Russell C

Just checking if my standard drag-direct-from-desktop works .... (it does!)

The Beck 904 Carrera GTS replica has a bit of the 911 Turbo-ish rear flares thing happening, if you need that for inspiration, but you may have to still go a tic wider ...

Man after my own heart!

Eek! And I knew that, too, hate it when I typo someone's name.

And here's the ultimate result of the vehicle the engine landed in, my entry into the GSL Contest's Common Kit category, where we were all supposed to build the Tamiya 1966 VW Beetle in any manner we wanted (except no resin replacement bodies, per the rules for the class here) What did I do here? Basically, the greenhouse was turned around 180° right at the door line, and I swapped the fenders from one end to the other. And to make matters more bizarre, I couldn't resist dropping in a flat 5 hybrid VW/Porsche engine. I managed to get 2nd place! Personally, I put my chances at no better than 4th. I'll have to do an Under Glass post for this, when I get a few better photos of it, but it needs just a tad of cleanup. I was working on it 'til around 2 in the morning on the same day I flew up to Salt Lake City.

Actually, three models were unveiled. One was a very old, significantly customized/stretched 16th (?) scale candy apple red Jaguar, and if that was the Dennis Doty one mentioned in this 2016 MCM thread, that was it. I can't readily find old scan photos to confirm that, but other guys might round up some old ones or have the latest photos of it at GSL. The second was a very customized green '49 or '50 Ford 'Ranchero' whose builder was right there in person to show it, and the third was the completed restoration of the 1964 Revell-Pactra Contest Senior Division co-winning Ford cabover, built by the late Bob Nordberg. I covered the rediscovery of that last one and Nordberg's others in this older thread, and posted my two update photos of it there.

Simply amazing to see the Nordberg Ford Cabover paired up again at the GSL 2019 contest's seminar on the latest International Model Car Museum acquisitions, just as it was in 1964 with the late Augie Hiscano's hot rod in the Revell-Pactra Contest. When I find more photos of different views of Nordberg's cabover before it was placed back into its bubble, I'll post 'em here, along with a link to the GSL seminar video on the Museum.

And I thought those looked stunning just on your laptop there ....

Congrats!!

Evil Kurt, I'll get Gregg to drop his camera on you when you walk out for the group shot.

And he got some of us in a photo or three.

More pics at the site for its upcoming auction: https://themarket.co.uk/listings/ford/escort-rs1800/e063c485-18a9-4caf-9810-ebff60b7706c Vimeo video here:

Two Youtube videos, Part 1 and part two follows below:

Saturday AM only.

All day, basically, 9am to 10pm. Full event schedule here.

Accessory belt. Yep, the Tamiya kit is fabulous in many ways, but that method of attaching wheels is not so much. I've never mastered having functioning parking brakes, so to prevent my models from rolling off the shelves, I just evilly glue the wheels into one permanent position.

For my 1/32 scale Kyle Petty wagon, I lathe-cut a groove in the wheel rim and glued in (via liquid cement) a length of heat-stretched red plastic sprue. But liquid solvent glue can melt that kind of thin sprue if you put a hair too much down, so an alternative is super glue. A person would have to experiment for a while with this technique, but it is a way to get consistent color and stripe width all the way around. Looks like after a couple of decades, the top center-right section of my 'stripe' has started to lift out of the groove just a tad.

Definitely not the throwback 300 version.

