Hobby Thread - May 2, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. As advertised, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) decided on a crowdsourced car repair as a theme for this Hobby Thread. (It also decided on a broader horsepower theme given the running of the Kentucky Derby.)

What are you hobbying?

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.

Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.

And here we are. So it is written, so it shall be done. Think of it like our very own Car Talk (with Click and Clack), Under the Hood or Motor Medics. We can expand to anything with a motor - truck, RV, motorcycle, quad, etc.

Post your ills and mechanical gremlins. Post your stories of cars with unsolvable issues or possessed spirits. Post about things you've always wondered about.

Ideally, the experts among the Horde can join to offer their wisdom and advice. If they don't, the rest of us will make wild and uninformed guesses.

Either way, the advice is be free and Ace of Spades disclaims any responsibility for anything that happens in this thread.

Credit to RandomDave and ARiK for the suggestion.

Let's stick closely to fixing, restoring and and improving things with motors and engines. Having said that, the Kentucky Derby is scheduled to run during the course of the Hobby Thread, so talking natural horsepower will be considered on-topic.

ODB2 Codes:

There are a shocking number of videos on DIY dent repair. Most are awful. This earned a place in the content because the guy uses boiling water and a toilet plunger.

Anyone do this type of repair yourself?

Carburetor knowledge from Destin:

Fuel injector knowledge from Destin:

Engine knowledge from Destin:

You'll need a few tools if you're going to work on your cars. This video is worth watching for the intro alone. I'll let others debate the advice and wisdom.

How tires are made. I was going to include a tire repair video to be consistent with the theme but this was far more interesting.

YouTube is full of channels that fix up damaged cars - usually, the more crazy and infeasible, the better. This thread needed at least a representative of the genre, so this is the most entertaining without going over the top I could find:

"How Hard can it be?"

From the Horde: There are repairs, and then there are repairs.

Before:

After:

Here's one of my current projects, rebuilding the engine for Mrs fd's '95 Nissan 240SX. After 200K miles it was kind of nasty inside. When finished it will look and run brand new. The car is getting a paint job too, after the engine is back in.

I now have the newly re-bored block, polished crank, and rebuilt head sitting on the bench awaiting reassembly, and all the other parts gathered. Hopefully the whole project, bodywork, paint, etc, will be done by the end of the year.

Hat tip: fd

In honor of fd's project, here is SuperfastMatt (if you mix dry humor and a little mad scientist flavor together, you get SuperfastMatt):

Is a demolition derby the automotive equivalent of a Viking burial?

My uncle and first husband entered the destruction derby one year and I was given carte blanche to paint on it. I painted the hood as a sunrise and the trunk as a sunset. And the required stuff. My contribution, lol.

My stepbrother, before his racing days, entered the destruction derby now and then. The only year we didn't go was the only time he ever won. Damn!

And finally, the last destruction derby I attended decades ago, someone entered a gorgeous old woody station wagon and the entire crowd was heartbroken. Some were even talking about heading to the pits to try and buy it before it got wrecked. What a shame.

Hat tip: NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker

This is a 2+ hour video showing a restoration of a 1926 Model T. I was intending to save it for a car restoration theme someday, but the odds of forgetting are high. It is entertaining and included to represent a very different era of automobile.

Since we're talking cars, it is appropriate to acknowledge the passing yesterday of Alex Zanardi.

Alex was a professional racing driver. Until 2001, he was known for his spirit, his smile and laugh, and his unbeatable speed. He racked up open-wheel wins and championships. In 2001, he was involved in this huge crash.

His car is not the blue one to the right coming into the frame at top speed. His car is the red one to the left. All you can see is the front wheels and bodywork. The car was bisected. He was in the back half of the car, but without his legs.

From that point on, he became known for the pivot to survival and recovery. He had an amazing attitude that took him back to racing (sports car and touring car with modified controls) and paralympian cycling (gold medalist).

He may have had no legs, but he had an enormous heart.

RIP Alex.

Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an beekeeping and honey theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Special thanks to all the beekeepers who posted last week. I'm continually amazed by the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience among the Horde.

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.