garagepunk66

A indicates Galaxie, E is the engineering revision level suffix

Did Ertl ever kit a Farmall Cub?

Reverse engineering from an unbuilt existing physical vintage kit hardly qualifies for being able to "produce them readily" . Yes, Round 2 has done a wonderful job of recreating lost or missing tooling for certain options on kit reissues by laser scanning original parts and creating virtual models of them within a CAD/CAM system. BUT, if they recreated in whole an entire missing set of tools for a kit, then made them to say,1968 annual kit level of detail, they would be burned at the stake for releasing such simplistic product upon the public. Not to mention the costs and the prospect of recouping that from a relatively obscure car like the Toranados.

Yes, I have noticed this in several instances. The 426 wedge in the Revell Tony Nancy dragsters kit is (ironically) one example. The assembled block is sectioned approximately two scale inches. Ironic, since there is no hood clearance issues as the engine is exposed. The lower block section of the engine has been "fudged" considerably, as the angles of the "Y" shape of the block as viewed from the front are wrong. The 1 to 1 angle is far more obtuse. The Revell Nailhead in the same kit and the Parts Pack and the Ivo Showboat dragster have quite a different problem....the block decks have been tipped in at the top, so they are no longer 90 degrees apart as they are in 1 to 1. I would say it's probably close to 100 degrees. The valve cover surfaces, which should be dead flat, tilt visibly inward on an assembled engine. In addition, the upper block section is shorter as well than it ought to be. I presume this was done first on the Ivo kit to make header clearance less of an issue, then all subsequent tooling used the same "fudged" masters.

I also have a couple unbuilts of this kit on the shelf. The most glaring flaw to my eye is the grille. Headlight engraving too flush and too faint, ends of grille are too rounded, and grille surround molding is too thick for an overall blob-tastic toy-like effect. Does any resin caster offer an improved grille for this kit mastered from the AMT annual?

well, maybe for a 1966 car, but these evolved into VERY "worked" race cars in very short order. later cars had no upholstery except for the seat and maybe front door cards before 1970, so a separately tooled floor pan with interior ribbing, rear axle cooler cutouts and pivot boxes for upper suspension links would be required. probably two trees worth of race-specific parts would also be needed including the extensive engine compartment/shock tower bracing, fully adjustable specialized anti-roll bars with roller links (look very different from OEM), Watts linkage, fuel cell, dry sump parts (legal for 1971 season), Harrison-type engine oil and rear axle lube coolers, specific 4-wheel disc brakes and ducting, etc, etc. Even the body profile was changed considerably on the Bud Moore prepped Mustangs as the nose was drooped by 2 inches! Round 2 nor Revell/Monogram would NEVER put the proper effort into replicating this stuff correctly into any existing kit or new tool that had a dual purpose as a production replica.

I personally love those cars, but i'm not certain for accuracy's sake of a real race version that Moebius is the right manufacturer, nor is Revell/Monogram. I'd like to see some high-end, full-detail kitting of that subject matter from Tamiya or Fujimi, although scale would undoubtedly be 1/24, not 1/25.

suspension is quite different than the actual Shores & Hess car too. the chassis was built by Don Long..front axle was chromed tubular, no drop when it was SBC powered (later when the BBC was put in, a mildly dropped axle was fitted). a transverse torsion bar setup similar to what was in favor with the Fuel Altered and Top Fuel crowd was placed behind front axle with chromed hairpins for location, ladder bars are wrong, etc, etc. some good reference material here.... http://theamazoeffect.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_archive.html

This build is inspiring! Those Monogram kits may have been dead simple to build, but they had something that the AMT early-Ford kits did not...stance and presence. For the first time in a long time I have the itch to do a traditional, 1963-era early-Ford Hot rod build. i just got a buildup of the Early Iron Series (moulded in black) and I'm going for a quasi-box-art build with it using Lil' Coffin rolling stock

I just purchased a '65 Chrysler 300 kit from his E-Bay store. My first purchase from TMR and a very nice kit.

wasn't the Revellion based on the 62 Dodge Dart body? sure would like to see any of the '62 Mopar annuals reissued

yes, in absence of existing aftermarket this is my plan. i'm "between" desktop PC's right now, my old one which had my CAD and CAD/CAM programs on it had a failure in the power supply and was very old. i chose to purchase a used engineering-purposed workstation PC from the 'Bay and have spec'd out and purchased the Hard Drives and memory for it but have yet to have it built. anyone have some good measurements from any old 1:1 413, 426, or 440 manifold? would need...port spacing, overall length on each bank, bank offset ( i am presuming one port width would be accurate enough of a figure) bolt spacing, face angle (as measured from the horizontal plane), width at top of port flange at ports, bottom width at ports, etc., etc.

thanks for the replies fellas. yes, i'm aware of the kit parts in the JoHan Chrysler 300 kits of 62-3; however those are rare as stated and pretty inaccurate to boot, as it seems to represent a dual-plane. the real deal is single plane as shown. with a set of air cleaners and Fireball Modelworks AFB's , a manifold like this would very nicely back-date Revell's excellent 68-69 Charger 440 and AMT's great 71 Charger 440 engines for early-'60's hot rod duty and would look great under the hoods of the Moebius 65 Satellite and Lindberg 64 Dodges & Plymouths too

Does anyone cast the factory cast-iron low-rise inline dual-quad intake for the 413 powered 59 - 62 Chrysler 300 Letter Series cars as shown? I could find lots of uses for a vintage setup like this.

