#and I found a 40s radio model that also matches perfectly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dipulb3 · 3 years

Text

The 2022 Hyundai Tucson is the new compact crossover segment leader

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/the-2022-hyundai-tucson-is-the-new-compact-crossover-segment-leader-2/

The 2022 Hyundai Tucson is the new compact crossover segment leader

The new Hyundai Tucson is fantastic both to drive and look at.

Daniel Golson/Roadshow

Hyundai isn’t falling into the industry-typical habit of making all its new cars look like Russian dolls. From the Sonata to the Palisade to the Elantra, every new Hyundai debut is more interesting than the last. But they’re more than just great pieces of design — these products are well-rounded, too. The 2022 Tucson crossover isn’t just Hyundai’s latest model, it’s the company’s best one yet.

Radical exterior styling

Supercomfortable ride

Impressive interior design

Loads of features and tech

Don’t Like

Tepid four-cylinder engine

Touch controls aren’t for everyone

Crossovers can be cool, too

Like the new Sonata and Elantra, the Tucson will surely be divisive, but I absolutely love it. Easily the most striking part of the design is the Tucson’s face. The wing-shaped “parametric design” front grille has angular inserts and a dark chrome-ish finish, and the LED running lights and turn signals are integrated into the grille, appearing hidden when off. Meanwhile, the main headlights and high beams are in the larger pods in the lower bumper. It’s a distinctive solution and looks awesome, especially at night.

The 2022 Hyundai Tucson is a radically styled compact SUV

See all photos

The rest of the Tucson is cool, too. It’s got squared-off wheel arches reminiscent of the Lamborghini Countach — yes, really — and lots of intense character lines and surfacing details. My Tucson’s Amazon Gray paint has tons of metal flake and looks green under direct sunlight, showing off the lines perfectly. The greenhouse is accented by a spearlike chrome strip that gets thicker at the D-pillar, but otherwise there’s not a lot of jewelry. The slash-shaped taillights have a unique signature and are connected by a full-width light bar, and the placement of the Hyundai badge in the rear glass is interesting.

Globally the 2022 Tucson is offered with two different wheelbase lengths, but we only get the longer one in the US. The 2022 model is 6.1 inches longer, 0.6 inch wider and 0.6 inch taller than the outgoing Tucson, and it’s on a 3.4-inch-longer wheelbase. Passenger volume and cargo space are up, too, besting the Toyota RAV4 in both metrics but falling a little short of the Honda CR-V. The rear is especially roomy, with reclining seat backs that easily fold flat and a fold-down armrest with cup holders and storage. The cargo area also has an adjustable load floor with two height levels.

The Tucson gives us Lamborghini Countach vibes.

Daniel Golson/Roadshow

An interior you need to touch

While more restrained than the exterior, the Tucson’s interior still stands out. It has a waterfall dashboard design with thin air vents that wrap all the way around the rectangular dash and onto the door cards, and a large center panel that houses the infotainment system and climate controls. Most trims get analog gauges with a 4.2-inch display in the center, but optional on the SEL and standard on the Limited is a nice 10.3-inch digital instrument cluster. The Limited also gets a push-button gear selector instead of the physical shifter found on the other trims.

Cloth upholstery is standard, and the base Tucson has plastic door panels, but supportive leather seats and soft-touch door cards are standard on the Limited and available on the SEL. I definitely prefer the two-tone light gray and black color scheme you see here, as the interior looks more sterile in all black. One of my favorite details is the Limited’s cool fabric inserts on the door panels and on the dash in front of the passenger; I wish that material had been used more throughout the interior.

The base Tucson uses an 8-inch touchscreen, but Limited models like my car get a 10.3-inch display running the same fantastic infotainment system that’s found in a number of other Hyundai Motor Group products like the Santa Fe and the Kia K5. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard across the board, but only cars with the 8-inch screen get wireless CarPlay. The large display looks really good and is super snappy, and I like that you can swipe over to a simple display that just shows the clock and exterior temperature info. It’s also got fun features like nature soundscapes, and there’s a quiet mode for the audio that focuses the noise on the driver.

This is an extremely nice place to be.

Daniel Golson/Roadshow

While the lower-end Tucsons have a bunch of physical buttons and knobs, the Limited replaces them with an entirely touch-sensitive panel for the climate, audio and infotainment controls, and a digital display for the temperature and fan speed. I’d like a home button for the infotainment and want the buttons to have some sort of force feedback, but they’re easy to get used to. You can hold your finger on a button to quickly adjust fan speed or volume, and I love that Hyundai has multiple intensities for the automatic climate control.

Comfort over corner carving

The Tucson’s standard powertrain is a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-4 paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission. It makes 187 horsepower and 178 pound-feet of torque, nearly identical to the Honda CR-V’s turbo motor and 16 hp and 6 lb-ft less than the RAV4’s four-cylinder engine. Front-wheel drive is standard, but my test car has the optional $1,400 all-wheel-drive system that has variable torque distribution. This engine is perfectly fine around town and on the highway, but it certainly doesn’t make the Tucson quick or sporty-feeling. The transmission can be sluggish to downshift, but at least the Limited comes with paddle shifters.

The Tucson’s steering is both lightly weighted and light on feedback, and there’s a good amount of body roll in the corners. But what this crossover lacks in sportiness it makes up for in comfort. Even on the Limited’s 19-inch wheels the Tucson soaks up bumps and rough surfaces, delivering a superb ride that’s smoother than any of its competitors — even the refined Mazda CX-5. It’s luxury-car quiet on the inside, too, though the noisy engine sometimes cuts through that serenity under hard acceleration.

The Tucson’s rear seat reclines and folds flat.

Daniel Golson/Roadshow

The EPA rates the Tucson at 26 mpg city, 33 mpg highway and 29 mpg combined for the front-drive model, while the AWD Tucson is rated at 24/29/26. In mostly stop-and-go city driving I average about 22 mpg, but on a long drive from Los Angeles to Bakersfield I match the Tucson’s 29-mpg highway figure — and that’s at 85 mph with elevation changes and the air conditioning on.

Every Tucson trim level is available with a new hybrid setup that pairs a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder with an electric motor for a total of 261 hp, and it’s rated at nearly 40 mpg. While I haven’t had a chance to drive the Tucson hybrid yet, with turbo response, more power and better efficiency, it might be the powertrain to get. But there’s also a plug-in hybrid on the way with 261 hp and 32 miles of electric range, and the recently revealed Santa Cruz pickup, which is based on the Tucson, has an available turbo-four engine with 281 hp and 311 lb-ft that’s paired with an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. Tucson N, anyone?

