shit fire im frustrated. i have just come across an opportunity to buy a pair of rare and unobtanium amal GP2 carburetors
(https://i.imgur.com/mXjyqtZl.png)
these are the racing instruments that succeeded the earlier GPs of the 1950s. they were used on the gold stars and the BSA spitfires up to 1966. they are incredibly impractical and were superceded twice because other carbs were developed that were simply better. but obsolete or not, the GPs were magical, a state of the art instrument for their time, in the same way that the P51 mustang was the pinnacle of piston engine aeroplane motors and the colt single action army was the beginning and the end of the naturally pointing 19th century revolver. a technological milestone, fascinating for its own sake as a benchmark in the time line of history.
this pair has the original matchbox remote float chamber and the the original mounting bracket. very rare and very expensive, but its for sale, now, today, complete.
i dont care about the money. what bothers me is that i am 65 years old, and the time spent to tune these carbs to my racing motorcycle is growing less and less each season. they are absolutely beyond the pale of practicality. is there a point to their purchase?
my father died at the age of 69. i am 65 stinking years old, and it will take several seasons to tune these things to perfection and see whether they are any better than the keihin carbs i am runnin gright now.
maybe not. but if i can get them for any kind of a reasonable price, ill buy them anyway and see what i can do, because you can never lose money on a pair of GP2 carburetors. but my problem is the more general one, that i am increasingly having to make decisions about this sort of stuff based on the knowledge that i am likely to be dead soon, and what i leave behind will be an inconsiderate and puzzling dilemma for my lovely wife and children. i think about this every time i contemplate buying a new and obscure tool for the shop, or another motorcycle (i resist that last successfully).
i don't like to cause difficulties for my heirs, but these stinking carbs are a fascinating mental exercise that intrigues me.
i don't care about living. what i am interested in is understanding, the physical world, human culture, people's minds, history and so on. these carbs are an opportunity to comprehend something better, a lost aspect of a lost world of technology.
but its also a lost cause--i ll never understand the world as much as i want to before i die, and these carburetors are a reminder that mortality is inevitably a cut point of unfinished business.
this is a first world problem isnt it
My thought is that you should do it. I think you will always regret it if you don't, as one's regrets are more often than not over the things one did not do, rather than what one did. So what if you don't have much time left? Grab the day.
lol
remind me never to bring you as a chaperone on any weeekend adventure.
but you know what? im re -thinking maybe you would be the ideal advisor.
what the hell. this world is a one ticket ride, after all, and nobody ever stood up from tbeir grave and shouted, i should have been more responsible with my money . . .
the seller has gotten back to me and the deal includes an extra carb body and four extra slides.
im going to go to bed and tomorrow i think i will take your very good advice.
Excellent! You will not regret it.
serilusly now
the only things in my life i regret are when i was mean to people . even when tbey deserved it. 7nnecessary at best. i would try to fix all of those if i could.
but heroically silly adventures into the boundary layer? shirking of reasonable due diligence in all its aspects?
look at me, im all in.
i have emailed the seller and asked him how he wants his money
Quote from: billy rubin on October 24, 2021, 05:24:26 AM
serilusly now
the only things in my life i regret are when i was mean to people . even when tbey deserved it. 7nnecessary at best. i would try to fix all of those if i could.
but heroically silly adventures into the boundary layer? shirking of reasonable due diligence in all its aspects?
look at me, im all in.
i have emailed the seller and asked him how he wants his money
I think we have a deep genetic connection. I am pretty sure if we go back a few years we will find some shared ancestors in Europe.
im american so im a mongrel
swiss, english, german, cherokee, chickasaw, some french hugenots, seems like therebwere some irish too.
my lovely wife is mixed nordic, sweden and norway.
I am also mixed: French and Dutch on my mother's side. My father's family were German Jewish.
I say go for it, you only live once. Buy the carbs.
On another note, in your post you said
QuoteP51 mustang was the pinnacle of piston engine aeroplane motors
I take exception to this statement. I feel the appropriate holder of the title of the ultimate piston-engined fighter aircraft is the Hawker Sea Fury, powered by the mighty Bristol Centaurus 3,000 HP, 18 cylinder sleeve-valve engine. The V-12 Packard Merlins in the P-51 produced only about half that amount of power.
holy shit the hawker was good for 460 mph.
i stand very much corrected.
prettier than this bearcat too
Thanks for posting the video. I think IIRC the Sea Fury in that video is technically not a Sea Fury but is what is known as a Baghdad Fury (one of the de-navalised aircraft sold to Iraq back in the day) without a tail hook and as shown in this video currently painted in the colour scheme of the original Sea Fury prototype. Nevertheless this one still has the Centaurus engine and the five blade Rotel prop. Far too many Sea Furies have been re-engined with Wright or Pratt and Witney engines and four blade Hamilton Standard props. I understand why, parts availability and finding people who know how to work on a sleeve valve engine must be beyond difficult, but the aircraft never looks "right" to my eyes after they do this.
