jbwelda

radio shack used to (and probably still does) stock a great nipper for about half what they wanted for one in a hobby shop. they had red rubber on the handles. excellent and comfortable...i too thought an xacto was fine but i learned different once i started using a nipper!

so can we post anime near-porn figures here? how about "dr flintbone" figures? are there any guidelines at all? how about that famous story of the guy who did a "scale model" of a pile of dog feces and was shown the door at some model contest? would that fit here? do motorcycle or bicycle models belong here or are they somehow considered "cars"? this should get interesting. not to mention another fine chance to keep the moderators gainfully employed (without pay, no doubt).

well here is a (common) ebay story from my side: picked up the revell 32 ford highboy (someone here once called it something like "the best kit ever made"): for 10$ plus 6$ shipping. what was the list on this kit? 25$? plus tax if bought in a bricks and mortar place? there are plenty of great deals on ebay every day, you just have to look for them. and the more people leave over perceived wrongs, the better for the rest of us.

well i would have to say it improved the lines of the camaro significantly. i saw a flourescent green "new" camaro the other day and was amazed that someone would actually buy one of those. what an ugly pile of you know what. i have a hard time believing thats the best american car designers can do. it looks big boxy and ugly and needs a sectioning job something terrible. or a crumpled front end to take away that gawd awful smirk.

i wonder how much that guy paid to totally ruin his 'vette? this "donk" thing is hilarious, most of those got more ground clearance than my toyota land cruiser! what for, i have no clue! did that monte carlo or whatever it is jump on its hydraulics and flip over? looks like it. would have been a moment to remember!

heres something: if your precious little photos are so important you want to copyright them and then get all bugged because someone posted them somewhere else, why dont you do everyone a favor and just not post them. this is the internet and as one who was using it before it became THE INTERNET, i personally am for freedom of expression including copying work if credit is given or even if not as long as no one is profiting from the use. go write a book or something, but meanwhile if you post it, it will get copied. thats kind of the point of the media. my advice is to go find an appropriate media for hoarding your stuff, cause the internet aint it. all these johnny come latelys who 10 - 15 years ago dismissed the net as a fad really got a lot of nerve assuming ownership of anything, its exactly what is making the net nothing more than a cheap advertising medium these days while leaving the "information" part somewhere in the trail of dust. and ive yet to see much "art" posted here in photos no matter what anyone else might think. so...if you put your model on a contest table and then someone takes a photo of it and posts it somewhere, eg: fokti book, thats not right either? seems like not much of a difference except possibly the model itself isnt "copyrighted". time for a reality check. you gotta take the bad with the good. yep im a net anarchist at heart. sue me. i would personally be proud if someone liked my work enough to copy it for their own use but i guess my ego isnt all wrapped up in 1/24 scale pieces of plastic.

as if on cue, heres an update! got the motor done, kind of a colorful scheme but it should look good with the body color being candy red. nice and simple layout, hilborn injectors with short stacks, big magneto sticking up with wiring simplified by going into plug wire covers on the tiny hemi valve covers: heres a shot from behind: with the body in place: and finally, a shot of overall progress...now i gotta get a set of headers and do the rear axle so i can be sure im done with frame modifications... i think i might have to move the motor and mounts forward an 1/8" despite my best efforts! irregular updates again soon, or not!

thats why stuff goes to the top when something new is added. you dont need to pay attention to it until something new is done. doesnt matter if its a day, a week or a month. or in my case several months. simple really.

does UPS still include the no-charge, completely complimentary, mandatory hole in the box from having something rammed through it? ive always considered that one of their best features. and it pretty much never fails to arrive so. the USPS treats me well.

skyline

you might need to put your monitor upside down to get australia!

thank you david, but to be truthful, most of the detail is out of box with the fujimi enthusiasts model that motor came from. just took a bit of a black wash to bring it out and some detail painting. it actually looks better now, i noticed quite a few little problems in the photos and went back and cleaned it up a bit more.

