TomZ

Heh. Given my "error tolerance" when I was a kid as compared to now, I'm not prepared to say that. I do remember one severely warped convertible top from way back then. FWIW, back in the '70's I ran yellow Accel wires on my 1:1 '67 'Vette as they were high-temp tolerant and there was just no way to keep them completely off the headers. With those wires they could lie right across a header pipe with no problems.

According to his autobiography, Mickey Thompson used Pontiac in his Bonneville record car because they had bulletproof bottom ends.

Musk himself said that the first launch was extremely risky, but it would be lame to launch a concrete block when you could do something cool. If you want to launch a satellite to low earth orbit, the retail price for a Falcon 9 Heavy launch is $90 million. The anticipated retail price for a launch on the new (under development) NASA heavy launch vehicle is anticipated to be $1 billion. 'Nuff said.

A recall is not a reliability issue unless you've experienced a failure. Consumer Reports was really liking some of the recent Chevy's, especially the Impala and their trucks. They never had anything nice to say about the Cruz or Cobalt. Recently Chevy has slid into the bottom third of CR's reliability by brand list, which is based on the hundreds of thousands of annual questionnaires they send to their readers. I have noticed that it seems like nearly every brand claims some sort of JD Power award in their ads. By any chance did the Chevy state that their award was for "American" cars, for example? (Seems funny to call cars made mostly in Canada/Mexico "American" and the Honda Accord, which has the most US content of any make, "Foreign.")

I know some of the secrets. Use enamel. Thin the paint about 60-40, varies with brand and color. Use a fairly large flat brush. Only brush INTO the wet paint, lifting as you meet the previous stroke. Keep the paint fairly heavy (not too heavy!) and wet. NEVER touch any area that already has wet paint on it except for finishing the next stroke. Light sanding with 1500 between coats. Don't expect even coverage right away, you might need five coats to cover. I've seen praise for Humbrol, especially for gloss black. Finally a coat or two of spray clear is often done. It takes a lot of practice to develop the techniques. I've had some moderate success but my bane is always dust and floating cat hair (arrgh.

I suspect that much of the reduction in posting is due to the passing of Harry. He posted a LOT and had some absurd number of posts to his credit. I remember one request for help I had made, and after three days with no response he jumped in and offered what advice he could even though he had no experience with my issue. That one reply got the ball rolling and I wound up with about a dozen posts of very helpful information. I had noticed long ago that Harry was a very significant component of the energy here. Alas.

I keep seeing what may be Hawaiian scattered about in this forum. Is there a glossary somewhere on this site that might give me a clue what those words and phrases mean? Seems like I mostly see people doing this with French. Hawaiian is a new one for me. It would be a courtesy to those benighted among us (such as myself) to supply a translation in parentheses. thanks

If Flickr is free, what is my advantage paying Fokti $24/year? I'm not opposed to paying such a reasonable sum. But just what is the difference?

Please let us know what happened! I was able to watch live for the items I was interested in. All of them went for far more than I was willing to pay. Guess I won't bother with Sunday.

As far as I know the last LHS around here went out of business about 25 years ago when the owner retired. Since then, a Michaels has been my only option and I have bought literally everything from Hobbylinc.com. Recently a Hobby Lobby opened and I was terribly excited about finally getting a little local hobby access. Much disappointment ensued when I found how little they actually stock. I will buy a can of Tamiya primer or some such on the 40% off coupon on occasion, but everything else still comes from the fine Hobbylinc folks in Georgia. (FWIW I initially picked Hobbylinc out of the crowd because of their exceptional web site. I'm sure there are many other equally excellent vendors.)

The auction info says that it starts 7AM GMT, that's "Greenwich Mean Time," or "Universal Time (UT)." That's the time in Greenwich, England. The time the auction starts for EDT appears to be 10AM as listed right under the item's title.

