MrObsessive

Yes, that is good stuff! I needed chrome stripped off a '57 Imperial front bumper and it did the job (Easy-Off wouldn't touch it). It didn't take quite that long...........maybe a week or so and the chrome was off. It's also not expensive in the least. I got mine at our local Dollar Store for something like $2 for a big jug.

Yup! I'm reeeaaal familiar with that site........it's this one I need the direct top view for and they don't have that one. I got the front, rear, and side view from another site, but no top. I can run those views through Fusion and make a printable body.........I'm doing that now with this '53 Cunningham C4R.

Yeeeup...........that's one of the things I'll have to correct if I get around to printing the '56 Safari I have above. The front wheel well is overly large and needs to be "shrunken" a bit. I'll admit one of the frustrating things about 3D printing is finding good orthographic pics or blueprints for reference. For the life of me I CANNOT find a GOOD orthographic top view of either the 1958 Packard Hawk, or the 1967 Opel Kadett B coupe. Both of which I'd like to create bodies for and possibly print in hopefully the not too distant future.

Oh! Almost forgot.......right at this moment I'm printing a body that I had to split in two and it's almost done. I won't say what it is right now or who it's for, as it's a test print that they want to see how it comes out with the scale adjusted. After it's done and I get the OK to show it, I'll post it here and also on FB. ??

I've gotten a bit picky about where to get 3D files now, and for me-----it's better if I can get the original .obj file as I can separate the various body parts, and then convert them to a .stl file for printing. There is a way to separate parts on certain files when they're created as a solid mesh, but it's waaaaay more than I can get into here, and it's not for everyone to attempt. Here's an example of a couple files I have that I was able to separate the body parts out.......it was made not as a solid mesh (although a seller on the 'Bay sells one as such) and this makes for a MUCH easier time to have bumpers and whatnot plated, and if I want opening doors and a tailgate, this makes it easier to do than having to cut them out after the fact. 1957 Pontiac Safari....... 1956 Pontiac Safari file I found for free on Sketchup, but spent a lot of time scaling things out to be usable.

I'll be following along on this one Steve! I too have a built annual-----had it for years, and it's screaming for a resto one of these days. I have the hardtop also, but that may be the one I restore first as I've always thought that roofline looked best on '62-'64 Pontiacs. ??

This is the first I've seen one of these Dennis! Looks great! If it's to be mounted pretty much like the standard Ford ones of the era, perhaps it should be canted towards the passenger side just a bit? Perhaps it is, and it's hard for me to tell by the perspective of the pic. ?

That I don't know..............I'm not familiar with those engines at all. ?

I just thought of the engine out of the '64 Cutlass. That I think is closer in architecture since they're only a few model years apart perhaps? ?

You're welcome! I can't think of an engine offhand that would work for that. Perhaps one of the old AMT street rod kits has an Olds? The 421 may work.....I'm not that familiar with the architecture on that to know for sure. One of other folks on here that know more than I can give a more definitive answer. I know that MCW years ago did a resin Olds engine as I have one. I don't know where it was copied from, but I know it's in the resin kit I have as that's one of those "someday" projects I'd like to do.

TJ, you'd want to use the chassis out of the AMT '62 Pontiac (tweaked to suit the wheelbase). Starting with the '61's, Pontiac and Olds shared the perimeter type frame with the side rails running along the rockers. Chevy, Buick and Cadillac still hung onto the "X" frame during those years up until '65. Certain GM makes though (Riviera comes to mind) were still using the X frame through 1970! ? Here are a couple pics of what the chassis should be like for that '61 Olds. Hope this helps! I've not built the Olds, but I have Ray's (R&R) kit from years ago. JF's I thought was always a bit nicer as the roofline looks better on his, which is correct for that as the '88's were B bodies..........same as the Chevy "bubbletop".

I have no idea about the decanted ones........I don't like 'em----too thick! You shouldn't have to thin it straight out of the can as I've used my Crescendo airbrush with no trouble. I'd think you could probably use 91% alcohol if you needed to do that, but I've never had to thin it at all.

Yup................especially anything that might have Alclad on it for example because it's so hot. As I mentioned above in one case I used a little bit of super glue as a filler (small area on a muffler), went to paint it with Alclad and the filled in area stuck out like a sore thumb. I stripped it, coated it with Future, let it dry, painted it again, and you couldn't see the filler. Nowadays, I don't use it for whole bodies, as I'd much rather use BIN-Zinsser Sealer which is like a shellac. The canned stuff as opposed to the spray as that goes on way too thick. I airbrush it on over a light coat of primer, the primer again and paint.

I have two of these kits as well (two GS coupes and the roadster transkit) and yes, the ride height has been a MAJOR turnoff for me building this for years. Every one I've ever seen sat way too high, and there was one in an ad in SA(e) many years ago that I'm surprised got used as it sat up like a 4x4 truck. ? I'll definitely be following this thread as you're doing some very good work in making this sit correctly to your liking, and I can keep the pointers in mind.

Thanks CL! I didn't know the car used a Tempest transaxle. That'll make things more interesting as far as the mechanicals. The article also mentioned that he used a Corvette suspension in the rear which would make sense. He would have been right there as far as getting parts off the shelf. I've been trying to figure out where the gas tank on this thing might have been. It more than likely was right behind the driver and passenger, with the filler neck located under the flip up panel at the leading edge of the rear deck. I do wish the original file had a bit more taper to the upper edge of the doors where they meet the fins. No big deal, and when it comes time to build it, I can heat up the body panels a bit and "coax" them to be tapered a bit more.