>We've had a couple come through the HTU I work for in the past few weeks, have yet to buy one though you have? maybe i dont understand what a "HTU" is, but i was under the impression these werent due in the shops until mid to late november. am i wrong? maybe you mean that curtis racer reissue?

i think ebay is great and buy and sell there all the time. heres the secret: if the price is too high, move on. the market determines the price or the item doesnt sell. its simple. just like the bus, if you miss this one, another one will be along in a moment (much like girlfriends too, might i add). but the basic rule is: if its too expensive just ignore it, and remember to include shipping in your calculation of price, and, this one will surprise you sometimes, tax if youre buying from the same state the seller is in.

everybodys right, check out youtube and youll get a good idea to start with. here are a couple answers to some of your more tricky questions: >what do you guys use for your heating source.Do you guys use a torch or a solder iron. well i use a soldering iron. but theres something to know that relates to another of your questions: >when you solder one end how do perfent the other end from coming loose.because if you solder one end don`t get the whole tube hot. yes that is the problem alright. the thing you need is the proper soldering iron, and typically that means kind of a big one, or one of those "guns" rather than a smaller iron type. the reason this is so is that you want to get the joint youre working on hot, but not have to hold the iron there long enough to warm up the whole tube, thereby loosening prior solder joints. so you want to have a hot iron, touch it to the joint, let your solder flow, and then remove the heat as soon as possible. this is a trick i took a long time to learn and it caused me a lot of pain, but once i realized i needed a bigger wattage iron and used this technique, things got a lot easier. you can also buy heat sink clips that you use to isolate the joint youre working on from adjacent work, but still if you have to hold the iron to the metal too long, the heat will get around the sink. >And what do you use to put under the brass so it don`t burn the table. thats simple: a piece of wood works well, then you can use nails or tacks or whatever to make little jigs to hold parts in place while soldering. >what do you use to cut your sheets or tubbing. i guess for sheets you need to scribe it a xacto knife and then either bend to break or saw with a razor saw. for tubing though you can buy a small tube cutter for a couple bucks from for instance micro mark. have fun with it and practice first on some scrap, but once you get a hang for it its a great skill to have.

sweet job and nice to see these cars kitted and built! i was amazed how many i saw driving around london still. the local (and by that i mean 6 miles away, population about 200) town here has a european garage that works on a lot of exotics and the other weekend there were about 20 mini austins and morris's sitting out front. not one bmw "mini" in the bunch! i didnt have my camera with me or i would have taken some shots and posted them here. that motor looks great too, by the way. when i built one i wired the distributor and then found i couldnt fit the front end in place because the wiring fouled it! so i took out the distributor and put the car into a garage diorama like it was getting fixed. gotta be flexible you know!

well thanks for the compliment and much as i hate to give away my (very few) awesome ideas...i bought that jig and magnets from micro mark! now if i had come up with it all by myself that might be different! thanks for looking, once again!

hey raul, thanks for noticing, ive been specializing in flaking out recently, just flaked on the street rod nationals show the other day, but i did make it to billetproof! anyway things keep coming up around here including emergency meetings to save the delta so model shows have taken a back seat im afraid. miss seeing you and jerry and curt though. would love to make the stockton show but have to be down in LA that weekend on some music business so wont make it. hold it down for me mate! and gbk, those halibrand kidney bean wheels are from reps and mins of maryland, very nice looking. at the stage of the photo i had not cleaned up the red epoxy around the knockoff yet but they look even better now! many thanks again for looking and as usual, comments questions and criticisms (more or less) cheerfully fielded!

well about time for a little update as progress marches slowly on! wheels and tires are just about done: hemi is coming together: magneto is getting wired: decided to use the elegant little Wild Dream fuel tank since i had a couple of them lying around. built some frame mounts for it and it will look cool back there...i plan on putting the battery right next to it. living dangerously: and finally, here is a profile: you can see the body probably needs to be channelled more in the front with the modified engine placement. i am thinking about another 3 scale inches, maybe 4. there is room between the firewall bottom and the bell housing top to allow it. i plan on getting the motor built and finished the next couple of nights, and the rear end has been narrowed by about 7 scale inches per side, painted and ready to assemble. i have to make some rear radius rods to really secure the rear end to the frame. funny how quick things never turn out that way.

