Harry P.

Oh, ok. I thought maybe it was some sort of band he put together after Steppenwolf. You got me...

Originally a Steppenwolf song (and album title).

Who is Raphael Ravenscroft?

Um... what does 4.3/5 mean?

I don't know if "junk brand" is fair. They are perfectly good paints... they just aren't specifically sold as "model paint," and so they don't have the insane "model paint" markup. I decided a long time ago that I was not going to spend the $$$ on "model paints" if there was a more sanely-priced alternative. Just today I was at Hobby Lobby picking up a few items I'll need for my model. Tamiya primer was $11 a can. ELEVEN freaking dollars for a tiny can of primer! No way am I going to spend eleven bucks on a can of primer.

I completely reworked the whole body/floorboard/chassis interface so that I could install the floorboard to the chassis, then the body, then the seats, and finally the roof last. It made sense to me to rework things so that the roof can go on last, after all the body and interior work is finished. Making things work that way involved a lot of changes to the way the body panels and roof assemble. You may not want to do that, it means basically re-engineering the whole body and roof. The basic reason I reworked things to that extent is because like you, I also didn't like how the floorboard doesn't directly attach to the chassis. I wanted to be able to build the model by first installing the floorboard to the chassis, then installing the seats, then the body, and finally the roof. Like I said, reworking things to that extent was a lot of work... but at least now I can install the floorboard solidly to the chassis before the bodywork goes into place. Don't ask me how I did it... it would literally take a book to explain it all. But step #1 was removing the roof from the body sides, and assembling the three roof pieces into one solid unit... to be installed onto the body last. This eliminates the awkward way Pocher engineered this kit by having you screw the roof panels together from the inside after the body is in place. No way I was going to go that route...

You're right, they are connected to the underside of the intake manifold on the horizontal part of the intake tubes above the carbs, not the carbs themselves. My mistake. And they exit into the air... so they have to be draft tubes. The smaller tubes between the intake and the valve cover is listed as the "vergaserheizung" on my engine diagrams. That translates to "carburetor heater," so they must be some sort of pre-heater tubes... which would explain why in some photos they are wrapped in insulating tape. The silver I'm using is "Odds 'n' Ends Silver from Hobby Lobby, with a coat of Testors Transparent Black Window Tint over the silver. They're a crafty bunch!

Back to the chassis. I made a dumb mistake... I glued the engine and chassis together before I added the road draft tubes (at least that's what I think they are, based on the fact they're connected to the carbs on one end, snake down the side of the block, make a 90 degree bend towards the back of the car, and exit into the open air along the side of the oil pan). They are the two black vertical tubes you see in the photo. I made them by bending aluminum rod to shape, test fitting, re-bending, re-test fitting, etc., until I got them both to fit. It would have been so much easier if I had added these to the engine before I glued the engine into the chassis.

Um, yeah... I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet, exactly... But obviously I can't connect the lines between tank and engine until after the tank is solidly in place... and the tank can't be solidly in place until the firewall is in place. I'l have to figure this one out when I get to it.

I'm going to customize the interior of the model a bit. Here is an inner door panel from the kit. I want to replace that upper part with real wood (to match the dash): The first step is to carefully cut down along the back of the two extensions at the leading and trailing ends of the panel. These extensions are there because there is a space between the inner and outer door panels where the glass goes, so I want to save these extensions and not just cut off the whole top of the inner panel. I cut down to the point where that top part of the inner door trim panel ends: Now I turned the panel over and used the back side of my X-acto blade to scribe along the seam between that top panel and the rest of the lower panel. I had to be careful at the ends because I didn't want to break off those two extensions. Here, the right panel has been modified: And now both are done: I also sanded off the molded-in door pulls at the top center of the door panels; I'll replace those later with better, scratchbuilt pulls.

I sort of just tried to get "in the ballpark" with that. These things are so small on the model (the camera exaggerates everything 10x)... when you look at it with your own eyes and not the camera's, things look way different. I made the fuel level tube by using a small half-round file and filing the side of some thin aluminum tube until I had opened up that "window" that you see. The upper and lower mounts are just regular old sewing pins. Here's another shot of the dash in natural light, no flash:

"Well she dances alone in nightclubs every other day of the week"...

"Once the religious, the hunted and weary, Chasing the promise of freedom and hope, Came to this country to build a new vision Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope."

"You don't know what's going on. You've been away for far too long."

"Well I was gonna bring you flowers... but I didn't. It's the thought that counts, and I think I'm a bit too broke."

I posted a bunch earlier in this thread that never got answered. I figured they were too hard...

I took one of the images of the car's gauges that Skip sent me and opened the image in Photoshop. I made several sets, each slightly a different size... that way when I printed them out I'd be sure to have at least one set at exactly the correct size. I scratchbuilt a horn switch using a sewing pin, some aluminum tube for the shaft, and a tiny bit of sheet styrene for the "wing" on the knob: I stained the dash and "varnished" it with Future. The gauge bezels are rings cut from aluminum tubing. I had to make the holes in the wood dash exactly the right size for the bezels to fit into without any slop. I added clear "glass" by gluing a piece of clear acetate to the back side of the dash, then glued the gauge faces in place. The black switch to the left of the tach (the big gauge right in the center) was cut off the kit dash with a razor saw, painted, and glued in place here. I scratchbuilt the rest of the dash controls using sewing pins and aluminum tube: I think the end result looks a bit better than what came in the kit.

MB started using them in the 1930s.

Just messin' with ya. But seriously... corn is not a vegetable. And a tomato isn't either. It's a fruit. And a peanut is not a nut. It's a legume, like beans. Stick with me, kid, and you'll learn a thing or three...

Only one chapter in the book dealt specifically with the Corvair. The book wasn't about the Corvair specifically, it was about a lot of different issues, like the automakers being reluctant to add safety features due to cost. Things like that.

BTW... for anyone who has never seen the movie "Bonnie and Clyde" with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and Gene Hackman as Clyde's brother Buck (Hackman's first major film role, I think)... do yourself a favor and check it out. It's not a particularly accurate telling (the "C. W. Moss" character is actually sort of a mash-up of two different people), but still a great movie with perfect period costumes and of course, lots of 1930s cars (Bonnie and Clyde stole a lot of cars!).

Tip: Clyde liked to drive in his stocking feet.

I tried to fix them in PS by upping the contrast to get the black blacker and the white whiter, but it doesn't do much good. The bad thing is, the gauge faces are so small at 1/16 scale that you literally need a magnifier to discern what they are. But that's also the good news, because to the naked eye, unless you have eagle vision, they look great! I'll have pix of the dash all done up with glass, bezels, and gauge faces either later tonite or tomorrow. I'm in the middle of finishing the dash right now. I must say, it's looking pretty cool!

I wish there was a model of this car available.