Harry P.

Maybe. Something to think about. I'm just glad that wiring job is over!

The ebay seller described this as a "junkyard" kit because of all the broken pieces... like the mounting pins for the radiator hoses, which were broken off. Simple fix: brass rod.

Getting the distributors attached, while forcing the ignition wires to make that sharp, tight turn into the looms, wasn't easy. And wiring the six inner spark plugs wasn't easy. And attaching the outer spark plug wires and running them into the looms wasn't easy. And finally... because everything on the engine is black, you can't really see any of this added detail unless you look really closely. And once the model is finished and the hood attached, pretty much all of this added detail will be basically invisible. I think I might have been better off just leaving all the wiring and loom detail off. Oh well...

The twin distributors and twin coils are mounted at the front of the engine, but the wires from the distributors run through twin tubes located between them. The problem is that there is very little room for this, and the distributor wires have to make a very sharp, tight turn into these tubes. I made the wire looms out of styrene tubing...

The engine on this car is a V12... but there are two plugs per cylinder, a distributor for each bank of cylinders, and dual coils... so adding ignition wiring is going to be a challenge. Two distributors with 13 leads each (two plugs per cylinder plus coil). To make things even harder, on each cylinder head the plugs are located six on the outside of the cylinder head, six on the inside (in the "valley" of the engine). And worse yet, the ignition wires run through wiring looms that are not included in the kit. First step was to scratchbuild all of the components needed... individual plug wires with boots, bundles of ignition wire to represent those coming out of looms located behind and below the distributors, the long looms that are located parallel to the cylinder heads, etc... Both distributors needed to be wired up, along with individual boots for each connection. the distributor on the right has the boots installed... Then 13 wires for each distributor...

This week's car is a 1958 Opel Kapitan PL. Who got it right: matthijsgrit Badluck 13 blunc dw1603 62rebel Ace-Garageguy otherunicorn Thom Earl Marischal Chris R bbsbase Zandmann Sixties Sam Power Plant chunkypeanutbutter

Nice work.

I could make this quiz a lot harder.

Man, that takes me back1 Love the "jacked up in the back" look...

I love woodworking, but can't do it as a hobby because I don't have the space to set up a proper shop. One of my dreams was to be a builder of custom furniture... custom designed, custom built. If I could make a living doing that, I'd drop all this other stuff I do to pay the bills in a heartbeat. But when I think of the cost to equip a woodworking shop, never mind the actual space needed... well, let's say my dream remains just that.

Classics IV?

So I went to the lumber yard today... ok, the "lumber yard" I went to was the local Hobby Lobby... Now if I can get my pesky clients and their rush jobs out of the way, I can start some serious building this weekend.

When I was a kid I built 1/24 and 1/25 because I was into funny cars, dragsters, street rods, hot rods, etc... typical kid's interests, and those subjects were mainly available in 1/24 or 1/25. Now I've lost interest in those subjects and am into the classics and brass-era cars pretty much exclusively. So now I'm all about 1/16 and 1/8 scale. After building so many 1/8 Pochers, even 1/16 seems small to me... I can't imagine ever going back to an even smaller scale than that! How some of you guys get so much detail into your 1/24 and 1/25 scale models is amazing to me.

Yuri... I don't even know how to begin. That is just about perfect! It's rare to see that kind of model building talent. I don't think it's possible to do a better job than you have done. Outstanding in every way, I'm very impressed.

I didn't know that Little Eva was their babysitter! I am learning all kinds of stuff here! BTW... Carole King's husband/songwriting partner was Gerry Goffin. He died last year. Carole, however, is still going strong,

I bet there are people here that had no idea that it was a cover.

Yes! Exactly what I have been predicting is now happening! Won't be long before a 3-D printer will be as common on our workbenches as a Dremel tool or an X-acto knife.

Flat roof it is!

Grand Funk had a big hit with "The Loco-motion"... But it wasn't their song,...

Been done. Either Monogram or JoHan, can't remember which.

I think the difference was that Kaiser was already a well-established and respected ship builder during WWII; they weren't the "new kid on the block" the way Tucker was. And like you said, Kaiser also was a steel maker, so the Big Three couldn't do anything to them even if they wanted to. Kaiser was a huge outfit with interests in several areas of industry. But Tucker was a different case–a new car company just getting started in the post-war years, trying to sell a modern, all-new car with features the Big Three didn't offer. I agree that Tucker would probably not have been a threat to the Big Three's sales, but apparently they felt the Tucker Corp. was a big enough threat to do like Barney Fife always said... "nip it in the bud."

Ok, here's a weird one, Everyone knows "California Dreamin' " by the Mamas and Papas... probably their biggest hit ever. And it was written by a Mama and a Papa... John and Michelle Phillips. So it would seem to be a Mamas and Papas original. But here's where the story gets weird... John and Michelle were members of a folk group before they morphed into the Mamas and Papas (with Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty). They had written "California Dreamin' " but never had recorded it. The first recorded version of the song was actually on a Barry McGuire album (he's the guy who sang "Eve of Destruction"). The arrangement and backing vocals on Barry McGuire's recording of the song are very similar to the version that was recorded later by the Mamas and Papas... the version we all know. In fact John and Michelle did the backing vocals on the McGuire version. So the much more well-known Mamas and Papas version of the song was actually a cover version... a cover version of their own song!

And you thought this was a Doobie Bros. original?

"Well, I hope we're not too messianic, or a trifle too satanic"...