jbwelda

im not sure what your posting about the number of replies is about but i for one dont really do the poll thing. that said i would be in line for one or more sets of those things! they look great and im always looking for an easy way to add detail. you should maybe also think about making some in 1/8th scale for the big deuce etc. i have a big drag under restoration that would love to sport some of those.

>It takes longer to "catch" then standard Testors Tube glue, but when it >bonds it's way stronger. assuming youre saying that superglue makes a stronger bond than testors tube glue, then i think we really are using different super glue! testors tube glue melts plastic together so assuming you dont use too much you have a perfect, strong seam. superglue on the other hand is only a surface bond. it is not very durable if there is to be stress on the parts being glued. remember that commercial with the elephant suspended from the ceiling with one drop of super glue? that worked because it was lifted straight up and no shear was applied to the joint. had that elephant twisted just a little bit s/he would have hit the floor. super glue has no shear strength at all. so overall testors tube glue properly applied makes for a much stronger bond than super glue.

you guys must be using a different super glue than me. personally i use super glue (zap brand i believe it is and then generally the thicker stuff, zap a gap) most of the time except when something really needs to hold weight, then i use 5 minute epoxy. i find it (super glue) adheres quickly and consistently unless its old and then it seems to take awhile to catalyze (but i throw it out by then and replace with fresh stuff). gluing your hands etc together is not a big deal; nail polish remover with unglue it right away. it sticks to your skin because thats what it was formulated to do originally: be an in-field suture for battlegrounds and it reacts to moisture by well reacting to it and that means the moisture in your skin. ive never had a case where ive really glued myself to myself or something else that a little nail polish remover wouldnt solve (but ive yet to glue my eye lids together!) and it will NOT frost clear plastic if you coat the plastic with future floor wax or equivalent first. but theres no need to really at least in my case; i use elmers white glue thinned about 50/50 with tap water to fix plastic "glass" in place and it works great all the time though obviously its not a strong bond. or i just use future floor wax as the adhesive for glass and that works fine too.

my one holy grail: the tamiya birdcage maserati. oh thats right, that was just a dream. but i did restore a busted up birdcage slot car body and the scratch built chassis it was on. a holy grail ive yet to attain: the wild dream/tognotti t double kit. maybe this year if the prices drop to a reasonable level. not cheap, thats too muc to ask for, but reasonable. like a hundred dollars reasonable. i know i know... to tell the truth nothing coming out from the major manufacturers do much for me. as for building, this past year i finished maybe 4 cars but made major progress on the same number that had been languishing in the corner for a long time in some cases. so it was a good year.

>Janis Joplin: deceased, alcohol. the heroin didnt help either. ive lived in the bay area a lot of my life and have known or been associated with a lot of people from the music industry there beginning with john lee hooker and mike bloomfield back in 69. used to see joplin driving her psychedelic painted porsche speedster up and down 101 from her place in larkspur. last year i played reggae records for keith richards at my friends ranch. being involved in sierra nevada world music festival has been an intro to a number of people over the years, most of whom most here would never have heard of. http://www.snwmf.com if youre interested. i go bicycle riding with stanley mouse every so often...for those who dont remember he was ed roths main competitor in the t shirt biz back in the sixties until he moved out to sf to be a hippie and roth decided being a hells angel suited him better. main difference between the two was that roth would bring boxes of preprinted t shirts and he would squirt some color on them; mouse would bring blank shirts and draw the design on them. he went on to design many posters for various sf 60s dances and then became the artist for grateful dead albums primarily. ive met all those dead folks through him one time or another. a more car related thing would be stevie ray vaughns brother, whose name i forget offhand (jimmy maybe?), but he has a nice 1:1 custom and often goes to car shows on the west coast. one time he brought along his buddy eric clapton but i wasnt around to meet him. and my friend who runs superior metalcraft often repairs the lead singer and harmonica player for little charlie and the nightcats, rick estrins, 55 el dorado when he is allowed to drive it (invariably straight into immovable objects).

you can buy little triangles that go on the xacto blade handle and keep them from rolling at any graphics supply place. i never use them but there you have it.

jairus, just to remind you, im in for the art on that truck i talked to you (via email) about. time frame for completion keeps slipping though, and in all honesty i dont see how you can do it for the price quoted...we may need to renegotiate. i am an honest person and want to pay an honest price. also just to bring this up, it would be acceptable for you to produce decals instead of handpainting the real thing. if i could get a spare sheet of the decals that would be great. anyway feel free to email me on justw @ dgweb . com or pm me or anything if you feel the need.

i always thought the attempt 1 was a very cool kit of a very cool car. but then again i never subscribed to the "more cubes" school of thought. ps: a two cylinder version would have been cool too, maybe even more so for its historical context.

thats a darn neat little photo booth there! im going to build one of those myself, possibly tonite!

