spotarama

i built the gold seat to go into a rat rod but i thought i'd show it off on its own anyway i guess its a take on the WWII bomber seat look i've seen used in some rods its made from cut, flattened, bent and drilled aluminium anti perspirant can, its also been sanded on the back when flat to get a more scale thickness, the gold finish is how it came , its just been sanded a bit to make it look worn the silver one is a stock seat from ( i think a VW kit) , stock one to its right, it had every second rib cut out and filed then driver restraint bars added, floor runners added not as good as the alloy one but better than stock

does this count, no actual paint, just raw aluminium, cut, flattened ( it came rom anti-perspirant cans ), and bent to shape, the hood and nose cone clip into place and have pins that locate the hood

been a while since i finished this one but i always liked it a lot

1/24th, i have one i built years ago, it went well until i tried to tint the 'glass' purple to match the bodywork and they ended up fogging (purple fog though)

cool, i've always wanted to use astroturf inside a real car and you've replicated itinside a camino, well done

try these guys in england, they do a range of MG's as well as a Rover V8 engine which is what was used to power the V8 (obviously) versions http://www.sefinecast.co.uk/Contents.htm

they're from out of the orig truck kit, going to call them the parking brakes. i'm sort of planning to use a sort of joystick/control column coming out of the dash, sort of like a light plane control its changed a fair bit since the project started, it was orig going to be a tracked towtruck with the cab from a pickup and ski steering at the front with a small block chev under a normal hood

had an average one it must be said....but got the doctor to change my meds so i'm not a miserable basterd all the time and lost over 20lb....then mrs spotty thought i must be having an affair because i was happy and losing weight .....hopefully got her straightened out so lets ee what this next year brings....could do with a new motorbike though,anyone got a spare hayabusa? on the plus side, just found a local liquor store that sells my favourite brand of cider tonight so it can't all be bad can it?

decided to change the handlebars and headlight on my m/cycle today (back to ones i used to have on there- non stock but much better configuration) and do you think they'd fit.....no bl**dy chance, not happy, now i get to spend tomorrow sorting it instead of actually riding it and by the way, if anyone tells you LED lights are the eway to go on bikes/cars, don't believe them....you can see the lights from the moon but you can't see 10 feet in front of you with them, back to good old halogens for me

you didn't say crup shoot did you? just as well cos you're not allowed to say crepe shoot or crip shoot for that matter

i'm doing a similar one myself, using the hull, wheels and tracks from a chinese rocket launcher, cab, engine and 5th wheel from some bigrig (looking at the pics it seems to be a Diamond Reo), detailed the drivers seat, full communications gear in the cab, plumbed the engine, hydraulic winch on the front etc it will either be painted in 'international emergency' orange or army green it's still a LONG way off finished but one day......

a trick i used for fogging the windows of a Trabant (well it can be cold in Germany and the heaters were barely functional in Trabbies) was putting a pool of superglue on a sheet of cardboard and suspending the window 'glass' over it, as the fumes from the superglue evaporated they gently fogged the clear plastic, just leave it there until the desired degree of fogging is achieved. if the glue dries up just add more

what, you're not going to replicate the butchered speaker holes? there wouldn't be a torana out there that doesn't have those..... on a related matter, holes like those will fail you on a RWC down here (victoria) for compromising structural integrity and you'd have to have them repaired and engineer certificated to get the vehicle registered. just another way to get old cars off the road or genuine safety matter ?

check the die-casts of OCC or Jesse James bikes, some of those have ludicrously wide tyre/wheel combos and with a bit of scratchbuilding you could chop the spokes out of the wheel and just use the hub/rim/tyre with your own design spokes all this assumes they'd be an appropriate scale for what you want i've used the OCC 'Fire Engine' bike to build my own custom, basically only the engine and part of the frame were left, modified or replaced the wheels, forks, bodywork, carbs, exhaust, bars, lights

our local supermarket had their xmas stock out at the beginning of july to catch the 'christmas in july' trend thats catching on over here. then it all disappears until the beginning of september when its back in force for the next 4 months, though we get overlays of fathers day and halloween to keep us spending in the meantime

to go with the above mentioned system, i've got about 2000 albums and somewhere over 4000 45's (and a couple of hundred CD's but we don't talk about them), theres even a box of cassettes out there somewhere in case i ever buy another 70s car

one of my other hobbies is DJ'ing and occasionally filling in on the local public broadcaster radio station so i mostly just play proper records and at home i have a full DJ set up, twin turntables, mixing desk, 400w amp and PA speakers capable of handling 300w per side ( i got sick of blowing up normal peoples speakers ) it's just past seriously loud and i've never been able to crank the amp and main feed off the mixer past half, after that it just gets painful oh and what do i actually play....mostly punk but a whole load of 60s, 50s, metal, anything that goes well with beer really