Lots of bang for your buck

The base Tucson SE starts at $26,135 including $1,185 for destination, making it cheaper than rivals from Honda and Toyota. It comes with full-LED front lighting, automatic headlights and high beams, 17-inch wheels, keyless entry, automated emergency braking with pedestrian detection, lane-keeping assist with lane centering, a tilt and telescoping steering wheel, a pair of front-passenger USB outlets and HD radio.

Upper trims get a 10.3-inch screen and touch controls.

Daniel Golson/Roadshow

Jumping up to the $27,685 SEL nets you LED taillights, push-button start, adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go capability, two USB outlets in the rear, heated side mirrors, a powered driver’s seat, heated front seats, auto up/down front windows, satellite radio, blind-spot assist, rear cross-traffic assist and a number of aesthetic improvements. A $2,600 Convenience package adds things like a hands-free power liftgate, 19-inch wheels, a sunroof, that digital gauge cluster, a leather-wrapped shifter and steering wheel, 10-color ambient lighting, dual-zone automatic climate control and wireless charging. There’s also a $1,700 Premium package with leather seats, ventilated front seats, a Bose audio system and the dark chrome grille. Then there’s a $31,785 N Line trim that builds off the SEL and its packages with more aggressive exterior styling, unique interior trimmings and sportier tuning for the suspension and steering, though it doesn’t add any extra power.

The fully loaded $35,885 Limited model like I have includes features and tech items that would have been unheard of in an affordable compact crossover not even 10 years ago. In addition to everything from those SEL packages, it adds a panoramic sunroof, more exterior brightwork, a 360-degree camera and parking sensors, Hyundai’s Digital Key phone app, memory for the driver’s seat, a powered passenger seat, rain-sensing wipers, remote smart park, 64-color interior ambient lighting, blind-spot cameras that display in the gauge cluster, heated rear seats and a heated steering wheel, and Hyundai’s Level 2 Highway Driving Assist system. Strangely, one feature that the Tucson doesn’t have is auto up/down rear windows, which is a weird omission given how much other fancy stuff you can get.

The 2022 Hyundai Tucson’s styling won’t be for everyone, and that’s OK. I think it’s better to stand out and be memorable than to be anonymous and fade into the background, especially in such a packed and traditionally boring segment. If you’re into the angular looks — or can at least get past them — the redesigned Tucson offers the best mix of tech, features, refinement and value of any new compact crossover today.

0 notes

fapangel · 7 years

Note

WWII planes question- which is better, machine guns or cannon? Followup, does this change based on what country you are and therefore available guns? Do some kinds of planes like one more than the other?

Oh boy, a good fighterplane question! This exact question has been the subject of intenseand furious debate both during the war years, and especially amongmodern simulation nerds and angry Wehraboos.

Aerial gunnery has a great number of factors toconsider - destructive potential against the target, exteriorballistics, (which affect accuracy and range,) weight of fire, ammosupply/duration of fire, reliability and redundancy, and especiallythe weight efficiency of the armament - destructive potential perpound, which affects how much performance you sacrifice to lug theguns around. I'll get into the technical discussion of all thosefactors and how they manifested in different guns/aircraft during thewar, but there's two big caveats to cover first.

First - one must remember that to a significantdegree, questions of destructive power, accuracy, ballistics, et al.were a moot point, as most pilots didn't have the skill to reliablyland deflection shots (or snapshots, for that matter,) and weretrained to fill their windscreen with the enemy before firing. Fromdead astern at 50 yards, it really doesn't matter whatyou are shooting. There's outliers - such as Japanese Zeros with twin7.7mm pecking away at Wildcats - but those were the exception.

Second -for all the obsessive sperging various internet autists have lavishedon the topic, actual combat experience reminds us that weaponry mustbe matched to the target. On lend-lease.ru, one of the most valuableresources I've ever found on the internet, Soviet fighter pilot N. G.Golodnikov (who flew I-16s,Hurricanes, P-40s and P-39s during the war) saysbluntly that they quickly removed the .30 caliber guns from the wingsof their (early-model) lend-lease P-40s to save weight, as theyfound the twin Browning .50caliber machine guns in the cowling to be more than sufficient!Against the light, mostly unarmored Luftwaffe fighters they werecontending with - and the ranges they were shooting at - twin .50swere more than enough. (Theywould repeat this with their lend-lease P-39s.)

Now, for thetechnical discussion. Machineguns/autocannons have to make tradeoffs between several categories ofperformance - weight of shell fired, muzzle velocity, rate of fire,and gun weight. For instance, compare the famous 20mm Japanese Type99 Mark I - an incredibly weight-efficient weapon at only 51 pounds(the American aircraft version of the Browning, the AN/M2, weighedmoreat 61 pounds!!) It paid for this, however, witha terrible muzzle velocity of only 600m/s and sluggish rate-of-fire,only 520 rounds a minute - but the weight efficiency was crucialfor the power-challenged Zero, which kept it light enough thatmaneuverability more than compensated for the cannon's ballistics bysetting up point-blank shots. Compare that to the SovietShVAK 20mm cannon, which was similar to the Hispano or the MG/151-, a good rate of fire (800 rounds/minute, equal to the AN/M2,) anice, high muzzle velocity - but heavy, at a solid 40kg(88 pounds). The reasons for all this were fairly simple - to achievea higher muzzle velocity, the barrel and action had to contain moregas pressure from a more powerful cartridge (and possibly a longerbarrel), in turn requiring a stronger action/chamber, which meantthicker, which meantheavier. Likewise, anaction capable of cycling faster had to be stronger to survive theheavier battering it took, and the heavier the shells it was slamminginto the breech, the harder this was - so a higher ROF required moreweight as well. (This tended to synergize with better muzzlevelocity, as the action was already stronger for that reason aloneand the extra gas power available helped with loading - but you couldstill trade ROF for weight even then. The Japanese Type99 Mark 2 is a good demonstration of that; delivering a solid750m/s at only 34kg/75 pounds, but with an abysmal 480 rounds/minuteROF; worse than the original!)

