Fabrux

Today's actually my brother's birthday. No, he's not turning 12; he's turning 33.

From which website are you trying to post pictures?

As promised, here's my model space. Forgive the picture quality; new camera is coming from Santa. Being a 6'x12' space, its difficult to get a good overall view. The first two pictures are from the doorway looking in. The next two are from my desk looking out towards the door. The room isn't a perfect rectangle; there is a small closet in one corner that intrudes into the space... The breaker panel for my home is in here too, further limiting the space. I managed to make room for everything I have at the moment. Gotta start building to make room for more!

I'll snap some pictures when I get home from work, but my model room is a 6'x12' bedroom that also doubles as a computer area. I have bookshelves alone one wall and two 6' wire shelves along the other. My desk resides on the third wall with the window and is almost the full 6'.

Interesting that that news comes out of Australia rather than the US; I guess they're more excited about exporting than the US is about importing...

Sure, the overall shape of cars is becoming more uniform but that is more for aerodynamics and fuel efficiency. But, each manufacturer still has their own unique designs.

The truck in that picture has buckets; no idea about console.

Telling the difference between modern vehicles is very, very easy. They're all vastly different.

Oh, I wouldn't say they have no style. They have a different style then what you like, perhaps. There are those of us that actually like modern vehicles and not only tell them all apart but see and appreciate the style in them. IMHO all the cars from the mid-to-late-70s all look the same: big, square, and ugly!

I can help you with that. The heater hose comes out the back of the block. This is the line from the water pump to the back. And here's the back of the engine: The return for the heater hose I think goes above the oil filter. There's a bracket that attaches to the block that houses the oil filter and a coolant line (I forget which). As a side note, the kit is slightly inaccurate with the oil filter. The placement on the block is correct for car-based 4.6L engines but for the trucks in 97 the oil filter was actually located on the frame in front of the driver's side wheel. I don't have any pictures of the setup but it was a lot easier to deal with than crawling in and finding the filter above the front axle pumpkin (which I have to do with my '01 5.4L).

No Ollie's stores around here, but I did get a bunch of Lindberg kits from the Mardens down in Calais, ME. When they first got their shipments in they had a 20' shelf section full of kits; you could really pick up a smoky smell from them so I believe the warehouse fire story.

Let me tell you, spark plugs are not fun. I fought with my Expedition so much I gave up and took it to a shop. The back ones on the passenger side were the worst ones for me due to all the extra coolant lines running to the rear heater core.

I stumbled across a listing for a die-cast 1:24 scale 75 Chevy K10. Look! A stock steering wheel! Someone needs to find one of these and cast it.

This all depends on what engine and what year you are trying to depict. The Modular motors all had distributorless ignition. The 4.6L in trucks from 1997-1999 had one coil pack per head with the plugs going in the top of the heads beside the injectors. This is a 4.6L in my 97 Expedition when I was replacing the intake manifold gaskets. All 5.4L and the 4.6L after 2000 run coil-on-plug ignition systems; 8 plugs, 8 coils. The 5.4L also has a slightly different front drive than the 4.6L, but in scale it probably wouldn't be that noticeable in the vehicle. The 5.4L's throttle body cover is also a bit different. Finally, around 2001 or so the intake manifold switched from cast aluminum (as above) to black plastic (as in my F-150). Surprisingly, I don't have any pictures of my F-150's engine bay...hmm. If you head over to F150online.com and poke around either the V8 forum or the Tenth Generation forum (97-03) you should be able to find some good pictures.

I'm loving the plow-rigging headlights.

All tenth generation F-150s in scale with the exception of the Revell Harley Davidson edition are all 1997 model year depictions. They all also have the 4.6L engine (the only one available with the 5-speed as in the Lindberg kit). Engines were bare metal, with the block and heads being cast iron, front cover aluminum, oil pan and valve covers satin black. The intake manifold is cast aluminum, NOT chrome. Top cover and air intake are black plastic, power steering reservoir is white translucent plastic. I have a 2001 F-150 however it has a 5.4L and the differences between the 4.6 and 5.4 might get confusing if you're not familiar with them. My truck is also 11 years old so the engine bay doesn't look the prettiest these days... I also have a few engine bay shots of my old 1997 Expedition that may be of some use to you. However, it had rear heat and had extra coolant lines that might also be confusing.

Moebius kits are standard plastic, released in regular kit boxes. The Hudson Hornet and Chrysler 300 boxes are about the same size as the current Revell boxes while the Lonestar is about the size of two boxes. Instructions on the 300 are spectacular but the Lonestar's leave a lot to the imagination (the RoG reissue has excellent instructions, however).

All I can say to that is air nailers are your friend.

I've recently had to decrease my office/hobby room space by half to make room for a nursery. As such, I've had to find ways to get everything into the smaller space which has resulted in some interesting challenges. Previously for paint storage I had a large plastic case for the small Testors jars and an old DVD rack for the spray cans. With the new space arrangement I didn't have the desk space for the small jars and not a lot of real estate to have the DVD rack. So, I built this little cabinet that slides between my desk and the wall. The two bottom drawers are just tall enough for the larger paint cans (ie Krylon) and the top, smaller drawers are big enough to hold the smaller paint cans (ie Testors One-Shot) as well as my Testors jars. This has the added bonus of giving me a bit more space to work on. These pictures were taken in my dad's garage right after I finished building this with my phone so they're a little fuzzy. I'm still trying to find my proper camera so I can show before/progress/after pictures of the rooms. The cabinet is constructed mostly with 5/8" white melamine board with the drawers themselves being solid wood drawers from a kitchen cabinet cut down to size. I'm not the best carpenter, go easy on me!

I have a Samsung GalaxyTab 10.1 running Android that I use for viewing the site sometimes. I have the option to run either the mobile version or the desktop version and I usually stick with desktop. There's more functionality with desktop, I find.

Maybe I'm not old enough but there never were any local hobby shops when I was a kid (there still aren't any in my city). Any of my models came from Walmart back when it was Wal-Mart, maybe some at Zellers, and Toys R Us as well. When I got a little older I started shopping online and purchased a lot of models from eBay. In university I discovered the hobby shops where I was going to school and started adding to my collection, partly due to the owner of one of the shops being in a club that I joined. It wasn't until about 2 years ago when I moved in with my now-wife that my collection really took off: I went from around 100 kits to 400+ kits...!

I seem to recall Ford building a car with this 3 cylinder engine, stuck Ecoboost on it and ran the Nurburgring faster than ANYTHING ELSE.

After reading a little more about this kit it apparently uses the same chassis as the Meyers Manx.

Just saw this guy today. Now I want one!

Cool! Any chance of there being RCMP decals in there?