Chief Joseph

It's funny the A12 Super Bee was brought up I've been working on correct wheels and tires for the A12 cars: 15x6 steel "H" wheels with G70-15 Goodyear redlines:

Jeremy's a good guy. He won't do you wrong.

Any more progress on the Escort, JC?

Any chance you can do the 88-90 Iroc wheels? don't believe they've ever been done. Sorry, I don't want to hijack Ken's thread, but I'll answer this quickly: The wheels I have done are the 85-87 version. I can do the 88-90 version wheel, but it would only be 16"-- I would never want an IROC-Z with the 15" wheels, LOL!

Beautiful job! It makes me want to finish up my 1/24 scale conversion set for the Monogram Z28. I've made all-new 16" wheels & Gatorbacks and fog lamps, and converted the kit's front fascia. Basically all I need to finish is the decal set. Maybe add a TPI setup, too.

The telescope-making guys need this process to coat their mirrors, so you could look in on some of their forums.

Are you referring to the Vallejo paint that Hobby Lobby has been carrying for about a year? It's extremely good paint that is intended for hand-brushing but can be thinned for airbrushing as well. Definitely better than the cheaper craft paints. Or are you talking about the Createx Colors and Wicked Colors airbrush paints that come in a 2oz bottle that looks similar to the cheap craft paint? Again, those are good paints for their intended purpose and worth the extra expense.

I've always perceived the biggest complaint to be "why isn't XYZ available?" or possibly, "I wish there were a better XYZ available." 3D-based manufacturing goes a long way to solving both those problems. We are still years away from replacing mass-marketed kits with printing your own 3D-derived models at home. The 3D technology available now allows manufacturers (small and large) to more bring better quality models to the market in a shorter amount of time than ever before. It also opens up a whole new avenue of creativity to those people who are willing to take a risk. Some model builders are content to just build whatever is on the shelf at the local Hobby Lobby, but I've never been that kind of modeler.

Thanks very much, fellows. @crowe-t: I think I used old Metalizers when I painted the motor/trans. I don't recall using any Alclads, but I could be wrong. It's been about a year. The goal of the exercise was to simulate a motor that had been in a street car for about 10 years and had accumulated some grime and discoloration. The turbo's heat shield is a bit overdone-- it should never get that dirty. @gearhedjon: The Turbo TA's setup was similar to the 84-85 Buick hot air turbo, but the latter was fuel-injected. The Turbo TA was in fact very close to the older carbureted Buick turbo. If the hood is closed, there's no need for me to get all OCD about the details on the motor!

Oh, man, this old thread came back to life just like a walker on "The Walking Dead" Not much more ever happened with these models, unfortunately. There was just never enough time left over after meeting all my other obligations to work on my own models. Still isn't! Plus, my OCD makes it difficult to complete things I really care about (I always re-do things and I'm never quite satisfied). On the plus side, I've been able to share some of the work I did on these models in the form of my Eagle GT tire and Vector wheel sets. But I did build a turbo 3.8 motor last year just as a little excercise:

Here is the future of figure modeling and it's available right now if you have the funds: A fellow in France is printing these figures on a high-end Envisiontec printer. Even though you can see some faint grow lines, the quality and detail is just perfect. The grow lines will disappear under paint. What is really absurd about these figures is that they aren't sculpted in 3D-- they are made from 3D scans of real people dressed in period uniforms. Just a couple of years ago, this would be virtually impossible to do on a hobby scale, but the advances in 3D scanning and the software to process the scans has put this kind of quality within reach of hobbyists. The figures still aren't cheap; a typical 1/32 figure is around $23, but that is well within the budget for professional modelers and serious hobbyists. With one stroke, my French friend has made both miniature sculptors and miniature casters redundant. Of course, if you want to model something that doesn't exist in the real world-- a troll warrior for instance-- you'll need a creative person to construct your model. What does this mean for car modelers? Scanning a person is really, really easy. Scanning a car isn't easy at all, unless you just want a solid model (like the ones Ford recently started offering). But if you have access to the real, original parts, anything can be reproduced in small scale with a high degree of accuracy. The fundamental part of this process is having the real thing sitting in front of you, and secondly, having the money to do it all.

Is it too late to get your money back on that little compressor? It's really not at all suited for your application. If you need really, really quiet operation, get yourself a CO2 tank. If you need just "sort of quiet," there are several small compressors with tanks from Badger, Paasche, and Iwata that will serve you much better. Also, a tank pressurized to 12psi cannot output at 32psi.

No, they are bare resin. Chroming would triple the cost. Alclad Chrome paint does a fine job on them.

