jbwelda

that looks sweet!

hi raul: >Sunday, April 6th, 13th or 20th any of those days would be good for me, would prefer the latter two of the three. maybe we could meet up some weekend out at my new farm, help me go through my models since the move and maybe even help me build a spray booth, AND a photo booth!

i use sharpies for windshield trim too. too easy not to use them and they have a proper sheen to them. one thing not mentioned here is that after you apply your tape, shoot a coat of clear or future on the part and let it dry. that will seal the tape edge and wont show as readily as color will. now you can shoot your color and it wont bleed past the clear sealing the tape.

a friend of mine, a professional metal man and painter, has the following sign over the door to his spray booth: "MORE ON???" because things often go the way they did for you when you think "just one more final coat"... it reminds him t try to not be a "moron"!

hey raul thats a good idea about meeting up in tracy and carpooling into the bay area. i dont live in folsom; thats probably jerry amaral youre thinking of. i currently live in east sacramento by mckinley park but i am currently moving to a new house on ryer island in the delta. thats probably closer to tracy, 160 to antioch and then over the east slopes of mt diablo...im guessing here, dont really know that route exists but i bet theres a shortcut. anyway keep me in the loop or even if you guys locally are getting together let me know (after march 31). getting hossian over would be a great idea too, hes always got a bunch of interesting projects going on. so all this talk about declining hobby shops, has anyone been to university hardware in berzerkley? the basement is the hobby shop and its pretty interesting with some out of producition kits and a good slot car dept. its the ace hardware right on university ave where it deadends into the university. ive not been there in a year or so but i understand chuck keeps it well stocked.

what day do you see doing this, or do you mean evening after work? i am a ways away but if it were on a weekend at a reasonable hour, like 11am or so, i might be able to make it. i dont think i would drive all the way there and back during the week. i will keep an eye peeled to this thread and see how it goes.

erik, my lhs has this model (or had it anyway, havent been there in a week or so) on sale real cheap, like maybe it was 15$ or so. if you want me to check it for you, PM me and we can discuss it. it will mean tax and shipping so maybe you can get it locally, but if not, i would be glad to pick one up for you.

thanks, it took me a while to get those wheels to look decent, shoved up into the fenders. they are 17" and should be 15s (stock is 14 and those are the wheels most autocrossers almost prefer because they were so light) but they turned out alright. they do raise the car higher than i wanted but were the only minilite style i could find... how does that roof fit? i did a black hardtop from the eunos version but it sits up somehow on the rear left (driver) side. im not sure if its warped but it sits pretty flat on a piece of glass, so i was wondering if yours (the black one) does that too? those monster miatas would make a better model than a real life car. that conversion completely ruins the nimbleness and driveability not to mention the balance of the car. would look very cool with some webers coming up through the hood though! thanks for looking, everyone!

if you dont see any swirls or blemishes in the plastic, it ought to polish out pretty nice. i think i would paint it personally but polishing the plastic or maybe shooting some tamiya clear over the plastic and then polishing that would suffice.

yeah so i have been fighting this tamiya kit (man is that a humbling experience) since i started it but it actually ended up looking pretty good. nothing to brag about but amusing in its pretensions. it more or less replicates one of my 1:1s that is in the process of becoming a full time autocross machine.

sorry gregg that was an (early) april fools joke!

im not sure i follow your question but there was a great pre-painted driver figure in the monogram chaparral. great except that while its prepainted, its still made up of two halves and the seam runs through the helmet and right down the body so if it shows in the application you use it for you need to seal the seam and refinish it. still its a nice driver figure.

i am still looking for that clear view paint. d#mn i have a windshield i need to clear up again after overspraying on it and another project i would like to be able to see the under body details. that reminds me, when you spray a body with the clear view paint, it *does* automatically make the underlying parts all detailed and stuff doesnt it?

dude with all due respect its pretty simple: youre given a slip to fill out your peoples choice on and you put it in the drum and then they count the ballots and the one with the most votes win. it is *not* best of show, it is peoples choice. people sometimes make choices that dont relate to quality (not that im saying the winner wasnt quality, im not even sure what won to tell the truth because "winning" seems sort of beside the point), just the same way juries sometimes acquit people based on emotional response that a judge would convict strictly on the basis of law. typically in my experience its often the largest entry that gets peoples choice because it gets peoples attention. and a lot of people dont even vote for peoples choice (like me...i didnt because i forgot to). so peoples choice is sort of a "giveaway" thing though in the case of the NNL, where most attendees are builders themselves, it probably has more credibility than your average contest in conjunction with something else like a full size car show. anyway like gregg said, sometimes peoples choice just goes like that. in retrospect, i personally would have chosen something completely different for my "peoples choice" but thats because im me. kind of obvious really. it was a great day, nice saying hi to gregg and watching him take photos and even better to see another years crop of great models and meet great people. always gets me motivated to go to this show...wish there were more nearby.

ive used those fan pattern nozzles (on their "fusion" paint i think it was) and thought they sucked. worked ok the first spray but seemed to plug up fast even with the normal upside down spray clearing. the part about shoot second coat within an hour or after 24 hours part though, i think i remember that from before, or maybe it was another similar brand who recommended that. i rarely followed the advice and still the paint worked well, so not sure what the point behind the advice was. but i prefer to use hobby paint on plastics after too many poor reactions to the plastic when spraying krylon on a bit too heavy.

richard, this poster biscuitbuilder, is/was the owner of all american models, source of the 27 t i have posted under my lakester thread, and i assume thats the body he is describing above. just wanted to note that since you asked where i got the shell in my other thread. i wish these were still available and also the MGBGT he cast as well; there was actually a conversation i overheard at NNL this weekend bemoaning the fact the MGBGT was no longer available.

