Foxer

Just a thought that may be pertinent ... plastic glues work by melting and fusing the styrene. They aren't really glue but a plastic solvent. You must scrap any paint away from the surfaces being joined or you will not get a bond. This could have been what happened to you.

Looks like plumber's dream! Gonna be a real looker thou.

Unfortunately, HP thinks everyone but them are idiots and camouflages the print setting as much as they can. Get into the print setting when you go to print. It's best to print from a graphics application so you can get to the printer properties easier. I'm sure there's no setting for Decal Paper, so you'll have to experiment with your printer to find the best paper setting. Ink Jet printers ARE all about the paper. Use the highest quality print settings to start, but you may find the printer uses too much ink because the decal paper responds differently to the ink than a photographic paper does. Decal Paper will absorb less ink than cheap paper, just like high quality photographic paper. I'd start with a medium photo paper setting to start at high quality.

Amazing bodywork using melted plastic! Headlights look great. I'm assuming you're not going to section the body like the 1:1 your modeling it after?

Looks cool .. lots of potential there.

It's a cool looking body. Should be fun making it look good.

Both are capable of printing good decals. I would make a wild guess that the ink jet will do the best job. Ink Jets have been printing great quality for years at low prices. Color lasers are much newer to the scene and are still very pricey to match ink jet quality.

STUNNING! Great one, Chris! What are those 2 screws doing on the lightened rails under the seats? ... OMG! ...Needless to say, details are incredible!

That is a stunning build!

Man .. that's some aged plastic. And a shame the purple pond hates custom bodywork. But, I'm sure it will be better than ever. All Sture's deserve a comeback.

Looking good. What a pain rescribing seats. ehhe

Good looking build. That paint looks great on all those curves!

Don't stop! This is a great looking build. The Alclad looks good.

That came out fantastic looking! You did the kit justice.

Be sure you have the correct decal paper for your printer. A laser and an ink jet are two distinct types of printers. You have one or the other. Decal papers are produced specifically for each type of printer.

You are really just talking about simple proportions. But as Harry says above, perspective is always a monkey wrench is doing this. Even with a photo taken at right angle to the side of the car the camera lens and parts that are at different distances from the camera than the wheels you use for base measurement will not proportion correctly. Some factored adjustment would have to be made to account for the proportion distortion. Even so, I have done this many times when modeling to get basic dimensions for a part I have to make. The eye is probably more important than the exact scale to the fraction of an inch to get something that looks right. You don't want to even think about the math involved in correcting for perspective. In any case, the basic math is very simple. Say you have a car with an actual wheel base of 100 inches. Call this value WB1. You then obtain a photo of the side and when printing it out ... it IS important to print it ... the wheelbase measures 5 inches. Call this number WB2. This is the proportion you need to scale off the print. Now say you want to know the diameter of the tires on the real car. Call the call the dimension of the tire in your printout T2. The actual dimension of the tire would be T2 x WB1 / WB2. Another way to say this is, divide the actual wheelbase by the dimension of the wheelbase in the print. This is your proportion. Then, multiply this by the dimension you measure off the print to get the actual dimension of this on the car. So, with the example I gave our basic proportion is 100 divided by 5 which equals 20. If the rims on the print measured .75 inches, you multiply that by 20 and get 15 inch rims. So there's the math. Good luck finding reference materiel you can use to do this.

It's 1963 and Lion's Dragway out West has been operating for 8 years now. Connecticut Dragway has been open a few years and all the local shops are stripping wrecks for parts to get in on the fun! Vin's Sunoco in Hartford has decided to sideline their Modified for awhile and go drag racing! A customer paid for a recent valve job with a long rail frame and got the sparks flying. It looks way too long for what Vin had in mind, but will serve as a good model for the weld boys to fab something up. (Thanks gbk1 for the frame leads! <img src="http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> ) A recent wreck brought in the untouched 283 and Vin's brother Vito out in Vegas somehow came into a front mounted blower with all the fixings. No one asked anything about this. Aunt Stella's old Vicky has been sitting in the barn just waiting for somewhere to go after losing her fenders to salt and this is it. The body shop has wanted to cut into this shell for years. Go to it boys!

Nice job, The highlites look good.

I go with the minimal, or even no chop crowd. Depends what kind of look you like. I rather like sectioned, full greenhouse cars. And, nice to see ya around again Roy. And, looked at your web page and gallery's after posting this. Your 3D car meshes look great , especially the engines. There's just not enough 3D engines around! I've been fascinated with car meshes since the day 3D Studio came out in '92 and have been collecting them since. I always had too many other things going to create any car meshes from scratch, but have modified and refined many. There's just something magical watching a car render come up all textured and smoothed!! 3D has always been just a hobby for me although I've done proposed building renderings for my consulting business and many objects for Poser artists.

Thanks for the links, Bernard. I can usually find anything but this was evading me.

Audi needed to be dethroned. Congrats Peugeot!!

That one sounds pretty good, Bernard. The frame does look very similar to the long Digger one I have, but with nice round rails. I am planning to throw the Chevy front blower engine from the Competition kit in it, but that does sound nice. )) Is this the same kit as the Hippie Hemi I see all over? I don't see the HemiSphere kit anywhere. It's a rough search with all the other junk that name brings up . eheh

That's a nice list to go at .. thanks Andy. Are some of those one piece frames? I never thought of draft as the reason for the flat sides .. DOH! .. of course! And, George ... I kinda like your idea. I may just try some and maybe a little of Andy's suggestion of scraping them to shape on some of the filler members. For the most part, I don't think the extra thickness will hurt me. The toughest area would have been the back end curves, but that's all covered with the seat and nothing is needed.

I'm planning a mid 60's dragster for the Lions Dragway build off and am having troubles locating a frame to use. I have a AMT DIGGER PLYMOUTH HEMI CUDA DRAGSTER that has the correct looking frame, other than the rails are only half circles.. they are flat on the insides of the frame.This must be because the frame is fully covered by the body when built. It would have been an easy cut down to a shorter wheelbase, but since the frame will be exposed it's not suitable. I'm figuring about a 120" front engine dragster. Modifying a longer frame is no problem but it has to be a front engine frame so the rear end looks right. Since I haven't seen any dragster kits in so long, I was hoping to get some suggestions as to what kits I might find a usable frame. It seems the old AMT Double Dragster kit is the one I really need ... and that was the last dragster I actually built... when it was first released! However, the prices I see are much more than I want to spend on this. I am also not up for building a frame from scratch even though that WOULD be an interesting project.

That's a real looker ... very cleanly done!