Mark Brown

Casting a complete engine would be a mess. Many, many opportunities for air pockets and bubbles, not to mention tearing up the molds getting the things out. I agree with casting the block as one piece....I've done many engine molds this way. Most of the rest of the pieces can be done as open face molds - the easiest kind to work with. Be sure to cover the mold after you pour your resin so you get a perfectly flat mating surface. Your problem areas, or the parts that will cost you the most time, will be things like belt/pulley assemblies, exhaust (if you include them) and small parts. The block, heads, intake, oil pan, etc, are all pretty simple. I pulled molds and cast the entire 429 Ford from the Revell Torino a few years ago. I was pretty happy with the results, though some of the problem parts I mentioned above needed a good bit of cleanup.

Here's a pic of my nephew's fully restored '86 Sage Green coupe, before and after the restoration. According to the Fox recognition guide, it's one of six coupes with the 5.0/auto.

I love the idea of aftermarket wheels for the big scale Shelby, but I thought I'd add a little constructive criticism. To be accurate, these wheels really need to lose the offset (deep dish). You won't find anything like that on a modern Mustang - all the wheels on the market have very little offset due to the fact that the brakes and hubs extend so far out toward the outside of the car, and thus, the spokes of the wheels are pushed to the outside of the rim. With modern big brakes and suspension, the days of deep dish wheels (or any dish, really) have come and gone. A Google search will show you what I'm referring to, and here's just one example.

Great pics but what in the world's wrong with that axle? Maybe it's just the photo but it looks like it's got some odd bends in it.

I like those valve covers - I guess great minds do think alike! Nice build - those SN-95s make great drag cars.

Something that I haven't seen mentioned but that seems like it should be pretty obvious to me, especially after being on both sides of the resin business: As a customer, if delivery time is important to you, and particularly with the problems that have plagued some resin casters over the years, you should ALWAYS ask before placing your order whether the caster has the item(s) in stock or what the delivery time will be. In a perfect world, the customer should be able to count on the resin caster to inform him or her if there will be a delay in delivery, but we don't live in a perfect world and, to be honest, I've never even heard of a caster letting the prospective customer know about delivery delays until money had changed hands. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the customer to ask first, but too many resin casters simply refuse to run their businesses - and they ARE businesses - in a businesslike fashion, and that's a real shame. Many people have one or two bad experiences and just make the assumption that the entire resin business operates that way, and never bother buying resin again. I know many modelers in that position. In the long run, poor service and poor products have the potential to hurt everyone in the resin business. Honest, responsible resin casters should encourage criticism when it's warranted because, if the scrutiny results in higher standards for the industry, both customers and resin casters will be much better off for it.

Making realistic throttle linkage is very fiddly stuff - patience and good reference photos are your true friends. I'd recommend ordering a couple of photoetch kits (Model Car Garage and Detail Master both make good ones) and you'll want to flatten out a beer or soda can to use for making bracketry. You'll need files, sandpaper and a selection of tiny drills to work with these materials.

Hey, what can I say? I learned from the best - you guys on SLM!

I'm with you, 100%, Tim. I've bought at least a couple dozen of the Revell Willys kits just for parts. Not only are the Maz and SWC kits trasure troves for vintage gasser stuff, but the street machine version is full of great modern suspension stuff, like the Mustang II front suspension. And I completely agree about scratchbuilding these parts, too. It's a snap to convert the Revell front axle to be poseable, but it's almost as easy to just make the steering axle from scratch. I also make all my ladder bars anymore - it's easy and they'll be unique to your model.

Doyusha did a kit of the '75 Skyhawk, but unfortunately it's in some "mystery scale" that looks to be about 1:22 or thereabouts. And it's a curbside with no engine or chassis detail. It would be a real job to convert it to a '79, not to mention adding all the necessary details, but you probably have limited options so it might be worth considering.

No raspberries here, Jack - that's some outstanding work!!! How old are those and what cool projects are you cookin' up now?

I'm the last guy in the world to try to dissuade anyone from finding alternative methods and materials, and I've used RR stanchions (and IMO, RR lift rings are even better) to make rod ends in the past, but if you compare the prices, the RB Motion rod ends are just about the same price or not much more expensive, and look so much better with no additional work, that it just makes sense to use them. Not only that, but Robert at RB is a modeler and caters to the car model hobby, so I like to support him back by using his stuff. There are very few things that I prefer to buy when I can make them from scratch, but the rod ends are one of them.

To me, that's the key - be willing to keep at it till you're happy with the results, without giving up or settling for something you really don't like. Along the way, you're learning new techniques, even if they don't necessarily work for this task. I think you can always salvage some victory from each defeat at the model desk, even if it's just a few spare parts for the next job. That's what keeps scratchbuilding fun for me.