Clearly, anyconceivable combination of tradeoffs could (and were) made, for alldifferent purposes. Both the Soviets and the Germans installed veryhigh-velocity, high-power, heavycannons on ground-attack aircraft (NS-37and BK-3,7respectively,) for tank-busting, as the only precision(non-cluster, non-napalm)direct-fire munition available for hitting hardened, mobile pointtargets was a cannon. (The famous GAU-8 of A-10 fame is the finallegacy of that dynamic - it didn't die till the PGM revolutionarrived!) And of course evenbigger cannons were used (57mm on the “Teste” Mosquito foranti-shipping work, the 75mms in B-25s, etc.) But these aren'tdebated over as they're clearly specialized weapons for specializedtasks that no other gun could accomplish.

Thus, the onlyapplication machine guns and cannons were really competing in wasfighter-bomber armament, and therefore that's where the debate did -and does - center. Since the monster guns mentioned above were simplytoo massive and heavy to be practical or useful on fighters, thislimits discussionto medium and heavy caliber machine guns versus20mm to 30mm cannons.

Again, we shouldremember that at close-range, bothends of this spectrum were perfectly lethal -asGolodnikov attests, rifle-caliber machine guns, with their impressivehigh rate of fire, could actually cut tails and wings right off enemyaircraft if you weren't stingy with ammo. Onthe far opposite end of the spectrum, he observed that the37mm M-4s horrid ballistics andROF didn'tmatter if you simply closed in close before firing. Ofcourse rifle-caliber machine guns had problems penetrating deep intobombers from the stern angle, big slow cannons were poor for takingsnapshots and both would've benefited greatly from the optionof effective long-range fire. Plus,these extremes of heavy cannon/light MG were usually mixed with heavyMG/light cannon to cover any weaknesses (Spitfires with .303s and20mm, Yak-9s with 12.7mms and 20mm cannon, etc.) Thoseexamples, in turn, show that the “balancing” armament was almostalways 12.7mm-13mm heavy machine guns, or 20mm high-velocity cannons- because both had high muzzle velocities, good rates of fire andwere flexibly potent against almost any target, ground or air.

In short, thewhole thing really boils down to 12.7mm HMGs versus 20mm cannons, andthat's where most of the debate has centered.Thisis especially because US forces explored moving to 20mm-primaryarmaments during the war, and because Wehraboos are eager to assertthe 20mm master race's ascendancyover .50 dumb yankee scum. Comparinghigh-velocity 20mms(Hispano/ShVAK/MG-151) versus 12.7-13mm, (MG-131, AN/M2,Berezin UB,) onefinds their external ballistics and ROF to be roughly similar; cannonvelocities ranging from 700-840m/s to machine-guns 750-890m/s, andROFsfrom 700-900 rounds/minute. Cannonshad far superior boom, of course, but also weighed as much as twomachine guns at least - so the argument, ultimately, comes to this:are cannons betteror worse than an equivalent weight of HMGs?

TheUsual Suspects passionately argue for the greater efficiency ofcannon with various metrics - often trying to quantify thedestructive power of the guns in some arbitrary fashion (total joulesof energy delivered over time and such) whichare further spun into firepower/weight coefficients like so.These analysiesare clean, neat, fully quantifiable, and have about as much bearingon reality as “muh stoppanpower” 9mm vs. .45 arguments do.They tell you nothing about howmunitions actually destroy a target. Aircraftare destroyed in one of two ways:

1.Score an effective hit against one of the three critical systems(engine, fuel tank, pilot.)2. Destroy theairframe's integrity.

Cannonsare obviously the most effective at #2, as their high-explosiveshells detonated on impact and did blast/frag damage to the immediatestructure. How many hits were required depended on the target and hitlocation, of course, and I couldn't find anything like authoritativeinformation, but my gut feeling is that, onaverage:

*four 20mm cannon strikes on a wing will probably do the job (more forbigger/tougher planes, less if they hit the wing root, which is alsowhere fuel tanks usually were,)

*two to the elevator(rendering the ship uncontrollable,)

*two to four to the empennage, toblow it off,

*one or two for a liquid-cooled in-line, two to four for a radial,

*oneinthe cockpit (the angles this is possible from depend on theaircraft's cockpit armoring,)

-and the fuselage... differs,sincethe fuselage aft of the pilot seat/radio was mostly empty space. Themore of it there is, the more hits required to make it crumple up.Plus,compared to the wing spars, the fuselage bears less structuralload in the air (which is why at least one B-17 camehome with a massive hole in its side just fine, but cracked in halfafter landing.) Asan example, Thunderbolt ace Robert S. Johnson's P-47 soaked up atleast24 20mm cannon shells from a Bf-109 sitting dead astern and hisship still came home (as he states in his autobiography, at leastthree detonated against the armor in the seat-back, meaning they flewthrough existing holes in the fuselage.) He also took fiveshells in the right wing, four in the left, two to the empennage(blowing away half his rudder,) andone shell that detonated in the cockpit, near his left hand. Soaccording to my cute list, Johnson should've been dead ten timesover, P-47 ruggedness or no. Thisalso demonstrates that dispersionmaters; hadthose five shells in his right wing all landed close together nearthe wing root...? (Alsonote that 20mm cannons couldanddid utilize AP or semi-AP ammo to go for the three critical systems,but this reduced their HE effect, and without the volume-of-firemachine guns enjoyed, getting hits in the right places was harder.For air-to-air they tended to stick with HE.)

Heavymachine guns, on the other hand, are king of kill option #1, as theywere often mounted in greater numbers, fired faster, and oftenbecause ofdispersion (from wing-mounted guns vibrating and/or convergenceissues,) they generally had far greater chances of landing a goldenBB somewhere important (like the pilot's skull.) This was enhanced bytheir armor-piercing ability - since they carried no fuzed explosive,they'd pop right through a fighter's aluminum skin and keep goingtill they met something substantial - like afuel tank, or thepilot. And they were typically AP-I (armor-piercing incendiary) toensure they'd do something nasty once they got there. Agood concentrated burst to a wing root or tail could indeed do enoughstructural damage to destroy the aircraft, but it was mucheasier to just go for the fuel tanks, engine, or pilot himself.

Thisall was exacerbated by the other tradeoffs cannons and machine gunsbrought - cannons are far more volumeefficient,which was vital for aircraft like the Bf-109 (you don't reallyrealize how small a Bf-109 was till you meet one in a museum.)Especially for the 109 and its thin wings, mountings were limited tothe propeller hub, the cowling, and the wing roots, almost mandatingcannon to achieve sufficient firepower. Incidentally, it meant thattheir whole armament had zero or near-zero convergence (same for theFW-190,) which allowed exploitation of the gun's full range (againstbombers) and with concentrating damage on target for good effects.(Evenplanes with a choice of mountings, like the Spit and Hurricane,mounted cannons in the wing roots for that reason.) Machine guns,naturally, were limited to two 12.7/13mms in the cowling at best, andthe rest in the wings, where greater vibration and the necessity ofconvergence dispersed their pattern a lot more. (Pre/Early war USaircraft had two .50s in the cowling and the .30 cals in the wings,before the six-fifties armament debuted.)