Nice alternative roofline there. Me, had the body & details, engine, interior all together, but hit the wall when it came to the suspension geometry, which was going to be a way better improvement over the Monogram kit. Gotta get my act together on figuring out how to make deadly sure the wheels are centered within the fender arches, with the right slight rake and all four wheels touching the ground. The key to engineering something is the success of making it so that it can be dry-fitted, evaluated for proper appearance, disassembled, tweaked, and reassembled in a way where assembly / disassembly / reassembly goes right every time. Couldn't figure that out with the suspension back then. Meanwhile, calling this engine done today. But now that I look at the pics, I'll need to run an Xacto blade over the top edge of the fan belt (oh, wait - there is no fan) to make it more of a dead flat black color. Made from heat-streatched black plastic sprue. When I went to install the battery wire to the generator, the heat-stretched red sprue just looked like it was plunging down a gopher hole, so to give it a more realistic look, I made one of my tiny wire rings for that junction. This particular one is really small. Slide the ring onto the wire, jamb the wire into the hole, slide into place, and make it all permanent with a tiny drop of super glue. Regarding the way I made the distributor, spark plug wires & color matched wire boots, I think I'll cover that in a separate future Building Tips thread, since another of my projects requires a custom made distributor, and I think I know of a way to make an even better one than I made here. What car does this go into? The hint was in my prior post above -- stay tuned to the photo coverage at the GSL contest two weekends from now, assuming no completion disaster intervenes.

Or a Jag V-12. Been using the same techniques since the 1990s, as seen in my still-uncompleted 427 Cobra Berlinetta. Tragic how some projects get sidelined. Onward with this one, though (jealous that you got your GSL Common Kit Tamiya VW Beetle entry done with weeks to spare before the deadline). Wasn't sure if this would work out well or not, to have the smaller wires (heat-stretched sprue, actually) come out of the coil, but they actually cooperated better than I expected when I test fitted the whole shroud assembly to the engine. Green & red 'wires' get jammed behind the distributor, while the black one will be going into the firewall when the engine is installed. Finally cut into a Fujimi Porsche 911 decal sheet for the coil decal that I had since 1990.

Partial work on the intake areas, and a test fit of the velocity stacks. Flat black paint speckles on my fingers is from painting the air cool covers, seen in the third photo in this latest post. Creating a little more visual interest for the velocity stacks. For accuracy and ease of cutting, I did use my miniature lathe to cut the pipes (from eBay seller "intermeccanica") to the height I needed. But for the thingys inside, I used my regular motor tool. A bit of black plastic sprue is 'lathe-turned' down to the proper diameter with an X-acto blade, then a center hole is drilled to accept a short length of heat-stretched gray sprue. Then I used my smallest drill bit, #80, to make a deep dimple int that tiny center thingy, and finally this is all cut off the black sprue. Engine looks better when it is not just unpainted plastic. Ignore the wire sticking up from the fuel injection pump, it's just there to locate the assembly straight. A fuel line will replace it later. I can get away with the front of the engine block being featureless since it will be almost all hidden from view in the car.

Yep, and I have a roof from the T-bird, favoring that basic look. Drop the 289 roof onto int and it becomes more of the Hawk Bobcat version. We'll see, but I might also just put a widening strip into the Apache roof, too.

1/32 scale Hawk Apache Sports Roadster, got it cheap off eBay, single bid. Missing the front valance and one wheel/tire, and the crank for the rubber band is cut in half and solidly glued into place in such a way that I guess it was intended to look like an exhaust pipe. My speculation turned out to be true, the body width and basic midsection height is about the same as a 25th scale Shelby Cobra. Open up the hole for the interior, and a 25th scale one could drop right in ….. so you see where I might be going in a WIP sometime in the future for a fun. relatively easy curbside project. Widening the roof might involve a bit of artful design work, though.

Ferrari sacrilege. Following, of course.

Heater hose is some discarded electrical wire with black insulation. Perfect diameter and texture for my purposes Had to rob the exhaust / heat exchangers manifolds from my late 1970s buildup of the Revell Carrara. Will be the first model I've ever built with velocity stacks. The bases of that are from the Tamiya DTM Mercedes. Some kind of fuel injection system here. Who knows how it works? If it's mechanical, then maybe that box on the plate ahead of it provides some kind of drive to it via the crank near the lower pulley. That's the mystery sometimes with these mix 'n match engines. Air cool area covers made from a thick part number tab on the parts tree sprue from the AMT '58 Impala, which was molded in that robins egg blue color.