jbwelda

thats pretty wild alright!

too kool! how much does that body weigh?

nice, i especially like that 510. i have the revell one too but havent gotten to it...

yeah thanks for bringing this up again, ive got something right now to do it on. colonel here i come!

one thing i have found is super clean doesnt do much to tamiya paint, or at least loosens the paint very slowly. now that i think of it, it has eventually removed freshly sprayed tamiya paint, but it did take a while, like a months time, to work. i agree with chris, i never do much more than let the piece sit in some running water for a while after doing the super clean thing, and then scrub it with dish washing soap and maybe a toothbrush. no problems with primer or further coats that ive noticed.

to suggest a method to open up existing louvers, on many you can attack the louver from the inside of the body, lightly cutting away with a dremel or perhaps just a sanding stick cut down to fit the underside of the louver. if youre lucky you sneak up on the outside and end up opening up the louver. and you might have to do some close up clean up to get them looking really good. i have used this technique a few times and its worked very well with deep louvers, and not so well with shallow ones. i suspect you could partially sink those glue on louvers and then use the same technique to open them up.

if something is in a closed glass or plastic display case and the sun shines on it, it gets incredibly hot inside. its the greenhouse effect. even 80 degree direct sun could do that in a display case. its like being inside your car with all the windows up in the summer: hot fast! i agree with bill though: the worst part is the sudden breeze or wind coming up. that can wreak havoc on a whole table of cars. sorry about that body, must have been in the direct sun for a while i would guess...

more important, when you gonna drop a V8 into it? naw, really, great build. the rubber bumpers sure are ugly and you portrayed them well, and i mean that as a compliment. they even look kind of oxidized and porous. great job on the paint and color too, MGB disco style!

its too bad that fiat isnt 1/8 scale! that would make for a great body for kit bashing!

is that "tall T" big scale, 1/8 scale? somehow i thought it was but its not marked as such. some kool kits in there like the ramchargers! if its the one i remember its a completely full box of parts!

i take it you *really really* like GT40s? whew that looks like an incredible lot of work. gotta hand it to you though, looks great so far!

>So that he could have a working stand and a photo platform, Mario scratchbuilt a stand exactly >like the one Citroen used when they made the original. wow i like that idea! what a cool looking motor in whats sure to be a cool looking car! dont let junkman talk you into replacing it with a hemi V8!

man very nice flames! and for your first time? score!

hey good to see some action in the slot car area! well what you have there is just like in real life: those kinda cars go good in a straight line but ask them to turn a corner and they crash. the solution is also sort of like real life: learn to drive them despite their handling or improve them. looks like you chose the latter! (oops i forgot to notice the viper! that one should go around corners fine! still these tips should help on the slot car even if the real thing dont need much!) so theres a couple of options and i have to talk generally because i dont know those specific cars. first of all if you like magnets, add more! that will sure keep the things glued to the track! or the cars you have may have magnets that you can adjust, either by removing or adding a thin spacer above the magnet, making it sit closer to the track, or maybe by having a couple of different magnet mounts you can move the magnet to for it to handle better, or maybe add new magnets into the vacant points. but if youre a bit more experienced with racing you get bored with simply using magnet power because, pretty much, more magnets trumps pretty much anything else up the point where the car wont even move because its stuck to the track! so heres some other ideas, maybe use them in conjunction with moving the stock magnet around: 1. silicone tires. if youre using plastic track, ive never met a car that doesnt improve at least 100% with the addition of silicones. the tires that came with your cars might be hard plastic, out of round, etc but the silicones will add a whole new level of feel. 2. lower the body and the center of gravity. this often requires deciding if you want a shelf model or you want a race car. thats because if im serious the first thing i do is ditch the detailed interior in favor of a thin flat black sheet of styrene with a pilot torso on it. this will allow the body to sit lower if you cut the mounting posts, and will take away a lot of weight. basically lighten and lower. if you want to get more radical, start drilling holes in the chassis and get rid of lighting systems (unless youre planning on entering lemans) and switches and all that ######...its a race car, if it dont make you go faster, ditch it. another thing that may not exactly affect your handling but certainly will affect the sound and feel of your car, and that is to glue in your rear bearings with superglue, and either glue the motor to its mounts or tape the motor down to the chassis. this will quiet down the car and in my experience will make it at least *seem* to handle better! also you should experiment with the mounting of the body...some cars run better with the body lightly screwed to the chassis and others with the body solidly bolted down. i also usually trim the chassis slightly where it touches the body so it doesnt bind as it flexes...esp with strong magnets exerting force on the chassis. front wheel movement is another factor and here are different schools of thought, basically breaking into: 1) people who what the axle loose so the wheels move up and down freely and 2) people (like me) who prefer a solid axle. the latter crew think the front axle adds stability going into a corner while the former evidently feel its good to let the car dip as it enters the corner... finally ive found that you should limit axle movement side to side by using washers or some thing to keep the side to side slop to a minimum. again this just keeps the car stable on the track as the various forces are put to bear on the car as it moves through turns. one more thing: you probably have realized it by now but there are very few cars that just run well right out of the box, pretty much all benefit from a disassembly and tune up or at least a lubrication before being put on the track. a lot of slop gets by the factory sometimes. hope all that helps and i have to say its really fun to tune a car and make it improve from a pile of dung to a contender!

