Harry P.

You can always use some pinstriping tape to apply an accent stripe along the sides. http://www.hobbymasters.com/Line-O-Tape-Pinstriping-Tapes.aspx That's what I used on these guys...metallic gold on this one: And red on this one: Your model looks fantastic as is... but an accent stripe would be really cool, IMO.

Keep it up, Bruce! We need more classics!

Does it have to meet federally mandated crash/safety/MPG standards? You're comparing apples and oranges.

But those safety standards are real. They exist. The manufacturers can't engineer a mass-market car without taking them into account. Their cars have to comply with all those regulations whether you like them or not. But I'm curious... where do see the 1,000 pounds of excess weight being cut out of the Challenger? Seriously... ONE THOUSAND pounds? Say they made you King of Mopar Engineering. Tell me specifically where a thousand pounds of "fat" can be cut from the Challenger.

If that was possible, don't you think they would have done it? Manufacturers have even have gone to thinner glass in order to save an ounce or two. No more spare tire, save 40 pounds. They have cut all the weight they can possibly cut while still meeting safety standards. I severely doubt that the new Challenger is carrying around an extra half-ton of unnecessary weight due to sloppy engineering.

I agree on the need for a contrasting strip of color... maybe a maroon would have been nice.

A V8 with cylinder deactivation hooked up to a 10 speed trans is a perfect example of needlessly complex! Today's V8s need more and more gimmicks in order to make them "efficient." Why not ditch the V8 and work with something that is inherently more efficient to begin with? That's where the automakers are going, and it makes perfect sense. Hanging on to V8s for nostalgia's sake isn't going to cut it.

So, do you go through ancient topics every so often just to find something to bring back to life? I mean, you had to really crank up the Way Back machine to max power to pull up a topic from the very beginning of 2007! Just wondering...

Bill, your underlying theme seems to be that we ought to hang on to V8s because they're relatively easy to fix and can be warranted for a long time. But we've passed the "easy to fix" threshold long ago. Today's V8s are no easier to fix than any other engine. The days of the "shade tree mechanic" are long gone, at least as far as cars manufactured today goes. So there's really no good, logical reason for automakers to hang on to V8s, which are currently probably near the limits of their efficiency. Let's be honest... when automakers need to come up with gimmicky things like 10 speed automatics or auto shut down and cylinder deactivation and stuff like just to wring another tenth of a mile per gallon out of a V8 powered car, the days of the manufacturers relying on a V8 are pretty much numbered. Much simpler to ditch the V8 and the mega-speed trans and the cylinder deactivation and all the gimmicks needed to make a V8 "efficient" at today's standards, and just go with something that's actually more efficient without needing to rely on the add-on mechanical crutches to achieve that "efficiency."

If you knew how to do your own repair work. And wanted to. You guys who work on cars as your job or as your hobby keep forgetting that the vast majority of people don't know how to repair a car, and have no intention of doing so.

You can't seriously expect the automakers to cater to that tiny slice of their customer base that "likes to tinker." Face facts... the vast majority of car buyers couldn't care less about "tinkering." Many of them have literally never opened the hood... they take the car in to be serviced for everything. That is the customer base the automakers have to appeal to... the vast majority, not the handful of "car nuts."

What kind of warranty covered your big old V8 back in the 50s and 60s? Nobody gave you 10 years, or 7... or even 5... yet people survived. Aurtomotive engineering and tech have moved forward in leaps and bounds. Today's turbos are better engineered than those of 10-20 years ago.

As long as CAFE standards keep rising (and there's no reason to think they won't), the auto engineers will be forced to keep increasing a car's MPG in one way or another. They have already cut a lot of dead weight, through lighter, high-strength steel and other materials... and they have probably managed to wring out just about as many MPG they can out of a V8. They're now getting silly with 9 and 10 speed automatics, to try and squeeze out another tenth of a mile per gallon. Is a 10-speed automatic a simple device? Or a ridiculously complex device whose only reason for being is trying to make a V8 just a tiny bit more efficient? Is a turbocharged engine any more "complex" than a 10-speed transmission? Hanging on to V8 technology while trying to constantly gain more MPG from them seems like a losing proposition. There is a limit to how little fuel you need to burn in order to create combustion, and eight cylinders are always going to need more fuel than six or four cylinders will, no matter what. The future is smaller engines, turbos, CVTs, electrics, and alt fuel vehicles. The V8 may not fully disappear in our lifetimes, but I really don't see the automakers hanging on to it for very long, given the ever-increasing mileage standards, when there are far easier ways to increase a car's mileage.

Spectacular! I can't imagine it looking any better than that!

I don't see what the big deal is. It's called progress. The new 2015 Mustang with the Eco-boost four makes more horsepower and more torque than my 2007 Mustang GT V8. There's nothing sacred about an engine having a certain number of cylinders. Over the years we have had cars with one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, ten, twelve, and sixteen cylinders. What's so special about eight? More important than how many cylinders an engine has is overall performance of that engine. And some of the highest performance cars today don't have any cylinders... they're electric. An eight-cylinder engine is only one of many ways to power a car.

So far I've only tried it on the wire wheels. I wonder how it looks on a large, smooth area? I'll have to give it a try.

My can of Spaz Stik finally came. I have never used it (or Alclad) before, and I was sort of skeptical about how "chrome" it would actually look. Wow! This stuff is amazing! It's about as close to chrome plated parts as you can get out of a spray can. I'd say it's about 90-95% there, visually, as far as looking like "chrome." The stuff's not cheap... I paid $14.25 for a 3.5 oz. can, but man, the results are spectacular! This isn't the best photo, and not the best part to see the effect on, but the wire wheels in the kit are molded in gray plastic. I sprayed them gloss black, then hit them with a light coat of the Spaz Stik. Amazing! And the stuff is dry almost instantly... 5-10 minutes and it's rock hard and can be handled with absolutely no problem. If you saw these wheels in person, I bet you would never know they were painted and not actually chrome plated: I'll get some better photos posted tomorrow.

I also started work on the inner door panels. I'm going to do a custom interior, and I want real wood trim along the door tops... so step one is doing the trusty old "back side of the blade" thing and removing the tops of the inner door panels, following along a molded-in groove (which makes the job super easy). Here are panels as they come in the box: And after surgery: And then, using the cut off pieces as templates, I cut new pieces from basswood, which will eventually be stained and varnished:

The kit has the option of building it with either exposed spare tires on the rear deck, or a smooth deck with fender-mounted spares, so there are two different rear decks. The joint between the body sides and the rear deck piece will eventually be hidden under a long thin chromed trim strip, but at the back end of the car, near the rear bumper, those trim strips take a turn inward, and would partially expose that seam between the body sides and the rear deck piece. Don't know why they didn't enginner the pieces so that seam mimics the shape of the trim piece all the way to the back, but they didn't. So I had to Bondo the seams near the back end and smooth out the fender tips:

Tossed in the recycling bin, specifically. Still "garbage."

Tossed in the garbage.

R. B. Greaves?

Correct!

Correct!