Art Anderson

Hmmm, cop cars you say? I'd sure like to see a 1955 Buick Century 2dr sedan (CHP had the only ones Buick built!), the so-called "Broderick Crawford" Buick--the star of the popular mid-50's TV show "Highway Patrol". Of course, a '48 Buick Century Fastback would be neat as well--got many rides to school as a Kindergartner in one of Indiana State Police's Century's--courtesy of ISP Sgt Smiley (one of our neighbors back then). Art

My experience as well. Been using the stuff for almost 40 years, never had the adhesive "let go". Art

Another way is having a chart giving the "AWG" or American Wire Gauge sizes for copper or other non-ferrous (non-iron bearing) wire. Here's a chart of AWG wire gauge's and their equivalent diameters in decimals of an inch, as well as metric. For modeling purposes, the actual diameters are given in the two far-left hand columns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge#Tables_of_AWG_wire_sizes The second thing is to know the diameter of the real thing--say plug wires, battery cables, wires attached to the likes of lights, instruments etc. That information is as close as under the hood of your (or a friend's) car. For measuring such, nothing beats a digital caliper. These will give you on an LCD readout the size of whatever it is you want to know the thickness off, from real wires (say, plug wires or a battery cable), as well as the diameter of the small copper wire found at craft stores, or even electronic hookup wire such as found at Radio Shack. Once quite expensive, digital calipers can often be found for less than $20, use commonly available button batteries, and are very simple to use. A great modeling tool to have. Another tool that can come in handy in this situation is a common pocket calculator, which can help immeasurably when reducing 1:1 sizes to 1/25 or 1/2. Those aren't at all expensive either. In miniature, a lot of the wiring one sees under the hood or dashboard of a real car can become seemingly "gossamer fine" when reduced to 1/25 scale, but that's the nature of scale modeling. If you measure a common spark plug lead (the outside diameter of the insulation) and find that it is say, 1/4 of an inch diameter, well that's just .010" or a very tiny bit smaller than .25mm. To many modelers that seems way too small, so this is an instance where slightly larger wire might be used, say .015". I know that can fly into the face of those who are engineers or precision machinists here, but sometimes in scale modeling, "fudging" the size of a detail ever so slightly can give an illusion of realism. Realize though, that plug leads are insulated, and the mere act of painting the that small copper wire to represent insulation will make it just a bit larger, and if nothing else, just having it in a color other than bright copper can make it seem larger all by itself. Art

Olds chassis completed (well as far as can be until floorpan installed). This underneath view shows what viewers will see when the model is finished. The whole idea here is to add details that one would see with the car on a lift, so ultimately they will be hard to photograph against a floor pan--one of those things you'd have to see up close and personal. Art

"Reverse Engineering" as applied to model kits is actually very simple: Find a mint, original kit, use that as the pattern for cutting new tooling. Art

The Johnny Lightning '57 Ford Courier is true 1/24 scale. I know, because I did all the development work on that diecast. Lots of help in accurizing the body came from Pat Mulligan (former editor of SA) who has worked in licensing at Ford Motor Company for about 15 years. Art

Gear shift linkage installed! Lots of fun doing the linkage rods! Art

Danno, I saw that museum in July '93, got to Manitou Springs on the 6th, but having family in tow who preferred going up Pike's Peak by the cog railway, time for touring the Museum was out. However, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum does have a PPHC car in their collection: Al Unser's Jaguar-powered former AAA Dirt Track Championship Series car--the red and green car, with whilte stripe. BTW, the excellent book, "The Unser Story" does have a fair number of pics of PPHC cars, understandable as the real name of the event should have become the "Unser Family Hillclimb", considering how many wins by what, 4 generations of Unsers? Art

Pike's Peak cars are pretty difficult to research, as even though the Pike's Peak Hill Climb is the oldest continuous motorsports event on the planet, it was never heavily covered by the racing print media. Sure, there were pics in magazines such as Hot Rod, Road & Track and Car & Driver, but they only covered highlights. I was rather surprised to find very few pics of PPHC cars online as well. Art