this is the first ive looked at this thread and man thats nice! like everyone says the stance is really great and the detailing looks like its going well too. say you dont happen to have the minilite wheels from the kit that cosworth cam cover came from do you? (i think its from the clear bodied ford escort cosworth rally car)

thanks folks i will post more pics as things come together. i just sprayed some tamiya orange on the body and so far so good. i will have to examine it closer when it dries a bit to see if it needs another coat before some clear. back to an old question, sorry i neglected to address it before: yep its 1/25 scale. and about the detailing: while im proud of what ive done there i do have to say the photos look consistently better than the reality! the front end is the most detailed part and it was a white metal kit that i got somewhere, i forget the manufacturer but it builds up very nicely. i replaced the wavy radius arms with pieces from straight pins after cutting off and drilling the bat wings. just that front end gives the impression of detail but its really pretty simple. i still have to hook up the front brake lines once the wheels/finned drums are in place, and need to hook up the radiator hoses as well which promises to be a challenge. other than that ive just planned a simple interior, there will be a dashboard of sorts and a hand brake handle/hydraulic cylinder (!) and maybe a parachute on the rear deck with some sort of release mechanism but thats about it for further details. its actually getting pretty close to me calling it done. thanks for the kind comments and for looking...stay tuned.

a little more progress leading up to the NNL, but it still wont be done! fabricating the interior, steering linkage and wheel, firewall and drilled out seat: and the body on the paint stand, ready for first coats of orange, hopefully tomorrow:

Sacramento Autorama is coming up this weekend and there will be a large model display and contest. If you're in the area please bring your models in to display and enter. I believe there will be a full range of classes, and typically there are over a hundred models entered in the contest. Judging will be Sunday but if you bring in your model on Friday or Saturday, you will get a free ticket to return for your model after judging on Sunday. I don't know where exactly the model show will be, but there are in-and-outs so you can leave your model in your car until you find it! Sorry I can't be more specific, but our club isn't putting this contest on so I am a bit sketch on exact details. I and other members of City Styles will be in attendance so if you want to join our club its always open! Hope to see you and your models there, especially Raul and Jerry out there! Again its this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, at Cal Expo, I-80 Business Loop and Arden way/Cal Expo blvd. in Sacramento California. Hours are probably something like 10am to 9pm with Sunday closing early, around 5pm or so.

raul, yeah be sure to bring the stylus to the NNL! by the way, are you going to the autorama this weekend? see my post in the contest/shows section and hope to see you and jerry and whoever else! im going to find those flexifiles and get introduced! that one with the wooden q-tips and the dremel is nice too.

really colin, im with you again. and through first hand experience: >If anyone tells me his MG runs fine, he either had his car restored several times (MGs actually >do get better with each careful rebuild) or he just isn't used to proper motoring anymore in 1965 i bought a 54 MGTF. now if that isnt a beautiful boat anchor i dont know what is. i then in my teen age years proceeded to pound that car, drove it to lake tahoe in the middle of the winter with a gal and our equipment, up from 0ft elevation to 7500 ft and back, time and again. drove it to school every day and to san francisco every weekend. did that for 3 straight years and the only problems i ever had were bad fuel pumps (replaced with bosch after about 10 lucas and the problem went away) and one day i broke the clutch activation rod. and rarely changed or even checked the oil. my friend around the corner had an healy 100 that he put a bleedin corvette V8 into and we kept sparring on whether we would do the MG next, but never did. then i moved away to college and wanted more of a "real" car so i was going to sell it and buy a new (68) MGB. well my mom would not let me sell the TF so she and my pop bought me a brand new MGB if i gave her the TF. done and done. and 9 months later done again when i proceeded to drive it off the cliff on the way to muir beach. long story short, no one was hurt but car terminally crunched. back to the TF, meanwhile the fantasy had worn off for mum and the car ended up sitting in the garage a lot unless i came over, swapped the oil and filter and took it out for a drive. at this point i think the car had about 150,000 miles, the motor had been opened once only, for a head/valve job, and still started first time every time and ran like a top. yeah it leaked a little oil, or as its called, "marked its spot". when my mom passed away in 92, i got the TF back and did a backyard resto on it because the body had deteriated a bit and the wood superstructure needed some attending to, the interior had gone ratty, and i thought about doing a workthrough of the motor. but then i checked the compression, it was like 1 or 2 psi off from each other over all four cylinders, so i just cleaned up the motor a bit. i would drive it near every weekend for awhile but as we all know, a TF can be fun, but its more "chick magnet"/cruise around fun than any sort of motor sport. regardless i would still race around in the hills, and i replaced the 48 spoke wires with some jaguar 72 spoke wheels and radial tyres which really made a difference. when i sold it in, i forget, 2003 or so, it went to a guy in michigan who did a frame off and says it ran better with the old motor than with the newly remanufactured one (that he put 20k$ into). all those years: started first time every time with the exception of maybe 10 times. had electrical gremlins but when i broke down and bought a quality complete wiring harness (rhode island wiring by the way, check em out), everything worked perfectly all the time, from the turn signals (not self cancelling) to the horn to the brake lights, everything. so you cant tell me all MGs were piles or even MGBs though i had more problems with that B in the year i had it than i did with the MG over 4 decades! i also questioned your account of the V8 in the B, and i knew it was a BGT with the V8, and so im glad colin came in with some facts i more relate to. heres the mg on its way to michigan to drive its life away around a lake and pine trees:

