#and looking at this in his mask he still remains dog because the antennae look kind of like ears)

[goldenbeastkeeper]

(Absolutely love throwing my own ocs into the backgrounds of art fight attacks)

[forasecondtherewedwon]

3! xxx

Thank you so much, Jess!!

“Boum” - Charles Trenet Le monde entier fait Boum/Tout l’univers fait Boum/Parc’que mon cœur fait Boum (The whole world goes “Boom”/The whole universe goes “Boom”/Because my heart goes “Boom”)

tout a changé depuis hier

“Up,” an authoritative voice is barking at him. “What’s your name again? Parker? Get up, Parker.”

“Five more minutes,” Peter groans.

“Teenagers,” the voice mutters, either not knowing to account for Peter’s enhanced hearing or intending to get his way through irritating Peter awake.

But Peter wasn’t sleeping. And he’s never had less interest in remaining unconscious than he does today, whatever day this happens to be. He’s not rising from sleep; where he’s been is someplace far more permanent, more merciless. Colder.

He springs to his feet and the action whisks most of the dark dust of Titan’s soil from the metal of his suit. Peter hopes it’s soil, anyway, and not little bits of himself or the people (and aliens, right!―there’s that lady with the antennas) around him who are currently rematerializing. Somewhat involuntarily, he shivers, then pretends he meant to do it, like a dog, shaking this place and the one beyond from his shoulders. Mr. Stark’s not here. Neither is the blue woman with all the… metal. Maybe they survived, or kept fighting and died somewhere else. He squints up at the yellow-orange sky.

Dr. Strange is a few yards away being not quite paternal, but rounding up their little space posse. Peter feels jet-lagged to hear the wizard say that they’ve all been gone for five years. Five. Years. And that they’re going back. He’ll get to see May again! He can tell Ned he rode on a spaceship and that it was mostly horrible and he probably won’t want to see Star Wars for a while!

And MJ. Oh god, MJ.

Feeling like everybody’s looking at him, Peter crosses his arms and tries to appear grown-up and present while Dr. Strange talks about portals and the antenna lady seems to disrupt an oncoming panic attack in the other, stupider Peter (seriously, man? Footloose?). It was a crush. If MJ went all flakey and crumbly like he did, then, for her, it was a crush five years ago. If she knew anything about it. She probably did. She’s very observant and he’s really, really bad at not being obvious about stuff. No matter what happened to her, she’s out there, right now. Home. Peter gets to go back to her.

It’s been crazy―rocketing through the atmosphere, breaking free of Earth’s gravitational pull, sinking as hopelessly and fathomlessly into outer space as a pebble sinks into a well. Then their muddled skirmish with Other Peter and the aliens, the real confrontation with Thanos that makes Peter feel hollow for a moment as the blood drains from his face. Rambling to Mr. Stark. Death. Within a single day, he learned that everything ends. He thought he knew, thought he understood when his parents died, but from what the wizard’s talking about, the thing that happened to the five of them happened all over, happened everywhere, and yet, they’re back. So the takeaway, as far as Peter can tell, isn’t emptiness and fear, it’s possibility. So many people can die, but so many people can be saved. A guy can bail on his fieldtrip to MoMa and show up five years down the line with a head full of the modern art of alien space travel, the graceful spackle of constellations.

If Peter can do all this, see all this, comprehend all this, maybe he can explain to MJ how he feels. Because it’s still with him, the crush. It woke up in the same instant he did. Even now, it’s pulsing through him, twining with his adrenaline as Dr. Strange starts the thing with his hands and Peter intuitively closes the mask of the nanotech suit over his head. It’s the rhythm of the universe, why they left and why they’re returning. As the wizard parts the air, it’s Peter’s heart hammering. It’s hers.

music shuffle fic game!

[itsworn]

68 Years Later Russ Aves Still Tinkers With 1932 Ford 3-Window Coupe

Surrounded by the tools, spare parts, motors draped with canvas, and memorabilia that have taken a lifetime to collect sits the youngest member of the Clockers hot rod club from Culver City, California. At least in his mind he is. In reality, Russ Aves is 83 years old. But you’d never know it when he puts his foot on the gas of the three-window Deuce he has owned for 68 years. When he does, you can still see the spark in his eyes that signals mischief.

