balthazar

For me, the whole short deck thing harkens back to the pony car, and in general I don't care for it. I prefer a short hood / long deck proportion, or at least something more balanced. Some treatments work, others like the toyota GS, don't.

'bout .4 or .5 mile.

>>"Maybe the military will work with Toyota on building green tanks powered by Prius drivetrains"<< Pretty sure the military spec does not allow for grinding to a dead halt in the middle of a maneuver.

Diesel dropped 24 cents from Friday to Monday ($3.35 -> 3.11). 87 was $2.22 @ one local station.

Here's another pic I took this past weekend (duh- the '08 shot), looking the other way from the up-top pic of this thread : 1948~ 2008~ No strange symbols spotted anywhere this way, and I have been about half-again as far as you can see down those rails. There is a huge railroad over/underpass in the woods this way, you have to be hiking thru the woods in order to spot it, where it rises from the rustling murmur of the forest, an abandoned monolith to American industrial might. The right-hand track curves to go under this underpass and join back with the left-hand track. 1948~ 2008~ I find 'industrial archeology' fascinating.

Railroad design class? Cool! Don't think so- RR used vertical concrete mile markers long before even 1948 and this doesn't line up- one still stands about a third of a mile farther down the track (doesn't quite show in my pic). It's certainly not 3 anything from anywhere, either. I could see if it was 3 vertical hashes and we were dealing with Roman numerals... Could be right... but I walked over a mile in either direction from that point and there were no other marks, similar or otherwise. It seems almost convinient that the stone wall was there as a canvas. I have other pics of the track layout that was there from 1908 - 1950s; no switches lined up with these marks. Regardless, those switches are long gone and there's nothing electrical there, either..... That the RR would be the only entity bothered to repaint them seems logical..... but what the hell do they signify ?? Going over to the RR board to see if anyone has any ideas..... Slow over there as usual- no replies yet.

smallchevy- the marks changed picture to pic- they are not natural. All the stone in that wall is solid dark grey stone... granite-esque; no variations at all. However, I didn't investigate the marks up close. Was it a quarry mark?? Possibly, tho the track was laid in 1857 and I'm certain this wall dates to that far back, so if it was painted, I would think the paint would be long gone by 1948... and why anyone whould repaint it is a mystery to me. The color shot cannot zoom in anymore due to the rez, and the B&W pic does not offer anymore detail when enlarged. Unfortunately, I won't get back up there to check it out up close until early next summer. usonia- intriquing idea, but not only is the general area not one for hobos and I doubt it ever was, the immediate area does not lend itself to finding any handouts due to the remoteness. I would also doubt that a hobo marking would remain a constant over 60 yrs, but it's not a circle I move in. There was a small station about 400' from that spot at least as late as '48 - hobos technically could have debarked there, tho in my experience in the area over the last few decades : the train primarily runs in the other direction... ie: the hobos would've been on the other side of the station when the freight ran thru. If anything I could see the 'nothing doing here' symbol... Cool retrospect about mom- the world is in short supply of her character these days.

This here pic is one I spliced together. The B&W shot to the left was taken in 1948, the color shot- this past weekend. I didn't notice either mark until I got home and downloaded my pics and compared them to the older shots, or I would have investigated it close up. It's the same location and the same stone block, right in the middle of nowhere. Kinda spooky- I could see if the fresh marks were in '48, but vice-versa; IDK. Must mean something.

Same guy who built the drag '34 Ford above built the 'Quad Al'. You think 27 liters of Packard/ Merlin is impressive (BTW- an Alison V-12 is 28 liters)- try 112 liters : Here's a build pic of the Merlin in the '55 Chevy: Engine alone supposedly weighs 2000 lbs.

Ahh; "The Thrill of Driving EMO" - got it. That 'family truckster' in the video looks as POS-y as it sounds, and it sounds like a 40-yr old dryer with 2 pairs of sneakers on 'tumble'. Are those 6 trans Am fender vents? Wow. Not sure what it is with these UK guys- they're doing a completely off-the-charts project, yet they start with a very ugly British car and just make more of it. The earlier 'Beast' : The car I was referring to was built by Paul Jameson and was a 6-wheeler (dual axles to the rear). I searched for it via google but apparently there's no pics online.... so from the Balthazar Archives I bring you : Smaller pic looks like a model, perhaps no body was actually built...

I have no idea what "Evo" is, so I don't know if this is the same vehicle, but a 'chap' in England built a Merlin-engined custom car in the late '70s- the vehicle was completely scratch built and bore an uncanny resemblence to the Pinin-Farina Modulo (crossed with El Camino proportions), if anyone remembers that design. There have been numerous V-12 aircraft-engined cars over the years. This drag car ran low 9s at 160+ in the mid '60s with a 1710 CI Allison V-12.

>>"I wonder if these yahoos were funded by the RNC or some Southern fundie Christian organisation. "<< I wonder if the Black Liberation Theologists or the DNC isn't behind it to drum up some last minute 'white guilt' votes in the swing states. Could've really played it big if they had managed to work a threat of lynching in there somewhere, and maybe named the suspects Jethro and Billy-Bob (or maybe just George & Dick)....

Didn't the 1st version of the miata shamble on for like 12 years (then get a 'Chinese-knock-off' redo to boot)? Cannot the Solstice do likewise? If there is no money for a replacement, continue the current car with a minor refresh.

"hardened piston rings" ??? "rebored new cam shaft" ???

Bought a set of non-ripped white buckets out of a '66 Catalina in a yard for $50 and turned them around for $325. Scored a good 'squirrel cage' for the blower motor of my B-59 (out of a '63 Riviera) for $5.

Loads of 'home built charm' in that Italian coachwork... as usual. 2 thumbs down on the ground on the design.

