Bernard Kron

Just checked your brand new Bronco thread. No pictures, instead I see Photobucket's Logo Of Death x 5...

I see Photobucket's Logo Of Death x 5...

I have always contended that high technology so-called is in fact crude, complex, unwieldy and expensive. It has been facilitated by an ever-declining interest rate trend which has cheapened capital and facilitated promises made to consumers that these companies eventually cannot keep. Technology is "front loaded" with huge capital costs just to get in and play. Then, as it turns out, many of the underlying structures are complicated and unreliable and require enormous staffs of skilled coders just to keep things from blowing up. So even from an operational point of view, many of these companies are inefficient and expensive to run. Because of access to cheap capital there aren't currently even any barriers to entry in terms of infrastructure. So vicious "me-too" competition drives these "network effect" models where the whole goal is to promise users the moon in the hopes of getting enough of them to use your service to justify the huge capital and operational costs. What we may be seeing here is the "network effect" in reverse....

If it's a hack job it's pretty sophisticated, and they're responding to it as of yet. Go to you P-Bucket account. When you log in there should be a blue banner stripe across the top reading "We have updated our terms of service - Read More" If you click on it you'll be sent to thousanmds opf tiny words defining their Terms Of Service. What follows is a quote of available Photobucket services: The only option that allows you to display images stored on Photobucket in your MMC forum posts is the Plus 500 plan at 399.00 per year.

I just sent the following message to their customer support address (support@photobucket.com). : I suggest any Photobucket users who have been effected contact them immediately and urge them to reconsider. I say they have perhaps 48 hours at best to reverse this madness. In the meantime millions of threads (not just posts) throughout the internet have been rendered useless.

If the change in policy is simultaneous across their entire Free user base then I suspect hundreds of thousands of netizens will be simultaneously effected. If they have any hope of surviving Photobucket will likely have to re-establish the old links and re-think their policy. Regardless of whether they do or not the damage across the web is considerable. What are they thinking??????!!!!!!!

The real damage here is that the change in their policy is retroactive. That is to say that all my pictures are now gone from all threads that I ever posted images to using Photobucket. This will be true of all Photobucket users. I can see changing their policy on a going forward basis but they have now irrevocably damaged their relationship with all their existing Free Account users. 3rd Party Hosting is ONLY available on their premium service @‌ $399.00/year. I'm quite certain as a company they will never recover from this. At the very least they should reestablish existing links. They should also .thing deeply about how much to charge. $399.00 is non-trivial.

The problem I've always had with Revell is they steer you to their own vision of a particular subject. As a dedicated kit basher this means trouble because the kits are narrow bandwidth and frozen in time. I don't think I'd ever build a kit from them Out-Of-The-Box. So the comments by AceGarageGuy and Richard Bartrop resonate particularly with me. (Please, just once, get the @‌#$% stance right!!!!!) My dream release from them would be to simply Shrink-Ray the Big Deuce. For me it's always been the ultimate Deuce-In-Scale. If it weren't so Dam Big. Otherwise I vote for the gorgeous Phaeton that Jantrix showed - except I'd bet the ranch they'd screw things up and not include all the cool details in that picture. On the other hand, they're pretty smart because I land up buying so many of their kits to get the right parts....

The one I've built the most is the Roadster, but I have a prejudice towards roadsters. The one I've used the most is probably the 5-window, although the Tudor has the flathead which is, for me, by far the most useful motor. The dual motor option variants would always have to be on top just because the small-block Ford is a plague on my parts box, LOL. I voted for the Tudor because, overall I think it's the nicest kit with many finely cast detail parts in addition to the flathead.

The Altered T Body is the AMT Parts Pak that was re-issued in the Competition Parts Pak just before Round 2 bought AMT from ERTL. It was originally released to replace the FIAT coupe body in the Double Dragster kit, which is what I did. The motor is the Pontiac from the Competition Parts Pak and the wheels and tires are from Modelhaus. The chassis under the FIAT is scratch built with suspension from my parts box and blown Chrysler and wheels from the Double dragster kit. The side by side digger is almost all from the Double Dragster except for the front wheels, chain drives and injector scoops. The Competition Coupe was made using a resin re-pop of, ironically, the Monogram Sizzler body. I used the extra suspension bits from the Tin Box mounted to the leftover digger rails which were tied together using styrene rod. The rear end, wheels and tires are from my parts box. The motor is the Dodge Hemi rom the Don Garlits Wynns Charger/HemiSphere kit with the carbs and log manifold leftovers from the Double Dragster kit. I came very close to emptying the Tin Box although with enough scratch building I could have squeezed out a 5th car using the streamliner body! Since then I keep mining the leftovers, including the really nice Hilborn fuel injectors, all 5 (1 for the Hemi and 4 small block Chevy ones) of which I still hadn't used, and the super sweet Corvette valve covers. I recently used one of the leftover 471 blowers from the second chrome tree mounted on top of a Chevy small block for a current project, and still have some Moon discs and spoked mags left from the Tin Box... Like I said, awesome Parts Kit - a kit-basher's dream.

