The Chat Thread - Moving forwards - WC 11/11/24

[HoTWire]

Hey Folks!

Another week, another weekly chat, your place for stuff that may not warrant a full thread or stuff that is just going on right now that you want to share.

Busy busy here still, started a task on Friday for Club RR which I expected to take a couple of hours, took the entire day and a lump of the weekend. In fact it isn't quite finished to the point I can send emails out. This is the joy of developing your own stuff, sometimes it is great because you can make a small change that makes things much better quickly, other times you are dealing with massively rewriting something to achieve something that should be simple. Still it is improving things overall.

I'm currently re-arranging the way I interact with online content, I'm trying out feedly.com/ as an app on my phone. The idea being to interact less with the rage inducing sides of the internet and more with car and programming stuff. First hurdle though was finding car websites to follow/get updates from. The whole ecosystem has shrunk. Which I guess is true for a lot of hobbies, but I could only think of like four sites to follow and two of those are just general car stuff in the hopes that something interesting appears. Which is its own kind of depressing.

Porsche off for a big service and a bunch of repairs this week (basically three years of maintenance), so I'm expecting to be sad with how much that is going to cost me next week. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes I guess haha


Previous Thread: forum.retro-rides.org/thread/227932/chat-thread-ads-back-wc

[DarrenW]

Feedly looks interesting, I used to follow loads of sites/blogs years ago using RSS feeds but they seem to have died out long ago, such a shame. I've recently been using my RM Twitter account ( x.com/retromotoring ) and there's not really that much on there these days either (or I'm looking in the wrong places). Instagram and FB have their places but I miss the old RSS days. RR RSS!

[skinnylew]

In non car related things I had an MRI scan today, took 1hr 20mins for the scan and several hours to be transported there and back (a whopping 9 minute journey 😝)
But it got me out into the world on a breezy sunny day which was lovely. Plus I survived it without incident (although am knackered)

This new hospital is incredibly peaceful (no A&E helps) and the pace is slower less frenetic, rehab going ok so hoping the date set for discharge (18th Dec) will be set. Long road ahead but seeing some end to this part of the journey is exciting. Steps forward hopefully (and literally 🙃)

[vulgalour]

My new windscreen for the Princess finally arrived! Won't be fitted until spring when the roof gets painted, makes sense to do that when the old screen comes out, and it means I can address any rot around the front screen (already did the rear screen surround a few years ago). I might finally find exactly how the water is getting into the front footwells, a problem the car has had variously the whole time I've owned it.

skinnylew's posts there are keeping things in perspective for me, and it's good to hear you're making progress too. My own recovery is going slower than I'd like and I'm focusing as much as I can on the things I can do now rather than the things I can't do yet. There's a couple of small jobs on the car that are still beyond my physical abilities at the moment, and beyond my finances to send to someone else so I'm just putting up with them for a bit longer. At least I've been able to work on some automotive artwork recently, if slowly, so that's helped my state of mind no end and makes me hopeful for a return to work soon.

[stealthstylz]

I managed to snag a Transit full of the old heavy duty steel Dexion shelving from Moss (BL parts place) in Bradford which has sadly closed down, and then managed to be too busy to build it all up in the unit. Will be nice to get everything up and off the floor and finish emptying my garage at home once it's in place. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I'll actually be able to start working on the car again and get the stack of engines I've got to assemble done and sold as I've not done any till I get the place sorted.

[ironmighty07]

This week I mostly be... faffing with the little bits for big Chrysler and chasing parts.
Retro fitting an a look alternative window master switch.


However did stumble across this Hemi powered Healey whilst hunting for spares in curious F/B groups

[braaap]

your place for stuff that may not warrant a full thread or stuff that is just going on right now that you want to share.

Well, in this case I show You a rebodied bmw z4:

[ironmighty07]

Nov 12, 2024 21:32:25 GMT braaap said:

your place for stuff that may not warrant a full thread or stuff that is just going on right now that you want to share.

Well, in this case I show You a rebodied bmw z4:

I can tell it's a Gremlin body from the bulkhead back but not sure whether it's the colour disguising the front but it's either very late Gremlin or includes some Pacer bits🤔

[ratchart]

I'm pretty sure that's a Gremlin front too, maybe stretched a smidge. Google's telling me this is a '74 model for comparison.


Either way it looks great.

[adam73bgt]

Almera has now gone to a good home thanks to the forum 😊

I've then spent a fair bit of time this week trying to strip sticky old soft touch coating from interior panels of the 166



It's messy work and I'm sick of the smell of isopropyl alcohol already 😅

Driving the Crossfire is giving me a bit of time to plan the next work on it as it's still a bit sketchy at speed..

[b18lou]

Been down in Kent again helping a friend break a Civic aerodeck VTI, a rotten donor so don't feel so guilty in breaking it espcially as its to save her beloved mint cascade green aerodeck with a blown D16.

The B18 is out of the donor car along with alot of parts sold. Message @paricyte on instagram or click below if you need parts.
www.facebook.com/share/19RZxo8CTQ/







The donor shell is very rotten we found out after I poked the sills. Saveable but this is a 200k mile plus shell and saving her mint aerodeck in rare colour is oboiusly the better choice.

