Russell C

Yep, I figured that would likely happen, and since the engine itself looked like more of a fun project than usual for me, it by itself begged for a WIP thread. The nice outgrowth from it is the 1:1 Y-block engine photo ref thread that Bill Engwer created, one that can be continually added to for others' benefit. Thanks for all the kind words, friends.

Interesting model topic, reminds me that there are variants of such 1:1 vehicles right here in the Valley of the Fierce Sun where you yourself can enroll in police driving tactics school: Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, Tactical Mobility

Couldn't resist the tease on up to the surprise of the mid-engine transaxle, I'm just weird that way. Full model below courtesy of the GSL awards slide show, and others can be seen at their official entry photo collection by hitting the "Next" button at this page for 4 more views of what the model looks like. I'll have to put together a different thread later of my full collection of yellow 3-wheeled models that were a running gag at GSL for its "Group" category going all the way back to 1992. I've done one thread on my "Group 5" (2005) Studebaker, here. I managed to snag the Ed Roth private award this time (where my name will be added to that one trophy), and I tied for 3rd place in the people's choice vote "Group 15" category. Quite an honor on both counts, and loads of fun to mess with peoples' minds. Couldn't resist the temptation to combine Roth's "Road Agent" and his "Mysterion", especially because the '56 Victoria had the transparent roof option, which technically would end up looking like a bubble top in this application. Since the back end of this thing is somewhat open, I thought it would be fun to do up the engine with good detail and have a WIP thread on it, and it was.

Or sell it to everyone, like one Randy Derr suggested. For laughs, maybe one of our cartoonists could draw a logo of a dog with teeth clenched on fuzz stretching from a cushion (more comical than this example) & lettering saying "Brizio Smoke".....

And you provided us all with a big laugh with the line about your model "smoke" being what your dog pulled from the couch cushions. That will be a memorable moment in the history of GSL.

Might be few and far between on ebay, but you could keep an eye out for a used JC Penny "Micro Workshop". These have a dial in the end for completely variable speed above 10k rpm. I've had mine since the '80s, it still works like a champ.

Engine/cradle install. Cramped quarters in there, somewhat dark and hard to see, thus the need for a WIP set of photos. This one shows the boot on the end of the coil which I'd forgotten to install when I took the photo for post #30, but now it reminds me I forgot to install the wire from the coil to the firewall location. I'll put it in right after I post this. Off to GSL with this thing early tomorrow morning, photos to follow of the completed model when I get back.

That could pass for full size. Looking forward to seeing it in person.

Oh, yeh. One of the wildest stunts was when the legendary Pryor Passorino showed up minus his standard mustache and otherwise disguised as Guido Dolce, so much so that none of us recognized him until he gave the practical joke two days into the contest, just before a bunch of us were headed off to the model car museum. Wish I could have recorded that on video, the roar of laughter and surprise was unforgettable.

Prime reason is I haven't missed a GSL since 1990, but secondary always is it's a hoot to mess with the minds of my fellow modelers. Third, it's great to revisit with the same guys again (be sure to catch Don Emmons' stories, assuming he - the luckiest modeler in the world - is there), and see others who haven't been back in a while. The museum is a must-see for me, since it has the Don Shenk / Phil Jensen truck models that brought me into the hobby in the first place, which I'd only seen in magazines and the "Building Model Trucks" book. And I love to fly, so it's a good excuse for a drastic 4-day change of scenery.

Well... driver will be in front, no room for passengers, though ..... Exhaust. Had some aluminum (?) clad copper rod in the right diameter which was somewhat cooperative to bend. Oval shaped scrap plastic bits look like small mufflers to me, and I had just enough aluminum tube to use for the end lengths. This setup demands whitewall slicks, of course.

Transaxle/gearbox. Needed to permanently install the engine in order to work out the exhaust pipe/muffler setup on top of the transaxle area. Removed some of the bulky looking plastic of the AMT '56 Crown Vic suspension with better looking metal pieces. The transaxle/gearbox is a much reworked truck transmission, I think leftover from the MPC Super Semi Zinger kit. I'll have to detail in another thread how I used heat stretched sprue to create the reinforcement ridges on it. It actually is, just not in the end you expect to see it in. Or I should say, it is in the proper end, kind of, but the end is not where it usually is. Hey. I resemble that remark.

Generator. I stand corrected, and a person learns something every day. I've been using both words interchangeably ever since I was a kid, never got around to learning the difference.

Dual quad carbs. As described in my #1 post, these are old Monogram ones, turned sideways (5/6/14 edit: senility caused me to attribute these to the Quicksilver kit in my first post, but that is obviously not right from http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/gallery_12144_1240_16372.jpg I just snagged. They must have instead come from the Monogram Cobra kit). Molded in red plastic, which is why that shows through the gold dusting of paint, where I scraped off the surface for the air cleaners. Throttle linkage is a bit blurry up at the top, and two fuel lines from a junction thingy mimics (sorta) this guy's 1:1 setup. The pleats in the 'filter paper' is nothing more than pencil lines in white primer paint. The one air cleaner is just on temporarily, I'll clean it up a bit more. The oil pan is chrome, it just looks white from too much reflection of the oven top in this lousy light in my kitchen. Temp fitting of the header - the back hole makes it too low at that end, I'll fix that. These are the custom headers from the AMT Crown Vic, modified so the outlet goes straight horizontal toward the rear. The reason for that will be obvious in my next post, as will the reason for the driver's side throttle linkage bellcrank facing toward the front of the engine. Of course, the wire out the back of the headers will be cut to short lengths to fit into the rest of the pipes.