At age 15, when his mom was conveniently out of town, Aves bought a “nondescript” green ’32 Ford, stock “except for 15-inch wheels,” from Blessing’s Auto Sales on Wilshire Boulevard for $75. He says, “I was $35 short, so my neighbor not only loaned me the money, she signed a waiver for an underage kid to buy a car. I had to get my friend Bob Claypool to drive it home for me. I didn’t have my license yet.”

Russ Aves’ three-window coupe has gone through several incarnations since he bought it in 1950. The present-day version harkens back to the days when he bought it as a teenager, with a few contemporary upgrades.

His mother “didn’t like the car idea too much.” Fortunately for Aves, he says that “a few months later, when I got my license, she started giving me a dollar a week for gas to drive my brother to school. So I guess that worked out.”

It was the beginning of a story that defines the man. His Deuce has been with him longer than anything in his life. It’s his best friend, his partner in crime, and the car that has thrilled anyone who has been lucky enough to take a ride in it or just see it rolling down the road.

Russ and his coupe in 1955, after he installed the small-block Chevy V8. “It was cool to run no hubcaps in the back,” he says. “It meant you were ready to put on your slicks and go racing.”

The coupe has been through several incarnations in the last 68 years. It has been drag raced, was featured in HOT ROD magazine in 1960, and has won multiple awards at auto shows.

“There isn’t anything on that car I didn’t do myself,” Aves says. This includes the motor, channeling, the interior, chrome plating, and the paint—everything right down to pinstriping.

Aves drag racing the coupe in San Luis Obispo in 1958.

Within hours of owning the coupe, Aves stripped the fenders off and started working. While still in high school, he channeled the car 2 1/2 inches. He then installed a Lee Stewart Dago axle, still on the car to this day, which he bought from a junkyard for $10. It provides an additional 3 1/2 inches of drop to the front end and gives the car its unique stance. “It was bent when I bought it, so I took it to shop class. With a little heat and a protractor, it was good as new.”

Aves says, “Those polished wishbones you see on the car all started with a piece of paper and pencil in high school. I finally made them at Santa Monica Junior College, where I learned to weld.”

The coupe was featured in the March 1960 HOT ROD. Aves’ goals for the car were “efficiency plus good looks,” said the article, words that remain true nearly 60 years later.

He remembers painting the firewall white by masking it off and using a sprayer he built from a glass jar and a mister powered by his mother’s Electrolux. Eventually he painted the entire car white with the help of his friends from the Clockers (named after the Clock drive-in in Culver City where they used to hang out) with the same spray gun. Years later the car was painted a deep purple color he had custom blended.

When Russ wanted to pinstripe the car, he couldn’t afford to have Von Dutch do the job. “I bought him a hot dog, and we climbed under the car. He showed me his craft as he pinstriped the rearend for me. I figured out the rest from there.”

The 1980s revamp of the coupe took Aves a few years. This 1994 photo shows him stripping the custom purple paint before he sprayed on a custom green inspired by a color he saw on a Rolls Royce.

Aves learned how to do interior work while working at a local Chevy dealership doing dealer prep and small repairs. “When it was time to do my interior, I bought a Singer sewing machine from the L.A. city school system for $28 and made my own. The only detail in the interior I couldn’t do was the stitching on the door panels. I had those done by a local shop. It’s best to know your limitations.”

When Aves bought the car it had the 21-stud flathead in it with an aluminum pan. Since then the car has had several different powerplants, everything from a Studebaker with a Caddy crank to the Ford Z-block flathead it has today. The drivetrain is ’39 Ford with stock ’39 linkage, a Schaffer clutch, and a shortened driveshaft made in Aves’ garage.

By 1996 the coupe’s makeover was finished.

While he was working at the Chevy dealer in 1954, Chevrolet announced the new 265 V8 for 1955. “I couldn’t buy the motor complete, so I bought it in pieces and assembled it myself. Once built, I dropped it in the Deuce. It may very well be the first small-block Chevy ever dropped into a Deuce coupe. I still have the motor stamped with the number 1 in the block.”

Of course, stock wouldn’t do for Aves. He installed an Edelbrock triple manifold to accommodate the three Rochester carb setup he wanted. “I then asked Ed Iskenderian to build a camshaft for the car. Since the motor had not been released from Chevrolet yet, Ed had to custom build it. I gave him the heads off the motor so he could work out the proper valve ratios. That little exercise may well have been the start of the famous E2 roller cam.”

