bobss396

Even better.. get some fingernail wrap silks. Beauty supply and drug stores should have them. One side is sticky. You need sharp scissors to cut them, a knife just pulls the material. I use the embedded wire method. Single strand works best, brass wire .015" is good. I groove the busted pillar, embed the wire with CA glue and give it time to set up. Leave the ends really long. Prep the body, groove a channel on both ends and cut your "fiberglass" pieces. I like to tack the pillar in with a dab of CA glue, give that time to set. Place the little patches you have cut. Then soak them with CA glue. Any I have repaired have held up.

I recall building a 1934 Ford pick up I got for my 9th birthday, on my bed. I had a pocket knife and an old pair of nail clippers with a file on them. We had 2 walking-distance kit sources. A stationary store that sold Palmer kits for 99 cents. The other was a bicycle shop that incidentally just closed under new ownership. That had roots in 1957 or so. The owner smoked cigars, ant kit you got reeked when we opened it. He was also a member of the Pagans motorcycle gang. He had TONS of kits. The old pink-gray annuals went for 99 cents each. $1.50 kits were $1.27, $2.00 kits were $1.77. Just about all of us in the 'hood built to some degree. I recall sitting outside with my brothers and friends at the picnic table for hours in the summer. Every cent we made doing chores went to feed the model car habit. One kid in my class stood head and shoulders above anybody else. By age 11, he could have beat some adults, he was that good. He had a can of leftover AMT metallic red paint he donated to my 1965 Pontiac build. I sprayed, he coached. That was in the day where we tried to see how many cars we got out of just one can. I have a couple of builds from 1969 to 1970... they were far from shiny.

I worked with old timer sheet metal guys. One didn't know Trig, I offered to teach him. He preferred to make trial and error samples on scrap pieces. He also had a fear of calculators. "What if I enter a wrong number?". Accounting would give us old print-out books, we used the back side to draw and work math. This guy had rows and rows of figures.

Back on the horse. The existing transmission tunnel was too small fir the engine set back. I made up some monstrosity tunnel that left little room for the seat. Since I have a ton of old NASCAR kits... why not? They are full of donor goodies. So this is it so far. I need to trim out the front of the interior tub and putty up a couple voids. And I did gut the dash.

I have to take pictures of my '56 Ford I'm working on. The A and B pillars were broken, nothing missing. I reinforced them with thin aluminum strips and CA glue. In the past I have scribed channels in the post and roof. Then embedded wire with CA glue.

One guy in the club used Blendr and likes it. I was turned onto Tinker CAD but didn't get far with it. I need a new PC, mine bit the dust.

There was a cable TV show about Anderson, Driving Dirty. It was quite good. The track itself looked like a good place to race. I was over at Saugus Speedway in California in 1986 for the Southwest Tour, which was late models. They had the street stocks doubling as figure 8 cars, all they had to do were some adjustments and change tires.

Exceptional work on the bed and boom. I like the bumper guard too. I made mine from a scratch. Might have 4 hours into that effort.

I have built so many of these as a kid. They are fun kits to build.

What tracks? I saw them mainly on Long Island. I'm not sure if they have to still run the 6. I saw some wicked fast ones in Florida, all V8 powered.

No idea. I'm pulling this from a very dark place. I saw a lot of them over the decades. I have another in mind, more modern with a Vega or Nova body. Even the newer ones circa 1984 still used old Galaxie frames. They took some abuse.

So, put a 300 cubic inch 6 cylinder into an old AMT kit.. it will be fun they said. The 3D printed transmission plus the set back I had to go with made a ton of work for me. I have to build a transmission tunnel, trim out the firewall after I get the mounts made up

Added some shots of the rub rails, seat and belts. Rails are .093" tubing and pinned with .047" brass rod. Much stronger over using all plastic. Steering wheel was done, using the kit piece, with Tamiya TS 30 silver with Tamiya clear blue over it. Just about any parts store had metal flake steering wheels that were widely used. Bumpers are done, everything is pinned to help final assembly. I can start engine mounts shortly now that the engine basics are assembled.

These had the camber thing going on both sides. And they were toed-out at least an inch. They really didn't handle well until the tires were "scuffed" in. Once scuffed, a R side tire couldn't be used on the L side and vice versa.

I'm not sure yet. Probably will remove them.

The '56 is back in work. Painted up most of the VCG Resins 6-cylinder that will the engine fit. Body is essentially done, the chassis too. Made up weight jackers for the front springs. Small parts box is starting to fill up. Next is some dash gauges. Rub rails are done, not pictured

Very nicely done. This was the car that Coo Coo won the 100-mile Daytona qualifying race in. He was the only driver that did not make a fuel stop. NASCAR had a canary over it... the next year the twin races were 125 miles. I have a Savinos MC I started a while back and the decal sheet... hmmm...

This is the 413 in my current Mercury rebuild. I have done nothing to the engine, it was already decently build with wires added to it.

My brother built the Buick a few years back. He narrowed the kit tires and they looked a lot better.

I started in 1960 or 1961. Of course I never had much money even to buy more than a 10 cent bottle of paint. Tried using thread for wires, looked awful. We had no real tools, certainly not small drills or a pin vise. When mom was not hone, we would use the gas stove, old knives or metal skewers to do real surgery. My dad had a sanding drum we used on his drill press to radius wheel wells. Gasser were cool even back then. My older brother had a Zona razor saw, he never let us use it.

Craft stores have all sorts of neat stuff. How about wrapping some fine silver-colored band material around them, glue on the back side. No paint required. Maybe some very fine silver wire would work too.

Soft Scrub is good. I use a scrubby sponge and it cuts the grime. Real tough spots, I'll use lacquer thinner on a rag. I have to do this myself, I'm getting ready to re-caulk my upstairs tub.

We have a local who flips horrendous cars. One of his gems was in a friend's shop to be inspected. The RF rotor was down to just the hub portion. The actual disc part was gone. The caliper was still in place, but had a piece of wood instead of brake pads in it.

All the same from what I have seen of the line.

I'm "restoring" an OG 1949 Mercury now that has the 413 in it. It does build up nicely.