Impalow

Thanks guys!!! Managed to get the hood sides and extensions all worked out and cleaned up last night. The panel gaps still need a little massaging, but that can be done in primer. I think i'm almost done with most of the rough-out body work... Just a lot of trim strips to add and its time to do some final cleanup and prime. Oh and i need to figure out how to connect those fender pods to the front and rear axles... Feels like im building an airplane... Model A fuselage.

I saw those... they are not mine.. if you notice the bottom of the lense comes to a perfect point, which isn't correct with the 1:1.. That's why I decided to do my own... here is my non-active listing.. but price-wise.. they will all be within a dollar or so. https://www.shapeways.com/product/D88VAJFSF/woodlight-inspired-headlights-1-24-1-25-scale

Outstanding work! This is coming together very nicely...the stance and flares look dead on, cant wait to see more. I love Gary Ragles work! I often check out the portfolio section of his website for inspiration... He is lucky and talented enough to be working with the "big dogs" in the custom car scene right now, a lot of those sema builds everyone drools over are coming out of his studio.

Super ultra boring update. Shaped the hood sides Made a firewall.. The Miller supercharged engine is pretty slick in the fact that the supercharger is at the back of the engine and half inside the fire wall. This puts the carburetor under the cowl, so i will have to add some air inlets on each side of the cowl. Pretty cool setup on the old indy cars. 1:1 example Added extension pieces to the body to change the hood side shape. Super rough... but should work after a good sanding and "truing" up. And one more... with the engine in.

Thank you all for the comments and compliments!!! Honestly Tom, I have no idea... I have had some wheels for an RC project printed in the same material once, and i just had to shoot them with some primer and they were good to go. I will post some pictures when they show up, hopefully if everything goes okay they should ship to me on Friday. As far as pricing goes, the first ones were like 9.00 in the frosted detail and 11.00 in the frosted ultra detail.. For the first set I spent the 2.00 extra hoping they can be nice and crisp and detailed. One really nice thing about shapeways, is once they have the model, you can make a virtual store front and anyone can buy your items and shapeways handles the rest. So we shall see how it goes...for now i am waiting to see a physical print before i make the store live.

Thank you guys! This project is a ton of fun... and a learning experience. I needed a set of woodlight headlights... and after looking around, the barris "bed buggy" kit that had them seems really hard to obtain... the set on shapeways currently isnt 100% correct shape wise (pointy bottom of lense)... So i decided to model up my own, and then send them off to shapeways to be printed. Hopefully they work.. I ordered up two sets, so maybe we can get a resin caster to make us all some. Mine aren't 100% correct shapewise either, but the lenses are pretty close,the part that gave me issues is the bottom rear. ( these are more pointy than the originals) Should be close enough for what I am doing. I hope

thank you all for the kind words! The comments really do help keep me motivated and working on this thing. Here is a little boring update... lots of stuff going on.. nothing all that exciting at this point. Added a transmission/driveshaft tunnel to the 1929 kit floor.. then i got tired of sanding so i added a layer of .020 filler by vacuum forming a piece over it.. then i sanded that smooth. the plan is for the floor to be gloss burl wood with raised chrome accents... more photos to come. Added trim to the frame rails... this will be chrome spear that comes off the headlight mount on the front, and runs the entire length of the frame with a little accent at the start of the luggage rack. Just something little to tie the frame visually to the trim on the fenders. added trunk detail.. plan is for the raised area to be body color and the recesses to be a light burl wood. Hood sides... started this fun... the first ones were too short... so i used it as a practice piece for the accent trim. Remade and attached to the hood... still needs shaping and accents.. but a start..

looks great buddy! remind me to take a couple of photos of our cars together Tuesday... I keep forgetting.

pure insanity... and i love it. outstanding work as usual randy!

If its anytime around the 1st or 3rd tuesday of the month, swing over to the NCAM meeting in Garfield Monthly meetings 1stTuesday & 3rd Tuesday of every month. (Please check schedule for any changes)Our current location is held at: Garfield Hts. Civic Center5407 Turney Rd, Garfield, OhioWhen? From 7:00pm to 9:00pm Civic Center Contact: 216-475-1100Directions: http://classic.mapquest.com/mq/9-BWA2saRyHRCkHZOnwTbF Kit raffles held at every meeting

let's cross our fingers and hope it's done way before that! I'm shooting for mid- march.. we shall see. I ordered up one of the Replicas and Minitures Hallock windshields awhile back.. and massaged the 29 body to get it pinned in position tonight. It's cool that norm gives us instructions on how to make it work on the new 29 body... and it worked like a charm.

Thank you guys! You have no idea how much I appreciate the encouragement. nah jim, i'm using a scrapbook cutter, draw paths in the computer and it scores the styrene for me... I still had to carefully trace every one with an xacto... but luckily a lot of the work the cutter took care of. I thought about going with a more pointy front end/ grille shell.. but with the bluntness of the model A body and firewall i think using a model A inspired one will work out pretty well... I hope. Last night I got the grille all trimmed and fitted... still needs some cleanup... but, i think its going to work!