Thenconsider the targetsthey were shooting at - Americans were trying to nail fast, nimblelittle German fighters that had modest to no armoring, and Germanswere shooting at lumbering bombers and... well, fuckingP-47s.The Germans, twiceover, had literally no other choice for armament but cannons.

Whichbrings us back to the Wehraboos again and their favorite pasttime -bagging on the US Army Air Corps for not going all-20mm. Theyloveto give the Browning AN/M2 shit, because it was relatively heavy27.6kg(61lbs)and had a relatively low rate-of-fire (750-850 rounds a minute.) Thatdoesn't compare well to the best aircraft-mounted heavy machine gunof the war, the Russian BerezinUB, at 21.5kg (47.4 lbs,) with a ROF of800for prop-synchronized guns and up to 1050 for wing-mounts.It even had good muzzle velocity. (TheGerman MG131 weighed a mere 37 pounds and fired at a hefty 900 rounds aminute, but paid for it dearlywith a horridvelocity fo 700m/s - this was mostly because the gun had to be tinyto fit in the Bf-109s cowling.) Soyou get a lot of shitposting about how four Hispano-Suiza cannons(weight unloaded, 368 lbs or so) would've far better than six AN/M2Brownings (366pounds unloaded or thereabouts.)

Asusual, theWehraboos are always wrong.

Entirelyaside from the Hispano being a twitchy,jam-o-matic pile of shit who's need for armorer hand-fitting andbabying doomedUS efforts to reliably mass-produce it, QUAD-DAMAGE isn't thepanacea it's made out to be. One limitation is that cannons really,really don't fit in cowlings so well, which is why the FW-190 carriedtwo MG 151s in the wing roots, and two wing-mounted guns (which hadthe usual convergence problem, but without the rate/volume of fire tomitigate it and less volumeto store ammo.) They also have more vibration, and thus dispersion,further complicating one's efforts to land sufficient concentrationof firepower to blow important bits off a plane.

Still,four cannons is afantastic amount of firepower, and the volume of fire (actual numberof bullets in the air) wasenough to make higher angle deflection shots and snapshots a lot morelikely to land hits... unlessone of them jammed (especiallywith the damn Hispano.) The AN/M2 might've been heavy, but it alsoinherited the ground-based M2's rock-solid reliability. Thicker,heavier chamber, barrel, and so on isn't great for weight, but italso makes a gun a lot more tolerant of temperature extremes, poorammo lots, gremlins, negative space wedgies etc. Plus,you had redundancy. Ifone gun jammed, you were down 1/6th your firepower; if one cannonjammed, you were down by 1/4th.

Andthen there's dispersal problems. “Convergence” relates to theneed to aim wing-mounted guns inward sotheir rounds all land in the same place some fixed distance ahead.The closer to centerline the guns are (such as in the wing root) thelesser the angle, and the tighter the pattern will be further awayfrom the perfect “convergence range.” Closer or further away andthe rounds land in a wider pattern, which can significantlyaffect lethality. As theWikipedia page shows, convergence schemes that aimed to maximizeeffectiveness over the widest span of ranges abounded. Theycould get pretty complex. Pilots/units could also modify them toaccount for changing theater conditions, differenttactics or even personal preference.

Withfour cannons, however, the wing-root mounts have only slightconvergence issues, and the wing-mounted ones could converge at...one point. (Assuming ships like the P-51 could've installed cannonsin the wing-root at all; withthat thin laminar-flow wing, I'm not sure they would've fit...) Gunswere typically harmonized in pairs (one on each wing) so thesix-fifties gave you three possible convergences, and the cannons,two. The machine guns couldexploit their greater volume of fire to cover more sky withlead, which made a bigdifference when taking snap-shots or high-angle deflection shots.Cannons, with their lower volume of fire, really needed toconcentrate their firepower on one point to achieve proper structuraldestruction (you could mix AP/HE or all AP, but then you were reducing your target from the entire aircraft to the three criticalsystems...) More dispersed fire is superior for deflection shots(especially as rounds are coming in from higher angles that can rakethe whole planform, giving you the whole smorgesboard of criticalsystems to aim for - and there's no armor on the top of the canopy!)Conversely, cannons are better for delivering lots of firepower fast,when you don't have time for a leisurely tracking shot (especiallyrelevant with the sanic acceleration of most German fighters, beforeyou factor in boom'n'zoom fighting - play a simulator and you'll seewhat I mean-) but American fighters suited to boom’n’zoom were not volume-challenged and could set all their guns on asingle close-range convergence to achieve similar results (such asthe FUCKIT WE'RE GOING TO 8 GUNS Jug.)

Andthe final clincher was the AN/M2s muzzle velocity of 890m/s - prettymuch the best of the war (even the UB only clocked in at 814.) Theflatter trajectory made deflection shooting easier, but only incomparison to other HMGs, not M2-versus-Hispano; the Hispano made upfor its other failings here with an 870m/s velocity, leaving even theexcellentShVAK in the dust. Nordid this matter much for distance; a pair of cowling mounted .50s aren't going to out-snipewing-root mounted Hispanos. But it did matter for actual firepower,as it gave the excellent .50 calAP-I rounds that much more oomph to penetrate - sometimesthrough a decent amount of fuselage structure and reinforcements tohit a fuel tank or engine on the other side. Whenyou're spreading lead around to maximize the chances of the goldenBB, the performance of each BB matters - andthe US had the hardest-hitting HMG of the war to use.

There'salways porquenolosdos.png of course - had the Germans managed to makea sufficient number of heavy bombers that didn't conveniently setthemselves on fire,and had the Hispano not been a French fustercluck, four .50 calibersin the wings and two 20mms in the wing-roots would've been theabsolute best of both worlds (imagine a Spitfire with four .50sinstead of six .303s and the same cannons.)

