Codi

Thank you Steve & Brad. Randy, the hand is coming along fine. I made the twin oil filters after dinner tonight but I have to say that after seeing your Ferrari I'm glad this car is not nearly as modern as yours. That car has just phenomenal detail, you're bringing that one to life. Dr. Frankenstein I presume? I hope to get some bench time this weekend to get the remote oil bracket done. The filters will be painted and decaled later. cheers, tim

I was always a sucker for any of the Motown Missile cars as a kid. Nice job on it. cheers, tim

I love everything you make Randy. This is no exception. cheers, tim

John, thanks man. Woke up this morning and my hand felt 100% better. Slowly getting there. Scott, Brad & Ray. Appreciated too but it wasn't necessarily easy, at least not for me. I think you're staring at close to 20 hours or so from drawings, planning & machining to get them correct. I'm pleased but I don't want to do them again anytime soon. Mike, thanks too, I don't know if they sell them anymore. I bought them maybe 3 years ago and have 3 or 4 in my parts stash yet. Ah, the math. Too much to explain here but I started with diameter X pi. And some insights from my friend Dave. This morning I machined the fuel pump base. Doesn't look like that much but it took me the entire morning. cheers everyone!

Thanks guys and I want to answer some of your questions. Bob, shaving the belt was easy actually. I stretched it teeth down onto an oversized piece of alum. Chucked it in the lathe and used a sanding file and took it down gradually. About a minute and it was done. Pete, appreciated. I do have to agree that it helps if you have done some machining to understand what goes into it. I like the challenge in trying to figure out how to make something and then going about doing it. My biggest fault is that I do something that can be made easier and quicker but my lack of experience leads me down the harder path. But I'm learning it as I go along and it's fun. Wait till you see the steering box & dual remote oil filter bracket that I want to attempt. I hope. Thank you Art & Joe. Paul, not jewelry..........but I appreciate the inference. Ah, Dave. Well now that's a story all itself. Which I'll share. I had the blower pulley done last Thursday before my surgery. BUT, my numbers were wrong and I had even run a few teeth and checked it and liked what I saw. Did the whole pullley (cutting one is a 2+ hour step for me to cut such skinny grooves) and the belt didn't fit. I discovered my number was off by .6 of one degree on each tooth. Made all the difference and it fits perfectly now. I shoulda asked I know but sometimes you just gotta let the student figure it out for themselves. Oh, so I took 2 1/2 hours just to cut the teeth in the 2nd one. Yippee. btw, thanks very much for the compliment. Jim, thanks for following along. The engine guys ran the belts on either side of the idler. I discussed this with some very knowledgeable people and there are different schools of thought on it. I am NOT trying to start a debate on whether one way is better than another. To each his own. I'm going to set mine up to showcase what I think will be the most interesting parts of the engine. I have yet to make some of those bits and pieces, so I'll make a decision when I get closer to final mock-up and assembly. Good question though. Thanks Chris. As I said at the beginning, I've always admired the ones on your Vega and really wanted to see how close I might be able to get in my scale. On the belt shaving, please see above what I shared with Bob on how it was done. Got some cool things coming up that I have drawn up and want to make soon. I promise to get you that list by this weekend. Cheers, Tim

Thanks again fellas. I've been a little slow getting back to this as I had finger surgery last Friday. Same operation as before (my 8th one) and I could finally get back to the bench. Completed the pulleys. The toothed belt is an M.A.S. blower belt that I skived down about 1/3 to thin it up. I drilled a plate to mock them up so the idler pulley is a little higher than it will be on the car. I did this as the belt had a little too much tension on it so I wanted to store it this way to give the rubber some "memory" and to loosen it up a bit for final assembly. Cheers, tim

Hey...............wait a second.............I counted 338 rivets, shouldn't it be 341 Chris? Stunning is all I can say. cheers, tim

An artist and his canvas

Now we're talking. I can't wait to see more of it Paul. Just one request, more light would let us see even more of the details. I don't want to miss anything. Your 3D capabilities are fantastic. cheers, tim

Nice, John's imagination is running wild. Those seats are so sweet John. Very creative..................as always! cheers, tim

I had to share those couple of pics because I was truly pleased with how it looked so far & that you would appreciate the difference too. Many sincere thanks for the comments & interest in the build. I did want to answer Chris about the starter brackets. I probably won't be bothering to machine that. M.A.S. makes some fantastic brackets for specifically for that in P.E. I have had a few sets laying around now for sometime and will use them on this build. No reason to attempt making them, I'm afraid if I did, it would just add another week to the build. I'll share a pic of them and the model number in my next post. I will be making the necessary idler pulley bracket though as I want to attempt one that incorporates the front motor mounts into the design as well. cheers!

Sorry to hear about the bad back Brad. Had a disc out when I was 20. You're oh so right how painful it can be. btw, I didn't forget you. Those cut-off discs I sourced from a company called Rio Grande. They specialize in the jewelry trade. I find a lot of helpful tools in their catalog. cheers, tim

Thanks Pete. I DID chuckle btw. Paul, glad to hear you like what you see so far. I wasn't aware of your background. I think the rest of the build should be of interest then. Today I got the crank pulley finished and the idler pulley. Blower is last. Hope to get it done by Thursday. cheers everyone! Got some machinist blue to clean out in the corner of the pulley as you can see.

