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Pics open perfectly for me on my iPad. I'd echo th comments already made so far you've done a ton of work on that shoe box and it works, even sectioning and shortening through the interior. Not all cars look good after taking a chunk out of the middle like that, yours looks good.

I like the single air cleaner too, it looks different as in not a cookie cutter Hot Rod. Something you might consider if you do. The bottom flange on the single air cleaner looks both too thick and too wide. Thin it down both in width and thickness adding a nice eye appealing radius as you thin things up. Spray it with Alclad or other chrome replacement, I think the air cleaner would look 100% better after that alone.

Geoff, another winner! These little cars kind of grow on you. Hopefully that genuine Trabant paint holds up better than on some of the cars! I see what you meant in your other thread about the paint being shiny when fresh on the real thing, looks very good.

Better get some really large pulleys to drive that blower on the banger, probably take a over half the engine's horsepower to drive it. Something like a 4-71 with 2 carbs max would be a little more appropriate for a banger. Not to mention the wobbly crank and poured babbit rod bearings, maybe they retrofitted the rods and added a full counterweight crank! Think about going smaller blower and less carbs. Don't get me wrong, that huge blower on that tiny engine kinda looks kinda cool! Your first attempt at lettering isn't too bad at all, actually pretty good. Check out some of the art catalogs, websites or stores for a decent Kolinsky (squirrel hair) watercolor brush, size one or two for the size you're lettering. Next, round up either a piece of glass 6" X 6" minimum or about the same size piece of sheet metal to practice lettering. Next thing (maybe shoulda been the first thing to do) do an Internet search for "free lettering fonts" find a couple of easy fonts and start copying them, (pencil and paper first) to develope the muscle memory for that font. Once you can do the letters a - z, 0 - 9 without looking at your reference too much, you're ready for brush and paint! Go for it, it's fun and relaxing! I've been Signwritting for years on and off, right now as my real job allows, I've only lettered a few models, it's fun. Just watch that your lettering doesn't build up too much that it looks way out of scale, you can adjust that part by thinning the lettering paint to where it lays flat (enamel works best). Good luck and have fun!

Cartoon Gassers, maybe. They look more like a collision between a Gasser and a Donk!! Really they're a conglomeration of parts, making them look like their builder used all the optional parts in the box and half the parts box whether they looked good together or not! Maybe they're the full scale equivalent of the "Glue Bomb"!!!

To all the naysayers, laying leaf is actually a whole lot easier than it looks. The same techniques Jimmy shows you here can help with some of the raggedy edges often seen on BMF where the user fails to burnish it down enough. In my opinion the leaf can do a far superior job of replicating chrome trim, it's thinner more pliable and can be worked into surfaces that would give BMF fits! The leaf is the closest to the original BMF that I've ever seen or used. (Then again, just like Jimmy, I've been gilding sign and striping work for a while, so I see and understand what and how Jimmy is trying to pass along a very useable technique.) I guess the bottom line is if your too impatient to learn to use a new tool, stick with BMF and don't tell some who wants to try a new technique that it's too hard, won't work, the wrong material for the job or the wrong tool! BTW, this is the same exact technique we use to gold leaf signs, as in, let's see, fire trucks, lettering on the side of a Gasser, Dragster, Funny Car, Show Car... So with what little information Jimmy just shared and with a little imagination you can do the real thing instead of a decal that looks just like a decal of shimmering leaf! The other thing here many don't understand about signwritting is that many of these techniques we know and use were either hard learned through trial and error. That's because the old guys we learned from were closed mouthed about many of their tricks. They would tell you part of the way to do something and you had to figure out the rest by applying what you already knew. So, in my opinion just showing you all the steps Jimmy has given you a huge gift, so don't gripe about it until you try it out!

Nice, "Period Correct" Hot Rod! You've got a great foundation going on there, be watching the rest of this one for sure. You sort of did and didn't mention what you'll be doing with the top insert. Perusing the early '60's Hot Rod magazines you see many of the "over-the-top" Hot Rods with plexiglass filled inserts either color complementing the paint or yellow, orange, blue etc.