An exquisitely turned out rendition. Also, I can't help but remark what a nice representation of 1:1 this CarToon version actually is. Perhaps it's because you captured the color and details so well.

Thinking out loud here, sizing up the pluses and minuses. First off although there are only two choices the question might involve 3 1/2 kits. Here's what I mean. The original Monogram Sizzler kit was 1/20th, is a genuine collectors item and thus can be pricey and is an oddball scale. The question is explicit in referencing the Revellogram's recent Slingster recreation and thus any consideration of the original Sizzler should be omitted. The other "1/2" kit is the "Tin Box" Drag Team Special Edition issue of Round2's revival of the classic AMT Double Dragster kit. The Slingster is a true 1/25th scale kit with really thin frame tubing and a quite tiny bantam body option. It has many finely detailed parts like the Hilborn Fuel Injection for the Chevy small block and the I-beam front axle, but also some strangely blobilicious parts like the differential and the rear blower casing. Overall the kit is the typical Revell issue with great castings and lots of useful parts but a tendency to steer you into their own problematic interpretation of the type of car they are representing. It's the kind of kit that rewards a straight kit build if their vision appeals to you, but can be frustrating if you have something else in mind. But it has a high count of very nice parts. So I rate it as a very good parts kit and a good kit-build but a mediocre kitbashing kit. The AMT Double Dragster kit has, for more than 50 years, been the ultimate example of a parts kit. Even in the basic cardboard box original issue you could easily build 2 kit-based models with more than 1/2 of a third kit-bashed rendition from your parts box. When the tin box Special Edition came out it included an entire second chrome tree featuring most of two more Chevy Small blocks, both injected and blown, and extra set of spoked front and solid rear Halibrand wheels, and the front suspension for a second rail. Add that to the extra set of dragster rails (side by side or inline) left over from your initial dragster build, and it became clear that as many 4 cars could emerge from the tin box. That's exactly what I was able to do when it came out a few years back. Incontrovertible evidence of this kit's status as a kit basher's delight. The downside of the Double Dragster kit is that it is so old and suffers from a couple of (relatively minor) issues. First off, compared to the Slingster the parts are relatively thick and heavily cast. It shows its age in this regard. Another way it shows it's age is that it captures a very narrow slice of drag racing history. So, while most of the engine parts and some of the chassis bits are very fine parts for any period dragster build, the bodies and much of the chassis bits scream 1959-1960 and are otherwise not very useful. If this sort of historical detail doesn't mean much to you as a modeler, or if you plan to build in this narrow window, then this is not an issue. As a confirmed kit basher the Tin Box Double Dragster issue in particular is the mother lode and I have mined this kit for parts for literally years. On the other hand the Slingster yielded one (and only one) darn fine early 60's rail job with only a minimum of kit bashing and fabrication and some period paint and decal work. I landed up voting for the AMT kit but frankly the Slingster rewards you with such a nice array of period drag machinery that it was a tough choice. Four builds from one Tin Box: Straight out of the Slingster box with some extras:

I've made diamond patterned panels using Evergreen Tile Pattern Styrene sheet cut at a 45 degree angle. Here are a couple of examples:

Movin' right along and starting to look good. There's a rear spacer bar on the chrome tree of the Revell 3 window kit:

For sure bring the nose down using the Boyd trick of shaving the front spring. Looking at the stance of the Hernandez car, cutting down the front crossmember won't be necessary. A great source of period 16"bias ply tires is from the Revell '40 Ford Standard kit. They're whitewalls but if you paint them flat black and put them on the inside they look fine. My favorite bias ply narrow tires tall enough to go on the rear are the Herb Deeks truck tires he sells. I buy them each year at NNL West. He sells on eBay where he has a store (HerbDeeksRetro). Drop him a line. For the rear, if you hang the transverse spring below the rear axle line that should bring things into line. I'm sure that's what Hernandez did. It's the classic setup. Here at the Revell '40 Ford tires on a jalopy racer I did last year. The wheels are the AMT steelies you're using. I shave some material off the inside of the Revell tires: Here are the Deeks truck tires on a 40's lakes style Deuce I did, also last year. The rear end has a transverse rear spring hung below the rear axle centerline.:

