Force

Ok I understand, it's great to see your builds and the Jo-Han Funny Cars are nice model kits.

Well I live in Sweden and I have to travel to the US first, and I have not just been to California but mostly there in the L.A. area, but I have also been to Arizona, Nevada and Oregon under my 9 trips so far...and changed flights a couple of times at O'Hare airport in Chicago Illinois. I had planned to make my 10th trip in 20 years in October-November last fall but the Corona virus did stop that in it's tracks.

The engine block looks a bit too clean and smooth to be correct, the ribs on the sides are not on any FE engine and there are nothing for the cross bolts for the three middle main caps either wich are on all 427's and some of the late 406's, the other FE engines doesn't have them. I also wonder where they had thought of routing the oil lines to the oil filter from, there is nothing on the drivers side of the engine block where the filter and filter adapter usually goes on a FE engine. There should be a squareish hump casted in there on the block side where the two main oil lines from the oil pump to the filter and back into the oil gallery comes out and the oil filter adapter mounts on that hump with four bolts, the filter usually mounts on that hanging straight down beside the block skirt and oil pan, if you want to use a remote filter there is another adapter for that with two oil lines going to the filter and back. The kit is supposed to be a 1965 and that's the year the famous "side oiler" came but there is nothing of that showing on the engine block for that either and no fuel pump or fuel pump mount. Well enough rambling, it looks to be a nice kit and easy to assemble.

Looks to be big scale, 1:12 or something like that and the feeling I get is that they are manufactured in Asia. I know Otaki and Doyusha issued 71 Mustang and 73 Firebird Mercedes and Porsche 911 kits in 1:12 scale, so I believe these can be Otaki kits and they were reboxed and also issued under the Doyusha name.

Has anyone seen this? https://uscp-ua.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=628 It would take any Audi S1 Quattro Group B model up a notch.

I have been to the US and California 9 times since 1998 and I have seen signs on some Highways and Interstate Freeways where it reads "Autos with trailers/Trucks 55 Maximum" and one time I saw three speed limit signs in a row, Speed Limit 75 on the first, Truck Speed 65 on the second and Minimum Speed 55 on the third. But mostly one feel in the way when the trucks are coming up behind you even if you're slightly over the speed limit yourself. And I forgot to add, Nice build of the DAF.

All of the above but it depends on the model I'm doing at the time. If I'm doing a replica model of something the research part is quite extensive to get everything right, or at least as right as it can be...but it's also a fun part of the build and you learn much. Engine detailing is fun but time consuming sometimes, at least when you do an engine that's visible, one example is engines on Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars , hot rods and other cars where the engine is a focal point and needs to be "busy" to look right. Interiors are fun to do, prepairing for paint, paint, polishing and BMF is challenging to do and a 50's car with lots of brightwork are somewhat tideous, I just remember when I did my AMT 58 Chevy Impala model where the foiling was fiddly and took a long time.

Very interesting, the big three was experimenting with gas turbines back in the day and had many test vehicles with turbine engines. Unfortunately the trailers seems to be gone for this one but it's cool the truck is still there.

Yes, the 70 and 80 decals are the maximum allowed speed limit in kilometers per hour the truck can go at on different kind of roads in some countries in Europe and it's a warning to other road users that they are driving at a lower speed than allowed on the road. Here in Sweden where I live the trucks are not required to have these decals and 80 kph is the speed limit for them and the speed limiter required in heavy trucks since the early 90's in most countries in Europe are set at 90 and most of them drive at 85-90 kph on the highways here even if they weigh 65 metric tons.

Nice, I like the old Jo-Han Funny Car kits and the fact that they are kits of real race cars from the time when they were done, the Pinto and Mustang were originally Mickey Thompson cars and the Challenger was a Gene Snow car. I'm just curious about the small size slicks on your two builds, they are a lot larger in my kits.

It's most likely not changed from earlier issues and the front axle is stock hight and not dropped wich would have looked much better.

The Byron's Gasser Madness site of Byron Stack was a great information site for gassers, Byron died 2012 but his legasy is still with us. Here is a link to his old site https://efregoso.github.io/gassermadnessus/ and the new Gasser Madness site https://gassermadness.com/

The tooling for the wheels are most likely changeable inserts so you can do variations of the kits, at least for old Monogram kits as there are several variations of their kits. The Corvette Hatchback and the California Street Vette are based on the same tooling, most are the same for both but some things are different, among them the wheels. The 55 Chevy Street Machine are from the same tooling as the Bad Man 55 Chevy, it's the same kit with different wheels and the wheels look exactly like the wheels in the California Street Vette, and there are several more kits with these five slot wheels and tires. Another example is the wheels from the old Son Of Ford 32 Roadster wich also are in the VW Bus customs like the Firebomb, Baja Beast and Baja Bandido, the Tijuana Taxi, the front wheels for the Bad Man Chevy and some others.

I don't like when people call all cars with the front up in the air "Gassers", at least nowadays, most of them don't comply with the quite strict gasser rules and if you don't the cars are Altereds or something else. Many drag racing cars , not just gassers, had the front a bit higher back in the day for better weight transfer in acceleration as been said before in this thread, not like today when all drag racing cars are low to the ground mostly to reduce drag and to prevent lift in high speeds.

It looks like everything is sold out now.

If you're into cars you learn over the years, I know I have. And if you are doing research on a subject you have to look for several sources for pictures and info and don't believe the first best you get until you have seen more to backup what you have seen, good websites are one, car shows and magazines are other places to look.

Don't mention it, glad I could help.

They are breathers.

Unfortunately there are no pictures but It's a 1:24th scale kit and there are no 67-68 Mustang kits available in 1:24th scale, only 1:25. But if it's a complete transkit including the body it really doesn't matter that much if it's a 65-66 or 67-68 as as you probably just have to use the chassis and drive train from the donor kit and the differences under the body are quite small for these years, but if there are no body in the kit wich year the trans kit is based on does matter a lot for the car to be correct as the body is very different. The movie car appearently had a small block even tho' the markings say GT500 so to be correct to the markings you need a 428 otherwise the 289 from the 65-66 kits will do.

Very nice indeed.

Detroit Diesel 12V-71, looks like the engine from Tyrone Malone Kenworth Super Boss or a copy of it.

No the brakes is carbon-carbon disc brakes, the thing looking like a drum is only a cover that helps cooling and shield the heat generated by the brakes from the wheel itself. Lets see next year, most of the air directing thingamagigs, doo-dads and winglets will be gone as the downforce will be generated in other ways and the cars will be easier follow without loosing downforce and be less sensitive to "dirty" air like they are today...at least that what the new regulations and car specs starting in 2022 are aming for.

I have an E9 V8 here on the bench from Auslowe and it has a turbo, I would guess it's a resin copy of the Italeri engine.

Yes Renault used the Mack E9 V8 in some of their trucks, for example the Magnum and some others, but the V8 disappeared from the Mack lineup 1999 and there are no V8's after that. You are right, Mack and Scania developed the V8 engine together and has some other engines in common earlier, they went kind of separate ways with the layout of the V8 with the head configuration and some other things, so they are not exactly the same: Renault still has relations to Mack as the parent company who bought both companies in 2000-2001 is Volvo, and it's a bit funny that Volvo ended up with Mack since Volvo and Scania are fierce competitors in some markets among them Europe, Australia and South America. But if you don't want to buy a whole kit for the engine you can get a E9 V8 in resin from Auslowe.

I found an add from 1972 in my files when I was looking just now mentioning the CO 4070A was coming so 1973 is probably right, I just took the year for the initial issue from the top of my head and only missed it with a couple of months, from October 1973 wich is the copyright date you have to January 1974 is 3 months, maybe 2-2½ if it took some time for the distribution. Anyway, it's one of the rarest truck kits out there as it was only out between October 1973 and sometime in 1975 before the tool was converted to the CO 4070B Transtar II Eagle for 1976.