Art Anderson

Nahhhh!!! For this white-haired old Hoosier, the REAL racing season will always kick off on the opening day of practice for the Indianapolis 500!!!! I guess I've been to too many opening days of practice at IMS in my life, but that really gets my blood to circulating. Art

The one thing I will always remember about GSL (I was there in 1991, '92, '93, '94, '95, '97, '99, '05 (when my '53 Studebaker Commander Starliner HT was awarded--WOW!, and '07) is that once you have been to one, you are remembered by EVERYONE--it rapidly becomes like a HS or College class reunion--everyone who was there that last time you showed up remembers you, greets you like a long lost friend. And Mark Gustavson's bear hugs to returnees? Yeah! Seriously, it's THE show to attend, even if you only make it to Salt Lake City once in your life. It's everything a model car event should be--clinics, camaraderie, model cars, food, fun (prolly even some dancing and drinking too--hey, they do have bars in SLC!). I plan on being there in 2011. Art

I know of no engine ever raced at Indianapolis termed that, which I assume was "Granitelli STP Indy V8". From the sounds of it, it's likely you are talking about the Ford 4-cam Indy V8, which dated from 1964, carried on through 1967 in normally aspirated form (255cid, with a bell shaped injector velocity stack for each cylinder, in the middle of the DOHC cylinder heads. The exhausts exited on the upper (or inner) sides of the cylinder heads, into tuned exhaust headers that were unaffectionately called "the bundle of snakes) for the way they intertwined with each other, going down to a 4-pipe collector for each tailpipe. This engine was used in many Indy cars from 1964-as late as 1968 (Gurney's All American Racers used one in the team car to Dan Gurney's #48 that year, which was powered by a 255cid Ford 4-cam V8, as were the 1965-67 Granitelli STP Lotus cars). AJ Foyt's 1965-67 Indianapolis entries (he won his 3rd 500 Mile Race with one in '67 used this engine also. These engines were ALL clearly badged FORD though. In 1968, Ford destroked this engine to 161cid, added a turbocharger setup in place of the long tapered tailpipes, and it became the Turbo-Ford Indy V8. Only a couple of those made the race that year, most notably Mario Andretti, in his Overseas National Airways sponsored Brawner Hawk, which DNF'd. In 1969, Andretti, still driving a Brawner Hawk under the sponsorship and car ownership of Andy Granitelli, used this same engine to take the Checkered Flag, win his first Indy 500. About a third of the field that year used this engine, which was clearly marked FORD in raised letters cast onto the cam covers. In 1970, Ford dropped their Indy engine program, and sold the Turbo Ford project to AJ Foyt, who had cam covers cast with FOYT on them, the engine being known from then on as the Foyt Turbo Indy V8. Now back to your original question: I have never seen any 1/12 scale aftermarket stuff for Indy cars, simply because there could not have been more than a couple of Indy car kits in that scale. Art