Thanks Phil. I design my decals using Photoshop, which, unfortunately is quite an expensive program. I was able to originally buy it as a business expense and upgraded along the way to the last version that you could buy outright (Photoshop CS6). Since then Adobe has switched to a rental model and today it's called Adobe Creative Cloud. It costs $50.00 per month - outrageous! In any case the steps I'll outline below can be duplicated in other graphics programs such as Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc. The good news is there is an excellent open-source Freeware programming every bit as capable and powerful as Photoshop. It's called GIMP and is available here: GIMP.org . The SpeedSport logos and the 235 number were both done the same way. I started by choosing an appropriate font, then made a basic text in white (Step A, below). Photoshop has a function called "Stroke" which allows you to draw an outline around the edges of an object. In this case, starting with my base number I applied a black line. You can set "Stroke" to put the line either outside the edge of the object or inside it. You can also adjust the thickness of the line. Here I applied the black outline to the outside of the object. (Step B, below) Photoshop allows you to layer images on top of each other. It's at the very heart of the program and allows you to do many powerful effects. You can even adjust the transparency of layers. In this case I made a copy of the original 235 number but set it to be a black number. (Step C, below) It's positioned on top of the white 235 with the black outline. Then I applied a yellow stroke to the inside of the black number. (Step D, below) The black number was set to 100% opacity (transparency) so that, except for the outline, the underlying white number would be hidden. Because the stroke on the lower white layer is also black and is on the outside, and the stroke on the upper black layer is yellow and on the inside, the effect is to make a black number with a yellow outline style. (Step E, below) For the trade logos I usually go to the web and search for web images of the logos I'm after. They're invariably low resolution and it's important get as large an image as possible to work from. My example below is for the Firestone logo with the racing flags that's at the top of the stack of logos on the front of each side of the body. The original logo was fairly small and only 72 dots-per-inch (DPI). The result is a fairly blotchy and fuzzy image. Also it was some what distorted so that is was too narrow and tall. This first thing I always do is make a high resolution copy set to the maximum resolution of my printer, which for me is 600 DPI. This is done in Photoshop and is just a a single mouse click. Photoshop allows you to stretch and distort an image so I readjusted the proportions of the logo to make a skinny and wide design instead. I also used Photoshop to fill the red and black areas with solid red and black color to eliminate any blotchiness. All the trade logos on the car were sourced from the internet and cleaned up and edited in similar manner. Here's a before and after of the Firestone logo: One of the great things about making your own trade logos is you can make sets of them which you have arranged for proper placement on the car in advance of applying the decal. Anyone who has spent time applying little itty-bitty trade decals to the side of a car knows what a PITA that can be! In this case I made panel of all the logos which I applied as a single decal on each side: I use inexpensive clear and white decal paper which I buy on eBay and standard hobby shop decal solvents. My printer is a cheap Cannon MP560 inkjet printer/scanner. After I print my decals I seal them with clear acrylic spray, Usually a couple of layers will do the trick. Really nothing special to note. I do dream of the day I can buy a Micro-Dry printer like an ALPS so I could print white and metallic, though! I hope all this gives you an idea about the techniques I use to make my own decals. Decals can be a powerful creative tool for your modeling.

Thanks guys! Decals! I got the graphics designed and the decals made and installed. I’m waiting on some headers to get the motor done and then, at last, it’ll be time for final assembly. Thanx for lookin, B.

Super-tasteful period mild custom. Except under the hood of course, LOL. Very nicely done indeed.

So glad to have you back. And doing this type of build, and the Old Master in particular, is a special treat. Will this project be primarily scratch built?

I don't think anyone does a nicer job of these types of race car. I always look forward to the latest off your bench.

I concur. This is scale modeling of the first order, and if you're disappointed in the studio photography it's hard to see why The textures, weathering, paint surfaces and details all scale perfectly and the photography, to my eye, captures your superb work and presents it very well indeed..

Really pretty darn great for a first build. The heater proximity thing is typical of the kinds of setbacks I encountered when I first got started modeling again about 10 years ago. Properly cleaning the surfaces before painting, besides too many cruel setbacks as a result, is still something I forget to do in my haste to move on to the next step. But it got better with each project and this is a great start. I won one of these Revell Honda kits a while back at an IPMA show and keep meaning to build it. I'm mainly an Old Skool hot rod builder but I've always liked the Tuner aesthetic and want to use this kit to get me into more contemporary subjects. Thanks for sharing this with us and welcome to the forum!

Welcome Louis, from a fellow Seattle dweller.

Thanks guys! This project seems to have developed a case of the stumbles as I’,m staggering along in fits and starts. I’ve gotten the basic paint done, a two-tone combination of Testor’s Daytona Yellow Lacquer and Duplicolor Oxford White. I also did some detail work on the bellypan, inserting a pair of ovoid holes in front of the rear wheels for the exhaust. With the basic body paint on the photos below include a rough mockup of the body showing the plain aluminum grill panel. Also included is a detail of the grill shell. I banked the radiator with a piece of styrene and finished it in aluminum Metalizer to represent a coolant tank which a lakes car like this would use to reduce the drag caused by the radiator core. The motor is still fighting me. Although I have one built it just doesn’t seem appropriate to the car.. It’s a blown SBC but the 671 blower seems too big and dominant. I hope to have resolved things in time for my next update. Thanx for lookin, B.

Thanks Dan!