Harry P.

It's pretty weird... the shroud is in the kit, but the fan isn't!

More... Pocher kits are known for their "issues" regarding the fit of various parts. Now, given the fact that the average Pocher kit has between 2,000 and 3,000 parts, a few fit issues are to be expected... but the problem is, in most cases you don't realize the problem until it's too late. In other words, there's no way for the builder to anticipate certain problems until they make themselves obvious, and by that time it's often too late (or a major PITA) to disassemble things and go back to correct the problem. Here's a perfect example. The car has a centrally mounted oil tank that sits between the frame rails under the floorboard. The filler for the tank is located on the right side of the car... the filler neck and cap protrude through a hole in the right side running board. (Yeah, the fenders are molded in that bright electric blue!) Unfortunately, the filler neck of the tank and the hole in the running board don't line up. And there's no way to know this until you've assembled the frame. Here's the problem, discovered too late: The hole on the running board doesn't line up with the neck of the tank. At this point I had two choices: Either disassemble the frame so that I could remove the tank and mount it further forward in the frame, or modify the running board. Moving the tank forward would also affect the location of too many other chassis components, so that was not an option. I could have disassembled the frame, removed the tank, cut off the filler neck, reattach it to the tank and then rebuild the chassis, but at this point I figured it would be easier to modify the as-yet unmounted fender/running board. Here's a photo that shows how far the hole had to be moved (distance "A"): So I measured, then carefully cut the running board apart, using a razor saw to make the perpendicular cuts and scribing the longitudinal cuts with the back side of my X-acto blade until the pieces came free, and reassembled the cut pieces as shown here: I reinforced the joints with sheet styrene from below, filled the gaps with Bondo and sanded everything smooth... all the time being careful to keep the running board ridges untouched. It was a pretty delicate operation, and the results were not perfect... but pretty close!

The kit has no fan at all, either electric or mechanical. I scratchbuilt an electric fan based on reference photos I found online. You can see it here (barely):

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa........

Yup, the real deal had mechanical brakes. I'm sure those brakes kept a lot of mechanics real busy! There are a lot of connections along the way from brake pedal to brake shoes. The kit brake system has all the individual linkages, rods, levers, etc. that the real system had, but of course the tolerances of the kit parts are nowhere near tight enough for the brakes to work... there's way too much play in the system. I read once where the only way to make a Pocher kit's brake system really work is to scratchbuild all the various linkages to much tighter tolerances... and I'm not about to spend the time needed to do that!

I don't know what the story is between you guys... and to be honest I don't want to know, it's none of my business. But I will ask all of you who are involved in this little "situation," whatever it may be, to please try and keep it from spilling over onto this forum. You guys obviously have some issues going amongst yourselves that apparently don't have much, if anything, to do with this forum... so please keep it off this forum. That's not to say that you're going to be "censored"... just a friendly request to sort of censor yourselves.

If you think hitting your face on an airbag will bruise you, imagine what hitting that same face on the steering wheel would do. In my case, I was hit head on, I was doing approx. 45-50 mph. Not wearing a seatbelt (dumb!)... I bounced off the airbag. My car didn't survive the crash, but I did. Injuries to my face from hitting the airbag? A bloody nose that stopped in a few minutes. I imagine I would have gotten a lot more than a bloody nose if the airbag had not been there.

All the Monza photos I've seen have the chassis matching the body color, so I'd guess that would be the way to go. I haven't seen a photo of a Monza that had the chassis painted different than the body. I did a "custom" color scheme, it's not necessarily accurate, but I like it!

Not all states require a helmet. And some states only require people under a certain age to wear one. As if being an adult somehow magically protects your head! Here in Illinois there is no helmet law at all. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. Car drivers sit inside steel-reinforced crumple zones, protected by air bags and seat belts, but you can hop on your Harley and go down the interstate doing 70 mph, weaving between cars and semis, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans!

That's right, there is no absolute guarantee that a seat belt will save your life, but according to all the data and all the numbers and all the statistics, seat belts greatly increase your odds of coming out of a serious crash alive, or with fewer and more minor injuries than if you were not wearing one. That's undisputed fact. Yes, there is always that freak 1 in a million incident where someone who wasn't wearing a seat belt comes out ok, but you have to remember that for every lucky one of those people, there are thousands more people whose lives were saved by wearing a seat belt. The numbers back up seat belt use so incredibly obviously that I can't understand how anyone could possibly make a case for not wearing one. It's like saying I'm jumping out of a plane without a parachute because there's always a chance I'll land on a haystack, but the parachute lines could tangle and I'd die from the fall. Incredibly unrealistic logic.