Nice! Reminds me of a '62 'Bird that shows up at the local (to me) car shows, with a 500 inch Caddy for motervation, he has it disguised pretty well for those who can't tell it's a Cad engine! I'd say both are equally sweet cars!!!

Great subject Bernard, agree not often modeled but it's such an important part of real Hot Rod history. Many forget it was the Hot Rods of the lat 30's and 40's that laid the foundation for the 50's and early 60's Hot Rods so any of us love. Don't know why, but when I read the tag line I thought it was another one of Dennis' builds, you two turn out some real beauties! Please keep the cool pix coming, I'm enjoying the eye candy so far! makes me wonder now that we have some really sweet Model A and Deuce roadsters why no one has done a bolster in resin. I know I'd like to see it happen for anything from one like '27 to '32, it's such a classic look that literally screams "Dry Lakes and Street Driven Hot Rod".

Refer to those jacked up vehicles with whatever tag you want, they're not Gassers, never would have been Gassers in their current form. No one who was around to hear the real NHRA and IHRA Gassers roar would mistake them as for a gasser either!

Yeah, I knew about the R &C "Highboy of the Month" cars but what I was pretty much referring to was that many of the high aerial acts were never refeferred to as "Gassers". Which your post further proves, magazines and writers went out of their way to not call those cars Gassers, because they weren't. Just like the hi-jacked cars posing as pseudo-gassers are being called Gassers by ill-informed people who weren't around when the real Gassers rumbled! Which is why I rather like the descriptive term "Street Freaks". Then again, I remember seeing (in print), this kind of car referred to as a "Street Funny Car", whip that term around and see how many guffaws and outright laughter that one generates!! By the way, some of them pipes are pretty laughable when you look back at them now! They must be in the magazines that the rat rodders are reading, every once in a while you see a rat rod sporting something similar. Thankfully just like rat rods those long upward straight pipes (I remember them referred to as "Organ Pipes) were the exception to the rule!!! Just think, 50 or 60 years from now some kid is going to build a rat rod, thinking that's what every one was running in the 2K's because he has two or three rat rod magazines with "cars" with bizarre looking straight pipes!! Just sayin' , kinda the same...

Interesting tidbit on the length of the zoomie headers. I would have thought the individual exhaust pipe lengths would have been determined by track and dyno testing. I remember reading several sources where the rear pipe on right and left were angled and cut many times so they shot the hot exhaust onto the slicks to help warm up and or keep the rubber hot and sticky. The other function of the exhaust angle was an attempt to gain the advantage of needed downforce at full throttle, top fuel cars were starting to sprout wings as weed burners gave way to zoomies. Don't remember them being referred to as zoomies in print then either, they were just headers. If you go back and dig up the Hot Rod issue with Ohio George's Mustang Gasser, I seriously doubt they were referred to as zoomies as it was well understood what zoomies were and were not! The whole thing is like a lot of the terms used to describe styles of cars like gassers for example, which were understood to be jacked up no higher than 24 inches from the center of the crankshaft to the pavement per the NHRA Rulebook. Then came the jacked way beyond ridiculousness Street Freaks as dubbed by Car Craft Magazine around 1972 - 1975 timeframe (give or take a few years). A few of which were legitimate Gassers recycled back to the street, where they came from in the first place. Street Freaks were all about getting the widest rear tire under the car, no matter how high it had to be raised to do it, (this was before rear axles narrowing became common). So now you have a whole generation of younger people who weren't around then who call anything that's loud, jacked up, running a straight axle a Gasser, fast or not! By their definition a Jeep could be a Gasser too!!

