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Pocher F40 with Autograph transkit upgrade challenge build


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Thanks SJ, actually as it happens, I do have a "stock" version that is built up and is on a table close by in case I need to look at it for reference. I'll add a picture of it on the next post later today. 

I really want to get back on it this morning but, I have to do a brake job on the Expedition first. Must keep the wife happy before play time!

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First up, this is for SJ and here is a picture of my "stock" F-40 that, I use for the occasional reference.

 

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Now, continuing on with some resin pieces and comparing the difference in rear wing with the stock version and the LM version side by side and very loosely mocked up on the rear bonnet. 

Stock wing:

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Difference in size:

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LM wing:

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Front splitter:

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Front radiator shroud air intake:

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With the main body on to get a better idea of what it's going to look like

 

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Here's some closeups of the resin parts to show how much needs to be filled with Bondo.

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First layer of Bondo:

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Today's body sanding and the resin first coat sanding with a primer coat to see what is still needed on the wing

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Still some work to do:

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The wing looks pretty good so, I'm going to shoot it in black and try some black carbon fiber decals to see how it looks on Monday.

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I will be painting all the black panels again on Monday and see how they come out. After painting the body, I'll be going back to the engine. I'll spread out each metal engine to show what comes with each and the do some side by side by side comparisons. This will be each metal engine part along with the kit engine. And, now that I have all the engine parts, I'll be concentrating back on the engine more for a while. I'll continue painting and color sanding the body until I get it perfect but, the pictures will be mostly centered on the engine and other areas unless the body gets finished and gets to the point that, I'm satisfied with the result or there's something worthwhile showing.

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On 9/5/2017 at 11:02 PM, larchiefeng said:

Thanks Kerry, it's good to see that, there's another F-40 with the transkit being built. 

I agree and, I think that you will find that the instructions are the most difficult part of the transkit. The pictures are too small and don't really explain the sequence of operation very well. I've had to go through them multiple times just to try and understand what goes where and next. The body parts have been a bit of a challenge because they are spread out all over the instructions. You have to find everything that pertains to the body and make sure that you have accounted for all the assemblies at the same time otherwise you will probably run into problems down the road. The doors and rocker panels come to mind as being around step 50 something and should be much earlier. My build is even more complicated because of the color change and the additional transkits and other LM parts that, I'm waiting on. I figured that if I'm going to all this trouble, I might as well build the car I want. 

How far along are you on your build? Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and I will answer them if I can.

Thanks! I have started for a month, so far I have scrapped the body paint, finished the front tub, inner tub, dashboard steering column, seats and the rear shock absorbers. For the front absorber, I have broken the upper part, I have tried to contact Autograph for the part, but been a week, still no reply, lucky my friend can help me mold one. However i also broke both tie rod heads, the white metal is very soft and fragile, I think I can glue it back. In the meantime I am doing the front part of the Frame, today just installed the Upper control arms and tomorrow I will try to install the lower part and have the rotors on see if the angle is acceptable. OMG the instruction is killing me!!!!

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Kerry,

I'd like to see some pictures of your progress and if you want any advice or help on something that I've already done, PM me or post here on the thread. I had a tough time getting the front control arms to line up correctly and I had to remove a lot more of the old frame than I anticipated; just to get the new PE and upper and lower arms to line up and keep the spindles straight. 

I also broke one of the top pieces of the shock absorber and I did get a replacement from Uli at Autograph but, it did take a while for him to respond and send the parts. You might have to contact him again and say that you are following up on your previous email. 

I also found that when assembling the front end with the shocks and everything it's a little tricky trying to keep everything together especially because the shocks and springs are loosely assembled and only are held together when the upper and lower arms are attached to the spindle. I expected that the shocks and springs would have been more of solid assembly and therefore a much easier assembly. There's a whole lot going on there in the front end and it all needs to be straight or it won't look right when the wheels and tires are on with the front bonnet. I did a lot of test fitting to make sure the the tires were tracking straight and positioned correctly in the wheel opening of the bonnet.

