bobss396

Figured I'd go back to the Laguna since it wasn't fighting with me top much. I got the upper chassis/roll cage done. Some rudimentary seat belts. I have to touch up the rear in a few spots before it goes in. Engine needs the carb plumbed and put on. I know the headers are going to be a tight fit into the chassis.

Well... BACK IN THE BOX!! with this one. The VCG Resins headers AND the kit headers were not fitting, as is. There are some differences between the printed chassis and the kit chassis.. my bad for not finding this sooner. Then somehow I knocked a big piece off the front of the printed chassis, where the front crash bars mount up. I never dropped it or recall manhandling it. I have yet to locate the missing section. I'll put the cat on it... I do have a potential header fix. I took one repaired header from another BACK IN THE BOX!! special and sawed off the flanges. Drilled some #65 holes in the tubes about 1/8" deep. I cut up and squared up some 3/32" aluminum tubing 7/32" long, sleeved the inside with 1/16" tubing. I did this on the outside tubes only and test fitted it. I think it may work. I have to do a workbench... dining room table... clean up, scour the floor and all boxes/bins on the table to find that missing section. I am soooo disgusted that I cannot even take pictures right now.

But wait.. there's MORE... I got the engine to sit right. I made up a tube to better locate the transmission tail shaft. BUT... the resin headers are a no-go. And the heads are drilled for them. I'll have to resort to using the kit pieces. I may have to give this one a time out. And the pilot hole in the hood is only about .080" too far back.

Thanks, I'm having fun with it. I have to make the headers a very easy fit, since they go on after the engine goes in. I have them pinned with 1/32" brass rod. I'm bouncing back between this and the Mustang modified. The hole in the hood is TBD, depending on the height of the air cleaner I plan to use. I may have to go with a lower profile one or bore a hole in the bottom of the taller one.

I use Bondo spot putty, 1 part. I "cure" it in the dehydrator so it won't shrink later. I'll re-scribe the line using a dull-ish razor saw held on a very shallow angle.

I see them on eBay, do not recall who the vendor was. They should be easy enough to find.

Magneto is in, plug wires and boots are done. I left the valve covers for last. The Predator carb sits up quite high. I'll have to drop the engine in tomorrow and see if I have to come up with plan B...

I have enough kits to keep a few of us going for a long time. I tend to buy at Hobby Lobby when they are 40% off or at shows. I wheel and deal with people in the club.

Predator carb is on (CARB_6), from Ron Coon Resins. Headers are from VCG Resins, pinned with 1/32" brass. These need to be painted and go on after the engine is installed, unless I find out otherwise.

I figure since I have lots in the works with the Mustang and Gremlin, why not start a '35 Chevy coach? The body is 3 pieces, lots of work to get it looking good. I trimmed the lower rear off the body. I ended up splitting the horse-shoe body insert apart. It was the only way to drop the body on low enough. I made up stops inside the body for the insert to locate on. I had to trim the rear of the interior tub to fit it to the 3D printed chassis. Most engine pieces are painted. I used a 3D radiator (RAD_5) from Ron Coon Resins. The hood is out of a pavement modified kit. I put a pilot-hole in it until I finalize the .656" hole location. Deflector and air cleaner are Ron Coon items.

Wheels and tires are painted. Tires lettering is next.

This is my system for squaring up stock. The vise I've had for years. Files are Nicholsen, a coarse and fine. Coarse for plastics, fine for metals. If I double-stick tape a "stop" to the rear jaw, I can repeat sizes to +/- .003 very easily.

Wheels are painted. I used a Model Master metallizer and an acrylic Vallejo Bronze for the centers. That thinned nicely with a few drops of water added to it

In the defense biz...this was known as vanishing-vendors. We would get a spares order on an older job and find out that some of our vendors were out of business. Or they were absorbed by another company. So we had to ferret that information out. I had compiled a database of who bought out who, or what sort of merger went on, and we didn't get the memo.

This was a big fear when molds, etc were first shipped to China. If something hairy went down politically between them and us, we would never see product or the molds ever again. This spiked a lot of kit hoarding... not like I know anyone like that.. 🙄

I still have some OG custom fender skirts and other parts from Ed Sr. He made very nice products.

I read up on Cardinals a while back. They are not flocking birds and have a certain range. I'm guessing a couple hundred yards perhaps. Another thing generally hard-wired into them.

I tend to rough cut everything and use a small vise with a file to get the perfect 90 degree end. I use a protractor and a scribed line for critical angles, rough cut, back into the vise. Line up the scribed mark and file away. A 22.5 angle is pretty handy in a miter box. In machine shops, we tried to use 15, 30, 45 degree increments where possible.

Cardinals are very territorial. This is why you usually see a pair and rarely an odd one mixed in. The exception is juveniles, which soon enough do fly the coop.

We had noticed years back when I was helping building tow trucks, that all cab lights were odd numbers, like 3 and 5. The last one we put 4 on it... nobody ever said anything... oh well.

I had been to his shop in Baiting Hollow once. His brother was a HS shop teacher and involved in the cars. He had a "new" Vega on the chassis table. The shop was big and had everything you could imagine. Charlie's full time gig was driving big rig gasoline trucks out of the Northville oil depot.

I think I have some thin-ish stainless steel somewhere... hmmmm. I would also do the 45* slots.

In my machine shop days, we made quick'n dirty punches from stainless steel rod. Depending on what was being punched, the edge would break down. Easy to touch up. Before long, it was evident that a thru hole was required to push parts out, via a long industrial q-tip stick. We punched things like solder pre-forms, thin soft metals.

So far i have only tried the Mr. Hobby primers. I can shoot and "lacquer" over them. Do they make other paints? I have to do some research.

I go there when my plumbing is backed up. Red Lobster when I need an express evacuation...