glad i could help gbk, thats a problem i had for a long time, my pearl paint jobs just didnt have much "grab". then a painter friend of mine told me that, and i tried it and was really surprised what a difference it made. seems polishing directly on the pearl dulls the effect and makes it look sort of metallic instead of pearlescent. the problem with white is that a pearl clear may tend to yellow it some. in my couple experiences with tamiya pearl white, it seemed like it was more of a pearl clear without much in the way of white pigment, but its probably perfect to shoot over a white base coat and my one experience over a white didnt seem to yellow much if at all.

thats kinda what i said harry, but my pics didnt really illustrate it too well, mostly because they were "in process" shots for the most part and i hadnt finished the wiring. the first pic though, the hemi with the red wires, the wires turned out to be too short to droop realistically (measure twice, cut once, doh!) and the buick/rover/morgan/mg v8 the wires on a 1:1 really do arc more or less like that over the valve covers down to the head. the porsche motor was unfinished in that shot and once it was finished i went back and smoothed and drooped the wires more: thats not completely finished at that stage either im afraid, i drooped the wires lower to attempt to cover the split seam in the cylinders. i like those MAD prewired distributors, nice cap detail! please post a url for ordering them! i typically use yellow wire to simulate hypalon or whatever its called ignition wire but i keep running out of the stuff!

that is a super build and ive always loved the orange crate chopped top body so its really appealing to me! excellent chassis detail too, something im currently working on as well. about your pearl...did you polish the pearl white? because if so that kills the pearlescent effect quite a bit in my experience. i polish the underlying color, and then shoot pearl (usually i use pearl clear instead of finding a real pearl color i like) and then bury that in a couple of coats of pure clear. then you can polish down the top pure clear without disturbing the pearl particles in the underlying pearl. you probably already know that so pardon me if so, just thought it was an off chance possibility. great build and its gonna look killer all together!

wow curt thats lookin super! you sure that aluminum driveshaft is gonna be able to handle the allison???

hey thanks for that bernard. thats some great info and it clears up a few things for me, especially the distinctive look to the 32 vs 29 chassis rails! sure makes the 29 body look like a completely different car.

well in most cases you will need a pin vise and some micro drills. then you will either need wiring, or a prewired distributor. lots of aftermarket offer the wire and the distributors prewired, i usually get wiring from detail master, but lots of people just collect up wire from whatever they come across: broken electronics, computers etc. i think detail master also makes a very cool multipiece prewired distributor that you have to build (so strictly speaking NOT prewired, now that i think if it). once youve assembled the necessary material, you drill holes in the heads where the plugs would be located, and run wires from the distributor to the holes representing spark plugs. of course you have to build your distributor by drilling a hole or holes (depending on how realistic you want it to look and/or your eyesight because youre going to test it drilling eight holes in a distributor cap, i can promise you that!) insert the wires into the hole(s) in the distributor and super glue them lightly. then you can make little boots for the wires with a bit of larger wire insulation slipped over the ignition wire. next insert the wire with boot run up the wire a bit into the spark plug hole, apply a small drop of superglue and push the boot down onto the block. when youve done all eight (i assume) wires, you run a middle wire from the dist to the coil mounted somewhere appropriate. the final step, and the one which really makes the wiring job, is to then work the wires to look like they do on a real motor, that is, kind of drooping into crevices, or kind of grouped together in a neat bundle to the plug holes. also remember on real cars exhaust manifolds melt wires easily so try to route the wires so they dont touch the manifolds (attention to detail counts!). what i do is basically use a sanded down toothpick to run over the wires and get them to sort of settle into crevices and try to create a graceful arc from the distributor down to the level of the plugs or however you are going to run them. here are some examples of what i mean, some to more or less a level of perfection: its really pretty easy and adds a lot to an engine compartment. take a look around or find detail masters catalogue on the net and do it!