Bainford

Beautiful Starliner, and that great honking Cammer should get it down the road without much struggle. All round lovely build. Nice work.

Nice work Mark. Cool concept.

And two hours later it's working slick as ever. Weird.

Yes! I would love to see some 80s vintage T/As. I know it's a stretch, but boy-howdy would I love a set of 235/50 13 in 80s vintage. I also think 70s vintage T/As would be great for period muscle car builds. This is a very different tread again, and different side wall lettering. I have never seen these in scale anywhere but would be great for many 70s projects.

The Boss looks killer in orange.

Those T/As look nice!

According to the ad it's multi-braid, seven strands of 0.05 mm each.

Dead slow for me, pages frequently failing to load and timing out. The last few days have been like this.

That a curious problem. I have yet to use MCW paints, so can't comment specifically on them. But I have chimed in here just to say that I seldom use a clearcoat unless the specific job requires it for one reason or another, and have not incurred this problem. This is true whether I paint with acrylic, lacquer, or enamel. I cut the paint with 3600, 4000, or 6000 Micro Mesh pads, depending on how good the paint is to begin with, then polish with finer Micro Mesh pads, Tamiya polishing compounds (usually just Fine and Finish), and finish off with Tamiya wax. I wonder if the problem is specific to MCW enamels. Repainting after waxing could be tricky. It may depend on what type of wax was used. Tamiya wax seems pretty forgiving. I have not tried to paint over a waxed surface, but I have glued to it with no problems. With enamel paint you may be able to wipe the body down with alcohol (but don't try that with lacquer or acrylic) though can't say for sure it will be effective at removing the wax. It may be difficult to ensure all traces of wax have been removed, even with a good wax remover. It may be worth painting a spoon and giving it the same treatment as the car body including wax, then try to remove the wax and repaint. Just spit ballin' here.

I just had a cruise through your build thread. I am very impressed with your project. A fine example of proper model building, and the finished product looks great. Nicely done.

This is some top notch model building.

Looking good. I agree about the black-wall tires. I'm digging the colour.

I was scratch building a side mirror for an MGB Roadster. I put a lot of work into and it was looking great. I gave it a coat of Molotow. I was admiring it, holding it by the mounting pin with a pair of tweezers when it pinged away. I had no sense of what direction it went. I searched to floor for over an hour on hands & knees with a flashlight. A very thorough search to no avail. So I reluctantly threw in the towel and spent the next evening making another one. And then the same thing happened, admiring my work (maybe the sin of pride was upon me) and it pinged away. I couldn't believe it happened twice, but this time I had a sense of its trajectory. After a couple minutes I found it half way across the room, and when I bent down to pick it up, there was the first one lying just an inch away from it. On another occasion I was removing the contents from a Monogram S'cool Bus kit box when a front tire dropped to the floor. I told myself "I'll get that in a moment" and didn't watch where it rolled. It's a whole tire, easy to find. But a moment later when I tried to find it, it was no where to be seen. I tore that room apart but could not find it. Over the next year I made two more ridiculously thorough searches but it was nowhere to be seen. Three years later I inexplicably found it by chance when moving the freezer completely in another part of the room. How did it get there?

Welcome to the forum, Tim. A great place to get some of those kits built. Enjoy.

Welcome aboard, Gilbert. Enjoy the forum.

Good looking Lotus, Matt. I agree with your comments on the body, it is very nicely done and captures the Esprit's subtle lines very well. I have one of these kits 95% complete, but stalled. I found it to be a fun build.

Congrats Steve. Very well done.

There is a Tom Daniels kit with a wide version of this wheel. I think it's the Monogram Dog Catcher, and maybe others. The wheel is the same as the Chaparral wheel, but without the eight bolts around the base of the rim. They can easily be added with aftermarket bolt heads or scratch bolt heads. If you can find a pair in the 'Wanted Section' it would be easier than modifying the kit wheels. I used them on my Chaparral.

Just found this thread. Your Chaparral is looking good. I built this kit a few years ago and found it an enjoyable build.

Good looking Toyota. Nice work on pinning the mirrors.

Despite the troubles, you have built a beautiful model. A wonderful combination of brutish and beautiful. Very nice work, and the Mercs of this era were simply stunning. Such gorgeous lines. Very well done.

Beautiful model. Your paint finish is excellent. Very interesting car, never heard of it before. Every day is a school day. Very nicely done.

My reference to race engines was generally for modern NASCAR, drag racing, etc, where wires can measure 10 mm or larger (in the case of Top Fuel cars, much larger). I don't know what size wires F1 cars were using in the 70s, but I would think wires on engines such as the DFV would be about 8 mm (someone please correct this if they know otherwise). If so, the proper scale wire size for a 1/12 engine would be 0.67 mm (plenty close to 0.65 mm). If the size was indeed 10 mm, the scale size would be 0.83 mm. The proper scale sizes may look small. Many builders seem to find a slightly larger wire looks better. Nothing wrong with that, though personally I find 'in scale' always looks best. The 1 mm in your photo clearly looks too large. You bring up an excellent point regarding the surface finish on the wire. The vast majority of small wire sold today has a PVC or Teflon (PTFE) insulation which has a shiny surface and does not look right at all. The colours also often look somewhat translucent, and sometimes have a pearlescent effect to them which just looks wrong. The colours should be solid, with a slightly matt finish. Furthermore, this PVC or Teflon insulation is stiffer then the conventional vinyl insulation, which prevents it from draping in a natural way when installed. Lately, I have been finding it very difficult to find proper size wire (for 1/24 scale) in an acceptable colour and finish, and suitably supple. As for removing the paint from the FORD letters; is the cam cover painted black or just molded black plastic? If just black plastic, you may have some luck with the local application of a stripper (Castrol Super Clean, Easy-Off HD oven cleaner, or Easy Lift Off) with a small brush or cotton swab, though that sounds like a recipe for a mess. Silver is also one of the more difficult paints to remove. You might get better results painting over it with black. You can then re-do the letters in silver if you wish. Others may have better advice.

That is one sweet coupe! Very cool. The side profile just rocks.

This is a scratch built model, not made from a kit. This model is built using the application of huge amounts of skill and knowledge to create an accurate replica from basic material stock. No small feat.