit when I was a teenager. I used to restore and drive British sports cars!!! You want to talk about an expensive habit!!!!!!

Ken

acdii

Sounds like you are up around my area with Lake Geneva and Milwaukee. If you are not too far from Rockford, the Hobbytown there has a decent RC Plane section.

Greybeard1

Burlington. Another problem with out of town places, my eyes are good for squat. I drive around town, maybe into Sturtevant, but going into a town I'm not familiar with, not for me. When I get something to fly again, I'll be flying at Bong, twenty years volunteer for the DNR before I had to stop, I know the way there very well. Don't ever grow old, it ain't worth the price. Talking to my daughter tonight, she suggested another BUSA Stick, maybe. It's big enough to see, slow enough I can probably handle it, but no depth perception, I don't know how that's going to work.

Rich

Telemaster Sales UK

British saloons, sedans in American parlance, are a bit cheaper. .

Telemaster Sales UK

My 92 year-old aunt agrees with you!

As for a suitable model for a veteran pilot, surely you should chose an Old Timer! .

Greybeard1

Too much emotional stock in and OT. As in hours of work for something I'm probably going to pound into the ground, or, as we say, re-kit. The stick plus is anything but pretty, it doesn't fly pretty, but I can't think of any other plane that fills the purpose I want it for as well. It can be built in a day, then you only have 90% of the work left.

Rich.

Greybeard1

I know I can't be the only one, but how many other people here remember breaking the old carbon steel razor blades in half, then breaking them on an angle to give those beautiful sharp points for cutting printwood kits? When it got dull, break another eighth of an inch off and you have another beautiful sharp point to work with. Or the Wil-Kro razor plane? The stainless steel blades don't work in that either, but the carbon works beautifully. Still have a dozen boxes, four new razors in each one. MY private stock. I'd better never catch anyone shaving with one, That would be a total waste.

Rich

jwrich

My Feedback: (17)

Telemaster Sales, you may like my 1964 MGB, I bought it in 1986, restored it completed 1987. It is still in my garage, the wife & I drive it on warm summer evenings. Here the pictures. I love this little car, I still use the original top & tonara cover that came with the car in 1964.







Rich

Telemaster Sales UK

I re-shelled one of those some years ago. We finished it in British Racing Green but I never got round to photographing the finished job!

donnyman

Hey RICH!

That MG of yours lit me up. I had several and restored one for my daughter while she was in high school, shortly after, we moved to our current location and I had to sell the rest.
That is one swell car but what a pain in the butt to keep running smoothly the electric fuel pump and carburetors gave me fits. I felt it to be too heavy for it's size. But I met a lot of young ladies when I drove it about town

donnyman

I cannot resist responding..................Hobbyshops as we are used to are a thing of the past due to the internet ETC. But they would do a lot better if the suppliers assisted them, Instead of dumping items on hobbyshop that were not ordered. Once a shop puts and item on it's shelf it is hit with taxes and if it doesn,t sell it is a deficit which few shops can afford.

If the shops could return items for full credit and order different stock maybe they would do better, the distributers can sell that item elsewhere.....
the profit margin for hobbyshops is so small I decided not opening a shop here. it's rediculous!

acdii

The key today if you are going to open a brick and mortar is to also have an online presence that you can compete with.

For example, say you have a customer who is an hour or two away and they are looking for a specific item. They can contact you via online chat to see if you have that item in stock, and if not, you could order it for them, and shoot them an email when it arrives, or for a small fee, ship it direct to them via the shopping cart. One could also put together a wish list of what you would like to see on the shelves, and when the store compiles that list, they would have a better understanding of what to stock.

It is a lot of work, but that is how you stay competitive with the online stores. Good example of this, Hobby People. I just got a flyer today in email. They have stores in CA, but deal online as well. The only thing they can't give a great deal online that they do in store is fuel due to shipping costs. They have wing servos on sale for $20 each, and I may get some of them for my B-25. I am on the wall on that one as I did have one of their servos fail, but I have had other brands fail as well. MPI for example had a 30% failure rate for me. Futaba though, I am not 100% sure the issue is servo related yet. My P-51 aileron servos, which are Futaba, glitch on me. So far HiTech are the only ones I haven't had any issues with yet.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Don's Hobby Shop in Salina Kansas is like that. They specialize in giant scale, they have the shop and you see them advertise in MA every month.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Rich,
I've seen you post this before I sat and drooled over it. If you EVER decide to sell please let me have a chance for first refusal (if you haven't already promised to somebody else). I'd love to own it if you ever decide to put it on the market.

I've never owned a MGB but I've always wanted one. I've owned 3 hard top TR-7's, 2 soft top TR-7's, a TR-8, a TR-6, a TR-3, a bug eye Sprite, then I went Italian with 2 X19's. But then I started to grow up a little bit and I realized that I got tired of having to own more than one car at a time hoping that one of them would start in the morning!!!! By favorite of all of them was the TR-8. A TR-7 body was an Oldsmobile short block V-8 engine shoved in it. It was a last ditch effort to save the TR-7/8 line and Triumph cars in general, but it came too late. But that car would flat out haul balls. Unfortunately it died a very untimely death. I got rear-ended by a beer truck who's driver was watching a cute blonde walking down the street. It did just too much damage to the car to straighten out. I cried because I loved the care.

jwrich

My Feedback: (17)

Ken, my daughter gets the car when I am gone. Old cars are another hobby of mine. I restored a '36 Ford and a two door hard top '55 Ford Victoria (beautiful car). The MGB is my last project. We don't drive it much anymore, I belong to the Masonic Shrine and we had a motor patrol. We did a lot of parades but we all got old and many died off, so it was disbanded.

