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Posts posted by Modelmartin
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And just for fun, here's a photo of the Flinstone Flyer four door Gasser that was raced:
Big sucker ain't it!?!
The cool part of this car is the homemade flip front end in fiberglass! His next car was a Studebaker Lark gasser with another homemade fiberglass flip front end!
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The Benz Patent Motorwagen (1886) and Henry Ford's Quadricycle(his first car from 1896) had wires. They were tiny cars. The 1890s Panhards mostly had wood wheels. Wire wheels were definitely around but the vast majority had wood wheels. Bugatti was one of the first if not the first to use cast aluminum wheels in 1924!
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I like the 62 sedan. It would be real feasible to imagine it at a strip as a locally campaigned gasser or modified production car.
The Plymouth wagon is really freaky but kind of intriguing - obviously it is not in the least prototypical of gassers that actually raced but as a modern statement of cool weirdness it is pretty successful. The coil springs at the front of the ladder bars are kind of frightening. Also open headers like it has wouldn't work well with a carbeurated car. They work best on supercharged cars.
That 64 is kind of weird. It is someone's impression of what a gasser might be but really wasn't. If all the ladder bars, piecrust slicks and tilt nose were on an earlier car like 55-57 it might fly but a 64 was too new, big and heavy to be outfitted like that. It isn't egregious, though.
I say this as a student of drag racing but I am sure all 3 of the owners of these cars are quite proud of their cars and justifiably so. They are very cool cars.
They just aren't accurate renditions of real gassers except the for the 62.
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Whatsup with the "call outs" on these cars? I've seen many with chrome or diamond encrusted numbers eluding to the wheel size, i'm guessing.It isn't enough they run the monster wheels?
When I had my 1960 Austin Mini I could have had the number " 10 " called out on my fender!
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Sure, someone can do whatever they want with a model but......
A gasser, at least in NHRA was up to 10% engine setback. You could run just about any engine. That determined the prefix AA, BB, A, B through H, etc. That changed some over time, also. Some were supercharged, some were injected, some were carbeurated. There was no requirement to run any kind of suspension. You do not need a solid front axle to make it a gasser.
AWB is a description of a certain type of car and not a class. It was done to FX and SX cars that led up to the funny car. I do not believe an AWB car could be run as a gasser. It could run as an altered which was up to 25% engine setback.
The thing is if you build a model that you call a gasser but is anything but a gasser it just looks silly. If you really want to build something a certain way that is a mish-mash of details and practices that isn't reflective of reality, don't claim it as being real. Just call it a your own idea of a drag race car! That would be fine.
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I think the other part of the problem with suspension hight is they always put the low profile tires, which they didn't typically run. So, yes, the floor is sitting on the ground and it's still not low enough to look right. Taller tires would help some I think.
I did a Carrera and the torsion bars were practically on the ground! What I have done is actually section parts of the tub so the front suspension will tuck under better. I am thinking of producing a resin tub for the Fujimis so they can be built a lot easier. There are a lot of gaps and missing sheetmetal all over when the kit pieces are assembled. The pre-crash bumper cars had two batteries in the nose which Fujimi neglected to represent. There is a lot that can be done to improve these kits. They definitely fall into the "Looks better in the box" category of kits.
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I have finished a couple of the Fujimi 911 kits and the biggest drawback is that the unibody assembly is a little bit tall assembled but that should not be a problem with a raised suspension rally car. I don't know if that car used FI or carbs but if you want to use the correct carbs they can found in the Revell 911, Carrera, and 914 kits. Fujimi just gave us fuel injection for everything even if it didn't have it originally!
The Fujimi 911s have some issues despite them looking so good un-assembled!~
With a bit of knowledge and finesse they can become quite good models.
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Darn Russians and their crazy weather experiments!
Nah! That isn't it. Ronald Reagan messed up the weather and it hasn't been right ever since!!
We had over 30 inches of snow in December and it was raining and 41 yesterday! Most of that snow that I very carefully shoveled and piled high has melted away now.
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Artillery wheels were used as regular equipment on cars in the mid-1920s to early 1930s, in both pressed steel and wooden designs.
They belong on those cars.
Not on new ones.
Charlie Larkin
Actually, artillery wheels as they are called are the original automotive wheels because they are merely adaptations from horsedrawn carriage and wagon wheels. The first cars were just motorized wagons. It was a rare vehicle that used wirewheels prior to 1910 or so. Wirewheels were seen as light duty and were adapted from bicycles. They were more expensive, too.
I suppose one of these days we will see 30 inch wooden wheels on donks!
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Nothing like a nose bleed up in the air
That thing is bordering on Monster Truck territory!!
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Nice job on a difficult kit. Dave Deal designed those kits, I believe. The engineering was horrible but the ideas and concept were great. There were 5 released. In addition to your Guber Wagon there was the Moon Mixer, Patent Pending (panel truck), T-bone (stake side pickup), and Meter Cheater (Parisian taxi). I hace a T-bone underway.
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Great job on the Mini.
The Tamiya kit is based on the 67 Monte Carlo winner. It is a Mark I Mini Cooper 1275 S so I would say 64 to 67. The Mark II production started in 67 and the only visible change was the outline of the grille and a bigger rear window.
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The work is very clean, nicely done, but the thing looks silly with the turbo plumbing all wrong, IMHO.
Actually, It's the new closed loop turbos!
It's a seriously cool model, regardless!
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In the early 80s I bought a case each of Monogram's new Pro stock kits and split each one with a friend so I ended up with 2 cases with 6 of each kit. After a few years I thought that they would never become collectable so I sold them all!