 I think that I managed to get some decent passes on the body color coats yesterday but, like I said before, I'm not going to bore you guys with more pictures of the paint work. I have been concentrating on getting the body paint finished before the weather turns cold because I've been doing a lot of it in my garage. I can do it in my spray booth but, it's easier in the garage where I can walk around the parts and see more of what I'm doing. Black is hard to tell if you are getting enough or too much paint on at any point during the spraying. You can probably see that, from some of the pictures I posted right after spraying where you can hardly find the parts in the pictures. It's like Codger told me last night; "I couldn't have done any worse if I had taken it outside at midnight and shoved it up a cow's behind and shot it without a flash". 

Hopefully, today I can get to some actual engine work. Anyway, circling back, Kerry if you have any pictures that you would like to share here on the thread, I'm sure everyone would like to see what you're doing. If you have any problems with posting pictures to the thread or don't want to, please PM me with some pictures and we can talk about any issues either of us are having.

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4 hours ago, larchiefeng said:

I also found that when assembling the front end with the shocks and everything it's a little tricky trying to keep everything together especially because the shocks and springs are loosely assembled and only are held together when the upper and lower arms are attached to the spindle. I expected that the shocks and springs would have been more of solid assembly and therefore a much easier assembly. There's a whole lot going on there in the front end and it all needs to be straight or it won't look right when the wheels and tires are on with the front bonnet. I did a lot of test fitting to make sure the the tires were tracking straight and positioned correctly in the wheel opening of the bonnet.

 

Not to interfere between you two but a trick to help with loose parts mock-ups that worked for me; tying parts together with dental floss. It's thin to fit small spots and easily cut off when the job is done.

Carry on !:whip:

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10 hours ago, Codger said:

Not to interfere between you two but a trick to help with loose parts mock-ups that worked for me; tying parts together with dental floss. It's thin to fit small spots and easily cut off when the job is done.

Carry on !:whip:

Thanks Codger, its a great idea!

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Dear all, with the permission of Wayne, I will like to post some of my process photos so far! Hopes can help some of you!

 

The first step was to stripped the paint.

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Then the front tub

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Seats were using the stockings provided by the transkit, the outcome is awesome!

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For the Dashboard, I decided to use flocking.

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Flocking was used for the inner tub

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Right now try to finish the from suspension part and thanks for Wayne's posts to help my life easier.

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I wish I can finish the front suspension part in the coming week!

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When I started this thread it was always intended to be about building two Pocher F-40's with the Autograph transkits and how each of us progressed through the build while helping each other but, still building them slightly different from one another. 

When Kerry came along I figured why not make it three builds with the transkit? The transkit has literally thousands of parts and the instructions are not very clear in some areas and leave a lot open for interpretation. So the addition of another builder who is crazy enough to take this on is welcome. I think that this will help all of us to elevate our builds and get through them.

As you can see by his pictures he is a skilled builder and he will provide some variety to keep it interesting and show areas of the build that are different from where I'm at and vice versa. So, I'd like to take a moment and welcome Kerry to the thread!

Kerry,

After looking at the pictures I see you have made quite a lot of progress on the interior and when I get there this will be a lot of help. I remember a while back that, you mentioned breaking the top of one of the shocks; did you ever get a response from Uli or did you repair it? I see that you have the rear shocks assembled and they look great. I ran into some problems with the paint chipping off the white metal when I was assembling the front shocks. I see that your rear shocks look very good and I'm wondering what you used to paint them?

I guess that, now I need to get busy, no more excuses!:rage: 

 

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Welcome aboard Kerry!  Your work is great looking.  How did you apply the CF decals?  Are they waterslide or need to be pasted.  The instructions reference wall paper paste but the decals look like waterslide...  