Love the "True" Sport Cars
Rich

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

A buddy of mine had a 40 Ford Pickup, one of those old farm trucks that sat rusting away out on a farm somewhere. I got under once and he had welded channel iron inside of what was left of the original frame. The frame was only there as a pattern. He then put a V8 in it with a Chrysler automatic transmission. He had a shft knob on the left side just in front of the door opening and you counted the clicks to find the gear you wanted. It drove great and had a lot of power too!

donnyman

This is what is left of my first new car 1963 Mercury Comet six CYL. stick shift 3 speed. I bought it new in Phoenix Arizona from Herb Stevens Lincoln Mercury dealership not very long after I got married and reenlisted in the Air Force.

I always wanted to restore it and rebuilt the entire front end but other things got in the way and it just sat. Now I have to let her go. Time fly's when your havin fun

J330

My Feedback: (3)

61,000 original miles, 1970 Torino 302 auto, bucket seats. Painted in 1997. Upgraded the heads to run unleaded fuel, shaved the heads for a tad more compression, added dual exhaust and a 4 bbl carb also. But it just wasn't practical, and for the money, I turned it into a Chevy pickup truck and got back into the hobby in 2003.
I might get a SS Camaro, or Hellcat someday, now that HP available today, makes you never look back to old technology again. I wasn't a fan of the brakes on these old things at all.

Telemaster Sales UK

I've never really rated the MGB, that long-stroke engine is out of a Nuffield tractor so hardly suitable for a sports car and the suspension is primitive to say the least. My Rover 2200SC is only half a second slower than the MGB to 60mph and that's a four-door saloon! Had my car been fitted with the twin carburettor engine, the 0-60 time would have been faster! I suppose the MGB is fun to drive for a day out in nice weather and that's a superb restoration job you've done jwrich but I've always preferred the MGA. I think it's a much more adventurous design available with an overhead cam engine; I'll concede that this engine was extremely unreliable!The Triumph TR range were much better, if rather more expensive, British sports cars.

Talking of cars with which you have a sentimental connection Donnyman, about ten years ago, my best friend, Marino Pacini, a professional mechanic phoned me to ask me to come and have a look at a car with him. I replied that he knew much more about cars than I did, he said that he needed me to keep his feet on the ground. Long story extremely short. Marino's father was an Italian prisoner of war who stayed on after the war working on a farm. In 1950 the lady of the manor employed an "au pair" who couldn't speak English so Mr Pacini was sent to translate. They fell in love, got married and had two boys, Vito and Marino. The family prospered and in 1979 were able to afford a two year-old Triumph 2500 but not long after, Mr Pacini died of cancer; Marino was twenty at the time. The car was sold to a man who lived about ten miles away to raise money for his mother.

Spool on about twenty-five years and a fellow motor mechanic walked into Marino's workshop and said, "You know that old Triumph your dad used to own? Well the bloke who bought it off you wants to sell it and it's only done a further 3000 miles in the last twenty-five years." We made an arrangement to see the car, took some fresh petrol and some pipe with us, borrowed a battery from a Massey Ferguson tractor belonging to the seller, cleaned the points and turned the key. Shug,shug,shug ...vroom! A price was agreed. We went back and fitted two new cylinders to the back brakes and Marino drove the car (illegally) back to his workshop.

Subsequently he has restored the body and he has entered it in several events including the 48 Heures de Troyes in northern France on three occasions. Pictures of the car below, in company with my Rover, Troyes 2008.



The last picture shows your humble servant standing in front of the largest British military cemetery on the Somme.

PS. Some younger man is going to love restoring your car Donnyman!

Telemaster Sales UK

While we're talking about old cars, I've just joined the local classic car club. Being France, the cars exist to take you to a restaurant where you have a four-course lunch in the French manner! Unfortunately I couldn't take the Rover because after forty-two years the master cylinder failed, then after I'd fitted a new one, the brake servo packed up! I won't complain, they are two of the only original components still left on the car. I went to the event on my 1999 Triumph Sprint ST motor cycle. I met an expatriate English motor mechanic there. We're going to have a look at the Rover's brakes in January.

Some pictures of the December event for your amusement.

CURTISSP40

My Feedback: (27)

Hey Frankie
Happy birthday,Jack here,I will be 81 Jan 17th,still flying and builden too,wondering how much longer I can do this.No real bad issues yet? I am slowing down some,but thanks to my two Siberian Huskys,who need walking every day (2 miles) the exercise keeps me able I am sure,my VA doctor always asks me if I still am walking,very important.I am not taking any meds for pain,just live with it.getting 7-8 hours sleep nearly every nite.My day of activity is 5 am till about 2 pm,then I run out gas.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Hey Telemaster, did MG shorten the stork on their tractor engine like Triumph did on the Ferguson tractor motor they put in the TR2/3s?

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

I wish I was a man of leasure like the rest of you, we are hovering around 40 the next few days but they are talking 67 or 68on Friday! Good flying weather if the wind will give us a break!

Telemaster Sales UK

Dunno, but if they did it must have been a mightily long stroke engine when it started out!