Aaron, Some inaccuracies in your post above: While the Curtiss P-40F was built with the PACKARD Merlin engine, the results were only marginal, given the obsolescence of the basic P-40 design (Curtiss' P-40 evolved out of the 1935-vintage P-36 Hawk), Bell Aircraft's P-39 Airacobra and their subsequent P-63 King Cobra were NEVER produced with the Merlin engine, period. As for the development of the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, take the time to read the Wikipedia on it, that story matches every history of the Mustang ever written: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang Please note that NAA even laid out $56,000 to purchase the wind tunnel data on the P-40 from the UNITED STATES ARMY AIR CORPS--hardly US Government cooperation, by any stretch of the imagination. Now, the Allison engine as available to NAA at the time of design (Rolls Royce had yet to license the production of the Merlin to any US Manufacturer, and they were stressed to the limit to supply the RAF) was no Merlin--due primarily to the Allison having been designed by them to fill the requirements as Allison saw, the US Army Air Corps seeing combat aircraft flying at fairly low altitudes as they had in WW-I, and mainly in ground support, with a single stage centrifugal supercharger, which gave superb performance below 15,000 ft altitude, where the Merlin, having a two-stage centrifugal supercharger (double blowers, the first sending pressurized air into the second one, which in turn delivered seriously compressed air into the carburetor!) was good up to 30-35,000 feet). This was the engine, of course, that NAA provided in the first Mustangs delivered (or to USAAC, the A-36 Apache, a dive bomber/ground attack aircraft). In order for North American to be allowed to build and sell Mustangs to the British, the US Army Air Corps had to approve of the plane (US Law, BTW which is still operative today), so the Army accepted a prototype, done as a dive bomber, gave it the designation A-36 (Attack, 36th type accepted for evaluation). But, North American, as you note, paid for all the development costs, betting that the RAF would buy enough of them to make it a profitable venture. In 1939-41, there was no surplus capacity for military aircraft (or for that matter, any military hardware production) in the US to speak of. On the reverse, there was no reason to be, either: The existing aircraft manufacturers (such as Boeing, Douglas, Consolidated, Lockheed, North American, Ryan, Stearman, Grumman, Martin) were all operating with very small factories, given they were still in a Depression-era mode. North American would have to build a new factory to go beyond the SNJ/T-6/Yale--fixed gear version of the previous--/Harvard trainers they were known for. They had yet to begin the design/production of their other signature plane of WW-II, the B-25). It was the same thing both during WW-II, and postwar as well. The design work for every US military aircraft was done by private industry, to meet a US War Department or US Navy/US Department of Defense RFQ (Request For Quotation) of the cost for such planes as were to result. In the heat of wartime, indeed in the pressures of Cold War needs, yes, the War Department/Navy Department, and beginning in 1947, the US Department of Defense, the Government DID buy test examples from multiple manufacturers, but to fly them off, one against the others, to determine which one they would buy. However, each and every aircraft the US Military has bought (other than those trainers built in the 1930's into WW-II which were designed by the US Navy Bureau of Aircraft and produced by the Naval Aircraft Facility -- most notably the Yellow Peril, the Navy's N3N Biplane trainer of WW-II into the middle 1950's) were designed, engineered, and built by private companies, private capital, by employees paid by them. Now, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was funded throughout it's development by the USDOD, simply because of (1) the sheer costs involved, and (2) because of the tremendous shrinkage of the military aircraft side of the industry--in short, it was deemed impossible for any one company extant to fund the speculative development of such a plane on their own nickel--just as it had been with the F-22, and before that, the YF-12/SR-71. There the lines as regards intellectual property do become very blurred. However, some planes that were privately designed, and their failed competitors: 1939 Very Long-range Bomber (VLB): Consolidated-Vultee, Lockheed and Boeing all submitted designs--Lockheed's offering ultimately became the Constellation airliner (USAAC designation C-67), Boeing's never saw any serious effort beyond the concept phase--Consolidated's became the B-36 Peacemaker--the Magnesium Overcast. Boeing, North American, Consolidated, Lockheed, Martin, and Northrop all offered designs for a new heavy bomber post-WWII to fit the notion of a high speed bomber, capable of intercontinental range, two designs were accepted by the US Army Air Forces (soon to be USAF) for prototypes for testing: Boeing's XB-47 and Northrop's XB-49--Boeing won. For the even bigger role, an Intercontinental heavy bomber, high speed, only two competitors showed up, Boeing, with their design which became the BUFF, the B-52 Stratofortress, and Convair, the YB-60 (basically a B-36 with swept wings and 8 turbojets--which were flown off against each other (B52 was the winner). The USAF paid Convair for the two YB-60's that were built, scrapped them, and that was it. The Century Series era of fighter plane development was still in that mode. Now, where the Government owns (or shoud, at least) the intellectual property rights is, is in the area of artillery, small arms, armor and naval ships--as because, the military has traditionally done all the basic research and development: The United States Army has designed and developed every artillery piece they bought since at least WW-I, and all armor they have ever bought, the US Navy every ship ever designed, and with the exception of the Browning M2 50-caliber machine gun, the Oerlikon 20mm cannon and the still used Bofors 40mm automatic cannon. Now, the conglomerates who own the shipyard companies today try to claim intellectual rights to US Navy ships they built in years past, even in the face that BUSHIPS, the Navy Bureau of Ships, did most of (if not all!) the naval architecture involved. Automotively speaking, the WW-II Willys MB Jeep does belong to Willys-Overland and their successor, Chrysler Corporation, by US Supreme Court decision in 1949--Willys having been the winning contractor of the Jeep project, over American Bantam and Ford (Ford Motor Company did build during WW-II some 40% of all the Jeeps built for that war, under license from W-O). The Korean War version of the Jeep, the M-38, was simply a militarized version of Willys-Overland's CJ-2a. The late Korean era M38A2 was a militarized version of the modernized civilian Jeep, the CJ-5. But in the bottom line, the ownership of rights to the design of military equipment does rest, by court decisions, with whomever spent their own or their company's money vs public funds being the ultimate determination. Art

The stuff you mention is "Alene's Tacky Glue" which is a tacky version of good old Elmer's (really, it is!). It's OK for wood, paper, card stock--anything that's porous, but doen't work that well for joining plastic parts. Thinned out with water, though, it can be used to glue down aluminum foil for foiling chrome trim, and it does hold headlight lenses in place, without scarrring or fogging them. Art