A better donor chassis would be the one under the Revell '59 Cadillacs, as they are more accurate, yet still the very same chassis. Art

Actually Luc, The old Revell '57 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham is far more accurate than most people believe. Yes, it does lack a couple of detail features at the top of the front clip, and needs a scale 3" (1/8" or 3mm) stretch just ahead of the front wheel arch. What most don't realize is, the Eldorado Brougham is actually a shorter, lower car than a standard '57 Cadillac. Art

Deano, I have absolutely no idea. I do know that model car kits produced in the former Soviet Union were rather few and far between--the only other subject matter being a 1/24 scale kit of a 1928 International Harvester 2-ton truck, significant in the Soviet Union as their government had bought a complete assembly line for that series IH about that year, and they were produced all the way through WW-II--still looking very much like its US counterpart. Art

Joe, A few suggestions: (1) Have you looked at the hobby shop at military colors? There may well be a flat finish color there, in say, Modelmaster Acryl, that just might do what you want--also check their rack of model RR paints (if they have one). Floquil-PollyS makes a "Grimy Black" that is very much a dark charcoal grey. (2) Any well-stocked craft store such as Michael's or Hobby Lobby will have huge racks of acrylic paint under brands such as Apple Barrel and Folk-Art--with a color palette to rival any paint store, and these are flat finish paints as well (they will need to be thinned with water or rubbing alcohol as they are pretty much too thick for use as-is on a model car interior). Hope this helps! Art

Promotional (Promo) model cars had their heyday in the 1950's, for three purposes: First of course was to promote interest in, and the sales of, new cars. They could be bought for a dollar or two back then, at the dealership. Dealers often would use them as a "come on" to persuade people to come into the showroom, take a test drive after which the salesman could give your son a model of a car like your Dad tried out. One other use, particularly at Ford and Chevy dealerships, was to have a display of promo's in a variety of color combinations, something that was available for several years in the 50's, to show prospective buyers a wider selection than was was in the showroom and on the lot. (Bear in mind, in the 1950's, new car dealers were not yet the "superstores" with dozens of new models in just about every color and trim level that they are today). In very short order, companies such as AMT, SMP and JoHan began offering slightly different versions of their promotional models to retail toy and hobby stores, as toys, sometimes without interiors--and in early 1958, AMT marketers had their '58 Promotional model cars put in styrene kits with a few customizing and racing parts, and the concept of the 3in1 model car kit was born, and our hobby took off like a rocket leaving a Cape Canaveral launch pad. Art

Monogram did the GNX off their Grand National, so yes it has the same body shell. Art

Ideal Toy Corporation did a VERY nice, fully detailed kit (complete with opening doors!) of the 1956 Lincoln Continental Mk II back in the day. I've seen just one, in the collection of the late Bill Harrison out in Monte Vista CA back probably 20 years ago. (Bill Harrison, to those who knew him, was a veritable repository of all manner of rare and unusual model car kits (both built and still in the box), as well as many unusual promotional models. As for the SMP 1911 Chevrolet, that was done by SMP (kissin' cousin to AMT) exclusively for Chevrolet in 1961, for the 50th Anniversary of the founding of Chevrolet. The kits and promo were available only from Chevrolet dealers, which meant that most of us alive at the time missed out on it. The kit and promo were one run only, after which the tooling was destroyed under the watchful eyes of GM auditors. Perhaps the rarest and most unusual kit I have here is a model of the 1925 Hannomag "Kommisbrot Limousine", which was a small, rear-engined German car from teh 1920's, The name "Kommisbrot" referred to the base shape of the car, which from the side reminded Germans of the time of the shape of the loaves of bread baked in the field by the German Army during World War I. The basic car was a 2-seat roadster, the Limousine version being a coupe, with a very angular, upright roof shape. What is even more interesting is that this Hannomag (Hannomag was a German industrial company well-known for their trucks and half-tracks during WW-II), kit was produced in the Soviet Union sometime in the late 1970's or early 1980's, in 1/24 scale. Art