 

Rich

Edited by rjfk2002
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OK, I'm ready to start building the main engine. I will also be doing a second engine as a display piece and, it just seems easier to build them at the same time. They won't be identical due to the available parts from the Autograph transkit but, there's quite a few nice details in the Scale Details engine. What, I decided to do here, is a side by side comparison between the Pocher kit parts, the Scale Details engine and the not quite complete engine that I obtained from Paul at Thunder Valley. The casting quality between the SD engine and TV engine is night and day. The SD engine's casting is really rough and the TV engine almost completely clean with little or no clean up required. The main difference between the engine kits is the casting and the amount of extra details included. The SD engine has all the goodies and hours upon hours of clean up required. The TV engine is very clean and straight but, it has no hardware like nuts, bolts, PE gaskets etc.

The first two pictures are a layout of each engine and what is included:

 

The Scale Details engine with lots of parts bags

 

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The Thunder Valley engine with more extra parts that weren't included in the SD engine but, no hardware. Notice the headers, intake manifolds and turbo piping; those weren't part of the SD engine.

 

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Now here's a lot of side by side parts comparison by component to illustrate the difference in casting quality. From top to bottom are the kit, TV and SD

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Left to right are the kit, SD and TV. On the SD piece I had already spent about an hour or more just to try and clean up the part and the TV part hasn't even been touched.

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From top to bottom are the kit, SD and TV. Here you can see that I really couldn't get the casting as clean as the TV came without being touched.

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Even the back of the parts you can see the difference in the quality 

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This is about the only part where the difference is negligible but, still kinda bad on the bottom of the part on the left. Also the SD parts are made for the bolts to be drilled out so, the bolt heads don't matter.

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Kit part, SD, and TV parts

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TV part, SD part and kit parts

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I'm not sure why there are so many holes in the back of the SD part on the right. I'm goin to have to look at the real thing and see if I can figure that out.

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The bell housings are sort of close but, the TV one on the right is better quality

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The last time you guys saw the engine it was assembled but, the intake and upper cylinder heads are an almost perfect piece so, it's worth it to start over. The only problem with the engine parts from TV is that, he sold it to me at a nice discount because the engine wasn't complete. It's missing one side of the engine block and one of the outside cylinder pieces, oil pan and front timing cover. Those parts are all in pretty good shape from the SD engine so, I think just changing these pieces will result in a much better engine. You can see the engine half and head parts in these pictures.

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When I got to the cam timing covers I thought that the TV cover on one side was wrong until I compared them to the kit parts. SD parts on top and TV parts on the bottom. Notice the difference between the ones on the right side of the picture

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Here you can see the kit part in the middle is like the TV part on the right and the SD part looks completely different!

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I just wanted you guys to see what kind of difference there is between these after market metal engines before I start building one. As I look at the parts, my thinking is that, I'm going to use the TV cast parts all the hardware from SD and any upgrade parts in the Autograph transkit that aren't included with the SD engine. There should be enough goodies left over to add upgrades to the kit engine as the second engine. After looking these parts over, I've decided that there is just too much work to use the SD cast parts now for anything. Given the cost of that engine it's really a shame that the quality was so bad! I got an upgrade kit from SD for my Testarossa engine and it was great but, this one was awful by comparison. Oh well, live and learn. 

Next post should have some actual work done on the engine. I'm color sanding the body tomorrow and will probably be shooting another color coat or two but, until it's almost done I won't bore anyone with more paint pictures. Speaking of paint, Kerry, what color are you planning on painting yours?

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15 hours ago, rjfk2002 said:

Welcome aboard Kerry!  Your work is great looking.  How did you apply the CF decals?  Are they waterslide or need to be pasted.  The instructions reference wall paper paste but the decals look like waterslide...  

 

Rich

 

Hi Rich

 The CF decals are waterslide, I just apply the Mr. Mark Setter on the surface, place the decal and then apply Mr. Mark Softer as the last stage. The outcome is very good. 

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16 hours ago, larchiefeng said:

When I started this thread it was always intended to be about building two Pocher F-40's with the Autograph transkits and how each of us progressed through the build while helping each other but, still building them slightly different from one another. 