And in the same vein: Neither the American taxpayers, nor the US Government (through the War Department or the Navy Department--subsequently the US Department of Defense) has EVER funded the design of any military aircraft, none, nada, zilch! Boeing Airplane Company (Now Boeing Aerospace) developed planes like the B-17, the B-29, B-50, B-47 and the B-52 on THEIR nickel, NOT the nickels of Uncle Sam, flew those planes off in competition with similar aircraft from the likes of Consolidated/Convair, Lockheed, Douglass, Martin and Northrop. Had Boeing not gotten the contract to supply any of those planes, they'd have stood the loss on the development monies spent. North American Aviation Inc. developed what became the P-51 Mustang, NOT for the US Army Air Corps, folks, but for Britain's Royal Air Force, so in that case, if any government should claim ownership and licensing rights, by rights it should be Her Majesty, the Queen's government in Whitehall. Even the principal engine used in the P-51 Mustang was a British development--Packard only refined and produced it, but Rolls Royce Ltd of Crewe England designed it. Sorry to rain on anyone's parade here, but the designs of any automobile are the property of the particular manufacturer (just the same if it were YOU cutting a million-selling CD of you singing), called "intellectual property". SCOTUS (Supreme Court of The United States) ruled about 25yrs ago that in order for any manufacturer (car makers in that case) to be able to protect their designs, their copyrights from foreign (in that case Taiwanese) copycats, they had to protect them from ALL who would use them--in short, protect them, or lose them. In short, I get really aggravated at self-serving sleazebag pols who take the socialistic tack with stuff like intellectual property rights, just to buy a vote or two. Patent and copyright protection as is generally vigorously upheld in these United States, are a huge part of what has made US the most inventive, innovative, and ultimately the most highly developed nation this planet has ever seen, bar none. The guy who's invented the better mousetrap didn't do it because he hated mice, nor did he do it out of mere compassion for his fellow man--no sir, he did it out of his own enlightened self interest, and that is a trait that I see as an endangered species in this country. End of RANT! Art

Finally, some more progress to report on the 1904 Knox truck. I've shown the engine before, but have been struggling with the front axle assembly since the end of September. I had one all built, just needed a bit of touch up on the mill, and I got one end caught in the roller & wedge tightening system that milling vises use for accuracy, crushing it beyond fixing. So, after a month or so of cooling off from that, I started over, built the axle beam itself in nothing flat, then on to the spindles. At first, I figured I could simply fabricate the spindles from K&S brass tubing, a combination of square (for the inner ends, round for the outer section that carries the wheel, but in practice, just too small for silver soldering, given the limited stuff I had to make a suitable soldering fixture. That took a couple of weeks, then off for a couple of weeks, onto other things, then Thanksgiving week. Finally, I figured out the setups needed on my mill to accomplish the spindles, in solid brass, that worked! Here's the basic axle components. The axle itself is 1/8" square brass tubing, with 3/32" round tube to make the "yokes" which capture the kingpins and the spindles themselves. The reinforcing web was made with a strip of 1/32" x 1/4" K&S brass strip, soldered into slots cut into each end of the axle beam itself. After that was done, the ends of the axle beam were "fishmouthed" on the mill, and the round tube silver soldered into place. Finally, a 3/32" end mill was used to mill out the slot in each yoke to accept the inner end of a spindle. 3/32" holes were drilled across the face of the axle beam to accept the round plugs that make up the spring perches (the springs are cantilever style, the ends of the main leaves trapped in a slotted perch, and these had to be spaced exactly the width of the frame rails. Next up was to make a pair of steering arms, and the tie rod. Note that one steering arm is longer than the other--this one will be on the right hand side of the axle, the added length to acommodate the drag link, which goes across the axle, from the steering column. The steering arms are 1/16" square brass tubing, with a bit of 1/32" rod inside, to provide a locating pin for mounting to the inner part of the spindle. Ordinary straight pins were used for pivots, worked like a charm. I hit a snag though, with the kingpins! I had figured on using 1/32" brass rod for the kingpins, with bits of 1/16" tubing at top and bottom to provide "plugs" in the yoke to hold them, BUT I misread things, used a .035" drill for drilling the kingpin holes in the spindles--SLOPPPY!!!!!. So what to do? I sure didn't want to have to remake those spindles, so I took a quick shortcut, knowing that gap filling CA glue can be used as a filler--so, I simply filled the kingpin holes in the spindles with some CA, hit it with the kicker, and let it set up. Then, I mounted the spindles each in the mill, and used a proper 1/32" drill bit to drill out the CA to the proper diameter--IT WORKED! YAY!!!! The last step was to make the round spring perch plugs, install them, and slot the back sides of them on the mill for holding the ends of the springs. Simple 3/32" brass rod, drilled on one end for hex bolt head detail, then silver-soldered into place, cleaned up with a wire brush on the Dremel, then clamp in the mill, slot the backs of the plugs. Completed axle assembly (and perhaps the most complex part of this project, engine included: So, now it's on to the next part of this "over the top" model car project--the rear axle and chain driveline. Stay tuned! Art

