Pete J.

Im going with real on this one, though it is a kit car. Missing wind deflectors at the A pillar. Any modeler worth his salt would not miss that and surely would not slap such ugly rims on this car after spending so much time getting all the window rivets in place. Real - but some rich guys toy.

Big Daddy Ed Roth created a beach cruzer called a Surfite. The kit comes with 2 or 3 boards of differant lengths and shapes. If you check ebay you can generally find a couple at very reasonable prices. I have a project I am doing and needed 3 of the kits. I got them for an average of about $15 including shipping. As always there are a number of dreamers who think their kit is "rare and desirable" and ask well over that price, but if you set your price and are patient, they come along often enough that you can get one at a reasonable cost. Here is a photo of one of my project cars. I made the rear wings out of the surfboards.

Yea, I'm going with the majority on this one. Model! Sidewalls of the tires look a little to perfect and the rims look a little to polished. I agree with the board in front of the grass. Very nice model though.

Harry - I'm going with real on this one. If you photo shopped it you did one heck of a job. The reflection in the front windshield is spot on. Interior looks good, as does the wind wing. Also the openings on the grill look great. The only part that has me guessing are the hood louvers. They just don't quite look right, but I am sticking with real.

I'm going with model on this one. A great model but there are just a couple of small details that don't look right to me. In particular the duze fasteners on the hood just look a little off to me. Also not to sure of the reflections in the paint. It kind of looks like the photographer is reflected in a very large size. Very nice model though.

Gloss black! Absolute must! The alclad chrome is dependent upon a perfectly glossy surface. Flat would definitely kill it. The better the base the better the chrome. I have used a lot of different gloss blacks and like the alclad base coat best. It is easy to use and gives a really nice finish. Good luck with your next try.

I find it very interesting that in spite of the size of the space available, whether it be a table in the kitchen or a 10' x 20' shed out back, we all only use a space about 12" x 18" tops. The rest is taken up with a clutter of tool, kits, paints, etc.

Got to go with real on this one. The handle crank holder and the left front hub detail just looks to good to be a model, though I have been wrong befor!

Cool! I will have to file that one away for future use.

Smooth jawed hemostats are generally refered to as clamps. My wife is an ER nurse and they throw these things away by the buckets. When she brings them home I sort out the smooth jawed and toss the rest. I still have my PE bending tools though. The Tamiya pliers are precision ground and have very thin edges cut at an angle so you can go past 90 degrees. Very helpful.

Forget about holding it and bending the fins with tweezers. You just don't get the support that you need. I would suggest getting a very small sharp set of smooth jawed pliers and hold the part with the folding line aligned with the edge of the pliers and bend it with a very small flat blade screwdriver. If you haven't got or can't get a set of pliers that small, then buy an inexpensive set and grind the jaws to size. It may seem like a lot of work for one part, but it you are doing this once, you will probably need it again. I don't know if they are small enough for this part, but Tamiya makes a small set of PE benders and I have found them very useful. They are not cheap but then good tools rarely are. http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=74084

I buy Micro mesh sanding pads and sticks directly from the source. MicroMesh- https://www.micro-surface.com/default.cfm?p...1&storeid=1

To much about this one screams reall to me so it must be so. Real

Aw, now that wadn't far tall Harry! Actually, I like the whites on wire side better. Probably drives really strange like that. Barely get it out of the garage?

The nice part about this car is that there were not that many of these cars made with Mark II's being the most common. Thus, the primary research needs to be race to race differences. There is even enough similarities between the Mark I's and Mark II's to make a reasonable replica of a Mark I from a Mark II. In fact the chassis were essentially the same. I agree there are a lot of people who can make a good to great model of these. Personally, I look forward to the challenge of correcting the chassis to make it look more realistic. I think brass would do the job for a lot of the parts. Also may try my hand at making a spyder. Lots of options.

Research is definitely called for when doing this car. The Mk Is were all smaller engines, mostly 289's with six 2 barrels. There is also the Mark IIA and B. The A's all ran a 427 with a single four barrel and didn't have a roll cage visible. They also didn't have a "cover" over the top of the door to keep the top of the door from lifting at speed. After Sebring(the B model), they also had the dog ear of the passenger side door cut off and bolted in place. That was to give the driver and exit if the car was inverted. Tons of other details depending on the team.

Another piece completed. This is the turbo boost controller and the gear shifter. 21 pieces, mostly held together with solder.

Thanks for the photos. Be interesting to see what they have besides the plastic. The plastic looks pretty good, but there is a lot that can be corrected. Getting a good model looks to be in the cards. Getting a great model looks like a lot of work at this point. Still going to give it a go though. Might need to buy two or three of them.

You well may be right. The more I look at it the right tire looks like a complete mismatch. The rim has hints of a wire wheel and the tread looks like an older style with a deeper tread pattern. I hope when this is all over Harry can give us a bit of an explanation of this point. I would really like to know.

Harry - You almost had me convinced that this was real, but for one big problem. Check out the inside tire wall on the right(passenger side) tire and the outside on the driver side. No real tires that I know of have two differant size side walls. Great model though. The red sky is a filter. I have a whole set of those in differant colors. They are quite common.

Here is a radiator that I made for my Tamiya 935 project. These are the PE parts from the SMS kit. They were originally intended to be glued over the plastic radiator(the white plastic piece in the photo. I decided that I wanted to test my soldering skills and have a "see thought" part, so I soldered some 1/32" brass angle to the backs and then soldered the piece together. The radiator is not a perfect rectangle. In fact far from it. The sides are very much curved and the rear is larger than the front so getting the pieced to together is a bit of a challenge.

The only thing I have a question about is the wheels. Any time I see spokes like that I have to think real, but the rest of the car screams model at me. Back ground definitly photo shoped. Ground looks a little modelish to me also. I'm sticking with model and that is my story.

I've done my share of building "for advertising" and it is an entirely different art. The company specifies what it wants to photograph most and you build to that specification. Most times it means that only one side of the model is built to a high finish and often the underside or interior is unfinished. The toughest build I ever had was for Tamiya's TS 020. They wanted box stock of the the engine. You can not see it in this picture, but the clear paint on the front cracked badly at the start of the shoot because of the lights. I had only 5 weeks to complete the build and got it done on the day of the shoot. Lots of stress in building that one. Incidental I have a vary rare 020, in fact it is the only one I know of. It is a test shot with the preproduction instructions. I have been more than curious as to what it is worth. I have it because I asked for two models for the build, in case I made a mistake. It is not the ideal job that most of you would imagine. Pete

I concur - model. The problem with the photo is that the shadow lines do not continue accross the ground where they meet. The bright spot should fall on the model and the light should be brighter IMHO. Pete

Dido all the above plus the clearcoat over the decals. Model