jbwelda

my original concept was including the Lotus Coventry Climax motor with two weber carbs and turned aluminum air cleaners, cutting off the wings (fenders to the yanks) in front and the running boards, lowering down the front end with a tube or beam axle ala hot rod style, probably try to fab up some kind of mounts for a halibrand quick change rear end (my all time favorite), with some wheels that fairly screamed British. i started making up a Z-ed kickup for the back of the frame but then i noticed that the Lotus rear suspension arms looked like they might fit. they didnt just fit, they worked perfectly with the rear axle centering right where it should and even the bracket out the back that on the Lotus holds the spare tire will serve well to support the rear mounted fuel tank that the MG uses. Now understand that i owned an MGTF for a few decades and i always liked the looks of that car. i did not especially like the looks of the predecessor MGTD or the car it derived its dorkiness from, the MGTC...that being the very car i was using as a base here. but shed the big ole wheels and skinny tires and ditch the external front fenders and you start to have something...though to my eye it sits up too straight whereas the beauty of the swan song of the T series, the TF, sloped rearward in the grille, headlamp profile and cowl area making it look like it was going 100 mph when it was standing still, which in my case it often was. total chick magnet but i digress. so what i am getting at is thinking i want this car to look a whole lot more like a Super Seven (one of the all time great cars in my opinion) than like a MGTC. so all this is pretty much in the back of my mind as i start figuring out what to do next. but from what i can see so far, it looks like things are going to fall into place pretty easy. a picture speaks a thousand words or something like that: here is basically what i have in mind: without the front fenders, the car takes on a whole new look. and i am kicking the front axle forward about a scale 6", which really does something visually to the staid TC look. Norm at Reps and Mins was nice enough to cast me up two cycle front fenders from his killer Triumph Bonneville (motorcycle) that i am going to hopefully use. they look even more kool since they are 1/25 and this MG is 1/24 so they barely cover the very small front tires and hug the circumference of the tire great...if i can just get them to mount that way. here you can see a bunch of parts in the early stages included the freshly trimmed off wings: heres a shot to give you an idea how it was to begin with: long frame running all the way to rear of car and providing support for fuel tank: and how about that! Lotus Seven active rear end bars fit right in there and look totally realistic! now this thing with go around corners! and to jump ahead a little bit, heres what that mess will look like a little further along: more to come...

i have been on a kick lately about trying to capture what i think i might have built in the way of a street rod if i were a teenager in England, countryside probably, and had mostly english mechanicals to work with but with a bit of a wannabe yank streak from reading the hot rod magazines of the day, the day being sometime in post-Beatle times, 65 or 66 or so. i had one other attempt at this sort of theme lately, with a rebadged Austin Seven (http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45137&hl=dixi), but that one sort of got too too yank especially when i used the american style wheels and the moon tank hanging out front, it looked sorta like a miniature deuce roadster but too much so for what i was thinking. at one time i built a 1/32 slot car from a MGTD body i picked up somewhere, removed the front fender which were separate pieces, lowered it down and thought it looked pretty kool: so i was looking through my kit collection such as it is and came across this old monogram chestnut kit of the MGTC that i had, and not only that i also had a metal version of the same kit. worthless trash in the metal version but i put it aside in case i thought there might be some pieces in there that would look better in metal than plastic. heres a pic of the box of the plastic version, note the box art sure to turn off anyone with any real enthusiasm but hiding a very nicely detailed kit complete with a sweet little 1200 four banger (edit: might have only been 900 or so cc now that i think about it) and SU carb setup along with an exquisitely detailed dashboard among other features: and nearby i noticed an old standby, the Tamiya Lotus Seven so loved in many corners of this forum, including yours truly. tons of kool details for these kind of projects so onto the pile it went. ideas started running through my head and pretty after some parts box scrounging for some appropriate wheels (really the heart of something like this, i considered Jaguar D-type wheels before going with the pure Lotus theme) front and rear i sat down and started mocking stuff up. more to follow...

after a couple months, i decided to do a couple of improvements on the original kit, suggested and executed by my friend Jody when he built the kit some years ago: the real car has three step rail things on the rear deck to step up on to enter the rear window area, the way you get into the thing, and there was a well hidden headlamp underneath the sculped part of the front edge of the body. also i didnt really dig the surfboard theme i had going on there, so i decided to redo that more like the ones that appear in the abundant photos of the car in later years. i think it looks a lot better; great project for pulling out the airbrush. anyway just thought i would update this thread with some pics i took tonite, will post in the under glass thread when i get done here; still have to do a final clear coat on the board and put it back on the chassis. thanks again for looking! theres the single rectangular headlamp down under there: the little step rails on the rear deck: finally a profile look at the new (original) board design:

I really used to hate trying to BMF trim, because of some of the issues mentioned here, but then somehow i heard mentioned that DM stuff was better (this was a long time ago), so i bought some of that to try. i thought it was nice and especially it was thin, but it always twisted when you pulled it off the backing. it was pretty frustrating trying to keep a long piece from folding back on itself and breaking. but if you got it down and trimmed it really looked good, nice and thin and shiny. then i bought another sheet of real BMF and what a difference! its actually pretty easy to use and its increased thickness makes it not at all as delicate as the DM was. one thing i noticed though, aside from the wrinkles and it rarely gets humid here, this sheet was wrinkled from the get go, was that the adhesive was missing on the outer 1/4 to 1/2 inch all around the edge of the sheet. if i used the inner pieces i didnt have a problem with adhesion, but if i used the outer rim, which was a natural thing to do, adhesion would be sketchy or totally absent. as noted above these problems seemed to come and go almost with lot numbers at one point; i never thought of it but it does make sense that BMF buys the stuff and repackages it rather than having it manufactured for them directly. that would explain inability to supply a consistent product being out of their control. as little foiling as i do, a sheet, even with a bunch of wrinkles, lasts me for a decade practically.

the level of detail on the undercarriage is pretty amazing! super job and really kool conversion to street rod!

i honestly dont see what your problem is with it christian, i kinda like it myself and hey this was AMBR at one time too: so its gotta be an improvement on that after 50 years! i like it and i like that color, its like a tobacco color. i think the whole thing shows admirable restraint while still preserving a look that has long since disappeared. yeah there might not be a lot "new" about it, but i like its simplicity and style. certainly havent seen anything from Poland to match it lately.

i would have to say the tamiya lotus super seven. probably bought 5 or 6 of those kits and used the motors, wheels, suspension, interior bits pretty much all of them in various builds. very nicely detailed components like foot pedals with master cylinders in place, kool rear link suspension, good stuff. and then the fujimi enthusiast kits of the 356 Porsches in various forms. mostly picked up a half dozen of the testors rebox of them with broken bodies, and they are a wellspring of highly detailed upgrades for VWs as well as nice to swap into even later porsches for the added details. when i was a kid i remember the double dragster kit being a real favorite and i would use that fiat body along with the coupe from the Sizzler a lot including the hemi from the sizzler because it looked so massive. and i used those clear cycle front wheels a bunch too cause i thought they looked pretty kool.

ok thanks for the info. see i somehow got the idea at one point that maybe someone went through posts here and picked out the best and reposted them in the "gallery", or perhaps the photos were in some way linked to what is posted in the (this) normal forum. i did look through it some though and it was confusing me some but i see what the deal is now. maybe i will throw some pics up too then

yes ok thats pretty much the conclusion i came to...its just that i wanted some kind of "official" word on what the purpose might be, when it is appropriate to post there instead of the forum, that kind of stuff. i would figure any site that had such a feature would also have a FAQ or something explaining its intended use. maybe not though

facebook? ummm dont think so. anyway: >As for the '64 Comet I second the motion and while they're at it add it to the slot car series... >drag car w/decals and 100,000 miles at 100 >miles and hour and the safari options... now THAT is an excellent suggestion if they have the molds to the base kit. especially those safari options and hopefully decals. plus a drag and a stock? thats a perfect kit even for these times. i would line up for it.

+1 on all that above. that is sweet and a very kool use of a pretty limited kit. fantastic! those are Copperhead wheels? look especially nice.

yep looks great with the wild dream! and thanks Don, see ya at our meeting!

i am sure it has been here forever and i am the last one to notice it, but i started digging around in the "Gallery" section. I got kinda confused...what exactly is this? is there a FAQ explaining its purpose and expected use? is it that it is a place that we as members can post photos of our models, completely apart from what i know of as the "forum"? in other words much like the "under glass" subforum? because from what i saw there was everything from detail photos of works in progress, to complete collections of cars, presumably from the same builder. anyone here got any feedback on the Gallery section they would like to share? edit: oh it occurs to me this might be more appropriately posted in some other forum. if so, move it please.