WeldOn #3 is the liquid cement used in the fabrication of Acrylic plastic, AKA Plexiglas, and works just as well, exactly the same on styrene as do Tenax or Ambroid Pro-Weld at a fraction of the price. As for any "issues" with the stuff, when I consider how minute the amount I use of WeldOn, compared to the thousands of cubic feet of air in my home, I rather think that it's a non-issue. I have a quart can of the stuff here, decant that into an old Tenax bottle as needed (use an ordinary turkey baster for that), and always keep the vessels tightly closed when not in use. Art

I downloaded and installed IE8, after having the same problem you did, now chat room works fine! Art

The Knox front axle looks quite simple, being of a plain, square cross-section forging, with "knuckles" at the top and bottom of each end, arranged as a "yoke" to capture the spindles in between them, with a simple triangular reinforcing web to add strength to the knuckle at both top and bottom of the axle. Like most very early cars and light trucks, this is exactly backward to Ford's 1928-48 beam front axles, in fact the entire industry's practice, beginning about 1920. The spindles were a very simple design, forged steel, with the obligatory round stub axle, the inner portion being a square section, with a hole bored vertically through it to acommodate the kingpin, a round flange separating the two sections, giving a thrust bearing surface for the wheel to run up against, without the hub making contact with the axle end. Simple in design, but a bear to build. The axle itself is done with 1/8" K&S square brass tubing (now discontinued, BTW), into which holes were drilled to hold the spring perches (not yet made in this pic), fishmouthed at the ends to capture 3/32" K&S brass tubing, then slit vertically so that a "web" of 1/32" thick K&S brass strip could be placed inboard of the steering knuckles. The knuckles themselves were made with a single, extra long piece of K&S 3/32" brass tubing, the whole ensemble silver soldered together with a miniature butane torch; after which the "webs" were cut down to their triangular shape with sprue cutters, the round brass tubing filed to the correct height above and below the axle, and then the "yoke" being milled into the constructed ends. This is the second axle built--the first was irreparably damaged when one yoke got caught in the tightening mechanism of my milling vice, so I made absolutely certain that would NOT happen again. The spindles were machined from brass bar stock, the spindle portion turned down to 3/32", the square section inboard of the thrust flange milled to square, then drilled for the kingpin, and a hole added for locating the steering arm. Sounds so easy doesn't it? Well, all told, this axle and the first of the spindles took over 12hrs to make, but I did learn a lot in the process. Without further ado: 1904 Knox Waterless front axle, WIP: Art

Brochures can be a very useful reference tool, but I learned many years ago to not take them as the final authority, particularly when referencing cars of the 50's or 60's--the simple reason that the print lead times back then often dictated that photographs and artists' renderings of those new cars were being taken/done months before the new car reached the dealer's showroom. Thus, there can be errors, errors in exterior trim (often times the final decisions locking up chrome side trim on cars, even the grille, didn't get made until almost the last minute). The same has been true with interior patterns. Another problem was the technique of the artists who painted those gorgeous brochure and advertising images, as well as advertising photography studios--they tended to elongate (stretch, if you will) the proportions of the cars they were doing brochure images for, to make them look longer, wider and lower (both to the ground and overall height), to enhance the image that US car buyers expected, longer, lower, wider cars. The legendary Boulevard Photographic Studios was a prime example, even to the point of having custom-made lenses ground, inventing their own conversions for the cameras they used, in order to deliberately "distort" the length and width of the cars they were photographing for dealer brochures and print advertising. Boulevard did photography for all of the marques of the Big Three at one time, and if you look closely at their photographs in brochures closely, you can see that they stretched the image photographically, to the point that wheels were shown ever-so-slightly "egg shaped". This was well documented in a book on the company that Tom Lowe had in our research library when I worked at Playing Mantis several years ago. Still though, dealer brochures can be a great help in accurizing a model, but I would suggest using them along with as many photographs taken with normal camera's, to avoid these deviations. Art

Charlie, I can only imagine what New Bedford would be like in a major blizzard!!! No Sir, I won't be coming to visit you this winter, just so I can have the experience!!! Actually, at the present time, I don't own a car (no real need, as I can reach anywhere I need to go in my city by CityBus, and prefer riding my 24spd mountain bike --with full suspension BTW--to commute to work whenever possible, BECAUSE I still can, at the age of 65!), but even walking the half block or so to the bus stop can be an expedition in a deep snow, as I live at the top of the hill, on the bluffs overlooking the storied Wabash River, but down in a holler, the ground across the street from me being about 25' above my head where I am sitting here, keyboarding this in. You are right about the ice though--we can get that from freezing rain, but also from the freeze-thaw-refreeze cycles that follow any major snowfall. When every paved surface turns into a skating rink, it's white-knuckle time here, walking, or in a motor vehicle (that nice bike stays nice and warm and dry indoors until the ice and snow are gone). Art