Then it was time to tackle the grill.... I wanted the grill insert to be see through and wrap under the entire engine, this is my attempt to pull that off... im still not 100% sure its going to work.. but im happy with it so far. Programed the shape and cut a few more than the 18 of them i needed out of .020 Built a jig and started assembly.. using .020x.020 square as a spacer, and straight pins to align everything. A little sanding and trimming I hope it will work.. Finished up here last night, I'm letting if fully cure before starting clean up and fitting.

and now... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! and a little update on this thing. I had last week sortakinda off work, so i got a bit of bench time... not a ton, but some. You will notice Santa brought me a new mat to work on, and after the first 3 photos a nice 150W equivalent LED Bulb for my work-lamp. (made a HUGE difference) First up was build a hood and get the grill shell in position. Grill is from the blue bandito kit, and the main section of the hood is as well, then I narrowed the rat rod pickup hood to make the extension. Next up was crazy with the cutter time. Filled and molded the grill shell, then cut and installed the raised grill trim as well as the raised trim on chassis, and also the ribbed center accent. Then it was time to make some wheels... The center 3 layers had the cutout of the little brass nut, the outer pieces hold the nut captive. I added a small lip on the face of the wheel, not that it will be seen at all... but it makes them a bit less boring for photos.. hahaha.

Thank you all for the compliments and comments! Ill try my best to answer all the questions, I apologize in advance if i miss any. Charlie, the engine is the Etzels/American Racing Miniatures Miller 91ci Straight 8, as far as i know this is one of the last ones they made.. they discontinued it shortly before I ordered this one, and had to email them begging for one...they had a few pieces left over and sent me what they had, it is missing some pieces that i'll have to scratch build. Its an amazing piece of resin and white metal. As for color, im going with a dark non-metallic burgandy with a tan leather interior and light burl wood accents. at least that's the plan for now. Riley my printer is the M3D micro, it was a kickstarter that went crazy... and became a company.. its excellent for a plug-n-play first printer, and for printing nik-naks and paddywacks, but really stinks for printing anything super useful and clean in 1/25th scale. https://printm3d.com/ That being said, I have had better results with it printing with their ABS material, these were done with the new ABS-R material. The print was more consistent, and easier (success on the first try) but the quality was not what I have had before. Agreed... and I even simplified it more by making the fender sized to work on the front and rear... Something you probably couldn't do if creating a replica, but part of the luxury of designing this thing as I go. Here is a rough idea of time.... not that it matters, really... but just to put it all in perspective. I rounded this all up a bit too. One 3d model (1hour) = Two 3d printed pieces(2.5hrs with 1hr cleanup) = Vacformed 8 fender halves (30min) = 4 assembled fenders (2.5hrs).

Awesome job on this! and fast... wowza. Makes me want to break out my rust kit, i bought one, and then everything i build turns into a showrod... its still sealed.

Yes! Here was one of ours this was a 2.0... If you follow Datsun 510 fandom, this is the car we sold on eBay, that ended up being Taz Harvey's car for the LaCarerra Panamerica. we still have the wagon, and the 4dr...

Have to agree with that 100% I absolutely love the L-series engines! Through my form-able years (birth-14yo) my dad ran a datsun 510 in both GT4 (GTL now) and ITC. There is something about the sound of those engines, its amazing and still gives me chills, you could stand in the infield and hear the car all the way around the track. We also had a couple of wagons we would run through the woods making trails by knocking over trees, we would drive it until it over heated, let it sit for an hour then go back and keep playing. I personally have become slightly partial to the Dodge Neon/ SRT4 2.0/2.4 engine.. I have a few, and they are interesting modern engines. There are a couple options of bell housings that allow them to be dropped into rwd cars as well. Here is the 3d printed/scratchbuilt one i did for my tuner cuda project:

Thank you all for your comments and taking the time to look at this project, your support helps keep me motivated! I have been using a program called formZ for about 20 years, its mainly used in the exhibit design/architectural design fields. I just know it so well, I do everything in it... its probably not the best program, but i can get it to work. Here is a link to their free version, not all the tools, but enough to make stuff. http://www.formz.com/products/formzfree.html The M3D printer has pretty decent software to actually run the printer and import the STL files. I just wish it printed better,but i knew this going in. It is a 299 printer, based on technology that is outdated at this point. Vac-forming over it gives me some hope of still finding a use for it in my work shop.

I use a program called formZ.... its probably not the best, but I've used it daily for a little under 20 years now so I'm extremely comfortable. They have recently released a free version of the software, its missing some tools.. but its free, and allows import and export of 3d files for printing... so its probably worth a look http://www.formz.com/products/formzfree.html Recently at work we purchased a fusion360 software package. I'm really impressed with it so far, but i haven't had much time to try and totally learn it. so it also maybe worth a look. http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview

Thank you for the clarification, i get excited and tend to over simplify. All of this is Outstanding info! .. and yes i'm sure he has the top of the line one.. Mine is the smaller Silhouette portrait, which i never really looked into a deep cut blade until i saw your post, and now amazon has 18.00 more of my money this holiday season! Thank you! Ill update on how that works, I'm hopeful that will at least get through the .020, I have been tracing everything with an xacto.