When Kerry came along I figured why not make it three builds with the transkit? The transkit has literally thousands of parts and the instructions are not very clear in some areas and leave a lot open for interpretation. So the addition of another builder who is crazy enough to take this on is welcome. I think that this will help all of us to elevate our builds and get through them.

As you can see by his pictures he is a skilled builder and he will provide some variety to keep it interesting and show areas of the build that are different from where I'm at and vice versa. So, I'd like to take a moment and welcome Kerry to the thread!

Kerry,

After looking at the pictures I see you have made quite a lot of progress on the interior and when I get there this will be a lot of help. I remember a while back that, you mentioned breaking the top of one of the shocks; did you ever get a response from Uli or did you repair it? I see that you have the rear shocks assembled and they look great. I ran into some problems with the paint chipping off the white metal when I was assembling the front shocks. I see that your rear shocks look very good and I'm wondering what you used to paint them?

I guess that, now I need to get busy, no more excuses!:rage: 

 

Uli never reply my email, but lucky my friend willing to made me a pair. And for the shocks, I just apply 5 thin coats of red paint to made it look glossy, and for the spring, I used few layers of semi gloss paint and few layer of thin clear coat only. 

 

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And for the color of the body, I havn't started to think about it, well may be keep the Ferrari Red! I still scare about the part that I need to do the air vents opening.  

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Those brass shock pieces look very nice and they will be much stronger than the white metal parts. 

Looking back on the body preparation now that I've had some time with all the paint work, I think that stripping it down to bare metal might have been a mistake. When I color sand, I have been burning through the paint and primer layers quickly especially on the sharp edges like around the air intakes on the rear bonnet and doors. I probably should have just roughed up the paint from the factory paint and used it as the primer layer and painted over it. Now, I'm having to paint a lot of coats and build up the layers just so I have something left after sanding. On a model of this size that's a lot of paint!:blahblahblah::swear:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I really expected to have some engine assembly done by now but, a while back I had asked for some recommendations for a good adhesive to glue white metal parts together and one of the suggestions was Loctite 324. I found it on eBay and it was kind of pricey for a small bottle but, I ordered it. The seller was in China and after waiting about two weeks, I received a refund saying that, they could not fill the order. So, I re-ordered it from another seller in India; that, was over 3 weeks ago and I'm still waiting!

In the meantime I have continued to work on the paint and to date I probably have something like 8-10 coats of gloss black enamel on all of the metal body parts. I have been color sanding in between each coat and that's after waiting any where from 3-7 days between each coat. I have been working on the car but, I said a while back that, I wouldn't continue to bore you guys with picture after picture of paint in progress work. i have been working on the paint for going on two months now and, I'm almost about done so, I will show a few of the last color sanded pieces and then a few of the last almost final coats of black. I just painted these pieces on Saturday evening so, I haven't really picked them up or examined them too closely. I'm sure that some will be fine for the final stages but, some will require just a bit more work. You will see that, the black is very shiny as is but, I have had a few issues with an occasional chip in the paint and with the number of coats on the panels any chip is almost catastrophic! So, even though the black really doesn't need a clear coat, I'm going to shoot a couple of coats of clear as a small bit of protection.

 

So, these first few pictures are the color sanded pieces prior to final color coats. I tried to get the it down so, that there's no orange peel or runs and each piece after being sanded flat still had color completely covering it.

 

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Then, I heated up the paint cans by letting them sit out in the sun for a while until the cans were warm and shaken well. Since the parts are fairly large, I used coffee cans to set the pieces on and used a turn table under the coffee can and rotated the parts and tried to get a good even coat on each piece without overdoing it. That's something that, I had done more than once on prior sessions. Black is a hard color to see when you start getting too much paint down especially when it isn't well lit. The turn table really made a big difference in keeping everything even as well.

 

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So, that's where I'm at with the paint for the moment. Like I said, it really doesn't need a clear coat for shine but, it will help protect it a little.