I live on the southern edge of the Midwestern "Snow Belt" in the US (that is a band roughly 500 miles wide N-S, that goes across Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana, Michigan, Northern Ohio, and extends into Pennsylvania, New York and New England. South of me, major snowstorms dropping several inches are perhaps one ot two a season, through here, maybe 3 or 4, but to the Northwest, and certainly in the Great Lakes region, MAJOR snowstorms are an expected way of life in winter (called "Lake Effect" snows) Lake Effect happens when extremely cold air (20F and below) comes as strong winds over the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario), where the water is warmer than the air moving over it. When that happens (and I saw it happening over Lake Michigan from the Outer Drive in Chicago 2 weeks ago!) the evaporating water forms clouds, not unlike the cloud of steam off a hot cup of coffee outdoors in winter), and drops prodigious amounts of snow inland on the downwind shores of the lakes. Lake Effect snow can be capricious: In 2005, I was to meet up with Ismael Gonzalez at Dean Milano's home in Elmhurst Illinois one Tuesday afternoon in February. Living in Mishawaka IN (across the street, literally from the University of Notre Dame and South Bend) which is but 30 miles from the SE shore of southern Lake Michigan --the area of warmest lake water), we got hit with a strong NNW wind of about 30mph, dropping temperatures into the teens F. Looking at The Weather Channel on TV, they were showing snow clouds forming over Lake Michigan NORTH of Holland MI (on Michigan's western shores, the wind carrying the developing snow half the length of the lake (over a hundred miles) south to Michigan City IN, then curving SE to hit us. That was perhaps the most dramatic snowstorm I have ever seen. Snow so intense, I could not see my own car which was parked a mere 20' from the front of my apartment. I left home at about 8am, stopping at an office where I was doing some freelance work, and could not see a thing, literally, it was like driving in a bowl of milk. At 8am, we had 6" of snow--by noon when I left, to test the forecast that 25 miles west of South Bend, on the Indiana Toll Road, I would run out of the snow, clear driving all the way to the Chicago area--by that time, almost 2 feet of the stuff. Never mind the driving conditions though! In that part of our state, they don't use mere street department trucks for moving snow off the streets--nope--5-ton tandem axle dumptrucks with plow blades mounted under the middle of their frames, traveling in pairs, one per lane (4-lane streets), at perhaps 25mph, at which speed they throw the snow perhaps 25 feet off to the side of the street. The toll road was pretty much the same, but being an east-west superhighway, the snow drifted in behind the plows very rapidly. So, what ordinarily would have been a 30 minute trip west to the Michigan City exit took over an hour. But, once there, the sky immediately cleared, no more snow all the way into Chicago, and out to Elmhurst. Coming back to South Bend/Mishawaka, it was the reverse, only this time, some 40" of the stuff on the ground at home, BUT streets were cleared although very slippery, even our parking lots at the apartment complex had been plowed clean. Had that snow happened here in Lafayette, 110 miles south of there, we'd have been snowed in for a week perhaps--we don't get nearly that much snow (although we did several times in the 1970's), so even though this city is well equipped with snowplows, they are the more common 2-ton dumptrucks, backed up by every city pickup truck having a plow mounted. In much of the Midwest US, indeed the Great Plains states, there is little if anything to slow down the wind, the topography is quite flat, no mountains, only gently rolling hills and river valleys, nothing much rises above the horizon. Even 35mph winds can create insurmountable drifts, the snow drifting on the lee side of any object, from farmhouses, to overpass ramps, even farmer's fences can create drifts. In a lot of places, "snow fences" are erected every late fall, and taken down once warm spring weather arrives--snow fence used to be made from 2" wooden slats, tied together with twisted steel wire, although anymore, they use perforated plastic to create snow drifts out in the middle of farmers' fields, the idea being to make the drifts happen, and taper off before they reach the roads. This, along with snowplows everywhere, is essential, given that nearly everyone in the US relies on an automobile, SUV or pickup truck to get to work, back home, and too the supermarket and such. Even the railroads are not immune--across the snow belt, and in the northern Great Plains, railroads operate MASSIVE rotary snowblowers in order to clear the tracks, particularly since blizzard winds can fill deep cuts in the landscape to the brim, and that can be upwards of 15' or more deep. It's different in the southern US, where such snow events are rare--there they have little in the way of snow removal equipment, the likelihood of a major snowstorm is too low to warrant spending lots of money on snow removal--an inch or two of snow becomes an emergency, often the streets and roads are simply closed, until the snow melts, which it usually does in a day or so. As much as I dislike snow (around here, SNOW is a 4-letter expletive to many people!), I have to admit, a 6" fresh snowfall can be quite beautiful, for the first day or so--especially at this time of year, the Christmas holidays. Ten years ago, I had the privilege of helping a friend, who owned at the time, a 1907 CarterCar, red with lots of shiny brass trim, drive it to their neighborhood Catholic Cathedral, and pose the car on the frozen, snowcovered front lawn, for a Christmas Card picture--awesome pic, although my print is buried deep in a box somewhere right now. But, yeah, we get more than our share of the white stuff, and our difficulties getting around in it (and the accompanying ice) probably is as miserable at times as what you are experiencing right now in the UK. And yes, every year, many drivers will have forgotten everything they ever knew about driving in snow--and that means "peak season" for every body shop in town! Art