I've had two occasions to use Revell's Part Replacement service. First bought a sealed New Beetle Tuner off of eBay, the entire glass spruce was missing, (I think Revell hadn't even produced it for a couple of years then). Explained issue, where I bought it, received glass a couple weeks later. Second was just after the Slingster came out, bought it from the local hobby shop. Got home opened the box to find the front axle was bent in the center at nearly a 45* angle! LHS told me they didn't want to exchange the kit, which I wasn't happy about in the least. Though I saw their point, they'd have to sell it at a loss on their defective /close out shelf; when Revell would replace the axle. Contacted Revell, I got the entire chrome tree, less than two weeks after requesting the new axle. There was a note explaining one of their molds had an ejector pin issue within the first 500 - 1000 runs through the molds. They though they had caught most of the defective pieces, they hoped the chrome tree made up for any inconvenience! It sure did!!

Oh, I thought that was the model for anything Kia or Hyundai!! Maybe just their quality model!! They both make really ugly cheap "cars". Father in law had a Kia that 99.9% of its miles were on a tow dolly behind a motor home, it was falling apart from vibration alone, electrical issues, loudest vehicle I've ever rode in (once only), didn't even feel romately safe in it. You'd have to pay me to have either in my driveway!

Perusing through EvilBay looking at 1/43 kits I found a few subjects which might be of interest, however some of the prices!! Ouch! I notice that prices range from around a reasonable $9 to a jaw dropping $300 and up. Totally blows me away, some of these offerings range from amazing to not bad the pricing doesn't seem to follow the amazement factor either. Being that I've never built or collected anything 1/43 Scale I am pretty much sticker shocked for mostly what we would consider "Curb Side" models. I know some of these are products of the cottage industry, but what's up with the prices for kits?

The other thing I remember about Keystones was that J.C. Penny's sold a mag wheel that looked similar to the Keystone wheel. They may have been Keystone seconds or just made by Keystone for J.C.P. branded as Scat Trac or something like that. They also were a sharp lined wheel when most other wheels were smooth and flowing which the Cragar definitely is. The chrome plated Cragar SS wheels from '60's to mid-70's were not wavy or over polished as described, I remember the set I had on my GTO being very smooth without any hint of waviness which was typical for the Cragar SS wheels I saw on other guys cars. I do remember seeing Cragar SS wheels in the 80's and later with the waves chrome finish on them, most people had moved on to polished American's by then though. Another factor might have been price or perceived value, I remember the Cragar SS wheel costing more than the Keystone wheel. Here in the Rainbelt (Pacific Northwest) the chrome on Keystone and J.C.P. wheels didn't hold up very well, which is one reason we run a lot of alloy wheels. Chrome reverse wheels start pitting and rusting after a couple years if run year round on a daily driver, so word gets around what holds up and what doesn't.

Cragar's were the wheel to have when I was in high school. Had them on my '65 GTO, many cars and sets of mags later. I remember that they were an easy wheel to keep clean, the classic look complemented my Goat quite well. The pictures of the two mags illustrate what I remember being wrong with the Keystone wheel, the lug bolt holes were slotted versus non-slotted on the Cragar wheel. I remember hearing stories about Keystone and other slotted lug bolt mag wheels cracking or fracturing around the slots. I never saw it in person, but there is almost always someone who swears they have or it happened to them! Musta happened to somebody or else Cragar made the story up to sell wheels!!!

The two Revell Custom Car Parts T Bodies that I have are exactly like the Tweedy Pie's body in my stash. Notching I would have to check, they are molded in battleship gray, I'm 99% sure it is the same body, even the truck bed is the same.

I'll toss my hat in on the Comet / Ajax cleanser on full size and model paint jobs. The trick to testing cleanliness used to be water beading on the just cleaned surface, I still use it to this day. After cleaning and testing, the bodywork is blown dry with filtered compressed air so I'm not putting any oil or moisture back on the bodywork. The next time I touch the bodywork my hands are covered with nitrile gloves which I wear up until the paintwork is laid down. We used to use a trick (still do) when doing pinstriping or custom paint work over fiberglass and plastic body panels to kill the static by spraying the back of the panel with a spray bottle of plain old tap water, worked every time! I've read where Ed Roth used to spit on the car in the area he was striping to kill the static; always wondered what the look on his customer's face was after Ed spit on their pride and joy! I used to polish model paint jobs with Crest and then Pearl Drops when I was a kid too, worked really well. That might be why a lot of us seasoned guys have more than our share of caps on our teeth!! (Still got'em!!). I remember if you weren't careful you could burn right through two coats of Testers enamel pretty quick!!