Thanks for the kind words, gents. Alternator. Generator [see posts 38 &39 below] The fan belt is heat-stretched black plastic sprue, bent to shape. I machined the alternator body and little pulley on my mini-lathe (blessed to receive that as a gift years back from my now-departed father, a pro machinist), since those were not something I could easily 'turn' on my motor tool. The fin wheel was a ratchet gear of a squashed wrist watch I found in a parking lot. The black brackets are the same dead soft black anodized aluminum as seen on the reject aerospace photo etched tags to the right, which were another item I snagged from the recycle bin at my former nameplate manufacturer job. That material cuts easily with a scissors, files like hard plastic, and is easily drilled through, all the while maintaining that nice even black surface. Touch up is as easy as hitting the silver-exposed surfaces with a black permanent marker.

Coil. First, I'm glad I could find the center hole in the distributor cap in that spaghetti maze of plug wires, and second, I'm pleased that this was one more little part I didn't lose in the carpet. When first viewing this photo, I realized that I'd forgotten to make a boot for the back of the coil, so I solved that problem by half-slitting a very short length of the same insulation material that I'd used on the plugs, and slipped it over the end of the wire going into the coil. Valve covers now permanently installed. At the front, you see the beginnings of the T-bracket and front mounting plate for the alternator. There'll be no "floating alternator" controversy with this engine.

Plug wiring. I made that metal 'hoop' for the plug wires to go through out of some super thin soft aluminum sheet warning label material that I'd scrounged from when I used to work at a nameplate manufacturer. Basically, I cut a strip of it with a scissors, formed it into that shape, drilled a hole through the tab and the block, and attempted to secure it to the back corner of the block with a bit of black heat-stretched sprue - but that wasn't strong enough to hold it in place when I attempted to run a second full length formed wire through it, so I re-secured it with CA glue. The secondary lesson from that was my blackened soft steel wire was just a bit too springy to use full plug-to-distributor length. So, all the remaining wires after the first one go from the plug to that loops on each side, and the second half of the wires go from the distributor cap to the loops. Sure made life easier after figuring out that it wasn't necessary to have uncut wires. Hovering temporarily in space above the engine on a copper wire peg is the coil. The plug boots were made from insulation cut and stripped from the wire next to the engine. If I may be harsh on my own work, those boots look a bit too thick, but too late to fix that now. I'll have to clean up the worn off orange paint, a result of excess handling. I tried my best to hold the engine from only the bottom of the block and the top of the intake, but the lesson here is that I should have made some kind of temporary fixture to stuff into the back, so that I wouldn't have to touch any part of the block.

Pins can be pretty much any round 'rod material' under the sun, as long as you have a corresponding drill bit to match the diameter. Paper clip wire, used staples, heat stretched plastic sprue, etc. For years, I've been using mostly some old http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/gallery_12144_1240_34601.jpg I found in a discarded electrical thing, the insulation comes off easily and it is nicely bendable.

Mostly Cadillac.....

By random chance, I was leafing through my dad's old car reference files this weekend, and long ago he'd cut out the article seen here in Google's scans of the Sept 1966 Popular Mechanics magazine, about PCV valves. According to the drawing on that first page, the crankcase vent tubes were used up to 1963.

Block paint & test fitting. Color shows a bit too orange in this photo, it is Testors Bright Red, which is close enough for jazz in my book when it comes to the factory Ford color. For more visual interest, I drilled in freeze plugs and gouged out notches in the heads for where the head bolts are. I added a better looking mount for the oil filter and removed the excess plastic behind the water pump outlet tube. The fuel pump, crankcase vent canister, vent tube and oil filter are out on their wire pegs in a sort of 'exploded view' for this pic. The giant holes are for the AMT Crown Vic custom headers, and the two holes in the block in front of the oil filter (one is a mistake) are where the engine mount will go. The other holes are for the spark plugs.

This link works for me, automatically putting out a web page instead of just downloading a PDF file.... http://www.gslchampionship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GSL-25-Seminar-Schedule.pdf

Glad to hear that, it's a tradition that can't be missed. And remember, '56 Crown Vics were sorta bubbletops (hint).

Quite nice Yep, the Singer 911 is yet another reason why I need to win a major lottery:

Must all depend on what batches came out. I bought 3 sheets in the late 1970s, all of which experienced the wrinkle/shrink problem, but since I've only used short sections of the material all of this time, I just avoid the wrinkle areas. I'm nearly out of the one sheet below, I have more on the next one, and the third is still mostly unused, all with no bumpy surfaces, no discoloration that doesn't polish out with a bit of Simichrome polish, and no adhesive problems. In some cases where too-small pieces aren't sticky enough, I cure that problem with just a small dot of Tenax which capillaries under and holds the bit to the paint with no noticeable wrecking of the paint when I do that carefully enough.