Morning coffee

[RICH MUISE]

It had the Edsel dash.

[Zapato]

I have a perfect Edsel dash that keeps getting stared at and am thinking of grafting the bottom left hand side of a 57 dash to and putting it in my 57. I just love that Edsel speedometer and the 4 individual gauges.

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[RICH MUISE]

climbed over 30,000 views this morning...cool!

[RICH MUISE]

Hmmm...typed a long post and it disappeared when I hit the post button...we'll try again.
I got to meet Thor from Kansas last month at my house in Amarillo, and last weekend I got to meet two more forum members at the Pate swap meet in Fort Worth. John/KYBlueoval came in from, you guessed it, Kentucky. We met briefly for a handshake and a little '57 talk. John is from the DFW area originally, and has family there he was staying with. Nice to put a face with a name.
Larry/AcrylicMan came up from Houston, and also has family in the FW area. Larry was picking up some '57 parts from me, so we arranged to meet before the swap meet on the speedway grounds away from all the in going traffic. We spent an enjoyable good 1/2 hour talking '57's and stuff, and planned on meeting around lunch time inside the swap meet. LOL...by the time I called Larry, he was already home napping. Funny. I'd probably have done the same if I was able to go back the next day as he was. I'm doing a seperate post on something Larry gave me that is REALLY cool.

[RICH MUISE]

Saw an article on the internet this morning about the current woes of Lumber Liquidators. I've never been in or bought from a LL store, so I've got no grudges, but I'm just tickled to death at the reason for their problems......CHINESE CRAP! The article talked about LL pulling all the inventory from the stores because of formalgahyde content, and that inventory is approximatly 20 million dollars that they're gonna get stuck with.
Point of my bringing this up....maybe there will come a point in time where the suppliers are as fed up with Chinese Crap as we consumers. As far as I'm concerned, this flood of Chinese products has set us back 30 or 40 years from a consumer product quality standpoint, as well as all the other problems created.
A thought to ponder......I hope the car parts suppliers take note of LL's problems, but at the same time I wonder why a business like LL takes that 20M hit, when our suppliers just say "that's all that's available". I guess the answer is is in the fact that we balk at paying 120. for something like a usa made ball joint.

[hiball3985]

I may be off base here as I'm not a wood working person but I seem to remember an issue with formalgahyde being used in the glue or what ever that bonds the layers of plywood together. I remember warnings about burning plywood in the fireplace. Is that the problem and do US manufacturers still use it? I'm not even sure if there are any US manufacturers anymore or they all just buy it from the Chinese? From what I have been told from a friend in the northwest is the Chinese buy or raw material and have large ships set up as mills, both off shore and docked that make the lumber and sell it right back to us.

[RICH MUISE]

I think the problem is plywoods using formalgahyde will leach off the vapors for years. I remember back in the 60's looking at prefabbed modile homes, and when you were inside your eyes would start burning in a matter of minutes. I think about  that time they stopped using formalgahyde in US production. That's the kind of thing I was talking about when I said this Chinese crap is setting us back 30 or 40 years. All the gains we've made over the years in consumer protection/product improvement are falling by the wayside quickly. Plastics that won't stand up to time are another example. I recall a while back there was another problem with Chinese building materials in the way of drywall. They found that whatever it was they were using was eating thru electrical wiring insulation!!
That disappeared from the scene pretty quickly.

[jvo]

Don't know if they are rare or not, but there is a 57 Ford power brake unit for sale in Hamilton Ontario on Kijiji.ca.  http://www.kijiji.ca/v-other-auto-parts-and-accessories/hamilton/ford-power-brake-unit/1056572756?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true
Not sure if this should be posted elsewhere, but hopefully that link or a search will yield results if anyone is looking for one of these units that run off the pedal.  Appears to be complete with brake pedal and all.  No price in ad.

[Jeff Norwell]

john..gonna give that hamiltonian a call?.

[jvo]

Nope. I don't need it.  Just thought you might, or someone else that might be close.  Or even someone else that might not be close. 

[LAUDY57]

I picked up a few hand tools the other day and this tool was in the box. It's made by K-D Mfg and turning the red handle turns a flexible shaft inside the flex tube which turns a threaded plunger inside the end tube.
I've never seen one and can't find pics on the web, anybody know?

[Limey57]

Today the postman came and delivered something that wasn't a bill or some pointless junk mail:







So that's this evening sorted!  It's amazing to think that back in the 50's it was common for folks to drive a brand new car out of the showroom to a custom shop and have it chopped/channeled/repainted etc, etc.....

[RICH MUISE]

LOL...your postman is as slow as ours. Your July 1957 issue, finally arrived.

[RICH MUISE]

Had a neat little road trip last Thurs/Fri, btw. Left about 10am, drove to Taos, looked around there for a bit and headed up to Red River. Beatiful little resort town! Had dinner and drove back to Taos where I listened to a concert in the Taos Square for a few hours then headed for the local casino for a short time. I woke up the next morning about 4:30, so I headed down to Santa Fe where I had breakfast and drove around the Downtown Art center for a while...Love the Santa Fe architecture and narrow winding streets. Headed home and had lunch with the wife at noon!...about 700 miles round trip.
Thought for the day.....Junk mail has a purpose! It lets you know the mailman in fact was there!

[Zapato]

When my wife and I first started talking about retirement we visited Santa Fe and Taos. Both of us fell in love with the area and started looking at property. For me it just had an immediate appeal that felt like I finally had found home. Weird to describe that feeling but it was there. Then my daughter started having babies and that was it. No way, no how was my wife moving away. No regrets on my part now as those 3 girls have been a great blessing for all of us. But there are days when I would love to just pull out of the driveway and head up that winding road up to Angelfire. Every veteran should gift himself a ride to the top and visit the memorial there I highly recommend it. Rich one day I hope to tag along with you on one of your lets see where the road takes me today roadtrips.

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