Andrea, I grew up hearing anecdotes from relatives who "stood and waited" during WW-II while their husbands, sons and fathers were overseas, fighting, and looking back, I can only begin to grasp just how hard it was for them in those years. Never having served myself, due to a childhood illness and subsequent disability, I find myself today still admiring those men who do answer the call to arms, to duty, to protect us here at home, and Clay has my undying admiration, support, and prayers, believe me. My youngest sister married a man who was career army, and we all prayed for Joe's safety, even though there was no shooting conflict at the time, although he served three tours in Nam, came back not entirely unscathed. I am simply amazed at the tremendous mutual support that exists among military families as a result. Although Joe passed away years ago from a heart attack, my sister is still in contact with her friends from his years of service, her years spent on military bases in Germany. Please rest assured that there are those of us, here at home, who pray daily for the safety of our troops who are fighting that we here at home can sleep soundly, and while we hate that they must do that, know that but for them, and their forebears, we would likely be speaking German, Japanese, Russian or even Arabic today (not meaning to sound at all bigoted here). Godspeed to Clay, may he come home soon, and embrace you and your children, and then, when things settle down, pick up on this hobby which we all love. It's guys like him who make that hobby possible, along with all the freedoms we do enjoy in this country. Respectfully, Art Anderson

Perhaps I am unique, but I never really did consider Walmart, or for that matter, Kmart, Target or any of the others as my "go to" place for model kits. I check out Hobby Lobby here periodically, but that's about it. I don't go online to seek out model kits, unless it's something I gotta have, and I can't find it locally. And, "locally" means a trip to Indianapolis, where there are a couple of pretty nice LHS's that are regular stops there--LHS here is heavily focused on RC, with a huge train shop here that is a great place to find raw materials, even detail stuff for trains that can be adapted to model car use. Perhaps I am "Old School", but I like the idea of a LHS being there when I want or need the little stuff, but if that is all they ever got the chance to sell us modelers, we'd not have them around any more. Yes, the LHS needs to bear in mind that I'm not their gold mine, nor any other customer or group of customers, but without being able to sell me that larger ticket item on occasion, what's in it for them? Art

Not so much under scale, as out of proportion. I did a conversion of Revell's '59 Impala (Incidently, ALL GM cars for 1959--except of course Corvette--used just one series of body shells for 1959, differing only in lower body sheet metal styling, and wheelbases), into a Biscayne 2dr sedan. Now, having a 1:1 '59 Biscayne 4dr in the driveway made checking dimensions on the Revell kit a breeze (it's quite accurate). Given the commonality of body shells across the GM passenger car line for that year, I took a look at a JoHan '59 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special 6-window sedan, which in real life has exactly the same body shell structures and upper body sheet metal shapes as my Chevy did (even the glass is interchangeable), for that project. My findings, upon measuring the JoHan Caddy? Front clip is several scale inches too short, same with the rear deck/quarter panels. The body shell is 3-scale inches (that's 1/8" actual on the model) too narrow. BUT, the "greenhouse" (which is the roof and body structure above the beltline, from the base of the windshield to the base of the back window) is not only exactly the right length, front to back, but also the correct height for any GM 4dr sedan roof. Here's the deal: GM's marketing people, whomever at the General did the buying of promo's, apparently decreed that promo's all be made to fit the same size box, regardless of marque. So, if a company was to make the senior GM car, the Cadillac, it had to fit the box size that GM approved for a Chevrolet. Aa a result, every Cadillac promotional from the AMT '56 Coupe de Ville through JoHan's 1979 Coupe Deville, including all the Eldorado front drives, was tooled smaller than actual scale, some even fudged in proportion to "fit the box". Art

Unless it's a 183cid (3 liter) V8 NOVI, running it's Offenhauser Engineering built flat plane crankshaft, turning at 8500rpm (unheard of territory in 1941) with its 12" centrifugal supercharger spinning at some 70,000rpm--talk about the music of a racing engine screaming, roaring, and crackling all at once, as if it were the final chord before the end of a race car symphony. Oh, and that engine could smoke the tires at any point in its speed range, with 550hp on tap (by the early 1960's, the Granitelli Brothers had added another thousand rpm's to the redline, and bumped up the horsepower just a bit, to a paltry 800. And, in a Ferguson 4WD chassis, it could still smoke all the tires coming off turns 2 and 4 at Indianapolis. Art

