Art Anderson

Lee, That is one HIGHLY detailed model car kit--in fact, so highly detailed, it almost resembles a fine Chinese dinner (every time you take a bite of one of those, the dinner expands to fill the spot where you dipped into it). Seriously though, Fujimi virtually rewrote the book on how model car kits should be made with that series! Art

Well, for starters, the Hudson 4dr is made by Motor City Resins, which is loosely affiliated with Missing Link. Jeff Ballard is a member on the boards here, as jeffb--send him a PM perhaps? BTW, jeffb is located in the Detroit area, as is Missing Link. Art

This is an issue that cuts both ways (unfortunately or fortunately--take your pick). Far too many people, of course, seem to carry the attitude that retailers are there to serve their EVERY need, whether or not it's even possible for a particular retail store to do that. Likewise, too many retailers seem to carry an attitude that they are doing potential customers a service simply by deigning to be in whatever business is their stock & trade. Face it, in spite of all the quality controls most manufacturers have in place, defective product still slips through the cracks, I've spent more time in retail (hobbies) than in any other career field in my 50-years now of working life. Yes, defects in model kits do happen, although I can be brutally honest and say that I cannot remember the last time I bought a model car kit that was missing any parts (Oops, yes I can--the AMT/Ertl Hogan's Heroes Jeep reissue which had 5 wheel rims, but only 4 tires, AND AMT/Ertl took care of that issue very quickly indeed), or truly defective parts (although my first Trumpeter Pontiac Bonneville did have that horrid dull chrome, and there again, Stevens International corrected that problem ASAP when complaints rolled in, to the point of supplying hobby shops that had stocked the kit with replacement chrome trees, again as ASAP as air-freight from China to New Jersey and then to LHS's would allow--got mine with no problems whatsoever). In my 10 years of owning and operating The Modelmaker Hobby Shop here in Lafayette, my defective model kit returns to wholesalers was less than 1/2 of one percent (I held onto defective kits, just in case a missing part complaint came up for a part that could be replaced from a kit previously returned for another issue). Even with RC cars, where people ignored ALL the warnings about overcharging a 7.2V Nicad battery pack (the results from that could be quite dramatic!), I often replaced the battery pack in question THE FIRST TIME ONLY, with quietly but firmly given advice as to how to avoid that happening again (I have raced enough RC cars in my time to know that those battery packs almost never burned up if treated properly, politely and most kindly thank-very-much). Far too many LHS owners try to refuse to back up merchandise when they know that they certainly can (however, some items, notably RC equipment and most model RR power packs are sold to retail stores with the clear understanding that all warranty service or customer complaints are to be solved BY the manufacturer or importer, NOT by the hobby shop or the wholesaler distribution chain--and that has to be explained to the customer up front at point of sale, frankly!) without fear of upsetting their wholesaler(s). In Champaign IL, there is a LHS that has a large "scratch and dent" section, they being just across town from Hobbico and Horizon Hobby Distributors--they are able to stock and sell potentially defective model kits for mere peanuts, and I understand they do quite well with that end of their business--and that's perfectly OK too. However, it makes no sense to me whatsoever for a "customer" to walk into a retail store, be ready to check out, and insist they be allowed to write a check for more than the amount of the purchase, particularly if the retailer has a stated and posted notice regarding "checks for the amount of purchase only", or to get upset if the retailer or his/her employee insists on seeing valid identification, and perhaps a driver's license number they can write on the check (in Indiana, a DL number on written on the check must be there for the local prosecutor to be able to take a bad check complaint to court--been there, done that as well when I owned the hobby shop). Pay by credit or debit card, then go back to return something and insist on cash rather than a credit to your card? Well, just this past October, the Dean of Student Affairs at the University here was arrested for theft and shoplifting at Walmart. Seems he had developed a pattern of doing just that, and then going back to the same department where he bought the item, picked another one up, walked brazenly out the door, waving an old sales slip at the greeter, smiling all the while--he's lost his job, and now faces a court trial, and quite likely a few years in the Gray Bar Hotel (wonder if his PhD will be of any use punching out license plates?). Back when the Moebius Hudson kit first came out, even though I was given a sample production kit by Moebius in recognition of my bit of assistance in helping out with the development of the kit, I wanted some more of them: I stopped by my LHS (truthfully though, I don't go in there very often, as model car kits are there stepchild, their main thrust and interest is RC in all forms--which is OK, it's their business!) and told the owner that the kits were rapidly becoming available, and asked him if he could get me a couple of them. "Sure thing!" was the answer, but I noticed that he wrote nothing down, it was all verbal. After the kits started arriving in shops and at Spotlight Hobbies, I called that store one morning, inquiring if my kits had arrived: The person answering the phone was NOT the owner of the store, nor was he the one clerk there whom I've known for 25 years. His answer was less than helpful--he didn't even know "Moebius", what a "Hudson" was, nor did he even offer to go check. OK, so I waited a week or so, repeated the process--same clerk, same answers. OK, so the guy must have forgotten that I wanted a couple of kits. Now, here we are, 5 months later, and I find out that the owner of the store is wondering why I never picked up those two Hudson kits! Needless to say, I am still less than enthusiastic about stopping in to retrieve them. But seriously though, this thread has talked a lot about obnoxious, unreasonable customers. An interesting story in the Wall Street Journal this past week--"Shopping Mobs"! It seems that groups of people have started banding together, ganging up on locally owned retail stores, go in, and actually shop the place, drop a lot of cash in total. Before they target a store, they do let the merchant know ahead of time, so they have time to prepare--it's all in fun, and apparently is being done to kinda fight back against the big corporate chain stores, by taking some time to "pump up" the smaller, locally owned retail establishments. Wouldn't that be a cool thing to do with a local hobby shop? Good clean fun, drop some surprise money on them, build some camaraderie--all of that? Hmmmmm! Art