Soin the context of the perennial WWII argument - which I'm sure you'veheard before - I find it a realstretch to say that cannons were superior to the six-fifties -especially considering that American pilots didn't have heavy bomberformations to fight. Andspeaking in general, thechoice really, really rides on what your intended targets are, andespecially on what you can actually fit into the aircraft inquestion. A HMG/cannoncombo is hard to beat. Two synchronized low-ROF, low-velocity 13mmscrammed into the cowling aren't gonna cut it alone, but if you've gota bigger plane to fit something like Brownings (as the Soviets did,with early P-40s and P-39s) or you just cram twice as many in thewings, it's great. The Germans had room for neither, so QUAD-CANNONwas really the closest they could get to that ideal loadout - andgiven their aircraft's sanic acceleration, suitability for energytactics and heavy bomber formations to contend with, it probably wasthe ideal armament.

So, in general -

- if you’re in a fast-accelerating fighter that likes to boom’n’zoom, your firing windows will be short, at close range, so deflection shooting is minimized and weight of fire matters the most, as you’ve little time to deliver enough dakka to kill the target. Advantage - cannons. Head-on attacks against a heavy bomber are identical.

- if you’re in a slower-accelerating fighter that can actually turn, you’ll often be taking “tracking” shots, with plenty of time to pour fire into someone; the challenge will be aiming and scoring. Advantage - machine guns.

- if you’re flying an interceptor, a cannon/machine gun combo is highly desirable, as you’ll want long-range (400, 500m!) firepower to engage bombers, and machine-guns to deal with fighters. A perfect example is the Spitfire.

Cannonsand machine-guns eventually merged when Soviet MiG-15s met AmericanF-86s over Korea and both found their armament wanting. Withthe speed of jets, F-86s couldn't put enough firepower into a MiGwith just machine guns, and the slow-firing cannons of MiGs justcouldn't put enough bullets into the air to land a hit. This isprecisely why the modern rotary-barreled 20mm aircraft cannon wasdeveloped - it's a merging of the machine-gun's ROF and the cannon'sfirepower in one package.