Love the pics you share of the 1:1 and your parts spread out on how you're replicating it. Fantastic job Randy. I think you've got one here that's going to be awesome on the tables. cheers, tim

Thanks fellas, I'll get the others done this week before I get some finger surgery again. Pete, glad the pic could be of help. Yeah, I'll hold onto that penny for sure. It's a great way of showing perspective on how small some of these parts are. If I might suggest, when you reply to a post, if you just use the box at the bottom of the page where it says "REPLY" instead of "QUOTE", it won't re-post/paste my previous post each time. Saves the redundancy. Thanks in advance. cheers, tim

Hi guys, I was going to post some chassis progress pics, but I took a detour 2 days ago and decided to tackle the pulleys. I've drooled over the ones that Dave made for Chris and his Vega funny. So I took a stab at it. I started on the crank pulley as I think it's the sexiest of the 3 and also the most challenging. Dave provided me with some numbers that were very helpful and I want to thank him now for the insights and advice. First 2 pics show it on the mill. The cutting disc is a super thin, .27mm thick, jewelers cutoff wheel. A better angle showing the center and 6 surrounding bolt holes. In the penny shot you can see an aftermarket pulley. In fairness, I spent many hours doing mine whereas the aftermarket piece was knocked out in just a fraction of the time I'm sure.

You're not foolin' me Dave when you preface that "it might not look like much".................the mark of genius is the pure engineering we're seeing here. You make it look simple, which is deceiving. I stare at the pics and see LOTS of thought in what you're doing. Beautiful beyond the bling. cheers, tim

Dave, Scott and Brad..........thanks guys, just doing bars and stuff and finishing the clutch can pedal etc. Randy, appreciated. to answer your question, the template was drawn and then cut the brass a single piece. Bent the seat bottom portion then used steel dowels in a vice to bend the seat backs. Getting the seat back width correct and snug was the most time consuming. After "finessing" everything together, I flame soldered the joints. Where the bottom meets the side at the highest point, I had a large enough gap that I had to put a 1/32" piece of brass rod in a filler. After soldering, filed to shape. Probably a lot more info than you wanted. btw, you should see the one where I cut the sides upside down. Dave, thanks man. I really like figuring out & fabricating these types of parts. Took me more than an hour just to get the silly seat belt holes cut in symmetrically. It's not much bigger than a quarter. Chris, I wouldn't go that far. I've admired the way you made yours. THAT is perfection. Hey Pete, I'm hurt man. That piece in the pic will someday be something cool. My stuff in 1/25th is so small I don't throw much out that can't be used for something else. Had to laugh cause I keep my scrap in tupperware too. Thanks too Bob, I don't consider the joints perfect, but they're more than close enough as I'm probably going to cover the seat bottom at some point anyhow. Have some ideas..........

Got the seat made and a bunch of other little things. I'll post some other pictures by the weekend of some of the other progress I've made. About 10 hours and this was the 4th one that I attempted and which I finally liked. The brass started out as .27mm and ended up closer to .20. some minor clean up of the solder joint on the inside and I'm still thinking about doing a quilted leather bottom for it. maybe. cheers, tim

I think of all your builds that I've seen and this one is my favorite. Great all the way around Tyrone. cheers, Tim

You're on a real tear here Dave. I'm not going to say "more please" but IF you should feel so compelled, well, I won't complain. cheers sir!

Does anyone know how to remove slobber from their keyboard, it's sticking. Turkey dinner was awesome, but Dave just served up dessert. Cheers, tim

Paul, AWESOME engine choice. I want to do one of these some day and another well known builder on this forum is a BIG fan as well. Can't wait to see what you do with it. btw, where did you score that one if I may ask? cheers, tim

Hi Donn, what a treat to see you posting here. Nice car but I've always been a sucker for mustangs. Beautiful paint as always. I think you're getting the hang of it. Thanks again for all the advice and insights you've shared in the past. Trust me, I've not forgotten. cheers, tim

Thanks everyone for your comments. I have to laugh that in the time I did these, Dave (comp1839) machined almost an entire clutch. How ridiculous is that (he said rhetorically) ? I did want to answer Bob's question while saying thanks for his tips that he offered me as well. BIG THANKS BOB! I started with 5/32" brass tube & drilled it out with a 3.5mm bit so it slips over the driveshaft tube. Then using a jewelers saw I cut it close to width at approx. 1.5mm and this forms the band portion. Step 2 - cut a slice into the brass band so I could solder a piece of .8mm brass tube onto one side. I filed / sanded the tube to match the width of the band and then used a super thin jewelers cut-off wheel to slice into the center of the brass tube. My smallest round diamond file widened the groove so that the .5 mm threaded piece would lay down properly. Step 3- I drilled a #79 hole into a .8mm brass tube. Then I ground down the end of a .5mm brass bolt and soldered it into the tube. Then cut it close to the width I needed & soldered the tube/bolt onto the end of the brass band with the threaded portion fitting down onto the half of the clamp. Clean up and minor filing brought the portions into square. Added the nut and just have to plate yet. I think the steps when matched up to the pics will make more sense. Hope it helps anyone interested in replicating these. cheers everyone. tim