Force

The wheels in my Revell 67 GTX Sox & Martin kits and some issues after that are Keystone Classics. I haven't seen Sox & Martin run Cragar SS wheels on any of their cars...not that I know of anyway, I have mostly seen Keystone Classics on their race cars up until 72-73...they had American Racing Bear Paw rear wheels on the 71 Cuda for a while tho', I really don't know why...maybe they were stronger.

Yes we can buy kits over here...but they are more expensive than in the States tho' so I do much of my business in USA nowadays. I don't know what stationwagon you mean, a picture would help. When Ormsby lost his battle with cancer it was a great loss to the drag racing community.

Thanks!! It isn't that hard...just tedious and you need lots of patience, There are good references on the internet so if you look around you'll probably find some...I used detail photos taken by myself at a race just before the build as I didn't have a computer back then. The fuel blocks are made of Evegreen styrene stock and the barrel valves are filed out of the same material, all the 16 injection lines under the bird catcher and blower are made of 0.4 mm stainless wire cut and bent to fit, the fuel and oil hoses are a type of insulated wire painted silver to look like braided lines, the insulating is stripped at the ends with red and blue for the AN fittings, all the hoses were cut and bent to fit before painting, the ignition wires are made from a thin 0.3-0.4 mm copper wire painted red with black ends and the magnetos are modified some to look more like the Mallory Super Mag's (III, IV or V) they were supposed to be...no MSD Pro Mag 44's as they use today, they came later. The throttle cable is the same stainless wire I used for the injection lines but most of it is painted red, and I added a return spring made out of a very thin wire coiled around a larger wire, the fuel shut off cable for the dual Enderle pumps are made the same way, (same here, the Sid Waterman "Bertha" series fuel pumps they use today came later). The only important thing missing is the blower bag as it was required at the time...but I didn't know how to make one that looked convincing so I left it off, the hold down straps are bits of masking tape. The thing is to not overdo it, so you need a bit of basic knowledge of what goes where and what they do, but you can't do everything as all things doesn't come out good in scale and will look clumsy and overdone so you have to have the feel of when it's just enough for the engine to look convinsing and busy.

Very nice...Where did you get the wheels??

Have a looke here: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70954

I rather have too much chrome in a kit than noting at all, it's a lot easier to remove unwanted chrome plating than put on chrome you want....everyone doesn't have a plating service near by you know. Yes, there are Alclad and other stuff wich works okay for small parts but nothing comes near real factory vacuum plating.

Here is another of my old builds, this time the Revell Castrol GTX Top Fuel Dragster tuned by Lee Beard and driven by the late Gary Ormsby in 1990-91. The model was built around 1993-94 and the model itself is built out of box except for some serious detailing...I simply had to...the engine looked so empty without it ...so the engine alone took about a week to do. All details are home made as I hadn't began buying aftermarket stuff at the time and the only thing that's not out of the box except for the detailing are the rear wheels, I used the Centerline Convo Pro wheels from the Revell Soff Seal 57 Chevy Pro Sportsman kit as Ormsby's car had those back in the day. I also built a hauler for it using the AMT Kenworth T600A Canepa and Trailmobile Moving Van/Race Car Trailer...everything was ready in the summer of 1995. To the pics: And the Hauler. Enjoy.

Vac-u-pan. A way to reduce internal pressure in the crank case using the exhaust to pull it out...today they use vacuum pumps for that.

Oh yes we do. Yes I have seen several teams/guys running both dual distributors/dual plug heads and singles on their Hemi's during the early to mid 70's in Pro Stock. I don't have the Cars article itself, just these pictures so I don't know if they are taken at the same time, the Cars magazine was from December and the Hot Rod article is from February and shows single plug heads...so I assumed the Cars pictures were late...but Sox & Martin had several cars active at the same time as they did both the NHRA, AHRA cirquit and lots of match racing during the year, and they could have changed some things around a bit now and then...but I don't know for sure.

Yes the pictures from the 1970 Hot Rod Magazine show the mock up clutch can as the car was just built at the time and wasn't finished and in race condition. As you can see in my last pictures S & M did obviously try dual plug heads already in 1970 but I think it was late in the year, because those pictures are from Hi Performance Cars Monthly Magazine December 1970 and the car is one of their 70 'Cuda's...but of course the pictures can have been taken anytime during 1970 as the magazines save material to do articles over the whole year. They did run dual plug heads in the 71 'Cuda but the distributors were a different setup as they used dual magnetos in that car.

Interesting, this I'm gonna follow.

The car hauler axles are 1 ½ inch drop from a regular axle and are widely used together with single leafs and air bags together. Petetrucker: Hesperia, Ca...I have been there lots of times, I have a friend who lives on Cottonwood Ave.

Here are a couple of articles from the magazines back then. First some larger more readable pictures from the Hot Rod February 1970 article you posted And a later article from Cars December 1970...note that they used dual distributors and dual plug heads by then as in the later 1971 'Cuda.

Well someone dug deep in the archives to find this thread, it was started over 3 ½ years ago and the latest pictures were posted 2 ½ years ago, so "much water has run under the bridge" since then. He could have rearranged his albums, deleted the pictures or even closed his account with photobucket since then...who knows.

M/T even ran a 2 cylinder Tempest engine sometimes and the car and a couple of it's engines (the 2 cylinder) are on display at the NHRA Museum at Pomona, CA.

Thanks guys! Yes the AMT kit looks a little off but it was the only kit available at the time. On the other hand, the doors are longer and the roof is shorter ...and maybe even slightly lower...on the Hard Top so you can't compare the body styles that way. But you can allways use the current Revell 55 Bel Air Hard Top kit and use the post roof from the 56 Del Ray and you'll get a better model, I have seen it done and the conversion isn't that difficult.

Yes, I have never heard of anything else than Chevy big block based Arias Hemi engines. The Arias, Donovan, McGee and other engine designs were used in drag racing back in the 70's and 80's but NHRA stated that the Mopar 426 Hemi design specs were the only accepted design in the rules for the nitro classes back in the 90's so the other engines faded away. John Force Racing designed a Ford Hemi called Boss 500, other than the block is anodized blue it looks like the other aftermarket Mopar based TFX, KB, BAE, AJPE Hemi's as the bore spacing and other measures has to be as the Mopar Hemi's, the only thing altered is the main bearings and the lifter holes are slightly different. The tractor pulling guys has since then adopted the Arias Hemi and it has been widely used there.

The teardrop scoop on the Revell Thunderbolt is too square and angular in shape and that's the biggest issue with this kit, it should be more round to be correct...I don't think Revell ever did anything to correct it so the last issues has the same squareish hood scoop. The flat stock like hood came with the last 2 'n 1 issue wich also had dog dish hubcaps and the teardop hood is still there. The Modelhaus does a correct resin teardrop hood for the Revell kit and I think there were more casters who had them at the time. If we go to the Trumpeter Falcon there are almost too many faults to list.

As far as I have heard the original sleeper for the second issue of the 359 small window Pete is altered and not usable. But AITM has the original sleeper, it's marked as 36 inch Restrite Sleeper on the website. A chromed Mercury Sleeper is a cool choise, many polished them out.

Time for another of my old builds, this time it's AMT's 55 Chevy Bel Air. I started this one in the beginings of the 2000's and finished a couple of years later, the kit is as I said an AMT wich is a bit demanding, the hood didn't fit and I had to add material both to the sides and length to get it to fit right in the opening, the rear light bezels was too large for the openings and had to be trimed to fit, I also had to scribe in a couple of missing panel lines in the front fenders and some other things. I used Alclad II Chrome on the light bezels and grille as it's opened up to accept a photo etch screen from the MCG 55 Chevy photo etched kit for the Revell-Monogram 55 Chevy, it works for the AMT kit with some slight modifications...all scripts and emblems except for the hood and trunk amblem are from the MCG kit. The engine is a Chevy big block from the AMT 69 Chevelle with some basic wiring so I had to put the radiator in front of the core support as they do on the real cars, the color is 418 Red Pearl Metallic from Volvo 850 with BMF on all trim and the wheels is from the Revell-Monogram 37 Ford Convertible With Trailer. Well enough talk...to the pics.

You're welcome. I'm not an expert but these are things I have learned from my own experience and trials. I bought my EOS 400D back in 2008, sold that and upgraded to an EOS 650D in 2013, I used the standard 18-55mm kit lens (no IS) and a 55-250mm tele zoom (with IS) at first, but wanted to be more flexible and I don't like to drag on more equipment than nesessary so I bought the EFS 18-135mm IS STM lens I have now and it's a nice close to midrange lens.

The standard 18-55 mm kit lens is a cheaper lens and a new more expensive one with higher quality might help some, but it isn't the total solution to the problem. With a 200 mm lens you have to go a lot further away from the object, I have a 55-250 tele zoom and the closest distance for focus with that is 3.6 ft (1.1 meter)...plus the fact that zoom eats light so the shutter speeds are slower. The most common misstake when photographing small objects is to stand too close to the object so the camera chooses a focal point further away in the background and the foreground gets out of focus, if you use the zoom feature you might have to stand a bit further away than the closest distance marked on the lens, 0.9 ft (28 centimeter) for the standard 18-55 mm kit lens in the 18 mm range and a bit over and if you zoom out to 55 you have to stand a bit further away from the object With a Macro lens you will get some distorsion of the object...not much but some, and that lens is only good for closeups. Another thing to keep in mind is the cameras focal points, I don't remember how many focal points the EOS 400 have but, it's 9 on the 650 but I usually only use the one in the middle so I'm sure what I'm focusing on and where the focus is in my pictures. Another thing, you don't have to be upclose to take good model pictures, you can try to not fill the whole picture with the model you want to take a picture of, the resolution on modern cameras is so large (if I remember correctly it was 10.1 megapixel on the EOS 400D and I have 18 on my 650D) so you can cut out the part you need from a larger picture and use it in normal size...the resolution setting you have chosen for your pictures also have much to do with how sharp your images gets, a larger resoution has more information per square millimeter and will get you a sharper picture and many professional photographers use the highest RAW setting wich captures all information possible for the picture...but the file size with RAW are huge and are not nessesary to use for this, jpeg is the most common file type for images and it's compressed so a jpeg file also looses some in quality. Also if you downsize the picture and make the file size smaller in for example Photoshop it will also loose in sharpness. So there are many parameters on how your picture comes out.

I have a Canon EOS 650D, I previously had an EOS 400D as you wich was a good camera but I upgraded to a 650D little over a year ago as it has more features. I have used either the original 18-55 mm kit lens or the one I use for most photographing nowadays, my Canon EFS 18-135 mm IS STM lens wich has better midrange so I don't have to change to a tele lens other than for realy long range. The key to sharp model pictures has not that much to do with what lens you use, it's better to try to use as small shutter opening as possible, if you go Full Automatic the camera chooses a larger shutter opening and the pics are only sharp where the focal point is...and on a car model that can be just the front fender...with a smaller opening you will get more "depth of field", that will say the picture is sharp from front to back of the picture and the whole model gets sharp. Use the AV setting on your dial and choose the highest number possible (for example F18, F20 or F22) and the camera chooses the shutter speed automaticly for that shutter opening...if you don't have Image Stabilizer you might have to use a tripod stand and use the camera timer so you don't shake the camera when you "pull the trigger" so to speak. I have photographed models in all zoom ranges of my lens with this method and it doesn't matter wich I use, the pics comes out sharp either way, but don't go too close to your object, the closest distance possible you can go is marked on your lens, my 18-135 lens has 1.3 ft, ( the standard 18-55 is 0.9 ft) closer than that the camera can't focus.

I believe he talks about this one....it could be a clone and the picture is taken at a later stage and not in 1970. This car also has Centerline or Cragar Super Trick wheels instead of the regular Keystone Classics, Bear Paw or 5 slots of the other cars.

Thanks guys!