A little more... The model comes with leather upholstery for the seat and interior. Unfortunately, the seat is molded as one piece with the body, which means you would have to paint the body, and polish it, then upholster the seat without messing up the finished paint. Impossible. The first step was to use the back side of a #11 X-acto blade to carefully scribe the seat away from the body. It took some time, but if you're careful and patient, it'll work... eventually! (the dark spots you see on the body is epoxy filler, used to correct flaws–mostly sink marks–in the body). Now that the seat was separated from the body I could upholster it much more easily, without worrying about ruining the paint on the body. Pocher supplies a sheet of leather with all the individual pieces for the interior die-cut. I used contact cement to attach the upholstery pieces to the seat. As you know, with contact cement you get one chance... kind of nerve-wracking when you're working on a $500 kit. I did several "dry runs" to get a feel for how the leather would fit and how best to apply it. Then the contact cement and the moment of truth. It turned out pretty well... After I painted the body and foiled the side spear trim, I reattached the upholstered seat by using strips if sheet styrene as "bridges" between the body and the seat. Here's a shot of an early test fit of the body with upholstered interior sitting on the chassis. Note how the leather upholstery wraps around the tops of the doors and across the body above the dash, forming a leather "bolster" around the cockpit. Getting the leather to stretch and follow these contours was a bit of a challenge, but it worked out well in the end.

I used to be one of those people who thought that seat belt laws were "infringing on my liberty"... I never wore them, drove for years without using them. Then one day I was involved in a head-on crash that totaled my car. (crash was the other driver's fault, BTW, not mine)... anyway, as usual I was not wearing a seat belt. I'm pretty sure (given the condition my car was in after impact) that the airbag in the steering wheel saved my life, or at least prevented serious injury. Needless to say, I am now a big believer in airbags... and I wear my seat belt every time I get into a car. I think that what I used to see as government meddling in my personal choice possibly saved my life.

I can't explain the motorcycle helmet law (or lack thereof), but as far as the citizens rising up and demanding change on seat belt/airbag laws, it ain't ever gonna happen. It's a proven fact that seat belts and airbag save lives and reduce injury. Whether you're "for" them or "against" them, there's no denying it, it's just a simple fact that deaths and injuries in crashes have decreased dramatically since seat belts and airbags have been required. Even if every single licensed driver in the country signed a "We don't want seat belts and airbags" petition, the government would never go back to the way it used to be and rescind those standards. Seat belts and airbags work, plain and simple.

The only "statement" they make to me when they do that is "hey, look at me, look at me! I'm so cool because I'm on a bike and you're not"... It's kind of like guys who drive around with their car stereos blasting so loud that you can hear it a block away. Hey, hot shot, guess what? You're not as cool as you think, because my car radio has a volume control too!

Yeah, what is the deal with that? Is there some sort of unwritten law that says if you're on a motorcycle and you're sitting at a light, you have to constantly rev the engine over and over while you're waiting for the green?

Links, Advertisers, and Web Sites "Here you will find links to web sites, our advertisers, photo albums, and other online sites"... I think that speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Ok, gang... real or model? As usual, if you know where the photo is from, don't tell! The answer: MODEL!

I never could understand why those high-intensity headlights that literally blind other drivers are considered "safer" than normal lights. To any driver on the road who has them coming at you or in your rear-view mirror, they're a giant PITA.

That does look cool... lowering it like that gives it a whole different look. It's almost unrecognizable as a Camaro! BTW... it's a Camaro with Cragars...

Exactly! Japanese modelers attitude is, hey, you're supposed to please us, the consumers of your product. We don't want junk. American modelers say, geez, this kit is junk, but I'm so glad we even have this kit. Two very different mentalities. What does that say about us? No wonder the Japanese kicked our lazy behinds in the 1:1 auto arena... until it got so bad here that we were forced to upgrade the product, kicking and screaming, or risk losing even more market share to the Japanese. I wonder if that same sort of "revolution" would ever happen in the scale car world?

Well, it's a little better...

So that begs the question: why don't (can't?... won't?) the American manufacturers put out a product at a comparable quality level? The price differential between the Japanese and the American kits has closed somewhat, American kit prices are rising faster than Glenn Beck's blood pressure. So where's the rise in quality to go along with the rise in price?

1. Use a razor saw to cut away the calipers along the surface of the kit rotor. 2. If the PE part has holes in it (cross-drilled detail), paint the surface of the kit rotor flat black. 3. Use a drop of CA to attach the PE rotor to the surface of the kit disk. 4. Paint the calipers you removed in step 1 and glue back in place with a drop of CA. There will be a gap in the caliper because you have the PE rotor in place now, but when the wheels are attached you won't see that gap.

That's because they're trying to get out of Wisconsin and back to Illinois ASAP!

That's the story in Chicago too... drivers are complaining that the yellows are much shorter than they used to be. Shorter yellows=more people caught=more $$$ for Chicago. Makes me want to move to Montana...