Another point to ponder is that if you can live without the knob-spinner feature, one can just use the ER8 collet chuck as-is; no machining required!

Also, don't overlook your local tech college. It's a one-class-period project for a reasonably bright and CNC functional student.

Yes Greg, i tend to agree to a point. But these days networking is king, and even if you don't know a "guy who knows a guy", the hobby machining bulletin boards are full of guys looking for request-for-work quotes

I purchased a low-cost import ER8 collet chuck on Ebay for about $15.00, and 5 different size collets; .2mm, .5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm and .125" from various online sources. Since i don't operate the CNC lathes, i told Curt, the day-shift Mazak guy what i wanted. About 1.75" of length needed to be removed and the end turned and threaded for the knob from the old pin vise. The Mascot pin vise uses a 5/16-40 (pretty unusual) thread form. The threaded portion is about .200" long. The major and minor diameters as well as the thread pitch diameter were all found in Machinery's Handbook. This is essential information for the lathe programmer. About 1/2" of length was turned down to the major diameter. One word of caution about using the collets; the collet "snaps" into the cap before screwing onto the chuck. The picture below shows the collet installed in the cap correctly. The collet can easily break if you attempt to place the collet and tool into the chuck and then try to screw the cap on. Mine also required a 9mm wrench and a 12mm wrench to tighten The finished product....

This is my first tech thread, so any kind suggestions or constructive criticisms will be welcomed. I have had a German-made Mascot pin vise since the mid-1980's. It is still a serviceable unit, and works fine as pin vises go. My problem with it has always been its inability to hold a small bit straight in the infinity collet, not since day one has it done this to my satisfaction. Recently, upon re-entering the hobby and evaluating all of my tools, i decided that i would try to build something better. But first, a little more background.... A few years back i had a career change; for 25+ years i had been an auto parts counterman in dealerships, with a 9 year stint in the middle as an assembly mechanic in the paper-making-machinery industry. In 2010 after a layoff from a parts job, i decided to go back to school for CNC setup & programming. I now work as a programmer/setup machinist, running vertical machining centers in a toolroom for a local company that specializes in making deep-drawn metal stampings in progressive-die presses. This has afforded me a familiarity with various tooling systems and opportunities to do some things for myself. We use ER (Erickson) series collets at work for holding drills and endmills. ER16's go from about .030 up to about .437, and ER32 for larger shanks. They work nice and even the cheap import collets will hold .0002 total indicated runout in a good collet chuck with a good nut. I got to thinking about my pin vise one day and wondered how small the smallest ER series was and what the range was and if a collet chuck could be made into a pin vise. Enter the ER8 series. The collets go down to .2mm (.0078") and up to 5mm (.196); perfect! more to follow....

Great job on the Little Deuce conversion. I guess i always thought the original Little Deuce used American Racing "LeMans" wheels like the Big Deuce did. Re: the original post topic, yes i would be all in for a Little T Redux with all bodies and parts to recreate all of the original 1/8 versions. the Deuce kit, however, though having decent proportions, is too simplistic in approach for me so new kit parts for the current Revell 32 roadster to backdate it (reverse engineered and improved ala the Slingster) is in order

While i understand your perspective concerning the tone of the OP's post; i believe the heart of the thread is aimed at re-purposing otherwise under-utilized, unused or throwaway consumables and materials that may not even have a commercially-available equivalent, or may work BETTER THAN what is available down at the LHS, For that, kudos to all of you for your ingenuity. i think for most, and definitely for me, it is a time-honored tradition of model building in general to pack-rat away this or that because it looks like it may be useful one day, or to look at something in the cosmetics aisle of your grocer or in the adhesives aisle of the hardware store and say to yourself " I wonder if that would work for....x?".

Yes, when i was in my auto body course in the mid '80's i was taught that any lacquer topcoat over the top of not-fully-cured enamel would buckle or curdle, so that is telling. Do the Tamiya Lacqers dry similarly then? I have no experience with either, as my last finish paint job on a model was done in the early 90's!

could it be that in the case of the Testors lacquers, that the "lacquer" marketing term is being somewhat misconstrued, chemically speaking? enamels will "cure" thru their exposure to oxygen (IE oxidation), while acrylic lacquers, by their very nature, are dissolved acrylic plastics that "dry" thru solvent evaporation. that would be some crazy-slow thinner to take the better part of a month to dry!

Wowza! Fantastic work and great subject matter!