Peter Vieira
Wow, you're reading this? Thanks! If you're into RC cars and I seem vaguely familiar, it's because I spent over 25 years writing and editing RC car news, reviews, and tech articles in print and online. What else, what else ... I have a degree in Film Studies (useless), most of a degree in Graphic Design (useful), and I'm married to a wonderful woman with horrible taste in men. Thanks to her, we have a terrific daughter who just earned her Journalism degree and is way, waaay more together that I was at her age. Or right now.
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@SWG – Man, if I can weld, you can certainly learn in one day. Seriously. You can learn to weld poorly enough to connect exhaust bits and other random stuff. Welding a nut onto a stripped out bolt. Just get a cheap welder, an auto darkening mask, a cheap grinder with a flap wheel to “prep” and you’ll be off to the races. I’d guess nowadays with Harbor Freight stuff you could get it all for $500 or less. My cheap Eastwood 120v welder has paid for itself many times over. Heck, my son cut and hacked a turbo Subaru header to make it work on his non-turbo Forrester. That alone saved him $$$ and we tested it in the kitchen sink: no leaks! Don’t wait. it’s fun and worth it.
Nice workbench, Mark! I see you have the requisite square footage of pegboard – approved! 🙂
Before you get too far into using it, may I suggest covering the work surfaces in an epoxy-type floor coating, or at least in a few layers of clear coat?
Behr makes a product called Deckover that would do a nice job. (There are other products, of course, but I haven’t used them.) You can get a gallon, chuck a stirring paddle into your cordless drill, mix it up, and then apply it with a brush. It’s scrubbable and stands up to light powerwashing on our deck.
@SWG – you needed a sketchy set of brake lights 😀
https://www.theautopian.com/how-i-built-my-car-a-sketchy-set-of-brake-lights-using-a-power-tool-battery/
I loved that piece. Incredibly well done, A. Barth!
You’re far too kind but I appreciate it!
Mercedes is not a nightmare! She’s delightful!
I will walk with my people.
SWG wth are you going to do with a Mercedes you can’t smog? lol
Not every state or even county requires smog; luckily my county only requires an emissions check for 20yrs and this little guy is now 22 yrs old: Score!
It’s a fine line between genius and madness, my friend.
We are the lunatic fringe.
Fortune favors the brave, right?!
Mark’s garage is so beautiful, I feel like I could cry. Living in the LA metro area, I know that I will never have such a large and commodious space for my cars and projects. Use it in good health!
The flip side, of course, is that you have access to clean, relatively inexpensive potential project cars that we here in the rust belt can only dream of. The car gods giveth, and the car gods taketh away.
That Mercedes is a brave project to take on! Second most expensive car in the world, after a cheap Porsche.
Loving Mark’s office! That’s like a billion dollars of unbuilt kits. Amazes me how expensive those are today, they were $2.99 at Woolworth’s when I was a kid. Always came home with one. Once my new house is finally finished, hoping to have some display space for my 1:18th scale car collection and bring some of it down from Maine. Love the ex-Forest Service pickup too. A proper truck.
My wife and I are certified antique store junkies, and I have a nose for tracking down old model kits. That bookcase is only about half of them; the other half (all the odd-sized boxes) are in a wardrobe on the other side of the room. Most of them weren’t very expensive, $10-15 each in most cases, but I’ve been collecting them for years. I really should increase my pace of building them, if I have any hope of finishing them all while I still have eyesight and dexterity to do so.
Nice! I haven’t built a car model in years, but I am a semi-avid model railroader so I build lots of kits of buildings and whatnot. Another thing I am looking forward to in the new house – more space for that.
I just lucked into a treasure trove of model railroad stuff. Older lady I have become friends with due to bonding over a mutual love of Friday Indian Buffet lunches mentioned that her late husband was a model railroader too, and would I like what she still had in the garage? That turned out to be about five huge plastic totes of stuff. Going to pick it all up tonight, having had a brief reconnoiter last weekend. I was in my convertible, I had no idea it was SO MUCH STUFF, she made it sound like just a few things. Going to be like Christmas going through it all later!
That is some rad bathroom wallpaper.
I can’t take credit for it; my wife picked it out. I just put it up.
In some sense he succeeded at making it a burnout car, next to that burnout boat, burnout golf cart, and burnout minibus.