Russell C

If you have had the chance yet, the official Malone FB page likes to see models of his rigs: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063630907438

In today's mail, the $10 eBay Buy-it-Now (plus shipping) Moebius Von Franco Willys I bought last week. Originally only wanted it for the driver figure for my Edselized-Fairlane dragster idea, but now that I see this Willys buildup in person, its front tires are the bigger size I need instead of the too-small Anglia cartoon model ones I got last year, which would fix that problem. Seems like a not especially smart driver might need a shift gate cut into the upper corner of the Edsel Fairlane passenger door ... but I'll probably shorten the guy's arm/wrist a bit, and make some kind of purple shirt sleeve for him to wear. Hulk Motorsports!

... ya learn something every day. Since the old Monogram Quickslilver kit had that asymmetric fan, I've updated my rebuild/mod project accordingly.

Neglected but not forgotten WIP. I'd long been wondering why the fans in the Quicksilver / Bad News / Bad Actor kit Z28 engines seemed to be strangely mal-formed, but now courtesy of this days-old MCM post about '68 Camaro fans, this asymmetrical fan style is a must-have for my rebuild/mod here. The Revell '69 Corvette coupe glue bomb buildup I got a while back will provide a better rendition of that fan (plus, the Vette's whole front frame clip/suspension will ultimately replace the Quicksilver gasser-style straight axle setup because I'm aiming for a more comfort-riding look).

It's doomed, but still savable in the utterly different direction of becoming a cartoonish dragster.

One increment further accomplished today: sculpted the pair of clear red sprue "Edsel-ish" taillight panels to fit within the somewhat hollowed-out Fairlane fins areas. At the rate this poor old promo is warping, in 50 years it'll be a C-shape with the front tires curled under to touch the back slicks. I might have to stuff a couple long metal rods under the chassis to brace the front panel against the back to prevent that excess curl ....

Call this "Edselizing" a '60 Fairlane. Since the arch-warped promo I got back in late 2023 is going to be a caricature dragster, and since I had one of those Edsel grilles from the ancient 69¢ AMT Custom Grilles parts pack, I figured I could make this thing one increment more funny that way today. Also cut off the Fairlane taillight panel, that area is replaced with a slightly concave strip that I cut out of a leftover scrap of my 1:1 vinyl shed roof rain gutters project, its shiny white color matches the roof color on this old promo. I superglued it into place to set overnight tonight, with hopes that this'll hold between vinyl and acetate (or whatever warping plastic promos are made out of) I'll cut a thick strip section I have of gullwing-shape clear red sprue to become the two taillights to jamb into the Fairlane fins areas (iPhone red marker scribbles to show what the basic idea looks like). Not sure how I'll tidy up the front bumper license plate area yet, but I'll drive off that bridge when I get to it .... (Roth "Fink"-type caricature driver figure to arrive in the mail Tuesday from a nice Buy-it-Now eBay purchase I scored last week)

Nice video of the Pete COEs. Gave me an excuse to to a quick photoalteration of one of the images, since I'd long wondered what a wide grille version would look like. But did they ever make a 1:1, even as a prototype?

No clue how it works myself, except to say it's been working flawlessly in my '86 VW GTI daily driver throughout the 32 years I've owned it, approx 330k miles. If I remember right, my mechanic only needed to do one small adjustment to whatever the big round lever arm plate is, but I myself need to occasionally adjust the idle screw to keep it around 900 rpm. When my mechanic's visiting German expert on Mk2 VWs came in one time, I asked what he thought of the computer running the system, and he said they are absolutely problem-free.

Within my demented imagination 🤪 (I have this tendency to see vehicles that aren't there). Body is from your Otaki box art while the drag racer bits are from one of the revised box art renditions of the old Revell Thames Panel kit.

Kleptomaniac "irk" repairman came back this morning, the one in my April 23 comment. This time he's called in by the daughter of the next door neighbor (no wall between us, tiny little backyards) to see why the A/C stopped working. One of the problems (among several, it's a really old unit) is that the water condensation pipe out of the unit has dust/small leaves blocking its upward pointing outlet. But rather than ask the lady to get him a pitcher of water from her kitchen faucet to wash the dust out, he instead walks into my backyard, picks up my pizza pan-size plastic birdbath platter full of water, dumps it on the A/C outlet, and with the washed-out dust gone he shows her how the backed up pipe can now discharge. Give him minimal credit for putting my platter back - cockeyed on the wire stand - but can't even bring himself to ask her for water to fill it back up. If I didn't know any better, the repairman was born & raised in a hippie enclave where everyone's stuff was communal property, which anyone could help themselves to as they saw fit. A little hard to get mad at the guy if he literally does not know any better, but this kind of thing is really irksome.

