Aaronw

I got a bunch of out dated desk calendars from work, they are about 2x3 feet each x 14 months so I'll be set for years.

If you have a Dremel or similar and a lot of patience you could scale down the technique in this video

There are two really good books on LACO rigs, Ride the Devil Wind, and Devil Wind Fire Wagons. The first book is a history of the LA County Fire Department and its predecessors, the second is focused on the fire apparatus used in LA County 1920-1995. Both are heavily illustrated with vintage photos. These books came out in the 1990s but you can still find them for reasonable prices.

Honestly I'm a little surprised he made it this far. He wasn't easy on his body when he was younger. I'm a big fan of Ozzy and Black Sabbath, so hope he is able to enjoy life for many more years. I saw him twice, 1984 during his Bark at the Moon tour at the Cow Palace (San Francisco), and then during his No More Tours tour, in 1992 at the Oakland Coliseum. I guess we should be happy he was able to keep going 30 years after his 1992 "retirement". I also saw Black Sabbath with Dio at the Henry J Kaiser Center (Oakland). Wish I had made more effort to make one of the Black Sabbath shows for their 13 album.

Before I had a lathe, I used my Dremel a few times to turn round ends on rod to make pressure air tanks. The Dremel drill press I have allows the drill to be turned horizontally making it easier to get a file on the part vs trying to work vertically.

Far from a proper lathe, but the 6 in 1 machines like the Unimat 1 are not entirely worthless. Compared to a Taig, or Sherline they are awful but with some work they could be useful and at around $100 they are far more affordable than other options. The actual Unimat 1 branded sets are far too expensive for what you get. I bought one on a whim when I found one for $80 or so. The biggest issue I found is that the motor is a very high speed unit with no speed control. It would never be a great lathe, but if converted to something like a variable speed Dremel motor, it would actually be useful for simple lathe projects like reducing the size of a wheel stub, or turning simple parts from plastic rod. As is they are more useful as a small drill press or sander.

The 1/2 ton truck shared its front end design with the cars having its headlights integrated into the fenders. The heavier trucks used standalone headlights like the older trucks. Not sure beyond that what changes need to be made.

Same with Ford, diesels were supposed to be 000 series instead of 00 series, but I've never actually seen a Ford badged like that. I think some of this is just on paper / vin vs badging.

No, there is this badly conceived notion that one can just scan a decal sheet and start cranking out reproductions. This can be done using an inkjet or laser printer to some extent, but the decal quality is limited and only as good as the original image. The decals using this method are transparent so unless you are putting them on white, the underlying color will come through altering the decals. It is also not possible to resize more than a tiny amount without lowering the quality of the image. ALPS printers are desirable not because of their having greater resolution. The design of ALPS printers is rather antiquated and most modern ink jets and laser jet printers have better resolution. ALPS are desirable primarily because they have the ability to print opaque colors, specifically white, but also metallics. Unlike ink jet and laser jet that print in one pass, ALPS print in multiple layers. This requires that an image be broken down into layers which can not be done with just any drawing program. You can not just scan and print with an ALPS, as a jpeg image will not work well. You have to use a vector based drawing program like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, or GIMP (a free, open source drawing program). There are few short cuts so it can take hours to do even simple designs, but the upside is vector based programs are not pixel based so they can be easily rescaled with no loss of quality. Making quality decals is far more labor intensive than most people grasp. Drawing the image is just the start, they also have to be sized and then adjusted to account for the shape of the object they are being applied to. Decals for a Ford Crown Vic will not necessarily work for a Chevrolet Caprice or Dodge Charger. Edit, sorry I went way off on a tangent that is really unrelated to your question.

I love the idea behind this one, but sadly it looks like I'm finishing year 7 on the no building streak. One of these days I'll get back to this.

Bench seat would be incredibly simple to scratch build, it is essentially just a couple of boxes.

No, if anything it will be a boost to truck builders creating more options. If you build super common subjects (1950s60s popular cars) then you may not have an interest in diecast, but for everybody else diecast has often been the only way to get your hands on many vehicles whether that is just to put one on the shelf as is or as the basis for something else.

The ink on home printed decals also tends to crack when cutting close to the artwork, so even if you did print on silver you would have to leave a fairly significant buffer edge. Similar problem printing on white. Your best option may be printing your decal on regular paper, and then using that as a template to cut out your BMF. Then print your decal on clear and put it over the BMF. I've done this with white decal paper to create a white layer that the clear decal is then laid over. ALPS printer is the best home solution, but never cheap and increasingly difficult to get.

Very neat, love seeing quirky cars like this saved. Not surprised that you got it to start so easily. My parents bought a new Toyota Corona in 1970. The body was tin foil, but the engine just wouldn't die. My Dad abused the heck out of that poor little car treating it like a truck and he still got 15 or 16 years out of it. It finally blew a head gasket. By then the body was a mess after having the front end caved in after a car backed into it while parked, later it got sideswiped by a bus. That plus the years of abuse and the head gasket was the end of the line.

I never get tired of the brass work that you put into your models.

I have a selection of nuts, bolts and washers to help with bending rod and tubing, but this is easier once it is made. Adding it to my to do list. ?