Unlike modern cars, which are painted robotically, cars of the 50's had their paint applied, on the production line, by essentially the same hand-held DeVilbis or Binks production spray guns used in body shops (but with the paint delivered to them through pressurized hoses instead of a color jar on the bottom of the gun). For body-on-frame production, the body shells themselves were generally dipped in some sort of rust-preventive, at least up to the beltline (not that the rust preventers of the time did much actual good!), then primed by hand held spray guns. After the primer was baked dry in a pass-through oven, the bodies were sanded, rinsed, blown dry, ready for final colors. These kinds of body shells weren't on a moving conveyor assembly line, but generally mounted on wheeled carts, which could be pulled along by a cable, as through the drying ovens, and pushed by hand into the spray booths. It took a crew of at least two painters to get the job done quickly, each painter taking half the body shell. One of the steps there was for the painters to squat or duck down, run the spray guns along the bottom edges of the rocker panels (actually a box-section of sheet metal pinch or spot welded to the lower edge of the rear quarter panels, and a full box section at the bottoms of the door openings, rather than the narrow edge that most model car bodies have). With the body shell perhaps a foot or so above the floor, this meant that the spray gun had to be used at an oblique angle to the bottoms of the rocker panels, meaning that there was overspray inward on the outer edges of the floorboards, perhaps 6" or so in from the sides, fading into the raw primer, which in those years was almost universally red oxide primer. The same was also almost universally true of firewals back in those days as well, they being painted the same color as the lower body main colors, but the painters didn't spend much time ensuring that the lower edge of the firewall, where it meets the upward angled "toe board", so the body color paint generally faded from color to primer at that point, across the firewall's lower edges or the upper edges of the toeboards. Front fender panels seem generally to have been painted on both surfaces, inside and out, that being done with them hanging from hooks stuck through the bolt holes on their upper or rear edges where they mated to the body or underhood structure, but probably not painted as well as the exterior surfaces. None of this overspray would have hit the frames, as all this work was done before the body shells were dropped by hoist onto the assembled chassis on the final assembly line. Art

More ultimate engines: 1920 Frontenac/Monroe 4cyl DOHC (the VERY first racing engine to have the handprints of a Chevrolet on it) Etzel's Speed Classics 274cid Offenhauser 4cyl DOHC, the legendary OFFY--Etzel's Speed Classics 168cid Turbocharged Offenhauser 4cyl DOHC--MPC Rislone Eagle Cosworth DFX 151cid DOHC Turbocharged V8 AMT 1978 Penske PC-6 Mercedes-Benz W-163 183cid supercharged V12 Hawk Indianapolis Racer kit Duesenberg Model J 420cid supercharged DOHC straight 8 Monogram Cadillac 452cid OHV V12--Johan and Monogram--dead heat there! Chrysler 392cid Hemispherical head V8--AMT/Ertl 1957 Chrysler 300C Just a few, from personal experience. Art

ViperDave who posts on Spotlght Hobbies Message Board owns and restored the real Posey Challenger TransAm race car. It's been awarded at several Concours already this year. Art

One thing to consider, if accuracy is important: A P-38 ferry tank (which is what the bellytank that salt flats racers used) isn't completely round in cross-section, but rather it has an "egg shape" to it when viewed from front to rear. Likewise, the teardrop shape, when viewed from the side isn't symmetrical top to bottom. This was because Lockheed designed it to be a bit of a "lifting body", so that its shape would provide at least some lift at speed when airborne. Most of the ones I have seen done in vacform and resin have missed those two characteristics completely, the California Model Works one appears to have it nailed to a T. Just a thought, Art

Dunno about our calendar, but I was born on July 12, 1944, and on July 12, 1954, I was officially 10yrs old, and July 12 this year, I officially turned 65. Art

That was pretty standard SOP for automakers, especially Ford, GM, Chrysler, even Studebaker, who all built heavy duty trucks in addition to their car lines. Fords, Mercuries, Edsels and Lincolns got hauled by F or C-series tractors, GM cars were carried on trailers pulled by GMC semi-tractors, Mopars utilized Dodge tractors, and Studebakers, their own company's semi-tractor products as well. Often though, independents not producing trucks used independent make semi-tractors, in the midwest those were largely Internationals, or perhaps a White, REO or Diamond T. Art

By modern standards, yes they were inefficient. But, bear in mind, it wasn't until roughly 1970 that teh Interstate Highway System began coming completely together, even though there were still breaks in the superslap network, patched in with old 2-lane roads. The US Highway System, augmented as it was with a network of state highways, both systems being built to standards that varied from state to state, sometimes even county to county within a state was full of 2-lane highways with lanes as narrow as 8 feet, often sharp curves (due to the initial highway systems tending to follow existing rural roads to reduce construction and land acquisition costs. Not until the postwar years was there any concerted effort to over- or underpass railroad tracks, the vast majority were grade crossings, and at that, often the highway approached the tracks BELOW the top of the rails, making for a considerable "hump" in the road, requiring fairly high ground clearances for any semi-trailer, even intercity busses. Bridge and overpass clearances were a problem years ago as well. It wasn't unusual to see warning signs a mile or two before approaching one, warning of clearance hgts of 12', even 11 feet, meaning that even an ordinary semi, and many box vans had to take another route. Such obstacles surely did affect the automobile haulaway industry as well. For the smaller independent automakers, even one as large as Studebaker once was, they could only supply their cars to the nation by rail, and that was even more inefficient, due to the limitations of freight car sizes that existed until the late 1950's. Most railroads had two sizes of boxcars devoted to automobile shipping, 40' and 50', each with wide double sliding doors, offset toward one end of the car on one side, the opposite end on the other side. Still, with these wide loading doors, it could take fully a half hour minimum to load two luxury cars in one, or upwards of two hours to insert 4 automobiles on a double deck arrangement inside. For companies such as Ford and GM, they had dealerships in just about every county seat town in the US, sometimes more than one dealership of the same marque in the same county (dependant on population, of course), but those dealerships were MUCH smaller than the mega auto malls we see today. Even a Chevrolet or Ford store in a major city might have had perhaps 65-70 new cars in stock at any one time, buy your average dealership in Anytown probably never floor-planned more than 20 at a time, if that. So, deliveries were smaller, and often farther between, again making those 4-car haulaway trailers pretty adequate for the job. Two developments converged to change all that though. First, at about the same time as Interstate Highway construction was getting into high gear, the various railroad companies went together, to form Trailer-Train (reporting code TTX), for the purpose of hauling two 40' max semi trailers on each 85' flatcar. By about 1960 or so, TTX rightly figured that by adding a steel superstructure with either one or two more decks (open ramps, actually), the bilevel and trilevel auto haulers were born, and true long distance rail delivery of new cars from distant factories became a reality, and today is the dominant method used for deliveries more than just a couple of hundred miles from the factory dock. Most of today's highway haulaways operate out of rail hubs to dealerships in a fairly narrow radius, except in western states, where the distances between major cities is much greater. But, the 4-car haulaway trailers remained in service, in declining numbers well into the 1970's, being the only ones that could service downtown dealerships in many towns and cities, going away as those old-school dealerships either closed, or moved their operations to the outskirts of many towns and cities where they operated. The almost constant rebuilding/remodeling/refining of secondary highways also make it possible for the new, modern haulaways to reach places once reserved for the smaller trailers of yesteryear. Efficent? Perhaps not, but those old 4-car trailers represented the best that was practical in their day. Art

To have changed, or updated the engine in that kit would have meant a lot of retooling, not always feasible, certainly not inexpensive to do, as pretty much, those parts were all tooled into the same block of hardened tool steel as all the rest of the parts. Certainly, it's not an option to just "drop in" say, a complete engine tool from another kit either, as they tend to be tooled in a very similar fashion, plus, few kits have all the engine parts on the same parts sprue or "tree". With the Revell-Monogram '36 Ford, you are looking at a kit whose basic design and tooling was done more than 45 years ago, when the design parameters, and modeler expectations were a lot different than they are today. One thing to bear in mind is, that model car kit tooling isn't always done in a fashion that allows many parts to be changed out, about the only parts that can readily be removed and replaced from such tools being the wheels, as those were created separately from the rest of the tool, and simply inserted into the mold base. Sometimes, that did happen with engines, even things such as cylinder heads or other parts, IF the original designers felt it would have been advantageous to do so, but more often than not, certainly decades ago, those things weren't considered important. That said, take a look at the chassis in the Revell Monogram '37 Ford sedan, coupe or convertible kits. In real life, that is the very same chassis that was introduced by Ford in 1935, and carried over into the 1938 Standard series ('38 Standards were 1937's carried over into the next year, with some styling updates). As for a better flathead V8 in 1/24 scale (all Monogram car kits of this size were done in 1/24 scale until the advent of their 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible done in 1992, and most of their flathead V8 engines were also tooled in the 1960's, some better than others, of course. A modern-tooled 1/25 scale flathead might look more than a bit undersized in that kit, given that Monogram tended to be right at, or perhaps a bit larger than 1/24 scale, while most all 1/25 scale model car kits tooled newly today, are pretty close to that scale all over. However, with a bit of work, you can probably get away with carving off the molded on exhaust manifolds, and either making up a pair of 3-branch headers (flathead Ford V8's had but three exhaust ports on a side, the center port carrying the exhaust gasses from the middle two cylinders in each bank), or adding separate manifolds from a 1/25 scale kit having that feature. Art