>THANKYOU Ralph Nader (NOT!). this, in my opinion, is misplaced. it would be much more truthful as: THANKYOU walmart (NOT! a thousand times not). you are a chancre on the body of society. please go away. not that you will or that you care, but youve ruined untold local economies and convinced sheeple that what they really need is to save 10 cents on something at the eventual cost of their jobs and livelihood, not to mention product quality and quantity. oops i guess that should go in the rant department. sorry but i just cant restrain myself sometimes. one love jah bill

lyle, yesterday you built the motor it takes me a month to build. hope that helps! one love jah bill

i recently sold a 1:1 that i had for nearly 20 years and probably rinsed 20k$ through in that time (gene berg 2.0 litre engine, 5 speed, etc etc etc) so this is a subject near to my heart. like said above in the usa only it was "the thing" (meaning when you see one on the road the proper response is "there goes a the thing")...in mexico and south america it was called a "safari" (which was to be the name in the usa until it arose that the grand safari wagon already claimed the name) and in europe it was a "trekker". the gas heater was standard on the thing in 73 but in 74 (and subsequently in 75 when they sold the last of the 74s and called them 75s) they switched over to the standard "fresh air" (cough cough) heating system. in 73 the fan shroud had no fresh air ports. another interesting concept was that the motor had engine protection hardware used no where else to my knowledge: two "barbeque grill" pieces that fit in the fins of the lower half of the cylinders to protect from rocks, a heavy plate between the trans and the motor (skid pan essentially) and another on the rear of the motor. another difference between the 73s and the 74/75 was that the 73 was flat sided in the rear with some louvers to keep leaves out of the engine compartment while the later ones had air boxes over the intakes and louvers on top of the air boxes for reduced cooling esp on hot days when the careless driver just threw back the top, thereby blocking the louvers and soon followed by the dying gasp of the air cooled motor! other difference between the thing and other variants was that the thing had super beetle type rear lights mounted high on the rear end while all others had type 2 (transporter) taillights mounted on the vertical flat surface below where the usa spec car had its lights mounted. lets see here, oh yeah no other vws were using 5 bolt wheels in the 70s but since it was felt the thing should be a "world car" and there were far more 5 bolt than 4 bolt wheels around, i guess they chose to use up the old stock... anyway, very cool car that i loved dearly and i would certainly pay for a conversion. in fact i once semi contracted with a guy to build a transkit for a tamiya bug or ghia (as mentioned the ghia pan would be more correct) but it never got done. this conversion was designed to be able to build 73 and 74/75 the thing variants along with trekker and safari types (all were type 181 designation) and would include full engine detail including the very hard to find option of two oil bath air cleaners instead of one (for hard dusty desert conditions) etc.

2 months? jeez. i cant get an engine built in 2 months. thats a massive piece of work there. one love jah bill

yeah great stuff there. i have one on the shelf for one of these winters. how is the fit on it right out of the box? i believe its a pretty old tooling isnt it? then again even old tamiya stuff often beats brand new other brand quality. one love jah bill

hey thanks for the mention in the latest magazine...but youre right i had seen those u-joints before and they are too large for my use. i am planning on implementing the sketch that j drew; unfortunately ive not made much progress on the lakes car due to a trip over to london, plus working on the charlie ace swing a ling morris van, plus the fact that our club, city styles, is building a raffle car (two actually) for the NNL west in february and ive been tasked with some building on it. so, as usual, the really cool stuff gets put on the back burner. hopefully though it will have had at least some progress made before the NNL. thanks again; you guys are alright. one love jah bill

is that a 1/32 scale king cobra/cooper slot car i spy? maybe this belongs in the rant section but does it strike anyone else as funny that here revell ostracized ed big daddy roth from kitdom when he decided to do motorcycle customs and hang out with the hells angels and now they got all these chopper kits coming out? i guess its all good and all american and stuff now that american bikes, well, suck, and any import bike of half the displacement can run circles around them? and that all these aged fat cats in suits have store bought "choppers" they ride on their way to banker meetings and all? the world, its a funny place.

personally i dont think that revell body cuts it at all. for starters those rear quarter windows look funny, and im not so sure about the dimensions of much else there either. tamiya body, that gets my vote.

there are a number of sources for weber carbs including rep and min of maryland, southeast finecast (english company) and a couple others. plus the fujimi 356 porsche kits have a spectacular quad cam motor with great webers if i recall right (though now that i think of it they may be zenith carbs). those fujimi kits also are chock full of great parts for VWs including the most detailed wheels, brake drums and disks youre ever likely to see. along with an approx 20 piece transaxle including...get this...a clutch throwout bearing and arm. they arent VW precisely but very nice real-world upgrades.

nice pics and nice build. one question: are you using blue construction paper curled up behind the model for the base and background? it looks good especially contrasted with the red of the model

yeah i would buy that caddy and then convert it into the worlds fastest cadillac! but i guess thats a cts? im not all that knowledgeable about detroit iron much less nowadays detroit iron. this is the one i mean: saw it once at bonneville and it was awesome! on a different matter im wondering about the 1/8 deuce...thats the big deuce, right? wasnt that recently reissued? is it now being issued again? that doesnt even seem like a "new release" to me...unless its got even more extras than the (magnificent) recent reissue did. other than that, maybe the 58 chevy, maybe the 49 merc...for my purposes, blah.

i would go for the cooper too but i would want to be able to build the precursor to the king cobra as well.

if there were retro parts (including NON extended front end) to replace the bling ###### on those kits i would be first in line (for the parts and for the choppers themselves)... "retro" parts would include spoolie front wheel and drum rear brake etc. dont know if that helps or not.

oh one more nomination: abarth double bubble coupe or anything abarth actually.

was that a trabant back there? yep i would go for one of those in tamiya quality as well esp as you say with rally/race options. and that barchetta, is that the late joel finns car? if so i know who rebuilt it (redid poor prior bodywork back in the late 70s) and spent many an evening using the hood as a beer holder while crawling over and under it assisting in the repairs.

oh lets see here: toyota fj60 land cruiser toyota fj40 land cruiser lotus elite (the original not that wedge thing) lotus elise (im sure this is on the drawing boards) maserati birdcage lotus 7 series 1 lotus 11, 19, 22, 23 morris woody MG TF MGA lotus cortina D type jaguar C type jaguar triumph TR4 stock anglia wagon(s) and i would like them to be tamiya quality please. and preferably including vintage racing equipment and options. that would do for a start.