Actually, if you do some searching on the web, you ought to be able to find a how-to article someplace (been done almost to death in model magazines over the past 40-some years--trust me on this one!) on how to build your own vacuum former for practically peanuts! Basically, what you would build is a simple wooden box, using perforated circuit board stock from Radio Shack, and set up the 'box to hook up to a shop vac, or similar powerful vacuum cleaner. Every "bubble top" I've ever seen, magazine and in person at a car show. was built using a vacuum-formed plexiglas bubble canopy--same principle, same methods as fighter plane canopies have been made since the introduction of the P-51D in early 1944 for the war in Europe. Only differences will be in the shapes, and the materials--plexiglas is much too thick for a scale model car. However, with some looking around (if you live near a large city, walk through the Yellow Pages to find an industrial plastics supply house there--they should have all manner of thin clear plastic, most likely PET-G, which is the clear plastic that soda bottles, and bottles for drinking water are made from--that stuff vacforms BEAUTIFULLY. Of course, you will have to carve, shape and finish off a "buck" or form for your bubble top, but that isn't rocket science either--in fact none of this process will be--but there is a bit of a "learning curve". I, along with numerous other builders here have vacformed many pieces of clear plastic for model car projects--lots of help available right here in these forums. Art

Yes, I like this build a LOT!!!! Your choice of body colors is spot on, my friend--Chrysler (along with Auburn, and most other luxury car makers) had, by 1032, broken away from the old (first three decades or so of the US auto industry) traditional use of black paint on fenders, running boards and their related splash aprons (something that harkened back to horse-drawn buggy and carriage times BTW), instead using complimenting (and sometimes contrasting) darker shades of the body color itself. A little note here (not in criticism, but something that does make front wheels look more realistically assembled to the model): All cars of that era, with solid (beam) front axles were designed with very visible camber to the front wheels when viewed in a straight line setting, from in front of the car (two makes of cars really show this, from that era: Bugatti's and Model A Fords) both having camber pronounced enough to give them almost a "bow-legged look). In addition, the axles themselves were raked back a their tops, which gave them considerable "caster", as both "camber" and "caster" (think of the back-leaning angle of any bicycle front fork here), which made the front wheels almost perfectly self-centering when the car is in motion, "camber" being used to make steering right or left much easier (critical back in the days before power steering, even variable ratio steering gears!). I want to say that most of those old beam front axle cars used about 4-perhaps 7 degrees of camber (with the top of the wheel being farther out from vertical than the bottom), which is noticeable. Another paintwork feature of cars of that era was to paint the raised moldings (body reveals) in a color which compliments the main body color itself--remember, this was nearly a decade before chrome or stainless steel trim spears appeared on automobiles, particularly in the US. For the truly ambitious (and daring!) modeler, pin striping was almost universal in the auto industry at the time, further accenting those body reveals, and almost always applied exclusively to them--again, a way of trimming a body before chrome trim became the vogue. On your Imperial, all the ones I've seen over the years have their thermostatically controlled radiator shutters painted, either in the body color or the fender color (and in some cases, body color with fender color as a trim shade, often just the center post of the shutters). But, all that said, this is just one beautiful build you have going--can't wait to see it finished! Art

I just did a search of Duplicolor's website: Duplicolor does make enamel paints (pretty sure they did!) and that line includes an enamel primer! Duplicolor, in their "Application Tips" (part of every section of their paint listings) BTW specifically states: Lacquer can be applied over Lacquer, Enamel can be applied over Lacquer, Enamel can be applied over Enamel. HOWEVER, LACQUERS CANNOT BE SUCCESSFULLY APPLIED OVER ENAMEL It really appears to me that you apparently bought Enamel primer, but Black Lacquer as your finish coat. Here's the link to Duplicolor: http://www.duplicolor.com/products/ The site has virtually every bit of information you need to know about Duplicolor products. Now, I suspect that a lot of Big Box stores (you know, the -Marts) aren't as careful as they could be about ensuring that different formula's of paints such as Duplicolor don't get mixed up in the racks. My suggestion? I would shop for automotive touchup paints in auto supply stores (such as Carquest, NAPA, Autozone, Nationwide). Those stores will have staff that at least has some knowledge of their merchandise, and I don't think the prices will be THAT much different. Art