you tell em colin! i had two mgb's and both were good runners. if you keep up on maintenance you dont have problems. but if you drive them like a typical yank, they fall apart fast. one thing the guy said though that i agree with: put japanese running gear in one and now you have reliable. a plumber (!) around here has a morris van in silver and black with all datsun running gear and motor. anyway about the 1/24 mgb motor, i dont know of a four cylinder but southeast finecast sells a killer metal V8! this one is done up more in morgan trim though the SU setup used here might be from the mgb. >7) If anyone knows where I can get one of the Aoshima Club Racer kits I will pay dearly for it, >just to get the Sebring headlight covers and the Minilite wheels. if you mean the one i posted the photo of above, pm me and we can see what can be worked out.

i am going to have to check out that dremel. i originally had a plug-in model with a flex shaft but it never really felt comfortable. then i discovered the mini mite, the cordless one, and all that changed. that thing has saved my a$$ so many times its amazing, mostly final assembly where a piece was binding up...without the dremel i would have been sunk and had to take stuff apart and probably break it. this new one looks even better! and those flexifiles, you know i bought some one time but never really used them, and hence never got used to them enough to feel comfortable. i will have to dig them out and check them out closer. what do you guys specifically use them for? sanding curves i assume? i would add to the list something ive just gotten comfortable with, that liquid masking material that dries into hard rubber. its been working very well and now the problem comes with my inability to cut it out properly... ps: back to dremel, i needed a battery for my first mini mite and all i could find were updated ones that wouldnt fit. so i contacted dremel and figured they would just say tough, time to buy a new one. much to my surprise they sold me one for below retail even with shipping and i had it by the end of the week. i was totally surprised. sounded like i was talking to someone sitting in the USA too, which is getting rare.

i dont understand why anyone would characterize this conversation as "arguing". move it to rants and raves would be maybe appropriate but to tell you the truth its exactly the string of thoughts that enter my mind every time i see that general lee car. i wouldnt want to see a ban on it or anything like that but i do think it communicates a certain lack of sophistication in everyday life. then again i live in california where its all about fruits nuts and vegetables (and i hear the vegetables are winning).

i have the truck right in front of me, its revell 50 ford f-1 pickup 2 'n 1, looks like number 85-7203 great looking interior! care to share the secrets of making that woodgrain?

i am kind of a strange builder: i actually finish projects, if only eventually sometimes. but i tend to get 6 or so builds going seriously and then decide thats enough, and strive to complete them, or most of them, before starting something else or more likely another 5 or 6 projects. what determines which i start next is kind of a crapshoot. i have a mental stack of kits in my head that i want to build in the relatively short term, and those are first in the queue to be built next. but then im easily influenced ('led" some might say" by what i see and especially these days what i see in this forum or the mag itself. hence my current interest in hot rods which a few years ago i almost never did, instead concentrating on sports and sports race cars. but now ive got a hankering to do some customizing so maybe this next run will include some chopping and channelling. other than that after im done with the miata im building (should be by the weekend) and the lakes roadster that is long term and liable to not actually get done in the near future, my current queue consists of: hasegawa jaguar xjs-he twr race car hasegawa mazda cosmo race car tamiya nissan xanavi gt-r some sort of 1/8 scale kit bash lakes roadster, essentially a 1/8 scale copy of the offy roadster im doing in 1/24 (but with a flathead motor probably) wilhelms wild dream, two actually, one out of box and a second "improved" by me hot rod mag concept car XR6 chop/channel/kustom project i mentioned above but havent decided on the vehicle (no mercs, thats for sure) those ought to keep me going a couple of years at my rate. edit: oh and a ski boat. thanks a lot model cars magazine!