Yes that is the main advantage! Thank you all for the compliments! The cutter has really been an amazing addition to my workshop. Initially I was just looking for a way to make repeat and mirror image shapes with some amount of accuracy. I don’t know if I’m lazy or it’s the creative in me that hates doing the same thing twice, but it has always caused me inaccuracies when I make multiple similar items. I remembered when I went to school we had an early tabletop laser cutter that would run off illustrator paths, so I started researching those. Then my good friend Andy (exesivefire on the forum) and I started talking about modifying a vinyl cutter to be a CNC bladed cutter for sheet… and that led us to this:http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/ It seemed the UK railroad guys had been using it for awhile, so I found a used one on ebay and figured I would be a guinea pig. He has since bought one of the newer cricut models and it has its advantages over my silhouette, but nothing that has convinced me that I need to upgrade. As far as differences between the silhouette and the cricut, from what Andy and I have discussed: The software for the cricut is internet based, so that means you have to upload your files to the cloud and then it processes them, from what I can tell this is more cumbersome than the silhouette software (which operates like a dumbed down version of illustrator) The cricut seems to be much more accurate at cutting small circles and will cut clean thru .020 styrene, the silhouette makes ovals sometimes and is more of score and snap over .015The cricut is physically larger and has a larger cutting area than my silhouette portrait. (not a big deal to me, but thinking larger scale stuff it is a plus)The cricut seems to have more stuff available at local retailers, Michaels and hobby lobby carry the mattes and blades, the silhouette I have to order things online. The cricut has a deep cut blade option, not quite sure how that works.. but ive seen it online.The cricut is more automated than my silhouette, the software sets the blade depth, whereas the silhouette has a ratcheting cartridge that you manually rotate to set the depth before hitting “cut” (I set it to max and never touched it since) I think the automation is nice if you are using the machine for its intended purpose, but since we are kinda hacking it the more crude feels better to me… less chance of breaking things.And that’s about all I can think of, based on me really only having hands on experience with the silhouette.. I hope that helps, both seem like valid options.

Then it was time for the integrated trunk that elongates the body and gets that streamliner look without a ton of body work. Since this is for a contest and is supposed to be based on the 29 kit.. I challenged myself to do minimal work to the actual revell body shell... just a personal challenge. and here is where this thing sits currently... I'm still assembling fenderpods... but its starting to get the look.

The engine will be the miller91 Supercharged straight 8.. So i picked up the last kit available from American Racing Miniatures.. and it is beautiful. Started connecting and cleaning up the chassis and making motor mounts: next up fender pod time... took the same outline i drew in illustrator and imported it into my 3d program, and used it as an underlay. once the 3d model was made, I 3d printed a rough sample to assure my sizing was correct.... 2 hours later... this grossness. everything looked pretty good so i decided to max out the settings and give myself a nice hi res 3d printed halves... its still not that nice, but with some sanding it works.. After I sanded the halves smooth, I added a flange out of styrene, and threw them in the vac-former with some .030 styrene. Cleaned them up pretty nice. Then I just had to glue the halves together to make the pods....Here are all the pieces to make a pod:

Well now for something completely different..... I decided to set my other projects aside and got started on my 1929 Model A Roadster build for the Buckeye Challenge. I really enjoy building the same kit as Andy, (exesivefire) its a lot of fun tackling the same kit and putting our own spin on it. And since that show is in march, I really needed to get going. This is a couple weeks of progress, mainly because this concept is a bit hard to explain.. and visually I feel its developed enough to be shown. So the idea here is to build a classy classic coach-built touring car using the Model A as base. Maybe a personal street car that would be built in the late 30s by an indy car owner/driver, out of spare parts and some spare time in the metal shop? I dunno how valid that is.. but at least that's where the idea sprouted from. Think this but with a Model A roadster as a starting point: After a ton of planing in my head it became time to start laying things out, and putting the Xacto to styrene. I needed to get the body and shapes into the computer so I can design and draw all of the new components. I haven't invested in a 3d scanner, mainly because they are expensive, and I haven't seen any amazing results from an economical one. So I went oldschool/low tech and just set the body onto a flat bed scanner and scanned it at 100% size. This gave me an actual size, side and bottom view of the stock 1929 body. Once that was done I imported the images into adobe illustrator making sure to keep them at 100% size. In illustrator I was able to draw the new components as lines on top of the images. These lines will be my cut paths for the cutter. Keeping things at 100% size avoids a lot of pesky/time consuming measuring, basically anything you trace will be cut at that size Here are the cut paths for the chassis separated into its own file. And the roughed out assembled frame/chassis The exhaust will run down each side of this raised center area, the plan is to add some trim and ribbed styrene to simulate some extruded aluminum accents under the car.