I bought them a few at a time but I have about 20 Tamiya Minis and about 7 Fujimi Minis.
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Strip it. Fix it, and have it replated. It is not hard and is well worth the results. I have done it many times. Budget version is to use Alclad. I have seen some models that looked really good with well done Alclad.
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You can't lose money under-estimating the intelligence of the public at large!!
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I just ran a very un-scientific survey on Ebay and the results were interesting. Of the various showrods mentioned in this thread The Red Baron scored much higher than any other with almost 500 items in the Toys and Hobbies category. I would guess that it is slightly inflated because the kit was just re-released recently and a lot of new ones were listed. The Beatnik Bandit beat out the L'il Coffin handily - 175 to about 20.
The winner by a mile was the 57 Chevy with over 2500 listings! The 40 Ford was next with 2000. No differentiation between different products. AMT 40 Ford produced 40 listings! Lamborghini produced 3400, countach alone produced 560. If you type in Earnhardt you get 13,000 listings!!!
Of course, this is just items for sale now. No correlation between original sales and kits for sale now exists. There are 40 MPC Barris T-Buggies listed right now because no-one and I mean NO-ONE wants those piles of cr@p! I think that more AMT 40 Fords were sold then Barris T-Buggies.
It was amazing when I typed in Dukes Charger. We got 130 and it included belt buckles, collecter plates and cars from 1/144 to 1/18th. Corgi made one in 1/36, Danbury Mint and everyone imaginable made the durn things! I typred in Bond Aston and got 230 results! I think ultimately the James Bond Aston Martin might beat out the Dukes Charger!
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A friend of an old friend of mine referred to me as modelmartin whenever he saw me so I took it as my username when I started on Ebay about 10 years ago. I use it on some of the resin kits I sell but will be phasing that out and sticking with Aardvark Models in the future. It was a natural choice for all of my usernames online.
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I do wonder, however, about many kits out there that are the "tortoises" compared to the Dukes' Charger "hare". Kits like the AMT and Revell 57 Chevies and the Trophy Series 40 Ford coupe, etc. Those kits have been in nearly continuous release since the early 1960s. I lack any knowledge of production numbers and since the kits were produced under so many different owners of the model companies, I would think it is nearly impossible to know. Inquiring minds want to know!
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To stray slightly from the original topic but to touch on something we are discussing about the same kits being released by different manufacturers - my favorite has to be the Lindberg 1/24 Bugatti Royale. Of course Lindberg has released it several times over the years but at one point Gunze Sangyo released it. Revell of Germany had an arrangement with Gunze to sell their kits so the Lindberg Royale became a Revell of Germany release. Well, of course Revell USA had to bring in all the imports so it came back to the US!
One day several years ago I was looking through the shelves of my LHS and there were the Lindberg, Gunze and Revell Import versions all sitting there with prices ranging from about $10-12 for the Lindberg up to $30+ for the Imported version!!
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What's REALLY interesting is, 1/25 scale works out ot just a hint over 1mm per scale inch, a far easier conversion than say, 1/24 scale. It's often hard to realize that when Monogram Models began producing model car kits in 1/24 scale, overseas, it was 1/32 scale that was the primary scale for plastic model car kits, principally Airfix. For whatever reason, when Japanese companies began model car kits, they gravitated to 1/24, and I would guess that they were emulating Monogram, thus their scale choice.
Art
In the golden olden days when Art was young( Yes, it was possible!
) I believe that scales were more commonly refered to by the inch measurement that went into the foot. 1/24 is 1/2 inch to a foot. It was called 1/2 inch scale. 1/12 is 1 inch, 1/32 is 3/8 inch, 1/16 is 3/4 inch, 1/48 is quarter inch scale, etc.
All I want to know is who was the crazy person who came up with 1/43rd (technically it is closer to 1/43.5). It is 7 MM to the foot! HO scale(1/87) is 3.5 MM to the foot!!!
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Interesting...I'm not familiar w/ the Heller AMTs...anyone have a list of what was released? Similarly, I remember about 20 years ago AMT released some 1:24th Aoshima and ESCI kits in AMT boxes.
They were double kits and were sold in the mid to late 60s. One was the Ferrari 330 P4 and the Porsche 908, next was the Gordini (Renault) sedan and the Alpine/Renault, last was the Formula II and III combo with a Matra and a Brabham. AMT also sold some Matchbox 1/32 kits a while back. I think it was ERTL who sold the Esci kits but with ERTL soaking up AMT and MPC who can tell!
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This is where you need a cheap set of dial calipers($10. to $30.00). You measure whatever wire you have and then grab the corresponding size drill bit. An index filled with bits is very handy to have. The x-acto index has the number size and the inch size printed right on it. An investment in tools is an investment in your modelbuilding skills and results.
Don't forget your spark plug boots! They can be easily simulated with a short piece of insulation from a slightly thicker piece of wire.
I don't really know what to call this rant!
in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
Posted
National Association of Stockcar Crashing And Racing
I do not understand this fixation with Carburators in the year 2010!! NHRA has the same problem. You would think that electronic engine management in a Nitro car would be a good thing. Why do pro Stocks have Carbs! Silly people.
I concur with Mark and Drew that racing is racing. I very occasionally watch a little Nascar because there are drivers competing. The cars are dull as paste!
For great action I like the Australian series with V8 RWD sedans on road courses. Those guys go at it hammer and tongs. Way better than anything else around!