bobss396

I skipped out of FB maybe 5 years ago, I may have checked in a couple of years ago, but to me it is a big waster of time. Plus being full of malcontents and attention-whores. There, I said it. I've said this before, I used to catch flak at shows by using parts I had machined up, I made some on CNC equipment. People would say that it gave me an "unfair advantage". By the same token there are many a model decked out with layers of PE parts at shows. More power to those who literally think outside of the kit box.

IIRC both kits were out at the same time. My brother did a box stock SD and it came out great. They were $25 in stores at the time, now I haven't seen one in many years. I doubt they are still being made.

Mopar touch-up paints on eBay, you can sort it by spray paint. I also select free shipping as a filter. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2332490.m570.l1312&_nkw=mopar+touch+up+spray+paint&_sacat=0

Thanks, the bed is from the snow plow truck kit. I just cropped the fenders and added a flat piece of plastic to cap it off. Also angled the inner bed to match. On building real tow trucks, the magic number for the rear-tow bar plate is 38" behind the axle centerline. This one was pretty close out of the box.

That is quite a crutch for a critical issue. Boeing has had other work-arounds for serious flaws in the past. Which were correctly resolved.

By the same token, I have seen and bought a few real crappy 3D parts. I had a tow truck push bumper, so awful I used it to take dimensions off it to build my own from plastic stock. I see 1/25 scale carburetors that look more like 1/32 pieces. Also I have a couple of sets of headers that are on the smallish side. I will probably give them to someone that I don't like. Conventional resin cast parts have always needed work to get some of them to look passable. Norm Veber's stuff is an exception to that rule, he casts very clean parts. Carburetors are one of the hardest things to make and look nice. They are one of the first 3D parts I have plunked my money down for. Now I have it narrowed down to a few sources I like. We had one guy (who has passed) in the club that made conventional-cast resin Holleys. The model he made to cast it by was astonishing in itself. Not a dud in any of them he had produced. I agree that parts are parts. The 3D market will in time make better and better parts with experience, better materials and better printers. We did a lot of 3D printing at work before I retired in 2020. We were able to quickly make prototype parts for fit-checks and we could hold close tolerances. Assembly tooling was another thing we made in quantity.

Squirted paint on a few things today.

I use the Bondo brand and it lasts a long time. I used to get the yellow tubes of Nitrostan, but had a big tube dry up on me. The caps are lousy.

I would like to replicate my '65 C30 panel truck. I think Flintstone makes the long body for one. Mine was in great shape with the 4-speed and 6, which got swapped for a 283 I had.

Some of the early AMT NASCAR kits had a bumper that is sort of like the Vega piece. Really easy to adapt it with plastic stock to fit anywhere.

I recently picked up 2 Galaxy 1948 Chevy kits for a good price, I just looked inside one of them. It seems to be a great kit. The decals on both kits were toast, I found replacements online.

Nice work! I just picked one up, plans are to do a wheel-lift type of wrecker out of it. I have had Duplicolor paint issues as of late too. I have been picking up cans of Mopar touch up paints on eBay, with much better results.

That is quite sharp! I worked at a remote facility from 1981 to 1986, a true R&D plant. Lots of black-box work and the place was very secure. It had a lot of property considering how small the buildings were, somewhere around 90 acres. Buildings and Grounds had a green 1964 4WD Suburban they used strictly on the property, it was never registered and never had a license plate or sticker on the windshield. AND it was in excellent shape outside of a few nicks and scratches. Every night, it was garaged. The facility was sold around 1991, I tried to find out where the truck was going, but never found out what happened to it. It had the straight-six with the HD 4-speed.

What is that white thing with the folding wings?

I have made modified bumpers out of aluminum bar stock (I have a milling machine) and picked up some suitable u-channel from McMaster Carr. Would that be in the ballpark for what you are looking for? These have open ends like c-channel.

I'm at the point where I need to make my own decals for the stock cars. I have an HP8610 Officejet Pro printer, but would buy another if it would help make a better decal. Can decals be made in Paint? I may have to wait until I get a new computer in order to download a decent graphics program, this one barely chugs along.

I do my color-sanding with Detail Master DM9000 products. The DM9000 is the whole system from 3200-12,000 grits. I buy odd sheets like 1500, 1800 and 2400. I find that with the thicker pads, it is too easy to wrap around a detail and blow through the paint, YMMV. I use the thick pads for sanding bare plastic before prime and paint.

Gas welding gives you the hand-eye coordination that spills over into other forms of welding.

I learned how to arc weld in HS. I did just about everyone's welding that had to be right. In auto school, I took a formal course in arc and gas welding. I used to trade doing mandatory welding projects for pitchers of beer at the campus bar. I guaranteed then at least a B for a grade. Gas welding came in handy with the stock cars for putting roofs back on after the roll cage was in. I did a lot of brazing too. At work, we did a lot of waveguide RF work. Anything from low-frequency large stainless steel material stock to small high-frequency coil silver stock. Flanges were heavier brass investment castings, commercial choke flanges too. Some of the stainless tubing we slit to install custom-made chokes. They got put together using silver solder, soft solder using a small torch, some were done on hot plates. We also did large systems from aluminum stock, those were all jigged and pinned then set out for dip brazing. With almost anything we did, they required the flanges to be machined after.

Those are great looking mods. I'd like to do one of the Len Bohler #3 cars, the decals are available.

I use black bead cord from Model Shipways. The part number is MS1210 and measures .020".

IIRC that car was the 1986 Daytona 500 winner. Well done.

That came out great. I have a love-hate relationship with these kits and cannot let well-enough alone. Worst aspects of the kit are the roll cage, the headers and their relation to the side cars. The coilovers are rudimentary as well. I made up a roll cage plate, so I can scratch build one without much pain. On the Vega and Pinto, I add a little to the header tubes so they clear the body better. I make my own coilover shocks. The latest Pinto I have going I added disc brakes to it.

I have a book somewhere about him. Quite a influential icon.

A buddy of mine owns a large machine shop, he started using circuit board drills on very small holes in aluminum. He was able to hold a +/- .001" location tolerance easily. We used to make our own PC boards at work, that was outsourced, that is where my drills came from.