Age of the paint should have nothing to do with it. What I am thinking here, is that even though both primer and black are Duplicolor, they are dissimilar paints formula's. Often when this sort of thing happens, it's because the first layer of paint used (the primer) is an enamel formula, while the color coat is actually one form of lacquer or another. Enamels tend to not penetrate the previous layer of paint, while lacquer does, and when lacquer solvents penetrate into enamel, they cause the dried enamel to swell up, but with no place to go, except to wrinkle as this paint job has. You might check the can of black, see what (if it does) it recommend for a primer underneath it? If there is a recommendation listed on the can, is that the exact same stock number as the primer? If not, then that's more than likely the problem. Art

Dave, well said! Art

Gasoline prices today aren't that much more, in relation to all other financial things than they were in 1960 (about 30-cents a gallon back then, when minimum wage was less than a dollar, a good salary might have been about $6000 a year, and a new house about $9000, a new Chevrolet Impala was perhaps $3000, and a model car kit was $1.49 msrp). Believe me, back then, as a teenager, buying gas for Dad's cars when I went out cruising on Friday nights (and the expectation WAS that I would put as much gas in the tank as I used, PERIOD!), impacted my model kit buying back then as well. The same was even more true during my college years, and I wasn't your average "traditional" college student--I didn't start off to college as a freshman at age 18, graduating at 22, money-wise that was not in the cards (4 years of college, 4 years finding the money to do it!); so I worked my way through, on and off in my local hobby shop. Now, I got paid pretty well for what I did (the owner and his wife saw to that) and got my kits when I was with them at a nice discount,but still--I could not afford all the stuff I wanted model-wise--I had to learn to set priorties, Still, in those years of the 1960's, i managed to acquire and restore a '29 Model A Ford, buy a virtually new, barn-find '31 Roadster (financed in large part by finding a lot of NOS Model A Ford parts in SE Iowa, hauling them back to Indiana, and nearly doubling the money invested), and my hobby shop job when I laid out of school, I managed to make it. I'd like to be able to say that I still own those two Model A's, but no, I sold them off about this time in 1969 to help finance my last three trimesters of college (graduated in June 1970). But in all of that, I managed to build a pretty fair number of model cars--1966 was the year that I, with the support of the Hobby Shop (the former Weber's Hobby Shop here in Lafayette) started building a collection of Indy 500 cars, for a yearly window display that became a local tradition (every once in a while, someone will stop me on the street, or at a local car show, ask when I and my buddies are gonna do that once again). The experiences taught me, back then, to make the most of any model car kit I bought, to learn to kit-bash and even started scratchbuilding, to get the race cars I wanted to build. While I had an airbrush and compressor from my Sr year in HS, a Dremel tool bought my first year working at the hobby shop, my tool box was mostly a few Xacto knives and some needle files--not much more than that. Yeah, a model car kit rose to an average $2 per kit for a kit of an American car (there weren't any import kits back in the 60's or early 70's much worth writing home about--that really didn't start happening until the 70's for most of the US away from port-of-entry cities), that $2.00 price tag stayed pretty much standard until the late 70's when inflation creep came along, then $2.25, about $2.50 by 1980 or so. Gas prices went up gradually all through the 60's, BTW. What was 30-cents a gallon for regular leaded gas in 1960 became over 40-cents by 1970, even higher for premium, which is what my brand-new '70 Cuda 340 demanded when I treated myself to that new car upon receiving my BA that June. And yeah, even at an $11,000 a year salary in 1970, the gas that car drank impacted my travels, what with apartment rent, utilities, groceries, paying off what seems today a miniscule volume of student loans (just $4000!). I remember thinking about hopping on a airline for a vacation seeing the sights in Southern California in 1972, and deciding that the more than $500 round-trip fare was not worth it (it's a lot less than that still today!). My annual pair of grandstand tickets to the Indy 500 were all of $30 per seat but even that seemed a bit steep (but I wouldn't have missed the "500" for anything back then!). I pursed my lips when I bought my first really good camera, a Canon, in 1971--almost $150.00, questioned my sanity at $175 for a Gitane 10-speed touring bicycle the same year. Apartment rent (in a new complex) was a princely $250 a month. Inflation happens, has almost always happened (deflation, or the opposite of inflation) is what happened during the Great Depression of 1930-32 (it officially ended with the start of an upturn in the economy in the second quarter of 1933, although its effects were still being felt in a few pockets of this country well into the 1960's). And, as cheap petroleum (time was, an oil production company had only to poke a hole a couple thousand feet down, strike it rich!) has gone away, yeah, gasoline has become more expensive, but with some reading of history, anyone can plainly see that it's never really been "cheap", not when all other factors are taken into account. 10-cent a gallon gasoline did happen, but at a time when an hourly wage was perhaps 30-cents or thereabouts. So, it really is all "relative". Art

What everyone is missing here is that the vast majority of model car kits sold here in the US are made in China. It doesn't take deep reading in say, the Wall Street Journal, to understand that China is undergoing rapid inflation, as workers become a bit more scarce, forcing wages upward. In fact, any kit on the shelves today, will be higher in price when the next container load is placed on a ship in Hong Kong or Shanghai for the voyage eastward across the Pacific. Art

if anything, plug wires in the correct firing order is almost impossible to trace. How many of us want to see a contest judge with a dental probe, painstakingly tracing each plug lead? I mean really now.