Two ways I've used to produce Faux-Tina primer showing through the topcoat are both done with airbrush for academic and a detail gun for full size. 1. Prime + Topcoat, try to apply the topcoat thinner in the areas you intend to burn through later. Next use either a polishing pad running up and to toe finest grits burning through to the primer where you want the primer showing. 2. Prime + Topcoat + Primer in the areas you want it to show. Use either a Polishing Compound or Polishing Pads to burn back the primer to thin coated areas over the topcoat where it would normally burn through with age. Again progress through the finer grits of polishing pads (skip the rough stuff) you want to polish to the primer if the effect you are going for is paint that has been waxed and polished so much that it has thinned and the primer is showing through the topcoat. This applies to both techniques. The final step would be to use a past wax to wax over the whole area that you've thinned. This will protect the effect and keep the paint and primer from oxidizing to the point you may have t o polish it again. Don't go all crazy and make the thinned paint so shiny that it's not believable to the eye, you're trying to trick the eye into recognizing worn paint. Observe real worn paint and try to duplicate the areas that normally wear thin with age, crowned areas, sharp transitions and creases. If you've ever burned through the paint when you were trying to polish, you've already got some experience with this technique!

If you can't get the Spaz Stix or Alclad techniques down some thing that's worked for me is to use Lowe's Valspar Primer + Valspar Gloss Black + Valspar Brite Metal Silver. (Valspar seems to work the best for me.) These are all enamel based paints so either accelerate drying with a hair dryer or dehydrator. Use your polishing pads on the gloss black you want the shiniest smoothest surface for the silver to lay down on. This won't give the chrome effect that Alclad or Spaz Stix will, close but not quite the same. Using this technique first out of the can, then decanting is going to help your learning curve and at $3 - 4 bucks a rattle can is cheaper to practice with too. (This technique goes way back before either Chrome Paint products ever came on the market, sign guys have been using it for eons.) this is basically the same base technique that airbrush artists used lacquers for to do headlights and chrome, tinted and highlighted with super-thinned blue.

Don't forget the Revell Custom Parts Pack T bucket body, it's the same one in all of the kits show, right down to the opening passenger door.

Since its light years out of my price range, it really doesn't bother me that it will be sold. What I prefer to see is that it is preserved as it should be, the fact that it will go for top dollar ensures that it will be preserved in its unmolested state, likely going to a very high profile museum (and hopefully not rat holed away in a private offshore collection). Agree that the Henry Ford Museum or Petersen Collection is the fitting place where it should be shared with those who will appreciate it. A Museum Collection in the U.K. To me wouldn't be as appropriate, only the "Raw Material" came from the U.K.. Likely no one but an American Hot Rodder (Shelby) would have developed it into anything remotely like the Cobra.

Appears to be a well executed high end, V8 Vega, looks like it could be right at home as a Street/Strip combo car. Your black paint looks good! Having built a couple V8 Vegas for my self and helped out on probably 5 or 6 other people's street/strip (bracket) Vega's, your stirs up a whole lot of memories, mostly good!! Like what you've done. If my memory serves me correctly, that Promo Body looks better than the (MPC or was it AMT (?) ) Vega.

is the new Revell '30 Model A Coupe out already or are eBay sellers trying to do pre sale auctions? I'm not going to post the auction information, but the auction I was looking at isn't mentioning that the auction is a pre sale for the '30 Ford Model A Coupe. Makes it sound like they have it in hand now.