Thanks to all who have supported me with these door handles. The GM truck and Mopar early-B door handles are in production now and available. They aren't on the website just yet. I don't even know if there are any decent early-B body Mopar kits out there, but since I had the real handle available to me, I made it in scale.

Thanks for the feedback. Going forward, my tires will probably all be weighted like this. That goes for both truck and cars.

Hi all, I've made a couple of aftermarket truck tire sets and they have been well-received, so I thank everyone who has supported me with that. One of the things that has always bugged me about scale model car and truck tires is that they don't portray the appearance of the real thing. Real tires bear the weight of the vehicle, and this shows up as a slight bulge at the contact patch. This bulging is mostly seen with radial tires. Aircraft modelers have realized this shortcoming in their models for years, and some of the very first resin aircraft items that appeared were weighted tires. Sanding the bottom of a round tire flat helps, but can't give you the bulge that conveys realism. I've made up a bulged version of a new 3D tire model: Here are two weighted tires alongside the un-weighted tire (right). I am thinking of selling this new tire in a set of five tires: four weighted tires and one un-weighted tire to use as the spare. The initial costs to do this kind of set are higher than a typical tire set, since it requires at least two masters instead of just one. Is this something that you truck modelers would like to see? Thanks, Joseph from Fireball Modelworks p.s.I have some GM truck door handles in the works that will be ready for sale in a few weeks:

I have a couple more door handle sets that have finished the design phase and will be going to print sometime soon. Mopar "Early" B-Bodies '63-65: GM Trucks '73-91

Just for fun, I googled around and found a '67 Camaro that was originally built in the Philippines-- sure enough, no heater! As if you really need a heater in your car in the Philippines, right? Those cars did have a higher-capacity cooling system, probably to account for the coolant capacity lost with the deleted heater core and hoses.

Thanks guys! I guess this a good time to officially announce my Mopar door handles are now available! These Mopar handles are specifically made for the late 68-70 B-Bodies (Roadrunner, Charger, Coronet, Daytona, Superbird) and 67-70 A-Bodies (Dart, Barracuda). I haven't had a chance to make up an example on a car body, but they work the same as the GM handles.

They work well. To see some past discussions, copy & paste this line into Google or your browser address bar: site:modelcarsmag.com wicked colors They are water-borne, so they don't adhere to bare plastic like good old enamel or lacquer. Bare plastic should either be primed or cleaned really well and scuffed. The paint works straight out of the bottle with a large-ish airbrush nozzle and lots of air pressure, or you can reduce it to work with smaller airbrushes and lower air pressure. Don't thin them with water-- only use the Wicked or Auto-Air reducers. They go on either satin-like or matte ("detail" colors), and should be top-coated with a clear if you are painting a body. Just about any clearcoat will work over them.

Check with Scott at Futurattraction, Ben.

Yes. Would have been more appropriate (from a puritanical point of view) to have started with a Monte Carlo. I mean, what if someone put a twin-turbo 455 Stage 1 into a Camaro? Oh-- they did: https://youtu.be/-TvOsDlpG-M

There are some camera apps you can download from the App Store that will give you more control over your iPad's camera. Cameras on iOS devices need LOTS of light, so taking photos outside with sunlight usually gives the best results.

You'd be better off using something like a hobby-specific liquid mask instead of vaseline. Microscale makes a liquid mask, and there are other brands, too. Walmart has a little bottle of liquid mask in the art supply department. These masking fluids usually contain latex, which contains ammonia, which can ruin acrylic paints. You can mix a very safe homebrew liquid mask from white glue, a little bit of dishwashing liquid, and some food coloring. The food coloring is just to tint it, so it's not really necessary. The dishwashing liquid makes the white glue spread more easily and makes it easier to peel or wash off. I've used it and it works, but you usually have to paint a masking coat, let it dry, then paint another coat.

A real 20" wheel won't measure 20" in diameter at the outside lip-- that 20" is the bead measurement. A real 20" wheel will measure somewhere in the neighborhood of 21.2". If your kit's tire is measuring 0.8", that sounds like it's perfect for an 18" wheel (19.2" scaled diameter). The AMT and older Revell Dodge Nu-Challenger kits in 1/25 scale suffered from the same issue; undersized wheels with tall tires. I guess you can do what I did for the Challenger: make your own new wheels and tires with correct diameters and aspect ratios and then lose interest in the project so all that work is now just sitting in a box... But really, if you can find a die-cast 1/24 scale Charger or Challenger, odds are it will have more accurate wheels and tires than your kit.