Hmmm, what a neat idea! Never knew such a thumbscrew could be had. What is the thread size and length? Art

First some definitions: CA is the quick acronym for "cyanoacrylate" glue, or "Super Glue"--much easier to say and to write or type. CA glues don't dry in the common definition of most all glues, rather they "crystallize", which reaction is triggered by one of several "triggers"; pressure as in pressing two parts together with CA in between, heat caused by adding some chemical or powdered material such as talcum (baby) powder or baking soda. or even moisture (get some on your fingers and the moisture in your skin will set the stuff pretty quickly!). So called "2-part putties" are in fact a mix of polyester resin (think "fiberglas resin" here as that is what 2-part catalyzed putties are made from), with a finely powdered filler added to thicken the resin to a putty consistency. To this, a catalyst, or hardener is added, mixed in thoroughly in order to cause the resin to catalyze or "set up" hard. "Evaporative putty" is almost always a putty in which the base is lacquer, most generally being described as very thick lacquer primer. These putties are not catalyzed, but depend on evaporation of the lacquer thinner to set up hard. Unlike CA glue or catalyzed putties, however, lacquer-based putties do shrink (they have to!) as the evaporating liquid reduces the volume of material. All have their uses, frankly! For major filling, nothing beats catalyzed, or "two part" putty. The stuff will not shrink perceptively, although it does upon going from liquid to hard, but that shrinkage generally is less than 1/10 of a percent, so small as to be imperceptible. AND, once the stuff is hardened, no further shrinkage is possible, as there are no solvents which will evaporate to cause any shrinkage, period. However, catalyzed 2-part putties don't always adhere tightly to polystyrene (the plastic from which our model car kits are molded), so some work before hand to give the plastic some "tooth" to hold the stuff is a good idea. Automotive primers, lacquer based, are good for this, as well as roughing up the surface of the plastic. I've had great results over the years by driling numerous holes in a body panel on a model car, to allow catalyzed putty to push through to the back side, thus creating almost a "rivet" effect which will hold the putty in place just in case. This sometimes inability to adhere tightly to polystyrene has cropped up for me when "feather-edging" puttied areas, where the putty gets sanded out to meet the styrene surface. If I experience any "chipping" there, a quick application of a bit of CA glue along the 'feather-edge" fixes, and prevents further chipping. With putty, I always look for "spot and glaze" putty, which is the finest grade of the stuff there is, meant for filling small scratches and gouges, not major filling of dents. CA glues, as described above also do not rely on evaporation, but rather a crystallizing reaction to go from liquid to hard, again, no shrinkage. However there is a possible problem down the road when using CA for filling any large areas, and that is "blistering" of the finished surface. I experienced this years ago, when re-contouring the roofline of a couple of conversions for resin-casting masters, and used some very fine fiberglas cloth to not only provide thickness, but also to reinforce some "butt jointed" seams in the bodywork. Apparently this was caused by entrapment of at least minute bubbles of air underneath the surface somewhere. It was more an irritation (given that resin casting masters aren't fully finished model car bodies, just raw work done for the purpose of making rubber molds) than a disaster, but it did raise a red flag for me. Now, a bit about tools, and techniques: Have you ever visited an auto body shop, seen how an auto body technician works down a large puttied or leaded surface? They don't use small tools, and for that matter, they don't often use just their bare hands on sandpapers to smooth or level out such work, not at all! Rather, they use very large, flat tools, either as a sort of "cheese grater" (not at all unlike what one uses at the kitchen counter to grate cheese, or cabbage for cole slaw), a very coarse sort of file, or a flat, "board-shaped" metal tool which holds coarse sandpaper, all of which have the effect of "bridging" the area that is puttied, leaded or otherwise filled to smooth it out from "metal to metal". No clearing away the fillers which in the case of 1:1 bodywork are far softer than the sheet steel body panels being repaired (quite the reverse sometimes from what we as modelers experience!). In our case, such "larger, flat tools" include flat needle files, or sanding boards (either from the cosmetic aisle as fingernail files or boards) or homemade ones (sandpapers glued to popsicle sticks (make sure those are flat, straight and true though!--or glued to thick strips of say, Evergreen styrene). For final sanding of say, puttied in file scratches or tool gouges, sandpaper often is the way to go, but fold that 400-grit Wet or Dry sandpaper several thicknesses thick, so that your fingertips don't compromise your work, this multiple thickness of sandpaper will spread the pressure from your fingers out over a larger area. Of course, it should go without saying that you want to slow down, not try to remove a lot of material in a too-short time period--PATIENCE is your friend here. A note about files: Needle files can be a model builder's best friend, and they are not expensive! I've bought needle files for as little as a dollar apiece, even as little as $6-$7 dollars for a set of 12 at real car shows and swap meets, at those huge tool dealer tents one finds there. The needle files that get the most use from me are flats, half-rounds, even the occasional "rat-tail" or round ones, that are tapered. It takes some time, some learning to figure out how to use them to the best advantage, but again, patience is key, not trying to remove too much material too fast. All the technical stuff I've written here comes from about 50 years of working with putties and fillers of one sort or another, and the techniques of finishing come from experience as well--something like 250 semi- to scratchbuilt models of Indy cars over a 20 year period, numerous factory stock conversions, even a few completely scratchbuilt model car bodies over the years. I hope what I have written here helps! Art

