A flathead six engine on a stand, freshly assembled, the distributor sticking out of the block and the carburetor and six spark plugs on top, with 22 head studs poking up. Doesn' yet run.

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   tom jennings (tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 07:35:13 JST tom jennings

   Ok, ffmeg to the rescue.

   A silly video of the throttle linkage on the Rambler motor. This is 1940 technology. It's just so pleasant to work with.

   Here, it's just loosely assembled. The parts are all over 60 years old they were cheaply made at that time, and the bellcrank has a lot of slop. I will drill it an install acetal bushings in the main pivot. If I wanted to get fancy, which I do not (probably), id do tiny heim joints instead of the dumb L bend and clips.

   Why? The *feel* of a machine coupled to your body with exquisite parts is indescribable. I've driven a (very) few modern performance cars, eg. Porsche Panamera; it's boring and soulless, grossly overmediated, bland machine. Everything it does is perfect. Who cares about "fast"? That was interesting in the 1960's, when hydrodynamics was an Art. Now a credit card buys 2000 hp V10's from the Summit catalog. BORING. And wasteful.

   This carburetor, a Carter YF 2014S, is barely Modern; there's an automatic choke, but that's it. No fast idle, no evap control. I will soon enough replace it with something I can do feedback control of and make it stop stinking when parked. But the simplicity is wonderful.