In the meantime, since I'm waiting on the glue for the engine parts, I decided to start on the interior. I have the Tremonia transkit for the LM version of the interior and I started with some of the PE after I stripped out all the old stickers that were used for the rear firewall. Here's the interior that I started with and the transkit.

 

The stickers were kind of a mess

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Cleaned and masked off

 

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After doing some experimenting, I decided to use a concoction I put together for the area instead of the material supplied in the transkit from Autograph. I think they give you stockings like pantie hose!

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After application

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The Tremonia transkit PE. Like I didn't have enough PE in the Autograph transkit to begin with! The Autograph has 8 large sheets of PE and this one has 2 smaller ones plus bags of nuts, bolts, ferules, rod and decals shown in the following pictures.

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I started with the first set of boxes that go on the passenger side of the rear firewall. This is the printed circuit board that goes inside one of the boxes.

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The box it goes inside of

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Needless to say there's a few more electronic boxes and radio with lots of wiring to be added. There's also a roll bar and extra bracing that go from the rear wall to the floor and a tank that goes on the passenger side floor area along with quite a few other things. I will continue to make the PE boxes and as soon as the rear area is dry, I'll start adding the carbon fiber decals to the floor. So, it will be adding decals and while they are drying work on the PE etc etc. More later as I make some progress. As soon as all of the body parts are completely finished I will take some pictures before I wrap them up until each is needed for assembly. 

 

Edited by larchiefeng
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Fantastic progress.  Your bench is like mine: "let's cut out a bit of transkit, and see how we can make it fit".....Larchiefeng, I am enjoying my build as you are, a little bit at a time....I've got some PE hose clamps in this transkit that I cannot figure out how to bend to get a proper clamp!  On we go!

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I think that you have a point there! I didn't intend for it to go like this but, when I got to the paint it all got side tracked to working on the paint mainly. I was following the instructions step by step up to that. I knew that I had to get the paint done before fall and winter and I wanted to do it in the garage where I have much more room for all these big parts. This along with the big deck repair project that I had going on all summer pretty much shot doing anything else. If I had painted the car with lacquer I could have cut the time frame down a lot but, after having done the Mercedes with the black enamel, I was comfortable working with it, it just takes a lot longer for the paint to gas out. 

Waiting for the Loctite adhesive for the engine to arrive from India on a cattle boat, has been frustrating too. So, in an attempt to do something that I thought I could make some progress on in between working on the sanding and painting, I thought that the interior was a subassembly that I could get started on and at least post something. I'll get the basic stuff done and work on the transkit parts while other things are drying or I'm waiting for something. My biggest problem is keeping all the different transkits and their parts straight and not mixing up the bolts, nuts and screws. I'm working with well over 3000-4000 parts and the workbench just isn't big enough! Lol :penguin::rage:

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It sounds like it; are you on the west coast too? It seems like it, judging from the time of your responses. I'm in California but, in the mountains up around 6000 feet so, that is why I have to focus on the body and paint work now. Once November gets here the weather gets cold, rainy and snowy and I'm done outside! Then, I can spend my time on the bench working on the smaller subassemblies staying nice and warm. And, there's plenty of those to keep me going until the spring and summer!

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9 minutes ago, larchiefeng said:

It sounds like it; are you on the west coast too? It seems like it, judging from the time of your responses. I'm in California but, in the mountains up around 6000 feet so, that is why I have to focus on the body and paint work now. Once November gets here the weather gets cold, rainy and snowy and I'm done outside! Then, I can spend my time on the bench working on the smaller subassemblies staying nice and warm. And, there's plenty of those to keep me going until the spring and summer!

I'm in South Carolina, Eastern Standard Time.  I just cleaned out my garage, so it looks like I'll be moving my stuff out of the house into the icebox for the winter :).  No biggie- I'm thinking of putting an LCD TV out there....

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You mean something like this? 

I went from this 

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To this last summer

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These pictures don't even tell half of the story. It was a total clean out and insulation and drywall job of the entire garage! But, yes it sounds like a parallel track or maybe we're all just kinda like this! 

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