thanks again, yeah i agree, i love building these old kits and seeing if i can do better than my last attempt, when i was a kid and NOTHING fit together too well! lol! i also agree, they look way better built on the shelf than they do a bunch of pieces in the box! One of these days i will get around to one i have been meaning to build for quite a while now, the AMT XR-6 Hot Rod Magazine car. Ive collected up a complete kit plus pieces plus a couple of vintage buildups and i keep looking at them...i think this one turned out pretty well even as a kid but if i did it now i would do some detailing and nice paint. i believe this was also a car Gene Winfield had something to do with, another kool klassik kit you dont often see built:

thanks for the comments folks, it turned out quite nice, even though the style doesnt really get it with me either, i much prefered the kit-mate Wilhelms Wild Dream. but this one has its charms too, despite being quite dated in design. there is still some room for improvement (he said in a characteristic understatement); in fact i never glued in the interior bucket for a couple reasons: for one those top bars prevent it from snugging down properly and for another i am thinking about taking a spare interior tub and drilling out all the buttons of the button-tufted upholstery and replacing them with something metallic. a pinhead is too large but i was thinking i might be able to come up with some pins with smaller heads or just cut the heads off altogether and let the trimmed off end be the "button". then replacing the interior here with that upgrade. yes i will be bringing this to the NNL West to bolster my meager output this year and about the display stands, they came with the kit and it is one of the weaknesses of my build: i got in a hurry and ran the black paint in one corner and ignored dust spots in other places. ah so it goes. thanks again and any further comments or criticisms encouraged!

Here is a relatively short build thread for some background: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58494 vintage AMT Double Kit with the Wilhelms Wild Dream, went together pretty well straight out of the box but i did add some "improvements" like polished aluminum steering wheel column, mirrored undercarriage, aluminum exhaust tips, maybe a couple other accessories. (Edit: and of course the hand formed brass radiator shell courtesy of "Mr Brass" Jerry Cardinal...he gave me the raw item he handformed and i finessed it a bit and polished it.) Thanks for looking and any comments encouraged!

Well wrapped this one up recently; here are some informal pics of the finished product and i will post more formal shots of it on its stand in the Under Glass section soon. Many thanks for following along!

so have you guys ever laid a copy of MCM on the table next to a copy of just about any other magazine, but we could use SA as an example? because its pretty apparent to me there are differences in the magazines themselves that may well make MCM more prone to catching up in equipment along the way. for one thing, MCM is printed on much heavier stock (paper) than SA in particular and most magazines in general. that makes the pages bulge out where on other pubs they lay flat and the thinness of the paper actually acts to hold them together vs the thicker stock inviting air in between the sheets which make the pages tend to fluff out even more. Note that this stock thickness is not a bad thing; in fact it is high quality and lends a sense of "weight" to the magazine that is often lacking in lighter weight, slicker publications like SA then there is the matter of the saddle stitch (commonly known as the staples and the manner in which the pages are collated as they are printed and later folded and cut). SA is also saddle stitched so no difference there although again it seems with the thicker stock used in MCM, the center staples make the magazine spread apart instead of lying flat. the thing to take home from those two facts is that MCM is putting out a quality publication but that quality is suffering because of a lack in the delivery department, be in the press shop or the mailing shop or the USPS or wherever. that problem is a byproduct of the fact that MCM is a quality magazine printed on good thick stock. the thing to do is to protect your quality product, all the way through the production/delivery chain. i think the best way to do that is with a plastic or paper sleeve (plastic is getting pretty environmentally touchy lately though it would be cheaper and more efficient than paper). while some magazines never get caught up in machinery even though they are not protected by a sleeve or bag, i would bet that it is VERY RARE that a magazine inside a plastic bag is damaged in any way. What i have been saying without really coming out and saying it is that the money is being spent to put out a quality magazine...you have to protect that quality all the way down the chain to the consumer. OR at least offer the consumer a way to protect himself (other than the pretty troublesome route of calling the publisher)...this could be an optional charge of like 5$ a year to have the magazine bagged. i think this seriously needs to come up at the next stockholders meeting or at least in the corporate boardroom.