Steve, this is the one build that I absolutely look forward to seeing! Thank you for the effort to keep us informed. It's a true wonder. Tom

According to eBay's Help info, you can bid on these lots, on eBay in real time, or you can pre-submit a max bid which will be automatically bid for you in the same manner as a regular eBay online auction. My understanding is that they do not reveal pre-bids until that lot's auction begins. The 18% buyer fee doesn't bother me as much as the $8/hour packing fee plus charges for shipping and materials. You can calculate the 18% and factor it into your bid but shipping could be anything. I got myself approved as a bidder for both days, the approval took about a day. Don't know if I'll bid or not.

I have figured out how to curve the Model car Garage '53 Corvette headlight screens. It was impossible to bend the screens over the kit headlight covers, they were just too small to work with. I hunted around and found a couple of metal tool handles that had rounded butts of about the right radius. Having a larger handle made it a lot easier to bend the screens with my fingers around the handle butts. But bending the screens in two dimensions results in creases, and wrinkling around the edges. So next I used the handles to smash the screens vigorously down against a hard flat desktop, rolling the tool as I pressed down. This smoothed out the creases and wrinkles very nicely. Rinse and repeat about a hundred times. With repetition, the center stretched and the edges shrank and I can control it. Seems to be working somewhat like an English wheel. I'm mostly done and I am very pleased with the shape I am getting. However, it is a slow process. I've got over an hour in them and have a ways to go yet before they are perfect.

Thanks for the ideas, guys. I'll try the gentle bending. And I'll certainly look at the size issue also! I think that MCG uses nickel-silver? Would it help to heat them like you might do to anneal brass PE? Heh. Not much to lose if I ruin them. Thanks again.

I'm building the AMT '53 Corvette, and I'd like to install Model Car Garage's PE headlight grills. I am not a stranger to working with PE, but I'm not sure how to proceed because the grills need to be an elongated bowl-shape and the PE parts are of course dead flat. These parts are the silver-colored PE variety. Has anyone ever managed to put a compound curve in a PE part? Any hints or tips would be very greatly appreciated! thanks TomZ

That brunette pic is exactly how Laura Preopon looks on Netflix's "Orange is the New Black," except she usually wears glasses. Rough lookin' prison broad.

I did read your build thread, it is great! I'd love to get more pics of the engines and cockpit if you have them. Just trying to understand the paint schemes, really. Thanks!

One thing you possibly could do is build the early unblown version of Challenger I and use the injectors and front covers off the Buicks on the Pontiacs. I'm gonna build that one day.

Ace-Garageguy, those Challenger pics are gold! I have Googled high and low for reference pics in preparation for building this kit and found very little, certainly nothing this good. Do you have more? I read Mickey Thompson's biography, Challenger, a while back. He was the first to ever take a hemi to Bonneville and blew it up four times in a single week. Don't know if he was doing something wrong or what, but he couldn't keep one together once it was modified for power. He loved the Pontiac engines and used them a lot because they had really strong bottom ends. I've seen it said that he was forced to use Pontiacs because they sponsored him, but he went to them because that was the engine he used.

OMG I love this build!

I would think it should be dull aluminum, since it will be painted black on every surface. Gonna look neat all shiny, though.

That, sir, is an excellent idea. What brand paper towel do you use? I don't have an airbrush so I paint with rattle cans. I mount the body or part. on a clothes hanger and hold it in my hand, turning it this way and that for full, even coverage. The purpose of the nitrile glove is to prevent my hand from being painted as well.

Well, I guess it's not the gloves, then. Must have contaminated myself somehow before I tacked the model. Thanks for the feedback.

I recently painted a model and wound up with a dozen or more fish eyes all over the place. It had already gotten two coats of primer with no issues. This is Rustoleum 2X primer and paint, BTW. This has never happened to me before. The only thing that was different this time was I handled the model with a nitrile glove while tack-ragging it. Before this session I had been using vinyl gloves and ran out of them. Has anyone ever had an issue with nitrile gloves? If it's not the nitrile itself, then perhaps there was some other contamination on the glove.