Aaronw

I actually used the same article when building my booth and it worked out great. Something to ponder, he never takes cubic feet into account. Using his formula a booth 2 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft (18 cu ft) and a booth 2 ft x 3 ft x 10 ft (60 cu ft) will both recommend a blower of 300 cfm (down draft) or 600 cfm (cross draft). Try an experiment with your own booth, get a large piece of cardboard and cut a hole 1/2 the size of your current booths opening. You will feel a dramatic increase in the velocity of the air entering the booth, it may even suck the paint right into the filter making it hard to actually paint the model. Your exagerated example would be ineffective no doubt, but the actual opening does play an important part. I'm not an aerodynamic engineer so I can't tell you where that point is.

Everybody gets hung up on looking for ignition sources. The #1 priority should be on avoiding a flammable atmosphere in the first place (keeping the vapors to lean to burn). This is really why most people get away with a homemade booth using a bathroom fan or other "inappropriate" vent fan. They have adequate ventilation so never reach the lower explosive limits of the paint vapors. The only paint booth fire that I have seen posted with details, involved an individual using a shop vac for the blower. The cannister makes for an excellent bomb by collecting the vapors until they reach a level that will support combustion. I advocate using an appropriate fan, but as long as the fan selected provides adequate ventilation there is minimal danger from using the wrong fan. Obviously the right fan and adequate ventilation is a better choice.

You've miss read what the sq ft relates to. It is not the size of the working area, it is the size of the opening. It may seem a trivial difference but has to do with the velocity of the air not simply movement, both are moving 100 cfm but the larger opening allows for slower moving air and areas of little movement. If a closed 2x3 ft working area only has a 14" x 20" opening (fairly standard size filter) then you are looking at 1.9 sq ft, not 6. 1.9 x 50 (downdraft) would put the 100 cfm fan at the appropriate size. I would be concerned that the 3" ducting is inadequate though and could be restricting the blower from seeing its full potential. I picked up a section of 6" metal flex duct at Home Depot, it is cheap, easy to use and provides for very little friction loss. Here is an easy to use online airflow calculator. If you use it you will see that the 3" duct has 4x the restriction of a 4" duct and 30x the restriction of a 6" duct. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/duct-friction-pressure-loss-d_444.html

Same problem with most police car kits. Seems like a simple enough solution of just providing seperate trim, so you either snap it in for stock, or fill two small holes for a police car. Could even change that to drill out two small holes and snap in the trim for stock and do nothing extra for the police car. This really make sense fo a car like the Crown Vic which I'm sure the vast majority are built as police cars.

My biggest concern is the color range. Polly Scale and Floquil Railroad colors have a much broader range of specialty colors than Model Master Acryl. If a simple rebranding and consolidation I use all three so that won't cause me too much pain. If they drop those additional colors it will force people to look elsewhere (probably Vallejo for me) so really not a very good business decision.

Terrible job, that looks nothing like a Dodge Diplomat

Yes they did, guess I better get the 2 or 3 I'm missing while I still can.

The highlighed part is what is so special about them. Cadillac models are few and far between other than Johan who did quite a few.

RMR has quite a few older truck cabs. http://rmrresin.webs.com/nf125.htm

I think the model kit is a 1997, but the Ford F150 didn't change noticably in body style until just a few years ago. The striping started in California and took quite a few years to get to the other states, so you wouldn't be grossly off with the larger decals or leaving off the stripes. My boss in 1998 had almost exactly the truck you are building, except he only had grill lights. Call it a 2002 and you are good. Where did the wheels come from? They look good on that truck.

Depending on how detailed you want to get, those Jbot decals are for a 2001 or later USFS truck. After the introduction of the white paint scheme in 2000-2001 the seal was enlarged from a 7-8" seal to the larger 12-14" seal. Here is a 1997 Model 62 with the older markings http://modelfireapparatus.com/apparatus/USFS/Engines5/USFSU5.JPG and a 2001 Model 62 with the current style markings http://modelfireapparatus.com/apparatus/USFS/Engines5/USFSV5.JPG It will take a few days for me to locate them, but I can help you with decals for the basic markings. You are on your own for striping.