Sorry, but that looks a lot more like the '35 truck grille than th3 '36. While both shells had the same grille insert, the '36 shell is over twice as thick front to back, as the '35, to cover the much thicker radiator (21-stud Ford Flatheads were notorious for overheating--so it was thought that a thicker core with more tubes would cure that--it didn't really). Beyond that, a very nice casting! Art

Research, research, can never do too much research! That said, I use the 'net a lot, at least for starters, as it's far easier to navigate with a Google search from the comfort of a stuffed desk chair than crawling around looking at stacks of old car magazines or shelves of books. Case in point: I helped Dave Metzner at Moebius Models with the body color availability for the Hudson kits. This took some real digging, as while I have in my possession a nearly 4" thick Martin-Senour paint chip book (NAPA's long time "house brand" of automotive paints) the book I have didn't give any information as to 2-tone combinations. I looked up autocolorlibrary.com whose chip books are I believe, DuPont, and hit the jackpot! By clicking back and forth through 1951, 1952 and 1953 Hudson chips, I not only found all the available colors for 1953 (some colors were shown in previous years, but being carried over a year or two, didn't appear in the 1953 pages), and digging a bit further, found the available 2-tone combinations, with a notation that they could be used in two basic ways, either color could be the main body color, or as the roof color--quite unlike most other automakers' practices! Thus, the very comprehensive list of body colors on the last page of that instruction sheet. Dave did the same thing, concentrating on interior and engine colors, having available within 30 miles of his home, perhaps the finest collection of Hudson automobiles on the planet. Google images are a great resource, but I find I have to take much of those with a grain of salt--what appears to be stock in those images may in fact not be, and not often are the variances from stock noted in captions--so many images online are of cars being offered for sale, often from individuals or dealers who may or may not be well-versed in the subject at hand, so some cross-checking is always a good thing. But, they are at start at least! With all the stuff available on the 'net, still nothing beats having the information in print, however. Perhaps, for the replica stock builder, Collectible Automobile Magazine is as good as they get, particularly for American cars, even though they are very unpredictable as to what they might feature in any upcoming issue. CA has been in continuous print since July 1984, almost 20 years, and the level of their photography along with the text puts this magazine as close to being the "National Geographic" of the automobile as I have ever seen. Of course, with rods, customs, drag cars, in fact race cars of any sort, similarly accurate and well-photographed magazines abound: Such magazines as Rodder's Journal, Vintage Motorsport, Vintage Truck, the various Hemming's magazines (Hemmings started publishing a collector car magazine, "Special Interest Auto's" in the late 1970's, morphing that into their "Hemming's Classic Cars" magazine a few years back, but either way, both magazines can be a wealth of information. Not to be forgotten are factory sales brochures! You know, the kind you can gather up at new car dealers. While brochures for this years' cars generally are free for the asking, expect to pay at least a little bit of money on the collectors' market for older ones--and many are not as expensive as one might think. Literature vendors at real car shows are a very good source, and most will let you peruse a brochure you are interested in before you buy it, and often, toward the end of the show or swap, negotiation of price is possible--don't be afraid to bargain a bit here--same goes for old service manuals, even old factory assembly manuals, even old out-of-print books on real car subjects--you don't get unless you ask! Then, there is the sheer volume of both hard- and soft-cover books published over the years. Just about any famous car or make of cars has been the feature of at least one single marque book on the subject, many have been the subject of numerous books, many with well-taken color pics of restored examples, with a LOT of black & white contemporaneous pictures (pictures taken at the time when the car was new, both factory and candid shots!). It does, however, take years and some serious $$ to amass a large library--I've been doing thus for nearly 50 years now, so been there, done that, got the T-shirt. In all this, both with books and magazines, detail pics are at a premium--most writers (and their editors and publishers) much prefer so-called "beauty shots" which while artistic and intriguing, often don't give as much information as we modelers would like to have, so, on to the next thought: One of the very best reference tools you have is your own pair of eyes, aided by your camera! With camera's, no longer do you have to worry about the cost of taking copious pictures--while the camera can set you back anywhere from $100 to almost enough to buy every model car kit you would ever want, the pictures you take are, themselves practically free of charge, the only cost being the CD or DVD you want to permanently store them on, and of course, ink cartridges and paper if you want to print them--but at least YOU have the choice of what pics to print off here. And, reference cars are EVERYWHERE, unless you are into any sort of race car, which means going to a show or shows, or to a race track, and springing for a pit pass. One note here: If the car is one or a subject that is plentiful online or in print, why spend a lot of time taking overall shots? It's often better, and more productive to take those detail shots, of the engines, wheels & tires, interiors and dashboards, in short, anything you might need to know more about, but which aren't readily visible in otherwise available pics anywhere. With race cars, one very important point: A race car at any single race, is more likely than not to be a "snapshot" itself of that car at a particular point, a particular race, on a particular day in its career. Many, if not most, race cars get modified at least someplace, from race to race, be it as simple as sponsor decals and their placement, to paintjobs, to bodywork configurations, to major changes in suspension, etc (Indy cars and sprint cars come to mind here, even Nascar), so concentrating on how that car looked at any one event generally makes more sense if one is striving for accuracy (which is why we take pics, want references, right?). The same can also be true of customs and rods--not always are these cars finished, and figuratively at least, cast in stone--nope. Many iconic hot rods and customs were changed, if mildly, subtly, from show to show, year to year, almost "works constantly in progress", so one would be wise to take that into account whenever possible. Phew, this is almost more than I wanted to write, but I hope I've given some thoughts worth chewing on for a while! Art