Aves has run a number of engines in his coupe over the years. When he revamped the car in the 1980s he returned it to flathead power, building the motor using a Z block.

In 1986, Aves felt it was time to go through the car again and make some updates. “I changed a few things in the process. I fell in love with a color I saw on a Rolls Royce. It was a rich deep green. I reproduced the color by mixing cobalt blue and orange together. It still boggles my mind that there is no green in the paint itself.”

He reupholstered the interior in dark brown leather. “While rummaging through a local junkyard, I spotted a Mazda Miata that had a really cool steering wheel and column. It was a banjo-style wheel that really worked with the vintage car. I topped it off with a Gilmore Oil emblem I affixed in the middle of the horn button. That little piece really finished it off. It sounds like a crazy setup, but everything fits like a glove and offers the perfect combination of old and new without looking out of place. I also changed the windows to power and used Lincoln window switches that are very discrete and integrated into the door panels.”

Topping the flat motor is a Navarro intake with four Rochester carburetors. “I went with the Rochesters because those are the carbs I learned to work on back at the Chevy dealer when I was a kid. It’s really easy for me to work on them and get them leaned out just right.”

Aves created an electric emergency brake using a GM power-window-gear setup.

It was also time for a motor change. “I really loved the thought of putting a flathead back in the car to bring it back to the way it was when I found it, but with a new twist. The car now has a Ford Z block in it. The Z block is a Canadian truck motor flathead with lots of torque. It has a Navarro intake with four Rochester carbs. The distributor is stock Ford, but those headers are all custom.”

Aves reupholstered the seats in dark brown leather during the car’s freshening. As for that old-school-looking banjo steering wheel, it’s from a Mazda Miata. The Gilmore horn button adds to the vintage look.

Aves also installed an electric antenna and a CB radio, and “remote hood releases using gas door latches that I release with a small button under the dash. I never like knobs or switches that stand out and end up giving you a headache. I also installed Corvette license plate lights on the bottom of the doors that now act as courtesy lights activated by opening the doors.”

Russ Aves’ car represents a lifetime of work and constant enjoyment. It’s the culmination of everything he has learned and an expression of who he is. This Deuce continues to put a smile on the face of anyone who sees him coming or going. But if you see him on the road, don’t be surprised if you can’t catch him. Once you see that spark in his eye, you know he’s bound to put his foot in it.

The instrument panel came out of a ’71 Chevy Impala. It “worked perfect” in the coupe’s ’40 Ford dash and “gave it an updated look without looking out of place,” says Aves.

Aves integrated Corvette license plate lights into the bottoms of the doors to act as courtesy lights.

Aves sectioned the grille 3 1/2 inches. “After lowering the grille, I had to create a custom headlight bar, which also lowered the lights 3 1/2 inches to match the new grille height.” Aves says that during the 1980s revamp he “was also tired of the directionals, so I found a pair of GM marker lamps that I embedded into the radiator shell. They’re very discrete. I guess you could call that custom.”

The Lee Stewart 3 1/2-inch dropped axle helps give the Deuce its signature stance. Front springs are stock ’32 Ford, brakes are ’58 Buick. In back is a ’39 Ford rearend with a 3.78 gear ratio and ’48 Lincoln brakes.

Aves sketched out his wishbones in high school, then made them after he learned how to weld at Santa Monica City College.

The hot rod club Aves belonged to got its name from the Clock drive-in restaurant in Culver City where the guys used to hang out.

Aves still has the business end of the makeshift spray gun he used to paint his car. Instead of a compressor, he hooked it up to his mother’s vacuum cleaner.

After 68 years, Aves still drives his Deuce and still tinkers with it. “There’s always something new, to this day,” he says. He calls the buildup “ongoing.”

  Inside the Shop Russ Aves’ shop space, like his Ford coupe, is a symbol of his hard work. It reflects the rebel who built it all from scratch with his bare hands.

The post 68 Years Later Russ Aves Still Tinkers With 1932 Ford 3-Window Coupe appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/68-years-later-russ-aves-still-tinkers-1932-ford-3-window-coupe/ via IFTTT