Here is the story: if you use USPS you have to package stuff correctly. Thats even if you buy "insurance". In the case of magazines they need to be put into plastic bags for shipping to prevent mangling as they get caught up in sorting equipment. Not all the time, but often enough to make it a problem with your supposedly most valued customers: your subscribers. Deny it all you want...this is from someone who supervised a mailing facility for a large scale printing outfit for a number of years. All this dancing around the facts is just BS, if you want your magazines to arrive safely, consistently, then you do what is necessary for that. If you dont care, then you keep making up excuses when confronted with the facts of the matter. The path chosen here is clear to nearly everyone concerned and it is why when my subscription for two years runs out i am done. And as i have told Harry (by the way thanks for finally following your own rules and putting your full name in your posts), when one person says it ten are thinking it and probably twenty are going to do it. And no, I dont think that it is part of my responsibility to deal with some publishing house when my magazines arrive in tatters more than once a year.

got mine Saturday:

i would use oh say a thousand of it to buy this site, kick out all the hitler moderators, and hire someone who actually listens when you tell them something is wrong. take your pick: magazine arrives all battered all the time, website glitches that are written off to "oh who in the heck uses internet explorer anymore (uh you mean besides like half the world?)", replace the sql server with one that works consistently, and most of all ban anyone who knows squat about modern operating systems and programming environments yet is more than willing to toss in their 50 cents about technical issues like they really know. and then i would wake up and find out it was all a dream anyhow.

so how does the body stack up to the body of the tamiya? is it larger since the tamiya is supposedly under-scale? also, how is the engine detail and how is it aspirated. thirdly, please expand on what you mean with the gear shift lever. "non remote"? would one iteration have the gears on the steering column or something vs on the floor? thanks for the advance look; i may have to grab one of these myself. it looks like a worthwhile successor to the tamiya kit for all the reasons you point out.

i notice something funny in that photo you posted J2, and that is that the wheels shown on your photo, but somewhat obscured by the display around it, appears to have the wooden insert spokes on the inside while the photos i took of it (the recreation) and the box art show the wooden spokes on the outside of the wheel. maybe thats just an illusion in your photo but it caught my eye. heres my photos of the prototype (recreation)

yeah i think you are right: the engine is set back beneath the T bucket on the real thing, but not nearly as much as on the model. if you look closely like i have at the T bucket shell itself, you will see it varies considerably from the 1:1, especially from the windshield line forward. i assume AMT had a T bucket body already in production and used that instead of tooling one up especially for the King T. I say "AMT" but i think this was originally an MPC kit so it may have been them who originally made the design decisions. thanks for the pic and thanks for the comments! i am hoping to get this in shape to bring to the Stockton NNL this coming sunday so i hope the weather cooperates (cooperates in that it rains cats and dogs but my electricity stays on, and so far so good)

bit more progress to report: the chief looming problem here has been the way too wide front end track which would make the front wheels and tires practically stick all the way out from under the fenders above them, kinda like a dune buggy. and with this style of car i dont want that. the real one did have a track slightly wider than the fenders but this was ridiculous. i marked the width of the fender unit on some graph paper and proceeded to see exactly how much i had to narrow something. right off the bat it became apparent this is a kit design "feature" because as you can see in this photo, the axle and brake assembly sticks out to the marks designating the outer edges of the fender unit. and the wheels have a small center so they only mount against the outer side of the collar coming out of the disk brake rotor. that means basically that the tires will be outside of the fender unit. so it occurs to me to maybe slice that collar off the brake rotors, which would have been a swell idea back, oh, say 6 months ago but at this point with the delicate suspension and all, i would prefer to avoid it. but looking at the problem a bit closer i see that i can drill out the wheel backs and let them slip over the collars and tighten the track a bit that way. now realize these wheels have a front and a back, and the front of the backs can be seen in the spaces between the spokes on the front of the wheel. i took one of these backs and enlarged the center hole so it would slip over that collar and it looked pretty good, so i narrowed the wheel back by relieving some from the front and back of it, to make it sit closer to the front side of the wheel and also to clear the tie rod and junk on the inside of the wheel. way harder to describe than to do almost! here is a before and after with the wheel backs before mods (on the right) and drilled and narrowed (on the left): (nice ejector pin marks eh?) and a shot of the two from a different angle so you can see how much narrow the one on the left is: this all looked pretty good and got me about an 1/8" on both sides...not enough to really pull in the tires but enough that it doesnt look freakish, and as mentioned the original had some of that so it can be considered prototypically correct i guess. heres a shot of the inside of one wheel sitting tight against the brake rotor: and a shot of the corrected track with both wheels posed: finally here is a shot from above without wheels mounted to compare with the next with the wheels mounted. again note my marks which represent the OUTER edge of the fender unit that will ride above the tires...also note how close the tie rod doodad come to the tire and wheel, thats why i narrowed the inside half of the wheel, to give a bit more clearance there, and also note that right side tire and wheel isnt up against the rotor all the way: thanks for looking!