[HoTWire]

Off to SCS Porsche tomorrow to get the 996 serviced and some issues fixed. It is an hour away, so need to get the train back, just found out that part of that journey is a rail replacement bus service. Which is disappointing.

I've also been trying to get in to a place where I can write some more threads for the forum more regularly (my recent threads list is embarrassing to be honest), got as far as a OneNote with a list of topics. Hoping I can start actually posting them soon!

[ToolsnTrack]

My automotive content production has slowed considerably the past few weeks.. Well, that's unfair to the truth.

I usually get a few YT episodes in the bag and "buffer" my Sunday releases. The Patreons get to see them as they are made, so lately this has dwindled and I have been eating into my rations. I think am down to a 4 week buffer now.

One reason, pure motivation sink. The Locost project is nearing completion and I'm facing a bit of a "what's next crisis". As such I subconsciously must be dragging my heels as once the project finishes, so does a significant part of my content stream. That might be a signal in itself to knock it on the head, not sure.

The other reason is in some sort of last ditch "try a new thing" I'm taking bloody weeks to edit one episode I want to release at Christmas, sort of a feature length special. I've been pouring extra effort into different formulas recently to find something that sticks, which so far has yielded no fruit.

If anyone fancies throwing every spare minute of their lives into making YT content, take this advice from a man who has done so for near 7 years now: Don't.

[vulgalour]

Youtube is a great way to lose a lot of hours making videos nobody wants to watch, I should know, I've been doing it 'properly' for about four years now and not even got 500 Subscribers. So I'm just doing super over here. Luckily, profit isn't my motivator on it, getting eyes on my work is, and it has helped more people see my work and earn some pin money through prints and stuff so I don't mind.

It'd be neat if it did make some money though, right? Talk about sunk cost fallacy.

[skinnylew]

The YouTube thing intrigues me, I have an idea for a channel but it's mainly as a place to keep a log of things I've done, places I've been and interesting things. And that won't appeal to many because it's too vast a spectrum. Found it very interesting Hubnuts latest video sharing the earnings of some videos. Not some thing I would ever do full time but if I could do it as a hobby on my hobbies then the pressure is relieved. Lockdown spurred me on but I worked it all as a key worker so never got the time to go anywhere with it. Life's change in direction for me might reopen some of this intrigue..........we shall see. Or not.

[The Cat Herder]

I’ve spent many hours recording projects I have done, spent even more time editing them down to something passable. But never published any of them, mostly because I hate seeing and hearing myself, and I don’t think I’m really advancing the art in any way. 

Those of you with the drive and persistence to record, edit and publish…

[vulgalour]

Speaking of Youtube stuff, today is all about getting ready to release something new on my channel this month which is automotive artwork creation. People have been badgering me to do videos of the process and I've resisted because, well... I've got enough on just making the stuff. 6-8 hours to make a piece usually (sometimes more if it's complex) and I don't like an audience while I work.

Obviously, because it's me and I am genetically incapable of being either mainstream or commercial, I've chosen a ridiculously niche 50s fibreglass vehicle that nobody has heard of when I could just have easily gone with a more popular option. I did learn it wasn't so bad to do on camera and that some elements I have to do off-camera because I can't get into the groove properly otherwise.

We'll see how it does. I'm not expecting greatness, although adequacy would be nice.

[HoTWire]

Re:Youtube, there is a reason we stopped doing it. Even with professional video people it is a massive time sink for not much reward (both view and financially). Now days I would 100% not approach it with any kind of ad revenue in mind. If you want to talk effort/reward ratio, then the hour long video from SEMA in 2019 that still has less than 500 views is a good example : ... we mainly made it for ourselves though, so not too bitter about it.

Cory Doctorow has a great thing about Youtube and other platforms handing out big soft toy bears like at a carnival stall. They hand one or two out early so the people march around the fairground with them showing everyone what they could win if they just go to the right stall and pay the money to play. Then no one else wins the big bears. If you have a spare 50 minutes and want to watch someone articulate everything that is wrong with the modern web this is worth a watch :



In other news:

Successes today: Porsche is now at SCS (will be interesting to see how much THAT costs *eeek*) and I got out the first update for Club RR with the new system. So that is getting back on track.

Non-Successes for today: We've moved forward the release of RR Gathering 2025 information by a week, which was somewhat forced on us by it being revealed somewhere. So that will go our on Sunday after a bit of scrabbling around (was supposed to go out next Sunday, so wasn't tooooo bad).


Other things:
Currently attempting to get this Theme working properly on mobile and tablets so I can put it live for everyone.

Also trying to get a Join Club RR banner sorted so I can actually advertise Club RR.

[skinnylew]

Ooooo excited about the Gathering, might be the first event I can drive to next year (all going well with meds etc)

[b18lou]

Update on the B18c4 Civic Aerodeck project i'm helping with it is now in, now just waiting on driveshafts and getting everything hooked up.

On the bad side i'm back in the midlands and left my impact in Kent. oops (Friend is keeping it safe until i'm down again or they come up my way)