Comparing a model car kit first released in 1959 (design work would have happened in 1958) such as the AMT '40 Ford Coupe and its follow-on, the '39-'40 Ford Tudor Sedan with any model car kit designed and released in the late 1980's to our present day is as "apples VS oranges" as any comparison can get frankly, and for a lot of reasons. For starters, the "target" market for a model car kit (actually for just about any plastic model kit of any subject one wants to think about) 50+ years ago was kids, plain and simple. And, by "kids" I mean an average age of perhaps 14 or 15. Grownups really didn't do plastic model kits back then--in adult eyes, plastic stuff was toy stuff for kids, realmodelbuilders scratchbuilt stuff from wood, card stock, bits of metal. As such, while I am reasonably certain that designers and pattern makers may well have wanted absolute accuracy, "market" considerations surely had to come into play here, given the perception of what kids were likely to have success building (and probably the companies' decision-makers weren't far off the mark there. On the accuracy front, with the '40 Ford kit(s) that kicked off this thread, stock versions weren't exactly seen on every show grounds (in the 1950's, except for the super luxury "Classic" cars, 1930's cars were merely "used cars", almost no hobbyist interest in restoring or preserving them yet), so finding good ones for reference pics could well have been a problem, even for the likes of a young and agressive outfit such as AMT Corporation located in suburban Detroit. Even Ford Motor Company had yet to truly support the already intense interest in the Model T and the growing fascination with Model A's with archival information. As a result, the follow-on release to the AMT '40 Coupe, the '39-'40 Sedan cannot truly a '39 Ford make: In that kit, the ONLY 1939 parts are grille, headlights and taillights, that's all. EVERYTHING else in the kit is 1940 (including the hood, which is a 1940 Ford STANDARD hood, fits a '39 grille but otherwise totally different in contours and trim). Even the windshield on the body is that of 1940--1939 being the last year for a "swing-out" (for ventilation) windshield, which was shaped a good bit differently than the '40. No '39 dash, no "banjo" steering wheel, no "wide-five" wheels (with their correspondingly large hubcaps--all that stuff is 1940 Deluxe in the kit. So, lack of available research materials, even ready access to 1:1 vehicles likely played a part in the story. Last, given the anticipated age of the end-user, the model builder, I am most sure that AMT was practically obsessed with seeing their kits being built, and built successfully by kids, a finished model that a kid could show off, and even roll around on floor or tabletop at least a bit (wire axles allowed for that!). Many competitor's kits truly lacked those advantages deemed important at the time. With that in mind, I'm not at all surprised that the early model car kits from just about everybody lacked such essentials as lower radiator hoses, that is today, a "sign of the times" from the era when so many still-iconic model car kits first came out. Art

A "sorta Replicar" but definitely not even close to being a clone! I have no idea where they scrounged up that engine, but Marmon Model 32 it isn't (it has two blocks 3-cyl each, where the real Wasp's engine is 3 2-cylinder blocks). And that rear axle? Not hardly, not even remotely similar in appearance to the Marmon rear axle. And all that steel framing for the cockpit area? That wouldn't have happened in 1911--if there was any framing in that body, it would have been wood (Ash, most likely). As for the belly pan, check that large color pic I posted way back near the start of this thread--I think you can get the basic shapes of it from that pic. Art

Just watching the video shot at Coker Tire Company in Chattanooga (maker of all manner of reproduction tires mostly from original tire molds). "Corky" Coker says that the tire size is 34.5 X 4.5, meaning a 34.5" outside tread diameter by 4.5" rim width. So there ya go! The MPC Stutz Bearcat has the closest wheel/tire size available, unless one has a lathe and a mill! If one looks closely at this video, a lot of the construction I mention is shown! Art

