OldNYJim

Exactly. I find it interesting enough though without them doing that, personally...but look at all the headlines they got by doing something controversial. It figures, they're a business, they're trying to get eyes on screens and get people talking about them. I'd be pretty upset if I was the guy who finished second yesterday tho. Cool Lotus! I wanna build some F1 kits - I always wanted that Tamiya Williams from the Mansell era, but last time I looked they were seriously not-cheap. That little Fujimi (I think?) Senna kart kit is a cool semi-F1 related piece too. There's a really nice resin kit of this year's Mercedes that I wanted, but that was crazy expensive too...

It's funny, I've been using Vallejo putty on my build too...but for weld seams on the frame, and for replicating the look of fabric on the seats. For little pieces of detail work, that stuff works GREAT for me...but yeah, as a filler, not so much. Looking good so far Bill!

Mazda has a factory color that sounds very much like this - it's called Soul Red and it's a candy over a REALLY reflective silver...looks pretty much like what you're describing when you see it in real life - like candy over chrome: That picture doesn't really do the color justice - but if you ever see it in bright sunlight they GLOW, it's a beautiful color. Sucks if you get a stone chip though, apparently - its really hard to touch in and repair

And that's the problem for me - picking and choosing which rules to enforce and which ones not to. The rules really should be a binary thing, as much as possible. Same thing with Max overtaking Hamilton under the safety car on that penultimate lap. Was it by much? No, but he did it. Did he get a penalty? No. (Standard penalty for that is 5 seconds, which would put him back in second again). They're both guilty of various rule infringements throughout the year, but only because they SOMETIMES get away with these things - and if you don't get a penalty for breaking a rule then you'd be giving up a sporting advantage if you DON'T make the most of that opportunity. I get it - they want to push things as far as they can...but it's wrong, in my opinion, when a blind eye gets turned sometimes and not others and it ends up affecting the results. I wanna see a fair even fight without the governing body interfering and spicing things up.

I was pretty disappointed in how they ended it, honestly. Exciting? Sure. But tweaking the safety car rule to manufacture a more exciting finish seemed artificial and absolutely not in the spirit of F1. Would they have changed that rule and allowed just SOME of the backmarkers to un-lap themselves and bring the safety car in early to give Max a chance at getting by Lewis if it WASN'T the last lap of the last race of the season? Nope - because they never have in the history of the sport, and that's not the how the rule works. They shouldn't just change rules and invent new ones on the fly to guarantee (or at least try and provoke) a more interesting result - that's what left a bad taste in my mouth with the whole thing this weekend. Is Max a worthy champion, based on the rest of the season? Sure - but if they hadn't messed with the safety car procedure to introduce One Final Lap Of Racing™ then Lewis would be champion right now, and that doesn't seem right to me.

Is that Beetle their little Superbug kit - the drag car with the shorter wheelbase? Or does AMT have a 'regular' Beetle in the archives too?

Love that color - nice job!

Not too late at all - and those reference photos are GREAT! You have REALLY helpful shots there of some angles I couldn't see previously - thank you so much! Now I know what I'll be working on today

Tiny bit more progress on this the last couple of days - I spent a couple of evenings hunting through old photos trying to find any pics I could of the 1:1’s frame without the bodywork in place so that I could see what little details I was missing. Found ONE solitary picture on a photohosting site from ten years back: Now, I believe this is one of the frames that the replica car ran before they rolled it, but it’s the closest I’ve found to a good reference pic to use so I’m rolling with it… From front to middle, added a little support brace behind the front crossmember, the two missing hoops atop the upper frame rail and brackets to mount the steering box and cowl steering setup. You can see the little pinch in the frame that was being discussed above in the ‘passenger side’ rail there, but the motor mount brings that true when installed so I’m not too concerned at the sec… Onto the back of the car, added the missing supports and mesh under the driver’s seat at the back of the frame, plus I made some of the little brackets that the body attaches to on the real car: And finally, a quick test-fit of the body panels to make sure everything still fits - perfect! Im considering remaking that upper body panel with brass rather than clean up the kit piece - but I’ve also been looking for an excuse to buy a little vacuum former so this might be the trigger for that… Just a small update, but it’s taken me half the week to get these few parts researched and finished…excited to get the frame far along enough to paint it! More soon! ?

Oh, the 40% works on that stuff too? Sweet!

I found these by mistake whilst looking for something else, and would love to see more of Ricky's work. Does anyone have any other pics of his builds saved? I remember his 'Moo Truck' was one, and SA did a feature on him sometime back in the dark and distant past...

This site is useful for trying to determine what you were trying to determine above: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ Tells you whether the problem is at your end or theirs. I know you already discovered the answer anyway in this case though...

As will I! When you're done, I'll race ya! ?

Picked this up - I wanna build a detailed-up ‘70 Chevy pickup, and apparently this makes a good donor for the frame and suspension and whatnot…

Yep - they're a good example of a company telling people what they want rather that GIVING them what they want. I'm just saying there's a lot they could do to make a digital version of the magazine (alongside a print version) an attractive proposition...but just getting rid of titles and saying "this is what you want instead" probably isn't going to fly.

Don’t mind you interjecting at all! I spotted that too, yeah - the motor mount is way too wide…the directions show that you should mount it to the motor, and then the motor to the frame, but I’m not sure if that’s really necessary. I’m going along with it for now though. Please do start a thread for yours - I’d love to see it! Good tip, thanks buddy! If I was close to somewhere with something painted Mooneyes yellow I’d go take a Pantone chart and match it from that…I have a bunch of different yellows here ‘in stock’ to choose from - I’ll likely end up with just a bright pure yellow unless I figure out something better in the meantime…

Good spot! Harder to see from the outside, but the second car runs a 9” rear axle it looks like, compared to the QC in the original

I suspect, but don’t know for certain, that this era of slingshot didn’t always run them…the 1:1 car didn’t have one originally:

Yeah, but that’s better than them being on the shelf with poor paint jobs… They both look great!

Well darn, thank you! Wait, for clarity - are we all taking about warp when you look from the side, or warp when you look from the top down? This one definitely has some warp from the top-down view, but there’s a couple of supports that I haven’t glued yet that fix that issue (or, they did when I mocked it up anyway…). The firewall goes between the rails and spreads them a little, as does the little motor mount bracket. Hoping it all stays aligned when it comes time to glue it after paint…

Thanks for the nice comments everyone! I think the latter, in this case - my iPhone tends to make straight things less straight for the exact reasons you mentioned…I got it pretty level I think when I had it in the ‘jig’ (softwood sheet and push pins ?): Today’s fun started with making a front axle - the kit gives the option of a straight tube axle or an i-beam early-Ford style axle, neither of which is right for this car: The Quickchange that Revell tooled up for this kit way-back-when is really nice…too nice to modify into one to match the 1:1: Never saw a chrome center section like that before - is it maybe just some covers over the regular QC center to pretty it up, a little? Or maybe something more substantial to offer some protection in case that thing blows? Either way, I cast another Quickchange center from my spares box and modified that to get closer to the reference pics I have here: Looks pretty basic…will add some more detail further down the road but it’s closer to the 1:1 now. Same deal with the seat and head padding - the kit part was nice but inaccurate, so I scratchbuilt a replacement and started adding a tuck ‘n’ roll design to it with some styrene strip. Once this has dried I’ll need to round off the corners of the strip to make it look more fabric-y and less square-edged: And with those few little jobs done (which took most of the day) I can see this little guy on his wheels for the first time - cute! Still plenty to do - got some missing bars on the frame to fabricate and install (whilst making sure they still fit inside the body panels), and then I really need to mock-up the entire engine so I can get it mounted just right before I get into painting anything. Anyone know if Moon uses a particular yellow for their cars, or just whatever old yellow they have laying around? I’d guess it’s a manufacturer color by SOMEONE, but I have no idea… Thanks for looking - more soon!

How long was the white tape stuck down before it started lifting?

I shoulda known that…. Sincerely, An Embarrassed New Yorker

Picked this up recently, and have been really excited to get going on it: Atlantis did a great job on this reissue - retooled some really nice tires (the rears, especially), and there’s a bunch of cool stuff in the box. Here’s (one of) the 1:1s that I’ll be replicating: Going to do my best to replicate the original car - the second replica car has quite a few differences, but the kit obviously best matches the original given the replica didn’t exist when the kit was issued ? Today’s job was getting a start on the frame - cleaned up all those hard-to-get-to spots that needed attention and got it glued together. I find with these multi-piece frames that it’s helpful to use some little dots of CA to ‘tack weld’ them together, then use a jig to get them straight as you can and hold them in place before using styrene cement to finish them up: That filler panel on the top of the roll hoop doesn’t exist on the real car, so I made a replacement hoop with brass, soldered the rear bar in place, removed the existing piece then drilled and pinned it all back together: The real car has a metal panel a little lower down on the hoop with wire mesh, so I replicated that with, well, metal and wire mesh: I can’t figure out if the car ever ran a parachute - I found pictures of it without one, and pictures of it with one…but I’d like it to have one, so I’ll need to mount a little plate to the back of the frame like this for the chute to attach to: Finally for today, spun up some aluminum rims and make some wire wheels - the Atlantis front kit tires don’t have any tread pattern on them like the real ones, so I swapped out the tires for spares from a couple of MPC trike kits…I’ll Alclad the wheels further down the line but I think they’re a nice improvement on the kit pieces: And that’s about where I got to today…more soon!

This caught my eye today - Plymouth?