yes richard the front end is from R&D Unique, thanks for the brain nudge. the body was a All American Models resin that i picked up sometime a long ago, and i molded it into one piece (body, hood and nose), did some other bodywork like adding lower curved extensions to the sides, to suggest a bellypan and then trimmed away to fit over the chassis hardware. the car is currently painted and just needs a bit of touchup there, and ive begun the interior details and building floorboards, but i am moving house in the next few weeks so its probably on hiatus till summer or so when i plan on wrapping it up. many thanks for the interest!

oh yeah, forgot to mention, i love that body too and have used it on other projects, like last years NNL West giveaway car:

right, i think i might be that "someone" from the other thread and i gotta say, im impressed. now its like a challenge, i *gotta* build it. looking at my reissue though it looks like it picked up some flash over the years. oh well gotta scrape that chrome anyway which really was the problem when i was a kid. i just got back from the NNL West where I ran into my friend kurt wilson, who i hadnt seen i a very long time. coincidentally he is the one person i mentioned in the other thread who i knew had finished one, a reissue at that, and did a very nice job. i did ask him about it and he says its still together and in a display case. but i did look around on all the tables and orange crate count? zero. saw gregg too and said hello!

nice tip! ive made a wiring harness with masking tape with wire ends sticking out, and it turned out ok but nothing like that!

"OG" originally meant "original gangster" to designate elders especially in los angeles chicano groups, gangs, clubs whatever you want to call them. it used to literally mean that, in that the OGs were actually ex gangsters who managed to survive their wayward youth, but have gained respectability through endurance if nothing else. it has come to mean more like old school of any type not just gangbangers. a lot of the more elder zoot suiters or pachuco warriors were typically the original "OG"s the phrase was coined to describe. so to say a car is "OG style" means its like a car a muy malo pachuco of the 50s or 60s would love, maybe a 39 cheby or even a 51 or 52. like this: it can also mean "old guy" to some whippersnapper youths. but in a nice way. its usually family business in the varrio de la east LA. someone correct me if i am wrong but i had a bit of connection to LA lowrider culture at one time and knew some "OG"s. they were solid people and wouldnt let you down.

since the time is rapidly approaching to wrap this mess up, heres some updated photos taken today. ive completed the chassis except to stick an injector scoop on the motor and jerry has modded the body, painted the color and applied decals (not shown as i took the body photos before he did them) but it still needs the chrome foil trimmed and clear shot over it. its looking very cool, check it for yourself: first some shots of the completed chassis, including aluminum tube driveshaft, brass rod tie rod, headers in place, moon tank in and plumbed, panhard rod installed and some other details. remember the top surface of the chassis will be against the floor pan of the body so will not be seen, hence its fairly unfinished. also note i broke down and broke apart the front end, put some raising blocks over the springs and reversed the springs so the frame and thus the car sits high in the front now, like a traditional gasser. in fact the PT Cruiser body on this frame is kind of reminescent of an old Austin gasser if you ask me and thats the point really. a couple closeups of the motor finished and installed with headers in place: finally, a couple shots of the body still in progress: man its gonna be painful but the plan is to have it done by friday night for presentation saturday at the NNL West in Santa Clara. Hope to see you all there!

thats looking better and better every update! i love the tonneau cover and the concept of a belly pan. implementing that concept has always been a problem for me so im hoping to learn something from your experience here. about the halibrands, im unsure what "unpierced" means, and im afraid i havent dug the ones out i was thinking of but as i recall they are kidney bean type halibrand magnesium wheels, and while the kidney bean part may not be open as cast, i was going to open them up. is that what "pierced" means, or was it a certain type of halibrand wheel? not to steal your thread but thanks for looking at my roadster. im persevering with it alright, it is painted and im almost done with the interior details. small problem is i painted the inside of the body black and then masked it and shot the orange and clear on the outside. unfortunately when i removed the tape i used to mask it, it pulled a very small piece of the orange away from the body along the body shell stock windshield area. i wasnt going to use a windshield but now i might...or i might just mask off the problem, feather the edges of the tear, and paint a flat black stripe there. i would paint it orange but i dont think i will be able to blend it that well or match the color so i might just go for what may look like where a windshield would mount or it could be just the black edge of the body...the flaw is only about 1/32" wide and runs about a half inch long but i would do the black up to the edge of the sides. i will post some photos one of these days in my other thread. im afraid i wont have it at NNL saturday, some other things have come up so i wont have time to get it done and dont really want to rush it. one thing i do want to do is make a tonneau much like yours but i want to try using thick aluminum foil of thinned aluminum sheet i have to form it from. sorry for the digression but keep it up man its looking great!

has anyone ever actually finished an orange crate? i think its the newest issue of rodders journal has an article on the real car, recently unearthed i guess, in which it says the model was one we all built as kids. we did? i know i tried but no cigar. ive yet to see one built well and rarely one even build although a friend named kurt did in fact do a rather nice job of one some years ago but he said it was a total b*tch and he wasnt happy with it even though i thought it was far better than any i had seen before. to me that is kind of a definition of "worse": a kit so complex and so fiddly its near impossible to build yet it is a continual temptation to try, only to likely end with almost guaranteed frustration and failure.

oops i just noticed its an aoshima motor kit not fujimi so that makes it rather not likely its the same as a fujimi kit motor! probably was an aoshima kit i was thinking of but its late and im spaced out god i love that emoticon, it just fits so well in so many situations.