Not junkyard-sourced, but : I had my '73 Charger Rallye 440 for a short while. While driving around, I spotted a same-era Satellite a rescue company had off to the side to practice using the jaws of life on. After asking politely, I got a solid battery tray, good horns and a host of other miscellaneous for nothing but my time. A short while later, a guy in my apartment complex had a beat-to-S Charger on a trailer- I believe he was going to build a drag car out of it. For a single bottle of beer, I grabbed pristine black vinyl upper door panels and another armload of miscellaneous for my car. This is the same car that came with a good $10 of change thruout it, including sprinkled over the engine compartment. Good karma with that car. I sold it to a MoPar nut / drunk for his son. This was a very solid car with only half-dollar sized rot hole in the rear quarters, a triple black car with the Powerdome hood and the original 4-speed in the trunk. 2 years later I stopped by and the completely stripped carcass was half on a trailer headed for the scrapman. "Too rotted," the jackass explained.

So many of these suggestions fly in the face of criticisms made far & wide & repeatedly. GMC is criticised as 'badge-engineered' & redundant, ignoring the steady fat profit the division makes. Instead, as GM's finances were as in 1968, keeping the Ram truck line is heralded as a potential good move when they share nothing whatsoever. In a period where the truck market is sliding steadily, 'we're' in favor of dropping a successful platform mate & truck line dating back to 1900 to replace it with a completely autonomous line from another company ?? Am I reading this correctly ??? Frankly, I would prefer the GMC name to continue but absorb the Dodge truck in it's next redesign (and the 'GMC' design language go over to Chevy).... but I doubt the money is there to run 2 autonomous truck lines at once these days.

Guys- what they did is NOTHING a '60s MoPar can't handle, driving tru tall grass & some powerslides, sheesh; I was expecting jumps and mowing over saplings. Sure, it could be spending a quiet afternoon getting polished in the driveway, but that's a waste of a 440, IMO. Did you catch that it was squealing the tires on DIRT? Real nice car, even tho 'lesser' than the earlier lettercars, still some real nice coupes up thru '70.

>>"It just reinforces my desire to get a bit farther from the "madding crowd"."<< You find a place where this sort of thing DOESN'T happen, let the rest of us know, k ?

Get this- my brother has been dating a woman older than him for many years. Clearly she was older, but he never volunteered her age & I never asked. After all the genealogoy stuff I've done over that same time period, I just looked her up via the internet last month. He's now 35. She's 62. They get along very well, seem happy, she's a very nice person. She doesn't seem any older than, say, 52 (!), but wow. I couldn't get past that, myself. Over time, I've upped the 'ceiling' for what I've considered 'datable' material (I'm married- this is all hypothetical); the upper range keeps pace with my age or slightly past it, but the younger limit never rises. :wink:

>>"When I 1st started at GM in Arlington, TX. I was told all Impalas were built there from the early 60's."<< Holy crap- I hope this was told to you by the security guard, as opposed to someone with any influence on running GM. '68 Chevies (other than the 'vair, 'maro & 'vette) were built in 17 different plants across the country. No way Arlington alone could have been able to supply even a major fraction of the demand for Impalas in the '60s.

>>"Wonder what the actual plumbers make per year?"<< Going rate a plumber charges in Jersey is $75-85/hr. 2080 hrs/yr x 80 = $166K gross. Now, plumbers have a lot of overhead/expenses, plus by nature- downtime during a normal day (ie- many jobs are NOT 8-hr, involving unpaid travel time). As parts/materials are extra (& commonly marked up 10%), a guy who works hard, tosses in overtime / some weekend jobs and manages to land a longer-term, really lucrative job and it's entirely possible he could clear $250K. Most do NOT, even in this market; downtime, scumbags who don't pay, and business costs eat a huge chunk of that up.

This whole campaign, running unprecedentally long, really has me wearied. BO is going to get in based on fluff and turning a blind eye to whomever he may be, and McCain is NOT my choice, either (even tho I do feel he definately has more credibility than BO). I never stumped for JM on this board (or any other), so your automatic assumption that it's nothing but 'us vs. them' or 'you vs. me' is off; the hope that I'm going to get in a snit over these much looser connections that you dismiss with a wave of the hand as completely unimportant in BO's case... ain't gonna happen. If you feel it's meaningless for BO, you must believe they're meaningless for JM, if you are approaching this entire matter levelly (tho I'm not saying that's the case). According to all I've read, BO is far too untested, unproven & undocumented to be 'running the country', and the liberal mainstream media is nothing but a propaganda machine anymore, desperate for ratings in a shrinking market, so you certainly aren't going to see real investigative journalism from any of them. That's why this stuff needs to get out. If BO had a mainstream political background instead of a closely shielded one with a long roster of crazies & radicals, he's already have a monster lead instead of barely squeeking by with only a few weeks left. I don't give a sh!t if he black or white or what his family situation is, but I do value his life experiences and influences, because they tell me far more about what he might do in different situations that the complete bullsh!t spewed out on the trail. Most of those experiences he's kept completely under wraps or has been brazenly obscure on, and the rest that's come out is certainly not reassuring. I value these things far more than the superfluous, but that's all we really have. It sucks- this could've been the country's Neo in reality, instead it's just a carefully crafted illusion. RE: the pic- It should be obvious that sitting in an ACORN meeting 1 day and having your picture taken is world's away from training hundreds recruiters in questionable tactics and defending the organization in numerous lawsuits over a period of years... but you won't agree on that, I know. What the F am I going to do in the booth on the 4th ??

Is that a guess, PCS, or did you get the VIN PM'ed to you? 7th VIN character would be an 'R' if it was Arlington assembled.