Harry P.

Posting news of the latest GM recall isn't "demonizing" GM. It's reporting the facts. If you want to start a Ford recall topic, go right ahead. GM has now recalled more vehicles this year alone than the total number they have sold in the last five years.

Another day... another GM recall. Yes, another one! From CBS News this morning: General Motors announced Thursday that it is recalling 117,651 vehicles from the 2013 and 2014 model years for a defect that could cause them to stall. The recall involves the Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban, Traverse, Express and Silverado; the Cadillac CTS, Escalade and Escalade ESV; the GMC Yukon, Yukon XL, Acadia, Savana and Sierra; and the Buick Enclave. GM said metal slivers in the chassis control module could cause an electrical short. If that happens, the vehicle could stall.

Final vote: 11 REAL, 30 MODEL. And the answer is... REAL!

No, I guess not. This section was added specifically for people who either collect diecasts like Danbury Mint, Franklin Mint, Hot Wheels, Tonka, Matchbox, etc.... or who take those models and modify them. Or both. So the emphasis here is on the diecast aspect, because working with cast metal kits presents challenges that "normal" plastic kits don't. I think a kit that is all plastic except for the body can go in the "regular" model car sections–but of course it can also go here. Sometimes it's a judgement call.

It works now. Weird.

No.

Yes, but not anymore!

It just so happens there's a lull in my "real work" at the moment... the kit came...autumn came... the stars aligned. No better time to start than now!

That's why I said all you guys in the midwest get to Menards...

It seems to dry fairly quickly... but then again, I use a dehydrator, so all paints I use dry fast!

Tip: Long ago I bought a bag of bamboo shish-kabob skewers at the grocery store. They are 10" long, 100 in the bag. I don't remember what they cost, but they were dirt cheap... maybe like 89¢ or something like that, and they have 1,001 uses! As you can see, they make great "handles" to hold certain types of parts for spray painting... they can be used to apply glue... stir paint... whatever. And did I mention they are dirt cheap?

All of you guys in the midwest, get to your nearest Menards ASAP. They have Rustoleum "Painter's Touch" 2X-Ultra Cover paints on sale. These paints work great on models (I've posted several of my brass-era models that I painted with these paints), they come in a ton of different colors, in gloss, satins, and flats... but best of all, they are all on sale for $2.75 per 12 oz. can. Here's a list of the colors this stuff comes in: http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/e6/e6fdcde5-9492-4273-a6c9-ad42b259a3c1.pdf

I assume you looked at ebay? Here are just a few: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ENTEX-Kawasaki-750-RS-1-25-Scale-Model-Kit-8494K-UNBUILT-/121408201227?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item1c447e220b http://www.ebay.com/itm/1970s-Yamaha-250cc-1-25-scale-Trail-Bike-Motorcycle-Resin-Model-Kit-/251659449210?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item3a9812737a http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jimmy-Flintstone-NB181-Tiki-Termite-Motorcycle-1-25-scale-Resin-/121415619231?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item1c44ef529f http://www.ebay.com/itm/Three-West-Coast-Choppers-1-25-Scale-Model-Motorcycles-Jesse-James-Collection-/271619761291?pt=Diecast_Vehicles&hash=item3f3dcca48b http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-MAISTO-HARLELEY-DAVIDSON-1-24-SCALE-MOTORCYCLES-NEW-2-/181540607377?pt=Diecast_Vehicles&hash=item2a44a9d591

I removed the toe board by scribing it away with the back side of my knife blade, and used the removed piece as the template to create the replacement from basswood.

More basic preliminary/prep work. I don't know why this is so common, but like many kits of brass era cars, there are ejector pin marks on the visible side of a part instead of the back side. Poor engineering, IMO. This is the seat base. You can clearly see the two ejector pin marks on the side, which will have to be filled: Photos of this car that I found during my research show it with both a steel or a wooden firewall/dash. I like the look of wood, so mine will be that way. I used the kit's firewall as a template to make a new one of basswood sheet. I clamped the kit piece and my wooden piece together and used the holes in the kit piece as the guide to drilling corresponding holes in the wood:

Here you can see that there is a "thickness" to the chassis plate (the area between the frame rails and the lower edge of the hood... The kit's chassis plate is too thin, so I added some thickness with lengths of square styrene rod:

The fenders on the real car are bolted in place onto the fender braces, and the bolt heads are clearly visible on the fender surfaces. The kit's fenders are smooth (no molded-in bolt heads), so I drilled out all the places where a bolt would go. Later I'll use sewing pins to simulate the bolt heads. It's hard to see in the photo, but I also drilled out the holes where the fender braces are supposed to bolt onto the frame rails. Sewing pins will also represent bolt heads in those locations: If I was going to go all "Gerald Wingrove" on this kit I would have cut off the fender braces and made better ones of brass rod... but since they are very hard to see once the model is finished, and will be painted black on top of it, I left them as is.

Ok... back to the model. I was going to title this thread "Debbie Does DeDion ," but then I would have to keep the same avatar the whole way through. This is going to be just a nicely detailed shelf model. I'm not going to do any sort of super-detail thing. I'll correct a few problems, add a few details, but nothing crazy or over the top. First thing to do (after a Google image search, of course!) is basic cleanup and parts prep. That means removing flash, cleaning up any mold seams lines or ejector pin marks... the usual stuff you always have to do with any kit. This kit is kind of weird in that in most cases where parts are made up of two halves (like the engine block, transaxle, muffler, etc.) the parts have no molded-in alignment pins and sockets. You have to align the parts yourself. So what I do is run each part's mating surface back and forth over some 400 grit sandpaper to get the mating surfaces perfectly flat, even, and smooth. Then I clamp the two parts together, make sure they are perfectly aligned, and flow liquid cement along the joint. The beauty of liquid cement (vs. tube glue) is that with liquid cement, you never get any "squeezeout" along the joint, and there are none of those annoying "strings" to deal with. Liquid cement is very thin (it's just like water), so it flows by capillary action into the joint, and fuses the parts together. You get a perfect joint every time. I went ahead and assembled all the major "two piece" parts this way. Here you can see that after the transaxle halves have dried, I then sanded the front mating surface smooth, along with the mating surface on the front cover... Then I clamped the front cover in place and flowed liquid cement along the joint:

It'll be a Turbo 4. As soon as they hit the showrooms (about a month).

More or less. Actually I did good... managed to accomplish about 98% of my "to do" list.

BTW... here's a shot of a real one. As you can see, they are pretty small...

Today I dragged out all of my tools and supplies and set up my "workbench" (my dining room table )... It's building time again! This time a 1904 De Dion Bouton. For those of you who follow such things, I posted a WIP of a 1901 De Dion Bouton I built a few months back... this was that model: This time I'm dealing with a 1904 model De Dion. This is one of those kits that has been released under various brand names over the years... the one I have happens to be the "Union" version. It's 1/16 scale: As you can see, there's a big old water stain on the box, but I don't care! I'm a builder, not a collector. After the model is built, the box goes in the trash! The important thing (to me) is that the kit is complete and unbuilt. In fact, the parts trees' plastic bags had never been opened after all these years. The instructions are in Japanese (with broken English translation), but no big deal. The kit is pretty straightforward... you could build it just by looking at the illustrations in the instruction booklet, regardless of the language.

I'm not sure why you're shooting some of your photo sideways, but you might want to turn them right side up before you post them.

Somebody's got to do it.

Thank God somebody gets the point I'm trying to make! Agree or disagree with me, but at least you get what I'm saying! I don't know why my point is lost on the others... I've explained it every way I can think of. They keep replying to issues that I didn't bring up...