Ditto. As a little kid when I followed my older brother into the model railroad hobby shops, I thought it was intriguing how the model railroad 1:87 Ulrich Mack kits had such long frames for the 3-axle versions, but over the years later as a model truck builder myself, I'd only heard it was a 'western United States thing' and nothing more beyond that. (photo gleaned from the WorthPoint website of some old eBay listing)

Finally got some of that after lunch today down here in the "valley of mostly unrelenting sun." Little drizzles happening right now, 78°F instead of 90°+ at this hour for a change. In the bottom half of the composite pic below, the duststorm wind hit maybe a minute or less after I got the shot; blew a bunch of those loose brown frond leftover bits off in rather spectacular fashion. Brief 'mudstorm' followed, less than a quarter of an inch. Plants & trees can use the mineral content, I guess (yep, I live in an old geezer colony where nearly each place has an 80 foot tall palm tree).

At the 1:30 spot, the video narrator says the original kit version was the Revell one, and then said starting at the 1:58 spot that this new version would feature a sunroof and a removable roof . . . . . but I double-checked my original kit, the Revell one did not have the removable roof cap, and has fender flares molded onto the body. The narrator and the Revell image he refers to might be a mistake, since the new box art certainly resembles the old original MPC Blazer version with its chrome spoke wheels, no fender flares, and the front front bumper guard that has the driving lights attached to it. That kit version also had a sunroof. Except it also has a molded-to-the-body roof cap. The Monogram Blazer / Jimmy kits were the ones with the removable roofs. If they are doing a straight up repop of the MPC Blazer version (which was later repopped as the AMT/Ertl one), I'd think it would be quite a chore to re-tool just to create a removable roof cap.

Way long time ago, the GSL contest used to have a Bonneville Salt Flats category, since that area was sorta right nearby - my fun with that category was to come up with the most unaerodynamic vehicles I could think of, and one year it was the Hot Wheels Divco milk truck. Ripe for mimicking that basic theme. (pic from my old Bonneville trio MCM thread)

My combo of mashing bits of a Hot Wheels '55 Chevy gasser into the body of a Hot Wheels Sunshine Cab - more pics in my MCM thread here.

I forget how many years back it was (late 1990s?) when I took that road on the longer way to my favorite Colorado summer vacation area. My condolences to you today . . . they added a roundabout to it. One of those showed up somewhat recently on the more direct route to Colorado, west of Ganado, on the way toward Chinle. Predictably, there are looong skid marks / scrape marks straight up & over that one.

Backstory there is that the "Group" category at the GSL contests was that we were asked to all build the same pre-determined kit ('40 Ford pickup for GSL XXI), but with parts only available 30 years earlier, nothing modern except for whatever repop of the original old kit happened to be available. My running gag was yellow 3-wheelers, and I figured out how to turn a pickup into a bike with an outrigger 3rd wheel. Little vertical pads for Ken's suicide rider to brace his feet against, back of the cab wall for mine.

Might try contacting him directly: https://www.kenhamilton-miniatureconstruction.com/ Tell 'im the guy who replicated his Bonneville Salt Flats suicide bike rider on a '40 Ford pickup trike sent ya. He should remember that old joke of mine.

Solution - simplify. Straight axle, 1960s tech suspension. Plus if you still want to keep the engine in the back, it would be a great wheelstander. 🤣

But if the thickness still looks bothersome, another option is black plastic sprue heat-stretched to a realistic thickness. Pliable enough to be bent around the pulley grooves, you just need to zap glue the joining part in at the least visible part of a pulley, bottom-most spot is where I do that. See my pic in this post for my Backbug's flat five engine. (I also despise single-unit pulleys/belts, and also thumb my nose at engine physics)

You guys back east have trees and shrubs and stuff. Always amazes me to see such runaway greenery. We don't have that out here in the low desert southwest. Car would've been entombed within a dense sand-filled cocoon of tumbleweeds. 🤣

I guess the Gatling Rail Gun is out, then. I remember when the hype came out on these, where somebody was saying you could also be hurling softball size mini satellites into low orbit perhaps cheaply. But from what I learned from my dad who had worked at a test lab that used rocket sleds to test missile components for durability under hard acceleration, the impression I got was that the 0-to-60 time over the distance of a couple of feet wreaks havok on yer average dinky electronics-filled satellite. All looks good on paper until you start trying to work through the physics bugs ....

Did one more image search, threw in the name "Oldsmobile" since they were famous for their rocket themes back in the '50s, and one single result was a guy at Flickr labeling it a '58 Olds Super 88, but had only this view and not of the whole car. However, I did a big search for '58 Olds-es, and none had that kind of mirror, just single stem round ones. Maybe these were a JC Whitney catalog-style custom thing back in the day?