Every cat I've had since the early '80's, if there was a mouse lurking around in the house...........well, they didn't last too long! Many years ago I had a cat that I knew he was after a mouse during the night as he literally had EVERYTHING crashing down in the kitchen trying to get this mouse. Later on when I went to see what the hubbub was all about, there was the half eaten mouse laying in the corner of the kitchen. ? By the same token, I'm not a fan of roaming cats in the neighborhood, as they can do just that...........go on the hunt for birds and things that they perhaps shouldn't be after. Not to mention the heartbreak of seeing one get hit by a car which happened to me years ago right in my own neighborhood as I accidentally hit a neighbor's cat.

I've seen the sites where Robert is getting a lot of his files, and some of them include interiors. One of them (Hum3D) wants something like $900 for the interior files?? YIKES! I don't know if that means they'll convert them to other formats for that price? It seems to me from some of the pics I've seen, they do have the interior. It may also be that he's paying the price for those files and he wants to recoup some of the cost in at least offering them for sale along with the price of the bodies.

A few days ago, I printed a car I had never heard of before in my life, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to find a 3D file of it. This is a 1965 "Pontiac" Vivant by Herb Adams. A one off car that he built while working for Pontiac back in the mid '60's and was recently discovered and restored, much to the surprise of us gearheads as a lot of us have never heard of this car. I got the files from a fellow on CGTrader who goes by the name "Brunomcardoso". A very fine representation of the actual car, and he offered them in an .stl format which made things a bit easier on my end to not having to convert .obj files. I separated the body into sections in the files, as I'm going to be brave and do opening doors on this. The frame will have to be scratchbuilt by me as the real car used some type of tube frame with a torsion bar front suspension. The front suspension to my eyes looks for all the world like something out of a MOPAR, so when the time comes to build it, I can at least find that in my parts bin. There are separate files included that do include the front suspension setup.......I'll have to see if that'll work with the scratchbuilt tube frame I have in mind. Here are some pics of how it turned out in the printer, and then cobbling it all together to see how it'll look as a whole car. As it was coming out of the printer............ I must have had a moment of CRS kick in as I thought I added enough wall thickness to the files, but apparently not. ? Take II came out MUCH better................ Now with the body parts taped together......... It was difficult to find out exactly how long this car was from nose to tail.......I had to guesstimate how long it was based on a Corvette of the era, and my scaling worked out quite well. The real car............... The real car used I believe a Pontiac 421 engine which I've got lying around in my parts box. Wheels were the traditional 8 lugs of the period. I still have the hood to print yet, interior floor and all the other interior stuff, grill sections, and cowl section with another part of the rear deck. I don't know when this will become a full WIP, but I like this so much I may do this one next instead of the '77 Olds Cutlass I have planned. We'll see.....................

A few days ago, I printed a car I had never heard of before in my life, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to find a 3D file of it. This is a 1965 "Pontiac" Vivant by Herb Adams. A one off car that he built while working for Pontiac back in the mid '60's and was recently discovered and restored, much to the surprise of us gearheads as a lot of us have never heard of this car. I got the files from a fellow on CGTrader who goes by the name "Brunomcardoso". Very fine representation of the actual car, and he offered them in an .stl format which made things a bit easier on my end to not having to convert .obj files. I separated the body into sections as I'm going to be brave and do opening doors on this. The frame will have to be scratchbuilt by me as the real car used some type of tube frame with a torsion bar front suspension. The front suspension to my eyes looks for all the world like something out of a MOPAR, so when the time comes to build it, I can at least find that in my parts bin. There are separate files included that do include the front suspension setup.......I'll have to see if that'll work with the scratchbuilt tube frame I have in mind. Here are some pics of how it turned out in the printer, and then cobbling it all together to see how it'll look as a whole car. As it was coming out of the printer............ I must have had a moment of CRS kick in as I thought I added enough wall thickness to the files, but apparently not. ? Take II came out MUCH better................ Now with the body parts taped together......... It was difficult to find out exactly how long this car was from nose to tail.......I had to guesstimate how long it was based on a Corvette of the era, and my scaling worked out quite well. The real car............... The real car used I believe a Pontiac 370 engine which I've got lying around in my parts box. Wheels were the traditional 8 lugs of the period. I still have the hood to print yet, interior floor and all the other interior stuff, grill sections, and cowl section with another part of the rear deck. I don't know when this will become a full WIP, but I like this so much I may do this one next instead of the '77 Olds Cutlass I have planned. We'll see.....................

I just got files from Robert to print the interior for his 1960 Plymouth XNR concept model that I have on order, along with the wheels and chassis. He and I were talking back and forth, and he mentioned that in the future since a number of folks either have 3D printers, or can have things printed, he may offer interior files for those that want them when they buy the bodies. I think that's a GREAT idea as this is a VERY prolific part of the hobby now. As I've been saying for a number of years------3D printing would be the next wave in car modeling, and it certainly has arrived.

Thanks for the nice words! The wheels came from Detail Master as the spokes are PE. They are loooong out of production. I have a 3D printer now so if I wanted another set of Borrani's, I could print them. ? I don't remember now where the tires came from.......I believe they came from one of the Monogram kits since they were 1/24 scale for much of their existence until Revell took over. It's been MANY years since I built that, and I still have it, albeit in a case to keep the dust away from it.

EXCELLENT! ??

I'll have to look in my stash for the Pontiac OHC 6. I'll need one for future use as that's what should go in the Pontiac Banshee I 3D printed not long ago. Thanks for the heads up on what other kits had this engine!

I'd thought I'd screenshot a post that Joseph just put up a little while ago on FB. Things are looking up after his big accident earlier this year. ??