Would be nice to see some modern medium duties too. Something like the old Ford C series and Louisville kits, Ford F-650, Chevy / GMC Top Kick, IH7300, Freightliner M2, Peterbilt 330, KW T270/370 etc. I'm not fussy I'd take any of these.

Thanks, that is the kit I expected it to be. One more of those kits I had in my hands many times but put it back only to find it gone one day and ebay prices climbing. Will definately get one or two this time.

I don't know Macks that well, but I have a book of Mack fire apparatus and I'm thinking it is an L series which was built from 1940-54, or potentially the E series built from 1937-50. I'm leaning towards L as it looks like the E series has more of a sloped back grill. I'm pretty confident that it is not a B series as the fenders are more swoopy than on the B. AITM makes a very nice L series fire cab. It does have a closed cab though so would take a fair bit of work to build it as an open cab like that. http://www.aitruckmodels.com/pages/cfk3macklfirecab.html

Its coming along. I agree the light bar looks a bit small. For the year of that truck you are pretty safe going with either a strobe or rotating light style light bar. The Federal Streethawk was a very popular lightbar with the USFS (I think they were fairly cheap), but you really could find just about anything on a USFS truck in the 90s, Aerodynics and Jetsonics were common as well. They often would recycle lightbars from one truck to the next so you could find a somewhat antiquated light on a new truck. Until the mid 1950s the USFS mostly used dark green. The USFS adopted the light green in 1956 or 57, but it included a grey top. In the mid 70s (probably 1975 or 76) they switched to the current all green.

The best off the shelf match I've found for the current USFS green is Krylon Jade or Rustolium Seafoam. Rustolium Sage Green works well for an older faded truck. There is some variation is shade between batches and manufacturer, although quality control has greatly improved on modern vehicles. Over my career I have seen vehicles with a much stronger yellow or blue tint to the green.

A truck built in 1949 could easily still have been hauling cargo for a local independant operator in the early 70s which is about the period most of the trailer kits represent. I'm not positive but I think the Lindberg flatbed, tanker and van trailers are a bit older style than the AMT and Ertl trailers. If you want it to accurately represent a semi in the 1950s you are going to have to do some scratchbuilding.

With this and Heller seemingly off life support I see several new French vehicles being added to my stash (and hopefully getting built). Now if someone would just do a Citroen DS. I can't beleive it has never been done in 1/24-1/25 being one of the best looking European cars ever built (at least in my opinion).

Can anybody comment more about the ’53 Chevy Sedan Delivery? Assuming this is a re-issue of the 53/54, so just a gasser, no stock parts?

Looks a bit like a Lotus Esprit done exactly wrong. I see a bit of the Fiat too, only it works on the Fiat.

If you go down to post 6 in this thread you can see both the lowering of the headlights and a single headlight conversion being done. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=43064

Thanks, I have the Heller Bentley which looks very nice, but have mostly built Heller aircraft kits. Most recently their Caudron 714 which was awful (maybe as bad as the 1-1) and their Morane Saulnier 406 which was pretty good for an older 1/72 kit. The Alfa sounds like a nice kit, will have to add it to my wish list.

What do you consider "typical" Heller quality? Personally I find Heller all over the place from very good to rather poor as is common with most companies that have been around for decades.

Yeah, that is a pretty poor representation of a CHP Mustang. As long as the rest of the kit doesn't fall victim to sloppy research it will be nice to have. CHP decals are pretty easy to source and the other mistakes (light bar, red / blue grill lights) are simply fixed by just not using them. I'm looking forward to this kit.

No not Cavalier, these were big like the Ford LTD, so Sedan de Ville or maybe the 1st gen Seville (not the one with the funky truck). Very short period because I was in Jr High so somewhere between 79 and 83.