5 notes · View notes

makemoneyonlineprofit-blog · 5 years

Text

Meet the Entrepreneur Ushering Vinyl Into the 21st Century

https://120profit.com/?p=2204&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr As a teenager, VNYL founder and CEO Nick Alt worked at a record store in his Ohio hometown. It would be a dream job for any music lover, but for Alt, that gig was formative: Not only did it serve his passion for interacting with people, but it also helped him develop a skill for understanding their musical tastes and introducing them to the artists they may not have otherwise discovered. Years later, Alt would funnel his passion for music and record curation into VNYL, a monthly record subscription service that launched in 2015. The concept of a monthly subscription service may not be new—everything from your smoothies to your skincare products to your dog toys can be delivered straight to your door—but VNYL’s relentlessly personalized experience certainly is. Every month, VNYL members receive one or more records chosen by an in-house expert, based on their tastes, preferences, and current record collection; and that information is based on information they’ve provided themselves, as well as data culled across several of their social platforms. (As a bonus, they’ll get a handwritten note from the curator explaining their picks and why they’ll love them.) For Alt, nailing down this unusual combination of software and retail took time, experimentation, and lots of love-driven labor. Here’s how he did it. Entrepreneurial Beginnings Professionally, Alt came up in the age of early web development and video. In 2006 he founded Clear-Media, a video production agency that happened to work with several hospitality-focused clients. That service-based work resonated with Alt; it harkened back to his clerking days of putting the customer at the center of his efforts. On a practical level, it taught him the importance of developing a product with the goal of solving the customer’s pain point—not solely from the desire to strike gold. Soon Alt ventured into software, eventually developing award-winning apps, like Appetites, an instructional cooking app that was the first to feature video from a point-of-view perspective. Alt then parlayed those skills into creating an iPad/iPhone tool for video creators. That, too, proved successful; in 2013, his company Echograph® was bought by Vimeo. While his extensive experience in the digital space was rewarding, Alt still found himself itching to get back into the music world. Then he came up with an idea that would seamlessly blend his software experience with his passion for music, as well as his deep understanding of customer-based products. That idea became VNYL, a bespoke subscription service that delivers its 10,000+ customers with new records every month. Founding VNYL Like most businesses, VNYL started with the desire to address a couple of problems that, Alt decided, didn’t need to be problems at all—they just needed to be inventively solved. As a music lover, Alt recognized that there were a ton of talented musicians out there. But if they were unsigned or on very small indie labels, these artists didn’t have the ability to reach their target audiences as widely and effectively as, say, a Top 40 artist would. How could other music lovers discover these bands, Alt thought—and ensure that these bands are aligned exactly with their tastes—on a regular basis? “I saw that there was a problem inherently with music discovery. Unless you’re someone like Ed Sheeran, it becomes very hard to reach fans and find your intended audience. The old business of music was a firehose approach: We used to discover music by way of radio and radio promotion, and that would lead us to a single point of purchase, which was the record store. And that would allow people to experience the music for free, and then go and buy that artist. When that all imploded with the age of the internet, I’m not sure that anyone re-thought or reinvented that model.” The solution, Alt found, was in part to leverage valuable customer data that was already available. “In the age of streaming, a lot of that data is available to third parties, but most people don’t really know what to do with it,” Alt says. “I translated that into a music subscription box.” How Does VNYL Work? How exactly does VNYL retrieve all the necessary data to create a box tailored exactly for you? It’s a combination of that readily available streaming data, information you provide yourself, and the work of a VNYL curator. Here’s how it works: When you sign up for VNYL, you’ll choose a plan—the Solo, which sends you one record per month; the Trio (three per month); the Triple Triple (nine records over three months); or the BFF (36 over the course of a year). Then, you can hook up your Spotify, Discogs, SoundCloud, Last.fm, and Rdio accounts so your curator can take a peek into what you’re regularly listening to. You also have the option of linking your Instagram and Twitter accounts so the VNYL staff can get a holistic understanding of your tastes and lifestyle. In addition to that digital data, you’ll also answer questions about your current record collection, the type of record player you have, which genres you’re into, which artists you like and dislike, and any other information you’d like the curators to know about your musical tastes that would better inform their decisions. Every month, you’ll also choose a marquee record or mood that becomes that month’s #vibe, which sets the tone for the rest of your month’s records. But if that month’s vibes don’t resonate with you, you can simply choose the #curated option, in which case VNYL’s team will choose a record based on the information you provide in your profile. So what makes VNYL special—and effective—is that this service isn’t powered solely by predictive metadata. In addition to that data, VNYL’s curators, whom Alt calls “modern record store clerks,” pore over these customer profiles to match them up with the artists in VNYL’s record catalogue that they think they’ll love. “At any given time we have a few hundred titles in our inventory that refreshes monthly, so that gives us plenty of variety to match up the right music to the right customers,” Alt says. “The VNYL staff is about six curators at any given time, and historically that’s the magic number for us to service upwards of 10,000 customers at a time. Sometimes we’ll need to scale up or down. But every piece of that information is not being driven by metadata or BPM—it’s all being driven by real humans who take the time to review a customers profile from day one.” As Alt mentions, VNYL maintains their own, physical vinyl inventory, which they purchase “from anyone who’s manufacturing them. That could be a major label like Sony, or it can be from a large assortment of independent labels.” In keeping with VNYL’s mission to deliver artists’ music right into their target customers hands, occasionally VNYL buys their inventory right from the artists themselves—if, that is, the artist is “scrappy enough to produce their own records. “We love to find new content that way,” Alt says of these artists. “Often, we’ll even assist artists in producing their own vinyl. In the age of digital, there’s no shortage of amazing music out there, but I would imagine that less than 10% of the music has been made available on vinyl or a physical disc. Again, the goal here is to service our customers, as well as the artists who are like, ‘I’m killing myself making all this music, but where am I supposed to put it? I’m not really differentiated in the age of Spotify and Apple Music.’” What’s So Special About V(i)nyl? When Alt first created VNYL, he didn’t necessarily set out to create a subscription service centered around vinyl. Rather, he started with the problem that needed solving, and worked up from there. That said, vinyl has been undergoing a resurgence in recent years. Leveraging its revitalization perfectly aligned with Alt’s idea for a consumer-focused subscription service, as well as his desire to return to the music world for his next venture. The physical product wasn’t the inspiration behind the company’s name, either. Instead, it was what that tangible object represents: a human-to-human interaction. On a personal level, Alt found that a connection with the customer was what was missing from his years of building apps from behind a screen. “When I named the company VNYL, it wasn’t because we were shipping vinyl records; it was the sentiment that vinyl represents. There was an age when you went to the record store and had an interaction with the clerk. We want to re-create that sentiment. We can kind of act as your friend in town. We can say, ‘Hey, we know what she likes, and here are some things that are definitely not going to pop up on the front page of Apple Music or in your Discover Weekly on Spotify.’ That’s huge and unique and awesome, and it’s very tangible, too.” Incidentally, that sentiment echoes Alt’s beliefs about entrepreneurship. “That’s fundamental to building businesses: It’s about knowing your customer and trying to solve a problem for you them. As shockingly simple as that sounds, there’s no shortage of businesses that exist that don’t really line up with that, so it’s hard for them to grow and scale unless they look at themselves from that perspective.” That said, Alt is a true believer in the pleasure of experiencing music on vinyl—which, as you’ll know if you own a record player (or did years ago), is a superior listening experience to piping a song through your phone or laptop’s tiny speakers. “I’ve collected vinyl for decades, and this format makes a lot of sense to me. It makes so much sense to us as humans, for some reason. It sounds different, it feels different, and it has this romance and charm to it. It’s literally the first format in which music became commercially available, and I don’t think people understand how special it is from that regard. ” Part of Alt’s goal, then, became not only to contribute to vinyl’s renewed popularity, but to remove the elitism that’s grown up around that resurgence and make vinyl accessible to all music lovers. “There’s this whole cohort of music buyers who consider themselves the ‘musical elite,’” Alt says. “Their tastes are precise, they focus on technicalities like fidelity and sound quality, and they’ve established what they do and don’t consider ‘good’ music. But the music business was never built on the people who are often attached to this so-called vinyl resurgence; the music, artists, were built off of fans who were impassioned and felt the emotional effects of the music, who could get into the deeper meaning of the songs. It’s a very special experience for people, and that’s what we’re going for as a business. Our overall pursuit is simply trying to expose everyone to awesome music.” Finding New Solutions In VNYL, Alt hit upon a model that achieved his goal of building a customer-centric business that delivered music directly into the right customers’ hands, and which made vinyl accessible to all. Or, almost all. To experience vinyl (or VNYL), of course, you need a record player. So, a couple of years after VNYL launched, Alt developed TRNTBL, which bills itself as “the first wireless record player.” Its setup is super-simple—it just requires plugging in a cable—and then it integrates with your home’s Sonos or Bluetooth speakers, as well as your Spotify account. Based on the music you’re playing on your TRNTBL, Spotify can then automatically create playlists for you. “TRNTBL started from that sentiment of, if you can detach yourself from the notion that vinyl is catered to particular, audiophile segments, then playing the music is inherently part of the experience,” Alt says. “So it felt wrong for me to be sending out new music every month, but not really putting a stake in the ground and saying, ‘Hey, this is how you could experience this.’ It provides a more cohesive solution to the overall problem VNYL is solving.” Retailing at $499, TRNTBL is also more financially accessible than many record players on the market, which can require hundreds of dollars worth of accessories to set up. “I thought, why are we making people buy all these records, then you still need to buy over $1,000 in [turntable] equipment? It’s ludicrous. But I would imagine that that same customer probably has a Bluetooth or Sonos speaker. So, let’s just make it work with all that existing equipment.” TRNTBL’s wireless integration actually serves a dual purpose. It’s a unique feature for customers, but the link to their Spotify accounts also gives VNYL’s curators more insight about their listening habits. That’s valuable, precise information they can then use to put together that customer’s subscription boxes. “It’s the first record player of its kind that can identify what songs are being played when the listener has the device on. So, if they’re a subscription customer to the record club, it allows us to have a completely different level of insight into the records that the customer actually spends time listening to. Because streaming data is great, but it’s so ephemeral that it’s hard to create a value system around. With streaming data you think, well, maybe they just listened to that, or their kid just listened to that, or maybe they share the account—there’s all types of weird things that you can’t solve for in digital. But when it’s on the record player itself, you know what the household is spending their time playing. That makes for a better experience for us to help them find the music that they would really be excited about.” Financing for Growth Like most small business owners, Alt bootstrapped his venture at the beginning. As a supplement, VNYL also launched a lucrative Kickstarter campaign, which was crucial in helping them vet the market and hone their product. VNYL then grew steadily, and layering in the record player a couple of years after the launch increased their earnings. They were finding new ways not just to grow, but to optimize what was already profitable. Once the company had proven its ability to grow with its own funds, Alt understood that they could explore outside financing. With those additional funds in hand, VNYL could do what it was already doing—growing and evolving—but exponentially so. But Alt also understood that there were plenty of venues through which to source that outside funding, some more legitimate than others. But when he discovered Fundera, Alt immediately recognized similarities with VNYL’s technology and customer-focused service. When he signed up, Alt worked with senior loan advisors Michael Yang and Nate Causey to navigate the loans process. And while working with Yang and Causey, Alt was drawn to the human interaction inherent to the Fundera experience—another aspect that was reminiscent of his own company. “As a small business owner, what Fundera presented to me was quite compelling. It aggregates the more trusted names in financing, but it’s not just a dashboard of all these different products and offers. With a loan advisor, you really have an advocate—which I think of as my version of the record store clerk—to help steer you in the right direction,” Alt says. “I already thought the brand was really interesting and cool, and I also saw that the founding team were respected folks in the tech industry. But the minute I had a call from Yang and Nate, saying, ‘Hey, tell me a little about your business, what are you trying to accomplish’—when there was that personalized touch—I felt like that was the equivalent of VNYL sending three records a month to a customer, including a handwritten note in the box explaining why these are the best options for you.” Like those handwritten notes his curators provide VNYL customers, Alt appreciated that Causey took the time to explain each of Alt’s loan options. With Causey’s guidance, Alt secured the funding that worked with his business’s current financials and, importantly, can facilitate Alt’s determined pursuit of building a better product. Moving Forward, Branching Out With a business loan, Alt has more freedom for experimentation. Next up, he wants to branch out beyond the product itself and find ways to implement VNYL’s unique concept into other industries. “The way I see it, we’re sitting on a significant amount of technology that best powers a user experience. And unlike a lot of subscription retail, we’re completely vertically integrated. Other than owning a record pressing plant, we do everything: shipping, curation, design, tech— it’s all in-house. So any one of those concepts makes for an interesting business as it relates to the age of subscription businesses. Even the concept of real-time supply and demand, and making better use of your capital so it’s not just sitting in unfilled inventory, is a whole white paper in and of itself. That’s a potential product that we could spin out and create more opportunity for ourselves around.” As VNYL’s “exceptionally ambitious” foray into the consumer electronics space with TRNTBL proves, Alt is constantly seeking new ways to “grow, scale, and optimize” what’s already working about a proven model. That way, he and his company can best serve his customers (and fellow music lovers), who are at the heart of all of his ventures. Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. 120profit.com - https://120profit.com/?p=2204&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr

0 notes

itsworn · 7 years

Text

Behind the Build: Pat Ganahl’s Cross-Country Cruiser Heads Home

Well, as far as South City Rod & Custom is concerned, the Ganahl Model 40 sedan, which Pat has christened “Roadie” (despite the DMV’s backup name, “Roadee”), is now back in Glendale awaiting its finishing touches. As it left his son Bill Ganahl’s shop, all the big had been completed—the metalwork (firewall, floors, and tunnel), complete chassis (from ’rails to brakes and steering), drivetrain (350/700-R4/9-inch), exhaust, and fitting/gapping the sheetmetal. Bill also mounted an underdash Vintage Air unit—minus the electrical and refrigerant—and though he was asked not to for reasons associated with paint prep and application, installed all the glass (Pat’s picky, but it is much easier to paint with the glass out, regardless how the sedan looks rolling down the 101 on the back of a trailer, Bill …).

Now that Pat has the more-door keeping his Deuce roadster and the Iacono inline Jimmy-powered dragster company, the deadline to get Roadie, well, on the roadie, is entirely in his hands. So, not that he doesn’t have his hands full as it is, I’m going to turn the keyboard over to Pat and let him bring this trilogy to an end in appropriate fashion.

“This was Anna’s idea, actually. She wants to go to the Austin Roundup, partly because we love the music, food, and ambiance of that city, and partly because Bill and Sabina are planning to cruise there in the lavender pearl Riviera I just finished painting for them. The problem was that I didn’t have a hot rod that was built to drive to Texas. I never have.

“You see, to me a hot rod is a coupe or roadster, or maybe even an early two-door sedan, stripped down to bare essentials, with a mean stance and sound and at least enough horsepower to back it up. Such cars aren’t built to be comfortable, and they certainly aren’t made to drive across country. Downtown to the malt shop and back is more like it. Or maybe a day-trip up the mountains or out in the country with your best friend to get your hair blown. My hot rods are built for short hops.

“I can’t say I’ve built a lot of such rods, but they’ve all had three pedals and a single fan belt. Parts came from the junkyard, fellow rodders, or parts cars. They didn’t have power anything, and no heater (this is SoCal), let alone A/C. My current Deuce roadster doesn’t even have a radio or windshield wiper, or provision for a top. There are no parts on it newer than 1952. It’s good—fun—for daytrips as far as L.A. to San Francisco (400 miles), but that’s about it.

“I’m proud that it’s traditionally true and accurate. But not only does that mean it’s not practical for road trips, today that also means finding these traditional parts takes scrounging (often on the infernal Internet), and paying big prices and/or rebuilding costs once you find them.”

Fordor Fate

“Anna’s favorite hot rod is a 1934 three-window coupe. She knows hot rods and she’s got taste. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of money. Plus I fit better in a sedan, where I can push the seat back and maintain headroom. I love full-fendered Tudor Deuces and Model 40s, especially on a good rake. But they’re nearly as pricey as coupes these days.

“Don’t get ahead of me here. I know I’ll never live down the stigma of a certain fat Chevy with too many doors and not enough cylinders. I did the best I could with that car, but it was never a hot rod. I’m glad to say it’s now a fully lifted lowrider—and not mine—which it should have been from day one. But the fact remains that four-door sedans are the least desirable, and therefore most affordable, of all vintage cars. The good news is that the 1933-1934 Ford Fordors, with their four suicide doors and leaned-back front edge, are the best-looking of all, especially when they sit on a nasty rake, with big ’n’ little tires, and a wicked black paintjob. So that was the plan for our ‘road rod.’

“Not only would we get a roof over our head, a good ride, roll-up (tinted) windows, but even a good stereo and—lordy!—air conditioning. Plus I wanted to find a pair of contoured, adjustable front bucket seats like the ones in Anna’s well-used Camry or Accord wagon, which we have driven across the country many times and know to be comfortable (for both of us). The ones I found at Pick-A-Part were in a clean Subaru Outback and cost $40 each.

“Finding a clean 1933-1934 Fordor wasn’t as easy. Browsing sources like Goodguys Gazette, Hotrod Hotline, and Jalopy Journal, I quickly found some candidates in the $12,000 range. I even sent Bill with a trailer to Sacramento to potentially buy one whose owner swore it was an all-original car ‘with just a little rust in the bottom of the doors.’ What Bill found was a mish-mash of cast-off parts recently bolted on a rusted-out frame. The owner actually told him, ‘Guess I’ll have to find a less-knowledgeable buyer.’