The best way I can think of to find what colors work for a weathered car (body shell, underside, the principle is pretty much the same) , you might spend some time with your camera, looking at the real thing. IF you can get access to an automotive repair garage, and can get pics of the underside of say, an older car with some mileage on it, that would be a good start. To be more specific, most all exhaust systems on production cars are made in steel, and steel rusts. So just looking around outside a muffler shop or other garage (you might talk to the folks, explain to them what you are wanting to do) and taking some pics of old rusted exhaust systems or parts that have been removed, and are waiting for the junkman. That alone can give you a wealth on information (a picture is still worth at least 10,000 words, I think!). Basically though, rusty exhaust systems will be medium to dark grungy brown in color, but not necessarily the same shade all over. Art

Check me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to recall reading that the first production run of the "Judge" was in Carousel Red only--other colors became available later in the model year. Art

I believe that is an AMT 1949 Ford promotional model. Probably molded in acetate plastic, which generally warped pretty badly. You are fortunate to have a relatively straight one! Art

Not even a drop in the bucket. Model car kit manufacturers deal in 10's of thousands of kits, resin casters deal in 10's of parts and/or kits. Art

Some more work, this time on the chassis: Brake lines! Lotsa fun doing those, fine plated copper beading wire, some very small styrene rod out of the UK (from about 20yrs ago, now out of production). The styrene rod is used to make the couplings, which meant drilling the stuff out to acept the ends of the various brake line sections, including the T-fittings. Sometimes, it's so nice to have rather severe nearsightedness! A master cylinder was scratchbuilt from bits of styrene, drilled out to accept the main brake lines. Bottom view: Closeup of the lines at the rear axle: Scratchbuilt master cylinder before painting: : Thanks for looking! Art

The pics that Dave Metzner has posted in this thread are of the tooling mockups, NOT test shots. As he noted, there are corrections to be made yet, and those need to happen before any tooling is cut--but compared to some tooling mockups I have seen along the way, the Ford pickup mockups are just plain NICE! Art

Luc, You'd be surprised to find just how much merchandise is transshipped across the US on a daily basis! The city I live in in Indiana is on one of the major transcontinental railroad routes--I see trainloads of ocean-going containers headed for the US east coast daily, where they are loaded onto container ships bound for Europe and the UK. It's faster and cheaper than shipping via the Panama Canal still (but who knows once Panama gets finished with their massive reconstruction of the Canal to accommodate the super-sized container ships now in service, especially since Maersk and other shipping lines are now constructing even larger container ships). But trust me, large bulk shipments of products from the Far East generally don't get broken down in the US, and then trucked to the other coast for forwarding on to Europe. They go by the container lot, from the West Coast across the US to the East Coast, then get shipped to you folks. Art

I have considered needle files to be an expendable tool for most of my adult life, given that even when they might cost $12 for a set of 10 files, those are cheap files. Even if needle files are made from hardened steel (almost always they are). styrene plastic is actually very abrasive, abrasive enough to dull them in fairly short order especially if a lot of file work on plastic gets done with just one or two files in a set. For this reason, I keep my eyes open for needle file sets all the time, at hardware stores, Harbor Freight when I get to one, and hobby shops. One of my favorite hunting grounds for them is at real car swap meets, and the tool dealers that show up at them. One of my most recent finds at one of those was a set of 3-inch miniature needle files, which intrigued me enough that I bought 3 sets of them, at about $6 per set of 8. For cleaning clogged plastic from them, I simply drag that out of the teeth with the tip of another very expendable tool: Xacto knife with a #11 blade. Quick, clean and simple! Art

On race cars, through at least the late 1960's,. such as racing stripes, racing numbers and such were generally painted on, as the concept of laser-cutting self-adhesive plastic film, such as vinyl, had yet to come on line. However, secondary sponsor logo's (like Goodyear, Firestone, Shell, Champion) were printed either on glossy heavy paper stock, or made as decals then applied to racecar bodywork. On production cars, however, once racing stripes and other graphics became popular in the muscle car era, the idea of having to mask off body panels in order to paint such trims quickly fell out of favor, and printed Mylar graphics came into use quickly,. but that of course was for mass production. Art