Hmmm. I wondered about that - it must be a state-by-state thing. Oh well, no biggie. Buying hypos is not the cheap way to do it anyway. Just Google "stainless hypodermic tubing" and you'll find places where you can buy it online.

I made a similar post on the "other magazine" message board, so I'll just copy/paste my comment from that post. The "mounting boss" is an RB Motion rod end - those little gems are useful for so many things. "The longer pieces are right at 7/16" in length, but that will be determined by the application. The smallest pieces (collars) are 7/64" diameter tubing, I believe, with 5/64" and 1/16" pieces that go inside. The thinnest piece is stainless steel hypo tubing. I don't think hobby shops generally carry the 5/64" tubing - I had to order it directly from K&S but that was quite a few years ago (minimum order was 100 feet so it's lasted me a long time!). I use it more than all other sizes of K&S aluminum tubing combined. The easiest way to source your stainless hypo tubing is simply go to the local pharmacy and buy a dozen or so of the biggest gauge syringes they carry. They're cheap so you might want to get a few smaller sizes, too. I find them very useful for all sorts of detailing tasks - just clip off the point after you've removed the needle part so you don't get stuck. The rod end is from RB Motion and the chunk of sprue is just something I used to hold the collar while I rounded it off." I hope this answers your questions - if not, please let me know.

I've made a few coilovers using aluminum tubing and craft store beading wire. I highly recommend the beading wire over trying to use a spring from some other application - it makes a very realistic coil spring and is soft and easy to work with. The chunk of plastic sprue is a tool to hold the small section of aluminum tubing for sanding to shape. These are pretty simple to make - they just require some patience.

While I certainly agree with your point about the wrinklewalls, Terry, I'm about 99% convinced that the Anglia photo isn't representative. I've looked through a couple hundred photos of vintage racecars and what I saw - or didn't see - backs up my gut reaction, which is that the car in the photo has severely underinflated tires and would never have been raced like that, and if it was, it probably wasn't done more than once. Anglias were (are) hard enough to control - enough so that the NHRA essentially outlawed them for several years due to their abbreviated wheelbase - and that car would have been virtually undriveable with that low air pressure. At speed, as the tires returned to their full diameter due to centrifugal force, the car would have moved around on the sidewalls and been more than a handful to drive. In my car, just a couple pounds difference on the low side - unnoticeable to the eye - made it a real attention-getter as it wandered around on the sidewalls at 140mph.

I think I'm going to partially retract my previous post. After doing some research, it seems that most of the DR community is about evenly split between the Hoosiers and MTs, and since there's already a couple guys making MTs, you'd probably be better off making the wider Hoosiers. And after looking at your 275s a little more closely, they look just great as they are - don't change a thing.

Since I don't see a lot of racers using the Hoosier DR tires, I'm curious how hard it would be to replicate the Mickey Thompson "tread" on the wider version. Seems like the majority of guys I see are running the M/T tires. Either way, if you make the 325s, I'll buy 'em! The only change I'd make on them is to maybe round the shoulders a bit, so they've got more of a "radial" look and less of a slick tire appearance.

I'm going to order a couple pair of these, but you'd probably get a huge response if you did some 325s in 28" diameter. 275DR racing is growing, but the bigger drag radial racing is already huge. I know if you did some 325s I'd be in for a half dozen pair, at least.

Durn it - I knew I should have done a search first!

The "hoarders" thread has gotten me thinking about wills a little bit, especially since I've never done anything about one. Since a lot of us have been around a while and we've already seen a lot of great modelers pass, I'm wondering if anyone has made provisions for their model stuff in their will. I would assume that, unless specific instructions are left in the will, most of the time all a builder's stuff would wind up in an estate sale and get auctioned off, probably to someone who doesn't know its real value. I'm curious if any of you have done a will and if you included anything about your model stuff. Have you included instructions to leave it to a particular builder, or maybe to a club or even to the Model Car Museum? I know it's kind of a semi-morbid subject for a thread, but it's also something that people tend to put off or ignore until it's too late. I'd hate to think of all the model stuff I've accumulated over the last 45 years winding up in a landfill or something.....I'd much rather it end up with a builder who will do something with it. Any thoughts or ideas?

Unless modelers get specific in their wills (probably a topic for another thread) I expect most of them will wind up in estate sales and then get eBayed by people who specialize in liquidating estates.

The only accurate 429-460 Ford that's ever been done in scale (1:25) is in the Revell '70 Torino and Torino Cobra kits.

Between all the models, model parts, paint, CDs and books, it would be a fire that would probably be visible from space!