taking my dog out for her morning walk (shes a 7 month old great dane) and running into one of the other great danes from the 'hood down at the park, they get on like a house on fire so she was a happy girl then took her to obedience classes and was told we'd done so well that next week we'd be tested to go up to the next level then took her to giant dog breed play date (yes, such things exist) where we let her off the lead for the first time and she repayed our trust by not running away. she just wanted to spend an hour and a half wrestling with her litter mate brother who she only gets to see at these days. a great afternoon watching 30+ danes and irish wolfhounds running free and not being careful about standing on smaller dogs (despite their size, giant breeds are remarkably gentle with other animals, generally more so the smaller the animals) all in all a good day topped off by her being so tired she'll (hopefully) sleep through the night this is her when she was about 3 months old, she's about twice the size now (about 97lbs, expected to reach 130lbs at full size)

the box lied to me !!!!!!!

a not a matador, but what you can do with a javelin and obviously nothing to do with ealanor or mustangs, just thought i'd put the pics up cos someone mentioned AMC, hope no-one minds too much

amazing work you're doing here robert, taking detail to the extreme degree. a mate of mine is building one of these (the 1:1 version though) for drag racing at the moment and i have vague memories from back in the early 80s of 4 of us piling into one for a weekend roadtrip from melbourne to sydney, very squeezy indeed. we lost the screen just outside gundagai at about 3 in the morning...not much fun, but then later that morning dave managed to squeeze an indicated 102mph out of its tiny little 2250cc motor (126CI from memory, the smallest 6 cylinder Holden made)

never trashed the parents car but then i didn't start driving regularly until after my dad died, my mum actually gave me his car a few weeks after he went. i took it straight out and swapped it for something i could a) fit inside and drive (he had a stick shift suzuki swift - i only drive autos and i'm 6'5"....) however a couple of years earlier i had rung a car hire place and ordered an auto ute (aussie for pick-up), when i got to the shop the only vehicle in the yard was a totally stuffed old toyota Hiace pickup with 4 speed manual on the column. i pointed out to them that this was not what i'd asked for and it was not going to go well.... they assured me i'd get the hang of it 'just give it a go mate....' in the (approximately) 5 miles from the rental yard to my house i.. overheated the motor to the point that there was coolant running out from between the block and head burnt the clutch out completely totally destroyed the brakes left the gearbox with only reverse gear still (sort of) functioning ran it along the side of a car transporter, destroying the passenger side of my car (none of this was deliberate by the way) made it home (just) and rang the rental yard and informed them of my eventful journey, there was silence on the other end of the phone for quite some time, then they said they'd send a tow truck and sort it when i got back there they were as good as their word, there was a brand new automatic ute awaiting me which i proceeded to send sideways (in a cloud of tyre smoke) across three lanes on the way out of their yard and spent the rest of the day 'driving it like i stole it' as the saying goes apparently they had to throw the toyota away and i was not required to pay any sort of excess for insurance as i'd not ordered that vehicle and told them i couldn't drive it in the first place

building one of these too (slowly) and using the motor, trans and rear end from the Airfix 1/24th Jag E type its very much the sort of hotrod that was being built in england right up to the 80s, easily available parts and relatively cheap (the other option being the Rover V8) much modified roll cage, front suspension/steering, engine mounts, seat, trandss tunnel and much more to be done yet

oops, see below

my user name 'spotarama' comes from my nickname 'spotty' which i scored from a friend many years ago after he noticed that whenever i got bitten by an insect or cut/grazed myself, the wound would always get infected and take up to a year to heal. this unfortunate state of affairs stems from a minor incident at the age of 5, i jumped into a european wasps nest (it was in england so i assume they were european anyway). in my defence there wasn't a nest of wasps the last time i'd jumped into that particular hole i'd dug in the garden. anyway i got stung a couple of hundred times and nearly died. didn't though, just ended up highly allergic to bites, scratches etc. after living with it for the last 45 years i'm kind of used to it and it has gotten better over the years but it still summons a horrified look when people ask me why i'm called 'spotty' oh and the avatar is a diecast forklift i modified to look like a forklift i'd be happy to drive instead of the POS i'm stuck with at work. it got a racing seat, alloy pedals, levers made from dressmakers pins, V8 headers, AMG mags and airhorns. it's photographed in the yard of the garage diorama i built years ago