Bill J

Sweet. Nice work on the Chevelle.

That's pretty cool. I never considered a bottom exit system but from the looks of your setup, it would work better than the old rear exit systems. My version has a rear/upward exit through a small AC filter and a paint safe exhaust motor. My motor needs a clean up perhaps from paint clogging. I can't find that motor at Grainger's where I bought it originally. It all works great but it takes my motor a few seconds to start, which I take as a bad sign. I actually built a small room in the garage which houses my paint area, fully insulated, has a 110 air conditioner for summer and my little silent compressor. I can be up and painting in under a minute, turn on 3 switches and plug in the paint bottle. The hard part is getting masking on a 2 tone so I can actually start painting. I have several that need the second color and I am dragging my feet. If I ever need to reconstruct my painting area, I hope I can remember your construction, looks like an inexpensive and effective system.

I buy from Tamiya USA's site. Occasionally an item is out of stock, but clearly marked as such. Always have had fast service from them. I almost never use the bottle paint, only the TS sprays.

That is a really fine batch of Cobras. I thought I had too many cars working at the same time....I must say, you are doing far better than I ever have at multitasking on the model bench! Keep it coming, always a pleasure to see some inspirational work!

Excellent GT40. Those were some interesting racing days.

I will say one thing about lacquer thinner, a friend spent a fortune on one of those overnight sensation Grex airbrushes, could have bought 3 Paasche VL's for the money...anyway he used it a time or two and cleaned it with lacquer thinner. The lacquer thinner melted some of the critical parts of the Grex and ruined it. My take on that is to still use lacquer thinner and don't buy into marketing hype on overpriced airbrushes. I know I own parts of 3 of the Testor's Aztec airbrushes and they don't like any paint or thinner. They seem to be made to look at...

A 1/4 liter of the Tamiya Airbrush Cleaner costs more than 2 gallons of lacquer thinner. I make a point of having a bottle of lacquer thinner ready to spray and as soon as I am done spraying paint, I run some lacquer thinner through my airbrush. I pull the needle and tips and drop the tips into another small bottle of lacquer thinner and wipe the needle with thinner. I use small brushes to clean all orifices and use lacquer thinner in that process. I have never had a single problem. One thing I make a point of doing is always keep the tip end of the airbrush downward when using or cleaning. I also keep the tip end down as my cleaned airbrush is drying out before reassembly. I do this to keep anything from running back into the trigger and air flow area. The air valve should always stay clean and mostly dry. If it gets crud into it there is an effect on the spraying and air flow. Acrylics can definitely clog up an airbrush and rapid and thorough cleaning will prevent problems. Although I have not tried it, I would think a good denatured alcohol would also be a good cleaner when using acrylics.

Nice tip and nice work on the scribing. I also use a small drafting compass with two points. One is the guide and the other does the scribing.

That's cool! Nice paint work and I really like the copper inserts, it fits.

I finally gave in and bought a bottle of this stuff. I am usually not a clear coat person, I look at it as one more opportunity to ruin my paint job. I have ruined a few with Testor's enamel clear, Tamiya TS-13 and a try of clear lacquer. I live where it is warm and dry and really have not had problems with decals or plain finishes. So, I do have a car that is partly painted gold that I need to clear before applying decals and after seeing a modeling buddies car that he coated with the floor shine, I thought I would give it a try. Worse case, I am out like $6.18 and I can use the stuff on the floor or something. I have excellent luck with the Tamiya TS paints, although the TS-13 ruined a car that had been painted for years when I decided to make it more shiny. Now it is crazed and pretty much ruined. Not sure why that happened. Paint is such a finicky critter. Today I sprayed some Scalefinishes acrylic enamel paint over some Tamiya white primer, which is my normal procedure and the paint weirded out in spots, having to strip the whole thing. That only happened one other time, maybe I sprayed too much on at once.

The Porsche 550 is really nice, excellent build of the car. Fernando Pinto makes some great kits of some rare subjects. he is also very nice to deal with, he made me some special wire wheels for a car I have on the back burner and they are perfect for my subject car.

Scroll down to "Redy Caps" you get 20 for $3 made for the siphon bottles. I buy a few packs and I am all set. http://www.coastairbrush.com/products.asp?cat=296

Mark, another beauty. Who know why Mickey was on the hood? I don't know but he looks good there

Be safe Bill, the highway to Tucson is like the Indy 500 with Semi trucks in the mix and everyone is in a serious hurry. I worked in Tucson some years ago and always went through Florence to get there to avoid the Interstate.

Interested in what you can build and where to find kits and accessories. Historic Racing Miniatures has some great kits and parts, LeMans Miniatures makes some kits, not as many as they once did. One of the aftermarket kit makes recently lost his home and business, Fisher Models made some very nice looking kits from that era. One I always wanted to build was the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR roadster of Fangio and Moss at LeMans 1955. All the cars of the 50's and 60's are interesting subjects and all have some stories. I started on my 300 SLR, I poke around at it from time to time. I hope to someday get the motivation to complete the car. I have the HRM trans kit and some wheels plus the Monogram/Revell donor 300 SLR kit. Shame the car had a short racing career, it deserved more. Here are the links I have: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/bilingham-design https://www.spotmodel.com/index.php http://www.profil24-models.com/model-kits-modeles-reduits/en/5-gamme-au-1-24e https://www.scaleproduction.de/?language=en http://www.gts-series.com/en/ http://www.mshobbies.com/

Looks like a fine outcome to me. Great work on the Corvette GS, the best looking 'vette of all.

Super cool! Nicely done.

Super nice Impala, I like the colors and the build. Has anyone tried the windshield and back window from an AMT '62 Impala bubbletop on the Lindberg '61??

Super nice work on the Daytona Charger. I sure wish someone would reissue those decals.

Very cool, congrats to Will and his Dad!

Really nicely done! Love the Boss Mustang. Now, can we please get a 1:25 scale 1970 Boss 302, Revell?

My understanding of why the Cleveland engine was discontinued is that Ford was not meeting emission standards with the Cleveland engines and decided to use the Windsor design for all it's small blocks. Cleveland engines have a much better head and intake design. Which is why the Boss 302 engine made good power and held up better because of the Windsor block type.

The saddest aspect of that to me is that the guy is here in Arizona. Last week I had a side window explode on my Jeep from an object launched off the top of a truck @ 75MPH.

I always wondered about the orange dot too. If you watch a video of the 63 Daytona 500, there are a few other cars with the orange dot. I was thinking it may have something to do with rookie status and only used once. Definitely a mystery that persists! I am actually working on a pair of 63 Impalas, one an AMT and the other a Revell. The AMT was started in the 1980's and will be the Junior Johnson car, the Revell is going to be the Rutherford car. I am getting back on them in a few weeks and hope to finish both soon.

Great story and nice work on the FC so far. Looking forward to following along.