What you think of as dust is actually oil smoke! Those race cars used castor oil, for its superior lubricating ability (castor oil was used in racing engines clear into the late 1950's, BTW). As for the "dust" on the track surface (looks almost like snow in the film tootage), that was sand which was thrown onto the bricks to try and counteract the oil that every car dripped, spilled and sprayed on the bricks in those days before gaskets that really worked to contain motor oil. It was thought at the time that sand would provide improved traction, just as sand is sprayed under the driving wheels of a railroad locomotive for added traction, but on the racetrack, it arguably made things worse (rubber tires on brick don't behave in anything like the manner of steel flanged wheels on steel rails!), and the practice ceased at Indy very quickly. But it sure makes for some fascinating film tootage! Art

Jim, Perhaps some of that is optical illusion, but having seen the Wasp out on the racetrack, as well as many times at floor level in the Museum, it is far lower than one might imagine for a car of its era. but only in its bodywork. Why you ask? Well, in a conventional 2-man race car of the time frame 1911 through 1921, the driver's and riding mechanic's seats actually sat somewhat outboard of the frame rails, which necessitated their being mounted quite a bit ABOVE the frame rails, to give a reasonable driving position (the riding mechanic almost always had a seat as high above the floorboards as the driver on almost all of those cars). However, remember that Ray Harroun designed the Wasp from a stock Marmon Model 32 touring car chassis, as a "monoposto" or single seat race car, with the steering column mounted dead center. What Joe Henning missed in his neat model Wasp project is the belly pan! The belly pan ran from just behind the bottom of the radiator to just beneath the gasoline tank (the body section immediately behind the cockpit). This allowed Harroun to position his seat down pretty much just on top of the frame rails, if not a bit lower so as to be between the rails themselves. That gave him a much lower position in the car than was possible in any other car in the 1911 field. Now, the space for his legs and feet had to have been pretty crowded, what with the open cone-shaped clutch and flywheel just in front of his shoes, and a steering reduction gear consisting of three or 4 spur gears below the forward end of the steering column (yes, those gears are there, I've seen them but it's been almost 17 years since that "after hours open house" that the Speedway Museum held in November 1995 for members of model car clubs from the area). Next, the Wasp has approximately a 60" (5') treadbase (the distance between the centerline of the tires side-to-side), which with that low profile/frontal area, makes the car look very low slung, that that is all in the bodywork. In the pic I posted way up above in this thread, Joe Dawson's 1912 National which won the 500 in 1912 is right behind (next to) the Wasp. Both cars have very close to the same frame height, but the National's profile is significantly taller than the Wasp--so your observation of the low-slung appearance of the Wasp in the video--on the racetrack at speed--is quite correct. As for the wheels and tires, the wheels and wheel covers (which are both inboard and outboard, BTW, on each wheel) ARE the original wheels for the Wasp, and they are large--tire size approximately 36" (those old high pressure, clincher rim, straight sided tires were described by the outside diameter of the tread, as opposed to the later description by inside diameter of the tire bead along with the rim width!). Incidently, that is a very common size tire from that era, most large cars used them, including the Stutz cars 1912-about 1916 or so, which is why I suggested wheels and tires from the MPC 1914 Stutz Bearcat! Now, couple up the low driver's position, and the consequently low and NARROW bodywork, along with the fairly wide treadbase, and you have a formula for a car that looks low, even with the frame height, exaggerated by the very long "stinger" tail cone. So yes, the Wasp does appear very low in the film footage shot from the grandstands (most of that film footage was shot by non other than Henry Ford, BTW!) due to the high angle, but when you see that classic pic of the Wasp crossing the finish line for the victory, that was shot at a very low angle, which makes the car look quite tall (and it certainly is, when compared to any race car from the 1920's and beyond!). A 36" diameter tire isn't all that large actually, when one considers that Model T Fords (such as the legendary AMT kits) used 30X3 1/2 tires on ALL wood spoked wheels 1908-25. (that's 30" outside diameter over the tread, on a 3.5" wide rim, BTW). And yes, having seen the Marmon Wasp running on the Speedway numerous times in my life, it does look both high and tall, but has that image of being lower than its contemporaries (and it is, for sure, in terms of side profile and frontal area than any other racecar 1911-1916 or so. Art

Geez, such an easy one to ID!

Years of selling and servicing airbrushes of all types during my time working in, and owning, hobby shops is that if you are getting intermittent, random droplets of paint splattering on the surface, the most likely cause is a damaged needle or in the case of the Binks Wren/Badger 350/Paasche H, the cause is a burr on the tip of the needle. This is caused by dropping the airbrush on the tip, which will bend the very tip of the needle/material control unit. When that happens, paint gathers on the damaged tip, until the air moving around it blows that paint loose and onto your paint job. Solution? Replace the offending part! Art

