End of era of classic cars in Cuba?

Thats great, and sad at the same time. Cuba is amazing and walking the streets covered with all those classics is sureal......   but they could use some fresh meat.

"Authentic Cuba Resto", would probably fetch a good price.

Iv seen some incredible work like that some guy in Indonesia I believe was making perfect replica of the corrugated floor pressing for some vw buses just using old scrap steel, hammers, rocks, and a tire on the ground.

In Mexico, I needed a voltage regulator for my 65 Chrysler.   We searched all over for a new one, nothing.  The alt was putting out 18 volts in a gel battery so we were not in total desperation but the fear was having the electronic ignition fail.  Anyway, on the way back to the hotel, there was a sign that said Alternado and we saw a light. 
The people lived in the shop so we stopped to see if they could sell a used one.  This old man with an analog meter with no face, just a wiper arm on it, spoke no English but thru broken Spanish and pointing he understood our problem.

He took the mission and literally took out VR apart and rebuilt it with junk around his shop.  he fiddled with it for an hour and I'm thinking OH crap, the thing will never run now.  At least at 18 volts we were able to compete; now we are dead. 

Another hour passed and it is midnight, the old man asked us to start the car and bingo, 14.8 VDC.  He nailed it. 

We've lost so much having  parts available that we just do not realize how fortunate we truly are.  By the time a car ends up in a salvage yard there really isn't much left in Mexico.  Compared to Cuba, Mexico must be a haven for spares.  The Cubans have all my respect the way they keep those old cars running.

So true. You won't believe how many of the engineering students I've taught who didn't know what a Philips screw driver was, or even, figuring these are the "digital generation" kids, what a byte was. We had to be secretive in recruiting (because all the know-nothings would show up) and very selective in hiring interns (looking for people who could solve a problem whose solution that involved their hands) for an electron microscopy/x-ray lab.

I'm finding it interesting how while initially scorned, the neighborhood car guy gets acceptance once the neighbors realize he can fix things besides cars.

BCD FTW!!

The first computer I worked on was a Univac 1219 that used ferrite donuts and a series of intersecting wires to record each bit. Kids nowadays get freaked out by concepts like that, along with logic gates, boolean logic and machine language.

Come to think about it, they kinda freak me out now too....

But the genius in the old machines was that they were repairable. We had several hundred logic gate spares on-hand that we could swap in for a quick fix, then repair the old one with new transistors & diodes and wait for the next bug.

Kinda miss the old fixable stuff.

You do know Pete owns several MGs, right?  Your point may be valid, but it's not a deterrent.

But you've graduated from rubber hammers to steel hammers for the MG (I have video). 

Yeah, same stuff except our program was set up to run backwards with the ACLS to land planes instead of launching missiles.

"Don't drop the Mylar tape". <thump> "oops".

"You dumb-@$$ bootcamp! Better start rewinding it. See ya after lunch."

That was a favorite joke to play on the new guy. The "program" was contained on a roll of Mylar tape a mile & a half long and punched with holes that loaded via an optical reader. Dropping the spool meant the center would start falling out of the roll and cascade into a huge mess that had to be untangled and then rewound by hand. It took most people at LEAST 3-4 hours to untangle. And making the new guy nervous almost guaranteed he would drop it.

But only once.

"Percussive maintenance!"  Comes in handy at times.

@m610: Beautiful shots.  I love core memory.