“Having looked at a few more with missing parts or rust issues, I soon learned a lesson: pay for pristine. It’s cheaper—and easier—in the long run. And I knew where to find it. Bill McGrath’s Early Ford Store in San Dimas, California, always has a few good ‘finds’ lined up out back. I had seen two nice Fordors there awhile back. But when I got there those were replaced by an amazingly complete, straight, totally rust-free 1933 that had just come out of some long-term indoor storage. I’m talking worn but original seats, mohair, gauges, garnish moldings, glass—even the roll-down shade over the back window. Then to make it more saleable Bill pulled parts off his shelves: new dropped axle, headlights, cowllights, bumpers, taillights, running boards, not to mention a good-running 59A engine with a new carb, headers, Smittys, radiator, gas tank, plus a 1939 trans and fresh 1940 juice brakes. With steel wheels with caps ’n’ rings, quickie lowering, and faded red-oxide primer it looked damn good—and was.

“So I paid a little more than double what the rust buckets were asking, for a complete, driving, no-rust Fordor (a similar coupe would have been twice, if not three times more). Better yet, when it got to Bill’s South City shop, he rolled the complete flathead chassis out from under it and found a buyer to recoup $6,500 of the cost.”

Religious Conversion

“The best part of this whole project, for both Anna and I, is having our son build it in his shop. This is a big first for me, because I am strictly a DIY guy. And traditional. But this car isn’t. I knew what I wanted—basically a Pete & Jakes chassis, as designed by Jim Jacobs for his own 1934 coupe 40-plus years ago, and thoroughly road-tested by him and countless others since. This is essentially the same chassis Roy Brizio puts under the majority of the totally roadworthy early Ford rods he builds, which is of course where Bill cut his teeth learning this business. So Bill knew exactly what I meant when I told him ‘Basically build a P&J chassis for it, just like the ones at Brizio’s.’ And he agreed. And you’ve seen what he’s done in the first two segments of this series. I’m obviously a very happy customer.

“But what really surprises me is how much I have truly enjoyed building what I formerly derided as a 1-800-street-rod. As Rob pointed out in the first story, it’s like a religious conversion. I like it. It’s fun. I don’t have to hunt high and low for period-perfect or numbers-correct vintage parts, and then pay dearly when (and if) I find them. I can choose any components I want and, especially today, be pretty sure that they’re going to work properly and fit with each other, without having to cut, grind, and hand-fit or rework every part. Actually, after telling Bill what I wanted, I let him do the specific ordering because he knows from much experience what fits and what works.

“Of course that still requires plenty of custom hand fitting, cutting, forming, and welding—especially since this is a Fordor sedan—as you have also seen in prior installments. Just one example is the steering. Plenty to choose from. But I’ve known Steve Dennish for years, I like his LimeWorks products, and he had a wheel that resembled the early Vette type I love. So I said, ‘I’ll take that wheel, with that horn button, and that column, with that shaft … send them to Bill.’ Meanwhile Bill had to figure out how and where exactly to mount the front seats I brought him. Then I had to sit in the seat so we could determine the most comfortable location for the wheel and column. And then Bill had to fabricate a custom column drop and floor mount to attach it. That’s 1-800 hot rodding at its best: part bought, part built, and all works perfectly. You can see many more examples on the car.

“What you see here is far from finished, however. I really like the way it looks, just as it sits. I’m particularly happy with the wheel and tire combination and exactly how they sit in the fenders. I told Bill I didn’t want the glass in until I painted the body, but he was adamant to get it installed with the proper channels and massaged regulators to work properly. It does and looks good. So I was seriously considering getting the car running and driving it for a while in its as-found primer, like this. It would be cool.

“But it would require installing and removing a whole lot of stuff (wiring, fuel lines, brake lines, glass, dash/gauges, and so on). So now that it’s finally home, I get to start taking it all back apart and painting it from the frame up. After a little block sanding the outside will be old-school black lacquer (PPG still makes it), with a white top insert to match the wheels. The frame and floorboards will be black, but most of the chassis components will be spray-can hammertone silver or dark gray. I’m thinking a medium gold for the engine with some early script valve covers and maybe a little Vette air cleaner. The interior will be black with white tuck ’n’ roll inserts in the seats and door panels. Chrome will be limited to the grille, windshield frame, and inside garnish moldings.

“Then it’s hitting the highway. Austin, no problem. But we won’t stop there. Anna and I have driven this country’s turnpikes and two-lanes every summer since we’ve known each other. Some retirees say a motorhome is the way to go. Thank you, but we’d prefer motels and a 1933 Ford hot rod.”

We left you hanging last month after Bill had finished hanging—and fitting/gapping—the sheetmetal on Pat’s Fordor, which he’s aptly named “Roadie” (don’t let the plates fool ya). Before the elder Ganahl took re-possession of the sedan, however, there were still a few things left to do before the car left South City Rod & Custom.

One of Pat’s nonconformist (read: not hot rod applicable) options he’s conformed to is having the comfort of interior climate control, which in this case is a Vintage Air Gen II Compac unit. Bill was tasked with not only installing, but doing so without using up a ton of real estate.

In order to situate the plumbing running vertically down the inner firewall, Bill fashioned up a horizontal bulkhead box off the lower edge of his recess.

A vise-mounted Hydra-Kool manual crimper from Mastercool was used to build the A/C lines to the exact desired length …

… and the plumbing routing ensued, with each and every line tucked tight and kept as out-of-sight as possible, when possible. (If you’re wondering why that was such a concern with everything located on the passenger side—Pat won’t be spending every mile traveled behind the wheel; when Anna’s in the driver seat, he preferred having ample room for his longer-than-most legs to stretch!)

And while we’re on the topic of legroom, that too had to be taken into consideration when Bill was setting up the steering. Matter of fact, Pat traveled up to the Bay Area to personally deliver his adjustable bucket seats of choice, to which his son tailor-fit along with the steering while he was there. The wheel and bare column are from Flaming River.

Lastly, although Pat had requested he not do so, Bill convinced his dad that installing the glass and all the related components (new regulators, channels, and so on) be done while he still had the sedan. (Pat initially wanted to forgo the glass install since he’ll be painting the Fordor himself, and wanted to save that till afterward.)

The post Behind the Build: Pat Ganahl’s Cross-Country Cruiser Heads Home appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/behind-build-pat-ganahls-cross-country-cruiser-heads-home/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes