Art Anderson

Parts count can have a lot to do with it. There's only so much room in a tool base for parts, and if a kit has an already high parts count, corners often get cut, and molded-in door handles and wipers sometimes get axed. Of course, decades ago, model companies often did mold in very small parts simply due to the anticipated skill level of the then-preteen/young teenaged buyers of model car kits. That said, I was looking at the test shots of the upcoming Revell '50 Olds, '57 Ford Custom Tudor, and '62 Corvette. Door handles and wipers? You guessed it--molded in. Art

Why? AMT made a perfectly good '53 Ford F100 for years, in fact the last go-round of it was in the late 1980's. This kit, dating from 1964 could be built stock, custom or as a service truck. Nice tool, chock full of optional parts, including a complete chromed tool set (lots of those got robbed for custom car displays!) Often, this kit gets confused with the MPC (later reissued numerous times by AMT/Ertl as an AMT kit) which was the "flip-nose" version of the '53 pickup. Now if only Tom Lowe and Mke G. of Round2 could see fit to release the original AMT kit! Art

Not at all bad. What many today probably don't realize is, this kit dates back to about 1967 or so, and as such represents the "state-of-the-art" for model car kits 45 years ago--not quite the same as we all expect from new tooling in 2012. Art

I picked up both sheets at NNL-East, and they are as advertized, in fact even better than Steve's review! They have me wondering what the effect would be with a dull-coat mixed say 50-50 with gloss clear, such as Tamiya sprays (most gold leaf numbers and trim on race cars was burnished with cotton balls to give various "brushed" or swirled surface to them. Very, very nice indeed, Steve! Art Anderson

The only pre-1941 Dodge pickup model I have ever seen (and I do have one) is the Danbury Mint diecast 1/24 scale 1929 Dodge pickup, like this: http://www.phillymin...danbury/923.jpg Art

Tim, I suggest contacting Moebius directly: www.moebiusmodels.com. Be sure to give them the kit number, description, and a brief explanation about the tires. I''m VERY sure they will get back to you promptly. Art Anderson

The Bertone Mustang 2+2 was commissioned by Automobile Quarterly Magazine (OK, so it's a hard back, but still a quarterly publication) in 1965. Made the rounds of a lot of car shows back then, but at last I heard, it has disappeared from view, nobody seems to know what became of it. Art

Of course, if you want SHARP #11 blades, Squadron surgical scalpel and blades are very sharp! And, being stainless steel, they hold an edge quite well too. Art

Nice ride! FWIW, Offenhauser engines (just as with their predecessors, the legendary Miller racing engines, and all the way back to the 1913 Peugeot GP 4-cylinder race car engine) were all "dry sump" engines, meaning that their crankcases themselves hold no pool of oil, rather the oil is held in a separate tank, away from the engine, pumped there and then back into the crankcase, with an oil cooler in the line. To better understand: The Offy, just as with the Miller straight 8 engines (even the Miller 220cid marine 4-cylinder engines--forerunner to the Offenhauser) and the Peugeot GP engine of 1913 were "built up" units. The crankcase is an aluminum "barrel" unit, holding the crankshaft and having very large main bearing "webs" which were press-fitted into the barrel crankcase. Atop this was bolted the cast iron cylinder block, which was "blind-bored", meaning that there is no separate cylinder head--the bores and combustion chambers are cast in place, then machined and honed for the pistons. In real life, several hot rods were built back in the 1950's and early 1960's, using the much larger "Championship" Offenhauser--almost all of them using the obsolete 274 cid engine, which was "legislated" out of use beginning with the 1956 USAC Championship season (normally aspirated Indianapolis Car -- the Championship Series in USAC). Some were fitted with the same Hilborn Fuel Injection system as used on racing Offies from 1952-onward, others used log manifolds with a pair of Riley side-draft carburetors. Detuned for street use, these engines still produced perhaps 170-180 HP, and properly driven, they could skin the pants of of most V8 powered hot rods--all the while making that distinct growling yet thunderous sound. Art

Not perfect--but not bad given this is only the second model I've completed since about this time in 2005. Fussy little kit, but I suspect that the more of these I do, the easier they will become. Art Art

I would assume one would master this vintage tow truck body to fit the AMT '50 Chevy pickup. However, it's more than a tow truck body and boom, with 1.5 ton truck wheels and tires: For starters, actual tow trucks back then were built on 1.5-ton medium-duty truck chassis, given that automobiles by the late 1940's were past the 3000lb mark for low-priced cars such as Chevies, Fords, Plymouths, Nashes and Studebakers. Mid-priced cars and of course the luxury cars had already passed the 4,000lb mark, and when raising one end of such a car as with a tow hook, the wrecker is actually hauling well over half the weight of the car being towed--way overweight for a 1/2 ton pickup. The quick (but not inexpensive) fix for this is to use the chassis, engine, driveline and wheels & tires from the Italeri Opel Blitz 1.5 ton truck. Opel was GM-owned, the Blitz chassis etc. being identical to the Chevrolet/GMC 1.5 ton trucks built in the US from 1936-66. Even the wheels are a very good match to the ones on the Danbury Mint Chevy wrecker shown above. The front fenders will need to be widened to reach out over the front tires, but that's not hard to do. To be correct, the hood and fenders also need to be stretched a bit (finding the Bumper-Back of Cab dimensions for both the pickup and the ton and a half should be fairly easy as well). As for the wrecker body--copying that with sheet styrene should not be a huge problem--flat sheet stock with some strip stock will get you there. Of course, you will have to decide what style boom(s) use and scratchbuild them as well. Art

"Cellulitis Rossa"!!!!! Art

Rob, In case you missed what I wrote: I get NO overspray dust whatsoever in the room, PERIOD! All the overspray gets captured by the air filter, PERIOD. And, BTW, I am almost 68, and my mountain bike is on track for more than 13,000 miles this year so far. Art

Why doesn't Tamiya, (and all other paint mfrs!) just quit selling their products in California? That should wake up Governor Moonbeam! Art

Mike, I understand your concerns, but with a proper spray booth, vented out of doors, you should NEVER even smell a hint of the vapors, and of course, a proper booth will have a filter to capture the particulates (overspray). Now, if I never see any particulates, and if I NEVER smell more than just a hint of the solvents, then it seems to me that a mask is just overkill. If it ain't in the air where I am, it ain't gonna bother me, not now, not ever. Art

In all honesty, while I know that many modelers are on a budget (as am I!), why invite trouble? A spray booth should be a "one time buy/build", so why not invest the $$, get it right from the get-go? Squirrel cage blowers are readily available, in sizes small enough to do the job if you want to build your own booth, but if you lack either the space, or the time & skills to build one, it really makes sense to bite the bullet, buy a top quality ready-made booth! For my money, the $$ I spent on my Pace Peacemaker has been very well worth it: Mr Pace is a professional sheet-metal fabricator--Pace spray booths are made from galvanized 20-gauge sheet steel. He uses only first quality squirrel cage blowers, which put the motor OUTSIDE of the air stream, so even the sealed motor never sees the overspray from airbrush or rattle can; and the booth uses a commonly available rippled paper filter (Walmart for one, carries this exact filter year-round!), and it's set up to use a commonly available 4" clothes dryer vent system. If you have a window nearby, just make a "plug" to fit in the window (my apartment has sash windows, so I bought a particle board shelf at Home Depot for like $10, shortened it to fit the window frame, bought a hole cutter to make the round hole in it to install the dryer vent outlet--I will hang on to the hole cutter, as eventually, I will have to make another window plug!). The filters for this booth run perhaps $7-$8 for a replacement. In the bargain here: I get to paint indoors, 12-months out of the year; absolutely NO paint smell in my apartment (and I live in an apartment in an older house, which has a single central heat and air conditioning--I can tell what my neighbors are fixing for dinner!), and NOT a bit of paint overspray to gunk things up as well. Yeah, it wasn't cheap to buy, but if I use the thing for just 10 years, my cost per year for it will be about $30 a year, and that's not at all bad! Oh, and did I mention that the thing is whipsper quiet? (The old Biddy directly below me, when asked, declared she never hears it, nor does she smell it, and SHE complains about EVERYTHING!) But the bottom line here is safety-- Fire is a very present hazard whenever one sprays any flammable paint (look at your aerosol cans of paint, even your shaving cream) the propellent more than likely is butane, the same stuff as in a Bic cigarette lighter--so safety should be a top priority--model car kits, your home and its contents, and YOU yourself--none of that looks very good as charcoal! Art

It's starting to come together now! First up is the instrument panel: I used the kit photo-etched overlay on top of the decal instruments--so far so good, but something was missing. The instruments just didn't look right without lenses, so I added my own almost-trademark clear epoxy lenses--that makes the dials really pop right out! Next up, the radiator: Revell's instruction sheet is a bit in error here, as race car radiators were seldom (if ever!) painted back in the day--unlike ordinary passenger cars. Racers knew back then that the black asphaltum paint used on production car radiators actually reduced the cooling capacity of the radiator, and in addtion--on dirt tracks of the day, it was not uncommon to pick up a small stone or two--and if one of those came through the grille, a radiator repair job in the pits was a given! So the top and bottom tanks, and the sides of the radiator are gold, for raw brass; while the core is Testors Copper. I was given a set of custom-made decals (the subject matter will be revealed at NNL-East!), with the #5 decals. Unfortunately, I didn't specify the shade of yellow for the numbers, and they washed out pretty much when applied. So, drawing on years of experience, but something I've not done in 27 years, I overpainted the decal numbers by hand using techniques learned from an excellent article in Rod & Custom Models by the legendary Don Emmons from LA. I chose black outlines with Testors gold for the numbers themselves (the outlines need some touchup for precision now that the overpainted decals are on the tail of the midget). The lettering technique is something I think begs for more practice for me to perfect it once again, and perhaps a posting here, or mebbe an article for the magazine (?) Art