Answer: The black & white elmusion used on both film and glass plates as well as in printing photographs prior to about 1930 did not give a very good gradation in gray tones of many colors, unlike the silver nitrate B&W film that followed it. As an example, anything that was white in color, would come out a very bright white, regardless of the "tone" of white (this is why the early "natural latex" automobile tires, prior to the introduction of carbon black, almost always photographed stark white, when in fact they tended to be a rather dark cream color in real life. Yellows were notorious for showing up quite dark in that primitive black & white process. As I noted near the beginning of this thread, I have a DVD of the Firestone Tire & Rubber film of the 1946 Indianapolis 700, probably the first Indy 500 Mile Race to be filmed in color. The first 10-15 minutes of this DVD consists of a conversation between Wilbur Shaw (Indy winner 1937, 1939-40) who was President of IMS 1945-54 and Ray Harroun, driver of the Marmon Wasp and winner of the 1911 Indianapolis 500 Mile Race. Harroun is seated in the Wasp throughout the conversation/interview, and the car is featured very prominently,. and it was then orange yellow in color. The Wasp carried, at that date, lettering proclaiming it as the winner of the first 500, and the paintwork was quite old, checked and peeling off in spots (very common with the brushed enamel paintjobs on cars in 1911, which were coated with clear varnish to get a shiny paintjob. In addition, one of my books on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has a photograph of the Wasp, taken about 1930 with that exact paintjob. Further, an article in one of the early Floyd Clymer Publications "Indianapolis 500 Mile Race Yearbook" (I believe either 1952 or 1953) clearly stated that the Wasp was located, in it's original configuration and paintwork on a farm near Indianapolis in the late 1940's, the farm having been the home of the then retired Howard Marmon, founder and principal owner of Marmon Automobile Company, and after the demise of Marmon in 1932, a partner in the firm of Marmon-Herrington (with Arthur Herrington, known for his pioneering work in 4WD trucks). The Clymer article goes on to state that Karl Kizer, who was the retired owner of Century Tire Company in Indianapolis from before the Speedway was built until the late 1940's, and perhaps the one person working with Anton Hulman Jr, owner of the Speedway, to start a collection of cars that had raced on the Speedway, said the Wasp was in all original condition when located on Howard Marmon's farm, in fact it was the first race car purchased by Hulman Old Wheels (Tony Hulman was one of the founders of AACA in 1935, when that club was primarily a group of enthusiasts preserving antique cars rather than restoring them). Kiser was a crusty old sort, by all accounts, but he was a walking encyclopedia of old race cars, dozens of racing teams having used his large facilities at Century Tire to build and maintain their race cars back in the day. The "controversy" here comes from a quote from Ray Harroun in the 1950's (Harroun retired from racing on May 30, 1911, in Victory Lane at the Speedway, went back to work as an engineer at Marmon, worked for a number of different manufacturers, including his own automobile company, retiring at the age of 79, passed away in 1968). In an interview prior to the 50th Anniversary 500 in 1961 (during pre-race festivities, at the age of 82, Harroun stated that the car was "orange". Now, anyone old enough to remember grownups even in the early 1950's descrbing colors--"orange" could mean anything between a very reddish orange, to almost a bright yeloow (My parents often referred to yellow school busses as being "orange", and that statement is what Joe Henning apparently based his comments on in the Rod & Custom article. However, given the guidance of the late Karl Kizer, and the meticulous research and work by the late Barney Wimmer and the still active Bill Spoerle who restored most of the Indy Cars that are owned by the Speedway Museum, I find it hard to argue with the restoration, done in 1955-56, of the Marmon Wasp. One final note: The 1911 Indianapolis 500 Mile Sweepstakes (the 500 Mile Race's official name for decades) was also the first Indy 500 to have been recorded on movie film--the majority of the footage having been shot by one Henry Ford himself!. Ford caught many scenes of the Wasp at the end of the frontstretch and going through Turn 1--see this clip from the film . At 3:20, there is a shot of Ray Harroun, sitting in the car after his win--the paintwork is clearly visible around the cockpit, including the black pinstriping. It comes across as MUCH lighter than the more famous "finish line" shot of the Wasp. Clear indication to me, and several who have modeled this car over the years, that the car was at best an "orange yellow", not the darker "red-orange" that most of us visualize when the noun "orange" pops up. Art

I think the "Miss Budweiser" hydroplane you are thinking of is the 1/25 scale 1980's Miss Budweister "picklefork". Art

AMT's Ecto-1a (or for that matter, the Polar Lights Ecto-1--the earlier version of the Ghostbusters ambulance) is a 1959 Cadillac/Miller Meteor Limousine Ambulance, and yes, it can be modifed back to stock. The biggest modification would be to the roof; getting rid of all those mounting points for GB stuff, and then adding the faired-in red flashers at each corner of the roof (pretty easily done with Evergreen Styrene Tubing and a bit of putty, BTW). Ecto had a pair of strobe flashers in the grille, which didn't exist in 1959, but I believe the Revell '59 Caddy grille will fit either of the Ecto kits fairly well, perhaps a bit of fiddling with bodywork up front to get it just right. If you want a truly stock rear bumper, I'd opt for the Polar Lights kit, as the AMT kit has a modified rear bumper with a wide treadplate step cut into it. Also, molding in the tailfins is necessary to make this body shell look right, and the Revell Caddy has the inner taillight fairings which are omitted in both Ecto kits (this could make painting the body with an airbrush virtually a requirement, in order to reach the right spacing between fin and upper bodywork. Modelhaus has the correct '59 Cadillac full wheel covers (There was no way the Eldorado cast-aluminum alloy centered wheels would have worked on a professional car, brakes would have been too small). Art