My father flew these back in the fifties and I recently bought him a t-shirt that says "Hawker Sea Fury: 460 MPH of whoop-ass". LOL
I think the Sea Fury is the most beautiful single engined piston powered aircraft ever built, even compared to a lot of people's favourite the Spitfire. Also, I love the sound of round...
My flying days were spent mostly in the not particularly pretty but very strong and effective Grumman S-2G Tracker.
This was made a few weeks before I joined 816 Squadron aboard HMAS Melbourne, I knew the people in the video very well.
Quote from: Bluenose on October 24, 2021, 10:21:42 PM
Far too many Sea Furies have been re-engined with Wright or Pratt and Witney engines and four blade Hamilton Standard props. I understand why, parts availability and finding people who know how to work on a sleeve valve engine must be beyond difficult, but the aircraft never looks "right" to my eyes after they do this.
i understand that completely. the machines are interesting to me because of what they actually were, rather than what they could be now. like owning an MG TD and loving the car and hating the motor so you drop in a . . .
toyota . . .just so you can drive it. if i were dead id roll in my grave. i i dropped a small block chevrolte into my 1950 hudsn once, but it was because i bought the car without an engine.
i confess i think the supermarines are the prettiest fighters of the second war to my eye though. better looking than the mustangs for sure.
for mutli engine stuff though i think the catalinas were among the most graceful of the machines of that era. i dont know what the 1930s had to make so many wonderful machines. the PBY, the DC3, and so on.
https://youtu.be/5UlKsGXifss
I'm getting a raw crotch from straddling the fence between the Supermarine Spitfire or the North American P-51 as the most beautiful design. ;D They each have their pluses and minuses. Since, as a man, I like curves, the Spitfire usually wins out. Both are beautiful planes.
where i last lived in california was in hollister, south of the bay area. my barn was right at the end of the local runway, and there were three or four millionaires that kept their mustangs there. when they took off they went over my head at about 1000 feet.
spectacular machines.
in the summer the water bombers went over too, but they barely made 500 feet. very ungainly looking they seemed, until you watched their pilots stand them on their wingtips to slip into the valleys dumping flame retardant on the wildfires.
Strictly speaking the Sea Fury was not a WWII aircraft, only entering service in 1947, so Ill grant you the Spit as the most attractive WWII bird. Of course that's really only splitting hairs. LOL
I agree with you about the Catalina, a beautiful aircraft for sure. As for Daks, there was one of these on the flight-line of VC-851 when I was on that squadron that had its nose replaced by the radome from a de Havilland Sea Venom as a former training aircraft. I got so used to that aircraft that ever since normal DC-3s look snub-nosed to me. ::)
(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adf-gallery.com.au%2Fgallery3%2Fvar%2Falbums%2FDakota%2FDakota-N2-43%2FME_N2_43a.jpg&hash=fd6e12839a407a2d71649cdd5a9500da3b62b235)
I reckon that the P40s were good looking too. Not equal to the Japanese Zeros but they are revered old airplanes that Chenault made good use of.
interesting lookin at the p40 and comparing it the wright bros plane of only 35 years earlier
https://images.app.goo.gl/QcKzqS9q4hbBWthj6
https://images.app.goo.gl/orwLNoKKasbHegidA
tremendous change in a short time
i didnt know where to put this
https://m.facebook.com/MarionMayhem/videos/420616493092286/?extid=CL-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&refsrc=deprecated&ref=sharing&_rdr
my number one son spent today having a good old time with his buddies. here hes the one with the blue shield
there are limitations on legal blows. you are not allowed to use the tip, for instance, because tips can easily penetrate unptotected areas, just like they used to.
hes waving this broadsword around, but his preferred weapon is a long handled axe
lol
he just sent me another. his axe is really as much a war hammer as it is an axe
https://m.facebook.com/MarionMayhem/videos/2196107860548357/?extid=CL-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&refsrc=deprecated&ref=sharing&_rdr
this shit is why he wears those $1400 gauntlets4
^ :wtf:
Go for it, to get to 68 and thinking you had wished you did it at 65 is no way to live.
hah
youre okay by me
Denny, take note that Billy is suicidal in a different way. He uses ancient motorcycles to compete in speed record events.
It is said that there is no fool like an old fool. I am eminently qualified in that regard because I have done some really crazy stuff too. Besides, I am old enough to have participated in the war against the Visigoths.
see, your sense of humour could incite suicide among some people