Harry P.

The pitch of a roller chain is the distance between the rollers. The Grandt Line chain has a slightly larger pitch than the kit-supplied chain, so I couldn't use the kit sprockets... the aftermarket chain would not fit properly onto the teeth of the kit sprockets. That's why I had to buy new sprockets, too. Here is one of the two kit rear sprockets... First step is to use a razor saw to cut the ring of teeth off the kit sprockets...

The Grandt Line chains and sprockets came today... The chain is sold in 6" lengths, I need two finished drive chains 8" long, so I had to buy three chains.

Very cool! The only comment I have is the placement of the exhaust pipes right at the rear tires. I would have had them exit out the sides, in front of the tires, or straight out the back... but not directly at the tires.

Looks good to me!

Or maybe even an addiction.

I don't think it's possible to shake a can hard enough to cause those bumps. There has to be a more logical explanation.

I never understood why they came out with a four-door "Charger." They had that really cool concept car that they paraded around, and yeah, it was a four-door, but it looked cool. What actually made production looked more like a Checker than a Charger. You want a new four-door? Call it a Monaco or a Polara or whatever. No "real" Charger ever came with four doors.

I prefer the two in the back of the line...

Well, yeah! 2016 isn't over! The contest issue always features last year's contests... you can't feature contests that haven't happened yet!

Already?

That probably depends on the specific material you're using.

Cool!

Another winner, Chuck! You sure keep on banging them out! But all I see are holes in the doors where the handles should be...

Pocher Bugatti seats, upholstered with the same stuff, then painted... Once again, the beading detail on the rear seat is that soft, flexible rubber bead stringing stuff found in the HL jewelry aisle.

Another Pocher Rolls Royce. This one will have a completely scratchbuilt woody body. Here is the front seat upholstered in that Hobby Lobby material in its natural color, which doesn't look bad if a brown interior is what you want... But this car will have green upholstery, so out came the acrylic craft paint... Rear seat is completely scratchbuilt.

Alfa Monza... upholstered using super glue, then painted black...

Here is a rare case (the only time, actually) that I used the kit supplied upholstery, because I liked the color and the stitching detail. I used contact cement in this case.

Pocher Rolls Royce seats, upholstered with the Hobby Lobby stuff, the "beading" detail is soft, black rubber that I found in the jewelry making aisle of Hobby Lobby. I used super glue to attach it, working in short lengths at a time. The upholstery material is brown, and the rubber is obviously black, but no matter, as these seats were painted after upholstering them with gray acrylic craft paint. The wood trim is real wood, stained and "varnished" with Future. On these seats the outer shells are kit parts, but all the cushions were scratchbuilt using balsa wood and some very thin foam rubber (also found at Hobby Lobby)! You can see that on the rear seat the armrests are not yet in place. Rear seat... And the fronts... The red "carpet" trim is yet another piece of material I found in the same section of HL as the upholstery material. In this case I also used that red material for the car's carpeting. The handles on the seat storage compartments and the horizontal trim across the seat backs is soft silver jewelry beading wire, found at... you guessed it, Hobby Lobby!

Aftermarket resin seats that I used on my Pocher Mercedes, before upholstery... And after, using material from Hobby Lobby similar to what I was talking about, but this has a more pronounced texture. By the way, this is the way the material looks, this seat was not painted after upholstering.

Generally the Pocher kit-supplied leather is way too stiff to work well. I use a material I found at Hobby Lobby... pretty sure it's some sort of vinyl, but it looks exactly like 1/8 scale leather. It's soft, stretchy, and can be pulled around curves. It has a thick sponge-like backing on it, which I just tear off, leaving me with the thin, soft "skin." I have no idea what this stuff is called, but it's sold by the yard. It's on a huge roll where they have several aisles of large rolls of all sorts of material. I just found it one day while I was looking for something that would look like 1/8 scale leather. I have built two Pocher Alfas, the Touring and the Monza. On the Touring, I remember that the seat was molded in one piece with the body! That would have made upholstering it impossible, so I cut it away and upholstered it as a separate piece. In that case I did use the kit-supplied "leather" because it had nice stitching detail. Usually I use super glue to glue the upholstery, but it will stain the material. Since in this case I was using the kit material, and didn't paint the upholstery afterwards, I used contact cement to glue it on, which didn't soak into the material and stain it. On the Monza I used the stuff I found at Hobby Lobby. I think I remember the seat was molded in one piece, so I separated the seat back from the cushion part to make it easier to upholster. In this case I used super glue and glued the material down working with one pleat at a time. Glued the first pleat, used a razor saw to sort of push the material firmly into the groove, then the next pleat and so on. I made the "roll" that goes around the seat by gluing a long, thin strip of the material to a length of aluminum rod, then shaped the piece to conform to the contours of the seat back. When using superglue on this material, it will stain the material, but that's not important, because when I was done with the upholstery I painted the seat with acrylic craft paints. I'll dig up some photos of various Pocher seats I've done and post them here.

No, it's not quite the same as vacuum-plating... but for me it's close enough. And easy to use. I wouldn't ever bother with those expensive, multi-step processes just for a model car. Maybe if I was interested in contests I'd go all out... but I don't enter contests, so I only have to please myself, not any judge.

The end result is pretty spectacular, but the process is way too lengthy for me. I believe in K.I.S.S. I'm not that hard-core into models that I would go to lengths like that to "chrome" a radiator shell.

It's on CNBC. http://www.cnbc.com/live-tv/jay-lenos-garage

I have my DVR set up to automatically record every episode of the show.