Straightliner59

It is! That's a beauty!

One front bumper is bent, and white-glued in place. The other has gone from rough to ready-to-bend. For a lot of my modeling life, I would have considered this process drudgery. I've come to where it's somewhat Zen-like, for me. There's a certain calm that comes from watching something come from raw material, right in your hands. Anyway--enough of that! It probably only takes 45 minutes to an hour to make one of these. I'm considering doing one for a grille bar, to reflect the center section of the rear bumper. Once the rear one is done, I can use it, to see how it would look, up front, as well. Thanks for looking!

I use a couple of different free photo editing programs. My favorite is FastStone Image Viewer. That's how I edit all my photos, posted here. I can crop them, resize them, and reduce the DPI. I resize to 1024 pixels, on the long side--in the case of portrait-oriented photos, I go 1024 pixels on the vertical. If necessary, I can reduce the DPI to 72, to keep the file size right about 100k. Irfanview is good, as well, but FastStone is a bit more versatile.

One down, three to go. I decided to give some aluminum armature wire a go, for making the bumpers. They'll polish up, nicely! I'm pretty much decided on this grey. I was going to do white, but I already have three white cars in the display case, and another that's cream-colored. And...I don't have any grey ones, and I've always wanted to do one. I think I compared about fifteen different Humbrol greys, and a Pactra one, alongside the interior. This one looks best, to me. I'm also leaning toward putting the scoop, offset, to accommodate the implied Rochester FI powerplant. To expose the bumper that lies within the wire (thank you, Francis!), I began by clamping the section of wire in my vise, leaving a little less than half, exposed. I removed the exposed length with a 6" mill bastard. I then rotated the wire 90 degrees, and repeated the process. Finally, a 180-degree rotation, and repeat completes the roughing-in process. I should note that the brown phone wire was used to mark the length(s) for the bumpers. The black Sharpie marks denote the front and rear bumper lengths. Next, I superglued the roughly-shaped bumper to the edge of a craft stick, where it was easily shaped and buffed. Next, I'll bend this one, and once I'm satisfied the process is good, I'll move on to the next ones. Comments, questions, and etc. are always welcomed. Thanks for looking!

And, the rest!

I knew I had more of these! @Guy Beaudette's Accurate Miniatures McLaren Mk8...

I think Guasco just died within the last week, or so.

Well, you know--we all need those!

Nice job with this classic kit, Pete! I still have spare parts in my original box, from 50+ years ago!

There are a mess of them on Ebay. All are what I'd call reasonably priced. Scratch that itch!😃

They don't call 'em "Rump, Rump" for nothing!

Francis, you do amazing machine work! I was silly enough, the other day, to ponder the idea of attempting a Donovan for one of my dragsters. I quickly came to my senses! I doubt I could ever keep my cuts and sequence in order. You, Tim and Charlie are in a whole different league! My hat is off to all of you!

You are most welcome, sir!😄

Thank you, my friend! My approach to curbside projects is that, there's not a lot to look at, so, the stuff there is, had better be interesting!

I knew I could come up with a better way to mount the pedals! Duh!🙄 I fixed those, then make a dimmer switch, and installed that. Next, I cut the plate for the four-speed shifter (basically, this car will "have" a '57 Corvette drivetrain). I then sanded the back side of some bookbinding leather, to thin it even farther. I pushed that up through the opening in the plate, and ran a round-headed pin through the crown of the new boot. The leather was then infused with superglue. My hope is that I can trim everything below the plate with a sharp scalpel blade, and the plate will mount flatly to the surface of the trans tunnel. There's enough of the pin left to cement into a hole that will be drilled, for it. I should be moving on to the dash, before too awful long. Thanks for looking!

We'll have to see how this works out: I'm going to attempt to make bumpers from K&S .064" aluminum sheet. I was thinking about just removing the vertical "bars" and "bullets" from the kit's bumpers, and going with those. Instead, I have decided to cut and form them from raw stock. I've started cutting out the front bumpers--they're the glued-together layers with the black Sharpie, on them. It's a decent start, but a long way to go! I think it'll be worth the effort. Also, I got the pedals installed. I'll need to bend the arm clutch arm in, some, to make room for the dimmer switch. I probably could have simplified that assembly, a tad!😁 Thanks for looking!

Thanks, Bill. I had to figure something out, those molded, chromed headlights just weren't going to cut it!😃

I have a lathe and a mill, but, by no means would I call myself a machinist!😅 There are a few very skilled machinists, right on this forum.

Thanks, Ace. I figure there's not a lot going on, so I want to add as much interest to it, as possible. I enjoy building curbsides! I appreciate your feedback, Bil. I do think either of those would be a good choice. I have been leaning toward either white(ish) or black, which was my original choice. That probably led me to consider grey. Thankfully, I still have enough body work to do, that I'll have time to think about it!

I have a Gunze 1941 Indian Scout that I was waiting until I felt confident enough that I wouldn't screw it up, but now that I've scratchbuilt the NTF, I don't really see anything being a problem.

Since I opened up the grille area, I needed to cover the tires (inner fenderwells). I also needed a radiator, which I found in a spare parts box. I was eating some yogurt, and noticed that the bottom "corner" of the cup might just work for the wells. I trimmed it to shape, and aligned it with the radiator, glued it with G-S Hypo Cement and painted it with Tamiya X-18. The radiator had been sprayed prior to installation with Krylon Satin Black. The fins were highlighted with a 4B drawing pencil, and a silver Prismacolor pencil. I wanted to add a floor mat to the driver's side. I'd planned to use the method Steve Guthmiller shared, but I couldn't find anything suitable to use as a master, as far as I was willing to dig!😄 I have some scraps of N-Scale car siding(?), lying around--I hadn't used any in 40 years, but, here we are! One thing about modeling--you can pretty much literally justify keeping every little scrap of material! I digress. I cut a small rectangle of the car siding, rounded the corners, and laid a bead of .010" Plastruct rod, around the perimeter. I sprayed it with Tamiya Tire Black. I can live with that! Andy Sapiro made some pedals, recently, using solder-infused screen to provide the textured surface. I have some very-finely perforated metal screen--I think from an old automatic transmission that was being rebuilt. Andy's brilliant solution inspired me to try the transmission screen for my pedals. I simply folded the bits to fit over their respective mounting points. I have the brake and clutch pedals done, but no photos, as of this writing. Comments, questions and critiques are always welcomed. Thanks for looking!

Here's one Guy Beaudette built. I thought I had more photos of it. The panels operate, and are removeable, as they should, if they did!😃

This is great! A fine replica, sir!

Thanks, Pete! That's very kind of you, to say. I try to make my race cars look "lived-in"--I've never seen a pristine race car!

Thank you, Tony! I appreciate that!