Not all CVTs are the same. Subaru has been working with CVT since the 1980s (an option on the 1989 Subaru Justy). Subaru manufactures their own CVT designed for their cars, where many other automakers outsource theirs from a 3rd party, Jatco supplies many automakers including Nissan who has developed a very poor reputation for its CVTs. CVTs are less complex, smaller and lighter weight than automatic transmissions which makes then well suited to small cars. I prefer a manual but we have a CVT in our Forester and it works just fine, I don't find it any better or worse than most other automatic transmission cars I've driven / owned. It keeps the car in its optimum power band when accelerating so makes the most of the engine power, and it drops to a low RPM when just maintaining speed on the highway for better fuel economy. It absolutely does allow compression braking, when I set the cruise control on a downgrade it does a fantastic job of maintaining my desired speed, and in fact it does a better job of holding speed than even a manual transmission on a downgrade, because it just keeps adjusting the transmission to maintain just the right amount of engine compression. Now actually slowing down with compression braking a manual does better, but just holding speed, I'm impressed at how well the CVT does and I do a lot of hill and mountain driving. CVT is apparently not a great choice for a large vehicle, or for serious towing but they work fine for small to midsize cars.

Nice, Lotus Esprit is one of my favorite 80s cars. The Spy who loved me, was the first James Bond film that I ever saw.

If you can afford an SUV that starts at $350,000, then buying a $40,000 replica is probably an after thought, like most of us buying a nice office chair or fancy swing arm amp for the model bench.

Scale is kind of like aftermarket parts. Like aftermarket parts a larger scale can help to create a "better" model, but it also offers more opportunity to fail. A good paint job in 1/24 may be marginal in 1/12 scale. The larger scale offers more detailing potential, but also requires more detailing. Small stuff nobody would miss in 1/24 may be a glaring omission in 1/12. More detailing offers more potential to do that detailing poorly. As far as scratch built models go, that also goes two ways. A lot more skill and work goes into a 100% scratch built model, but the final model may not look any better than an average builder can do with a plastic kit, despite 50x the work being put into it. Just think about the work and skill hand fabricating everything just to get to 75% of the quality the guy with the plastic kit had just opening the box. How can you judge something like that fairly, what are you even judging, skill involved or simply which one looks better? The scratch built model took oodles more skill, but the box stock plastic model is the better representation. There is a good reason models are usually highly segregated into categories.

I see this brought up a lot with aircraft models and subsequently disproven comparing 1/32 to smaller scales. The idea being 1/32 has bigger parts so is more kindly to aging eyes. If you actually look at kits, the smallest parts tend to be about the same size regardless of scale. The larger scales just tend to have finer detail with many more parts. A larger scale kit literally just scaled up from a smaller kit would be unsatisfying for most. As the scale gets bigger, the detail increases, so a 9 cylinder radial engine in 1/32 might have 10-20 parts (individual cylinder jugs, crank case, wiring harness, exhaust collector etc) while in 1/72 it is probably just 1-3 parts with most detail cast in and all parts larger than the smallest part in that 1/32 engine. This is the same reason why smaller scale kits don't cost a lot less. Material costs are a relatively small portion of kit costs, 2 kits of different scales are not just resized, they have to be re-engineered and have entirely different tooling made for them. The result is a 1/48 scale airplane kit costs $1-2 more than a 1/72 scale kit because that is the material difference, although the finished model is about 1/2 the size, it did not take 1/2 the time to design, mold and package.

No idea on the electrical consumption front, I'm just happy to see that unlike many Toyota is exploring other technological options. EV's work great for some uses, not so much for others. EVs also have their own issues, charging and its toll on the grid will need to be addressed. Lithium extraction is and will continue to be a serious problem. Gasoline and diesel have issues but they are well known and there is a long history of addressing them. Currently as a fuel it is too useful to go away anytime soon. I like options, instead of hoping EV is the solution to all our power issues I'd prefer that we continue to see options explored and then use the most appropriate for each niche. Imagine where we would be if in the 1880s,"they" declared steam power was good enough and pressured those tinkering with internal combustion and electric drive systems to give up and just focus on steam.

Agree, EVs have their place but the push to make EV the answer for everything is misguided in my opinion. A great option in densely packed urban areas with relatively short drives and lots of charging opportunities, not so much in areas where things are more spread out. I'd really like to see the push for other than gas / diesel include more options. Toyota has been a leader in hybrid technology and they are now looking at hydrogen as a fuel source. Unless people reign in their fear of nuclear power the added demand of EVs is going to stress the grid. EVs currently account for about 1% of the cars on the road, it will get interesting when they account for 10%, 20% 50%.

I know people like to laugh at the idea of powering an electric car with a generator but that is essentially what a Toyota Prius hybrid does, as do most trains. Diesel electric trains arrived in 1925 and have dominated rail travel since the early 1960s. Using a gas or diesel generator to provide the electricity to electric motors is much more efficient than directly powering the wheels with the engine, because the engine runs constantly at its most efficient rpm. Diesel electric buses are being used and they lack the characteristic diesel plume on startup / acceleration. Even after years of use their exhaust stacks are clean, not black and sooty. So yeah, I get it, funny idea, and personally I'd think a hybrid would be smarter for this use, but recharge with a generator isn't actually a crazy idea.