I'm willing to bet that Jimmy used a Product Miniatures Company '59 Country Sedan as the master for this casting. PMC did a promo of that wagon in '59, and a year or so later, shot the thing in styrene, packaging them up in polybags for the supermarket trade. Art

Range hoods do have explosion-proof motors. When one hears of a stack fire in one, it's generally from a source other than the mofor--which is why when you go into a McDonald's--if you look closely at the french fryer station, see the exhaust uptakes, they have those rather sophisticated baffles on their bottom end--should a fryer flare up on fire, the baffles help to keep the flame out of the exhaust stack. Art

I've not seen any notice on a bathroom fan package indicating that they are explosion-proof, Harry. However, due to the humid environment they generally work in, their motors tend to be induction, or brushless motors. In any event, bathroom exhaust fans don't have much CFM capacity, and if one is trying to vent out of doors completely, chances are the inner surfaces of a dryer or other sort of vent will slow the air going through down dramatically. Just a thought. Art

Absolutely not! Hair dryers and heat guns use motors having brushes and commutators--not sealed either--and that in the air stream coming out of a home-made spray booth can be a recipe for disaster! Additionally, those units lack the CFM capacity to really do much good. Seriously, a spray booth is SERIOUS business, and a tool I highly recommend for all the reasons that have been enumerated on these forums. But, it's very important that it be designed properly, for safety and efficiency. Art

The easiest way I have ever found (and this goes back better than 40 years!) to remove tape "residue" is with more of the same tape! Just press a piece of masking tape down on the residue, and lift up--that has removed any and all tape residue every time I've done it! Art

My observation: The resurgence of model car building as a serious hobby in 1981-82 coincided with a deep recession--suddenly, Baby Boomers who were reaching their late 30's, having the time for a hobby but not a lot of money for really expensive hobbies, began coming back to something they'd enjoyed 15-20 years earlier, when they were in their teens. I saw it as very much the change from "wine, women and song" down the scale to "beer the old lady, and television" in scope--not literally, but figuratively.. This resurgence continued for perhaps 11-12 years, until the prosperity of the 1990's began to let people in general, modelers in particular, to branch out, take on more expensive pursuits. With this general economic upswing, model kit sales generally began to decline, also driven by rigid price points "forced" on the industry by major chain "big box" retailers. A good indicator of what was happening then (just as in the mid-late 70's--but for mostly non-economic causes) was the decline in the number of new kit releases announced at yearly trade shows. 9/11 is one event that again changed the landscape, for leisure goods of all sorts. Fear is a great motivator, but also a great "depressant" on many things, including the pleasure activities most all of us enjoy. Certainly the recent "Great Recession" stuck everyone to at least some degree, and it did drive model kits completely out of the "-Marts" pretty much for all time to come it appears. However, freed from artificial price points which did seriously limit new releases, and prevented many of the more esoteric subject matter we are starting to see hitting hobby shop shelves today, from even seeing the light of day. Freed from having to meet expectations of mass retailing corporate buyers, model companies are, and will continue to, introduce more and more model kits of cars that while they would never fit mass retail expectations, if the price required meets sufficient customers' approval and at the same time, the profitability needs of model kit manufacturers, I see this continuing. The other big sea change over the past 30-35 years or so are the demographics of our hobby. Face it, model building in general is no longer the rage among the younger teenage set (or even older preteens) to anything like the extent that such happened 40-50 years ago. Times change, and have changed, and will continue to change. What lights the fires for kids today isn't necessarily the same thing that got kids' adrenaline pumping in the 1950's (If things were still as they were back then, Lionel would still be filling Christmas wish lists from grade school age boys, for example). I suspect that the true "entry age" for most modern-day model car builders is perhaps the early 20's; high school is past, college degrees in hand, careers started, and all that--and some of those young adults are now trying something which while new to them, they've seen adults doing over the years while they were growing up and are now deciding to try model car building on for size. At the other end of the age scale, more and more of us older modelers are in our 60's now, and 50 years ago, you'd have been hard-pressed to have seen anyone older than say 30, visibly buying and building model cars--frankly that just didn't happen in say, 1962. So, I see it as a mix: Older, dedicated builders with the money and the time to pursue the hobby at some level, younger adult builders who've become impassioned by the thought of building models of cars they can only dream of owning, with a smattering of teenaged builders who can almost be considered "precocious" in today's model building world. Just my thoughts (with no scientific data to back them up) Art

Hmm, another ding against Revell! Thanks for the info! Art

Plug wires, as well as the wires from timer to firewall (individual coils for each cylinder were in wooden boxes on the inside of the firewall through 1925) were: red (#1 plug), green (#2 plug), white (#3 plug) and black, #4 plug), from timer to coil (twisted together) and from coil to plug. The timer is a simple small drum-shaped affair on the front of the camshaft housing, coil wires came out of the sides, 90-degrees apart, with a single lead wire (black) coming from the top of the flywheel housing (the magneto on a Model T was built into the flywheel), and ran down the right side of the engine to the timer (a very primitive "distributor"). Also, the intake manifolds on all T's were black, exhaust manifolds never painted, turned rusty within miles after first bought. Art