These were simpler times:

 

I have ZERO recollection of that. Though, i do miss weeks of this thread from time to time.


A friend of mine is tearing down a house built in the late 1800s (i think 1880) and it had an addition put on in the early 1900s... Turns out, the floor here is getting torn out on it's 100th birthday.
Kind of sad if you think of it.

 

Might be a repeat.

 

 

Today is bittersweet; I dropped my son off at college. I am sad he's leaving, but so damned proud of the fine young man he has become.
This is a pic from the trip he took recently to Puerto Rico and the girl he went with:

 

An old friend of mine down in FL is having this exact same experience with his daughter this week.

No pics, because he hasn't posted them publicly.

As someone who hasn't had kids myself, I can only think back to that day when I pulled away from the house in a heavily-laden '71 Beetle, bound for Gainesville, and I do not recall that mom visibly cried. (Dad was out of the picture at that time.)

I now recognize how difficult that moment was for her.




EDIT: As I'm writing this, I think about all of the things which we take for granted.

I left home for the first time with a paper map, a rough guess as to the terrain in between my origin and destination, a handwritten note describing where I needed to get to, and a thermos full of soup, driving a car which could charitably be described as "somewhat reliable."

You remember the ones with a faux-plaid pattern printed on them. (The thermos, not the car.)

Would you or & I have the strength of will to send our progeny out into the world in that manner?

I wonder if this made us stronger people.

 

The answer to the second part is definitely YES, and the answer the the first part is directly tied to that second part. Most kids have not had all those experiences that would have made them stronger leading up to that point, so most parents would likely err on the side of caution when sending them out in the world as noted. If I knew they did have that background of experiences, then YES to that one as well.

Of course, this all is based on the assumption that we would be sending our progeny out into the world as opposed to them competently launching themselves out into the world as a healthy indication of their quest for independence (i.e. "I'm going in the VW bug - you can't stop me!" )

Oh yeah, this is the pic thread:

 

And that is the reason I thought it best to let him travel to PR like I did. Independence is learned, not taught. He had to experience it himself. A young person has to be willing to leave the nest in order to grow, and not have it be too jarring an experience to not want to try again should it not go exactly as planned.

 

I left home for the first time with a duffel bag filled with basic needs, arrived on campus and reported for first grade.
That was in 1968, and I still had a few months left to turn seven.
College was a breeze after 13 years of boarding school life (5 years in grade school, 2 years of "prep" and 6 years of secondary education).

This is my grade school:

 

 

Really, Florida?

You need a billboard to remind people not to get drunk and rape their daughters?

 

Same here for me. NSFW would have been useful.

And I too worry about adequately developing my children into people who won't make decisions similar to the bad ones I made.
How 'bout a 4 valve hemi made not by the people who made Hemis but by a specific subdivision of another big 3.

 

Ford marine engine?


Unrelated:

 

Wow... but I suppose drunken date rape is OK there? I'm from Florida, too, but that is really weird.





DNM

 

 

Nah, Oldsmobile!



EDIT: Same valvecovers? haha
I couldn't quickly find a pic with a hemi and front mounted mechanical fuel pump. Usually they are mounted on the back side of the plate (sorta below the BOV there) or attached to the dry sump oil pump assy, so you can't see it in the above pic.

 

While I totally get the appeal of ditching the belt, do those setups typically have some sort of non-rigid coupling in between the crankshaft and the drive gears to the supercharger? Seems that an important damping function is being lost by removing the belt, given the non-uniform rotational velocity of a typical piston-engined crankshaft.

Or maybe these only go onto engines where they expect to do a full teardown and rebuild after every lap...


No idea as to the back-story on this one. Just an engine which I found randomly laying at the side of the road: