Alyn

Wow Bernard, those last photo's are way over the top. I love it!

forgot to add: NICE WORK ! Bernard. The narrow body is cool

... except the duck

man, you are on top of the mountain. This car is indescribably fantastic in both creativity and execution. Find a way to add another 400 parts so we can keep watching.

so many details, yet it doesn't look over done. I'm enjoying the ride. Keep at it.

No lack of skills here. Beautiful paint work, and a great way to overcome the pin striping limitations. The gold is a perfect addition.

thanks for the interest, guys. Bil, nice to see you on-line. I'll be looking for some pics of your awesome aluminum work - real soon Darrick, build away. I'll be looking for some progress pics on the 40.

good idea! How well does this type of plastic respond to glue? CA I assume. These look like they could be used for a variety of parts. I think I see a generator in there, maybe a magneto, fuel pump, etc.

almost forgot about this one. In my opinion, one of the more challenging things to do to an older hot rod is lowering the front end. On the 40 Ford, the axle runs under the frame rails with a transverse leaf spring used for support. The simplest thing to do is use a drop axle. The kit comes with one, but mine was donated to another project. I like to use the suicide front end; simple and it can easily drop the front end as much as you like. By design, the wheelbase ends up longer, but that's pretty commonplace with rat rods. I added a straight front cross member, and then constructed the suicide mount from some "C" channel styrene. A slot was cut to mate up with the tab on top of the leaf spring. This provides a positive connection between the two parts. Here's the finished mount in primer. I added some holes to accept some bolts. Radius arms locate the axle to the frame. The arms consist of aluminum tube, slightly crushed to create an oval cross section. There's no particular reason to do this. I just thought the arms would look better this way. Holes were drilled along the length of the arms for character, and styrene was epoxied into the ends to facilitate mounting.At the frame end, I fabbed up some brackets using square styrene tube. once again, in primer: 9" Ford rear axle as provided by the kit. This will be located with radius arms provided in the kit. I cut out the molded in gas tank to make it easier to paint. It was nestled down between the frame rails so deep that accurate masking would have been very difficult. thanks for looking

Thanks, guys. Bart, I was in the same boat as you about three years ago. I hadn't built a model in 45 years; back to my pre-teen glue bomb days.My wife had bought me an 1:8th scale Corvette to placate my sale of my full size one. I got on the internet to look for supplies and tools. I was blown away by the quality and detail in the hobby today. Nothing like what I remember back in the 60's. Glad to see you've come back around as well. Welcome to the new world. Erik, I've grown to love the look of this car. I remember back in the day, that Pontiacs ruled the highways. They were know to be the best of the high speed freeway cruisers. This is an excellent kit. Everyone should give it a go. John, I have the same shaky hands and bad eyes everyone else has. Good magnifying glasses make up for a lot of it. I thought the same thing as you about the valve covers. Since this car will be more akin to a show car, the chrome was definitely the way to go. The stock blue valve covers would still be great on the competition version and would enhance the look of a motor that is "all business" Thank you all for following along.

I've seen some cool flying car models lately, but this one has got to be the best of the best. Everything you've done to chop up the 59 has been right on the money.

You gotta be a proud poppa, John. This baby is spectacular. Congratulations on a truly beautiful model.

great stuff, Ira. Your imagineering is impressive and entertaining.

Once again, I can't thank you guys enough for the great comments. Dave, the MCM forum is a great place to find some inspiration. Lot's of great guys doing some really cool things around here. Glad to see you found the place. Mike; don't you have a wagon to finish? Just bringing that up to remind you that messing up a keyboard can be a two-way street

Here's the engine and battery dropped into the engine compartment. More Alclad covers the fender wells. The mufflers are covered in Tamiya gold topped with dull coat. The exhaust tubing is covered in more metalizer(buffing aluminum). Finally, the chassis is in paint. This will show the final body color; kind of a burnt orange pearl. The exhaust is just setting in place. I still need to file to fit where the exhaust meets the headers. (the kind of thing that should be done prior to paint). and one more... thanks for looking

Chuck, this is only my second attempt at Alclad, so I only show the good parts It is good stuff, though. There''s absolutely no doubt that I'll be buying more. I picked up some of their black base, but I haven't tried that yet. What you see here is shot over Tamiya gloss black. Thanks, Ken. There's only going to be a moderate amount of detail on the chassis, but I'm hoping the use of color and metalizers will make up the difference. Glad you like the engine, Guy. Thanks for the compliment. It's surely going to be my favorite part of this car. Here's where I'm at today. The top chop is finished. The emblems and door handles have been shaved, and chrome trim strips on the trunk and rear fenders have been removed. After a little more clean up on the hood, the body will be only a wet sand away from paint time. I sanded off the molded in wiring from the fender wells and firewall. All other detail was removed from the firewall as well to create a clean show-custom look. I also added the small scratch build braces at the top of the fender wells. The brake master cylinder will likely be the only item to remain on the firewall. There's still some block sanding left to do at this point. I decided to scratch build the battery hold down, so the molded in detail was filed off. The vertical groove on the side will help keep the hold down bolt in place. A little overkill so the glue won't have to do all the work. Here's the finished battery, detail painted and ready to go. The hold down bolts are 1/32" aluminum rod with the top end pinched and filed to give it the look of a wing nut. The cross bar is just a piece of beaders wire wrapped around the bolts. I found the DieHard decal on an old TransAM decal sheet.

I'm digging the Yellow Chevy truck and tow combo as well as the Stude, but what's really cool is the impressive collection of stockers. With so many hot rods, customs and competition cars, it's refreshing to see the unmolested ones.

... and the 1/2, my yellow gokart Thanks, Greg, for giving us all a way to show why we spend all that time in the basement.

Happy New Year to you all. I think and ponder too much, and then finally translate my thoughts into plastic and other media. This in not a good formula for getting a lot done, but I enjoy it. Here's my completed builds for 2011 32 Ford Sedan 57 Chevy Black Widow convertible

I don't know how you could improve on that. Fantastic work, John

Thanks for the support, John. I hope this technique will help you create some really groovy parts. I like to get my money's worth out of these extrusions. The first example of a radiator cap was a bit out of focus. Here's a better one, although I should have used the smaller rod to make it more to scale. Why make make a radiator cap when most kits either come with one, or have it molded into the radiator? In my case, they are easy to lose. I also find that with a separate cap, it's easier to do a good job of painting the cap with a clear and sharp line between the silver and black. Plus it's fun to see what you can make.

Here's some examples of how the newly "extruded" shape can be used. This is a close-up of a Pontiac 421 with a scratch built intake. A thick section of the extrusion was sliced off the rod we just completed. I used a small round file to shape the bottom side so it would fit like a saddle over the coolant cross-over pipe. After the part was glued in place, the large center hole and two smaller holes were drilled. The center hole will help hold the radiator hose in place. Here's another slice used for a radiator cap. The only addition needed was the pressure release button in the center. Imagine trying to create this part by creating a small disk and then attempting to create the small ears and glue them in place. This is much easier with the extrusion technique. Finally, here's some slices of the extrusion used on some scratch built headers.I drilled a center hole into the end of the extrusion rod prior to cutting the discs. The holes were then reamed out to the size necessary to slip over the head tubes. Now you've seen two different "extruded" shapes used to make scratch built parts. You may very likely think of some additional shapes to create with this process. Please share them when you do.

In my tutorial on scratch building distributors, I mentioned the concept of extrusions. Real extrusions are forced through a die to create the necessary shape. The parts I am making only mimic this effect, but their usefulness is the same. To me, this concept was the most important part of the tutorial. Here's another example to show how handy this technique can be. Once again, I'm starting with some round and 1/2 round styrene. In this instance, the core shape, at .080" is slightly smaller than the rod used for the distributor. This rod was too small to fit in my aluminum heat sink, so I used a triangular file to cut a shallow groove in a small wooden block. The round rod was laid in this groove with a piece of masking tape holding it in place. The half round is then positioned along the top of the larger rod and also taped into place. Liquid cement is then applied to bond the two parts together. It's important that the pieces of 1/2 round are directly opposite each other. To ensure this, the dot on the end of the 1/2 round will make it easier to check the orientation of the parts during construction. Once the glue sets up, this part is turned 90°. The mark on the end aids in making sure the rod is positioned correctly. Place another strip of 1/2 round opposite the first and glue it in place. That's about it. How easy was that? Give this assembly 24 hours to allow the glue to thoroughly dry and then it's ready to slice. The next post will show a few of the uses I've found for this particular shape.

Here's a mock-up of the two parts. At this point, the pump is still part of the longer piece of styrene. The extra length makes for a nice handle while you're working on the part. Here's the completed part which is about 1/4" long not counting the silver sediment bowl. Two 1/32" holes have been drilled into the side for fuel inlet and outlet. Two smaller .017" holes are drilled on opposite sides of the lower pump body to accommodate the sediment bowl retainer. This is merely a small length of 30g plated copper wire bent into an appropriate shape and inserted into the holes. Finally, here's the newly created part shot in Tamiya gold topped with Testors dull coat. The sediment bowl is covered in Model Masters Aluminum Plate. With the gold finish, It looks a lot more like a fuel pump. I inserted a couple of small lengths of insulated wire to show where the inlet and outlet lines go. To do it up right, you would want to add some hex fittings here along with the fuel line of your choice. Another option might be a mounting plate with PE nuts or screws to be glued behind the pump.

In another thread, John Pol asked for some tips on building an electric fuel pump similar to the style used in 60's and 70's drag cars. The first thing that came to mind was Stewart Warner. I've built a few electric pumps, but they were generic cylinders with fuel line fittings on each end. Here's an example on the chassis of a Revell 32 Sedan (in front of rear axle). I'm sure this in not what he had in mind, so I decided to try building one a little more like the old SW pumps. The pump consists of a main body, with some slightly larger diameter bands, and a sediment bowl on the bottom. Essentially, this breaks down to various diameter cylinders. Rather than glue a bunch of cylindrical slices together, I went a different route. 1/8" tube was used for the main body. To duplicate the protruding bands, I wrapped some styrene strap around the 1/8' body. The strap in this case is .015" X .040". For starters, the strap was laid perpendicular across the body. A small amount of liquid cement holds it in place. After a short waiting period, the glue was set enough to finish wrapping the straps around the 1/8" rod. More drying time, and then the excess strap was cut off with enough left to completely circle the body. Now it's time for yet another application of glue. This represents the main body casting for the pump. Now for the sediment bowl. I found a scrap of 3/32" rod which is slightly smaller in diameter than the body. Another scrap, in this case 1/16" hex styrene rod, was glued onto the 3/32" rod to serve as a mounting pin. It will slip into the end of the pump body. Why make it separate? This piece and the body will be different colors. To get the best color separation line, the pieces can be painted separately and then assembled. Here's the sediment bowl.