Ace-Garageguy

Apparently at least $75 tariff on $3.50 worth of paint from this particular seller in Poland? Might want to check the math on that. And speaking of a topic that is already getting "political"... EDIT: And I'm sure any attempt on my part to explain the rationale for the tariffs would be branded as "political", so I won't bother.

Nice '59 land yacht. A little busy for my taste, but I could learn to love it.

I rather doubt that's even an option. But I wouldn't buy a brand new truck, with or without air conditioning, even if I won the lottery and literally had money enough to heat my house by burning $100 bills.

This section is called "The Off-Topic Lounge". If I'm still capable of understanding what words in English mean, that means this section isn't about model cars. If endless posts about celebrities dying and friendly squirrels and what somebody had for dinner and what griped or pleased everyone don't interest you and all you want to be exposed to is model car talk, there's a pretty simple solution. Don't scroll down this far.

Though rhymes with "doh".

They're very good. You just have to pay attention and work carefully.

By way of illustrating a much less awkward sentence that expresses the same thought, allow me to respectfully present "By the Time I Get to Phoenix was a hit from days gone by, sung by Glenn Campbell in 1967".

By now one would think that the non-sentence above would have been made into the following sentence: "Meet the Beatles, 1964, had a song titled It Won't be Long, good music from days gone by".

It's political here though, as not all parties share the same opinion. And last time I looked, this site was based in America. If you don't see there's a contradiction there, then we'll just have to disagree. Nor can I understand how one can even think about 9/11 without questioning how such evil is possible in a "civilized" world, and remarking about it. Seems like a perfectly natural conversational segue or digression to me. But it's not my call.

I can tell you one thing right off. The line over the side glass is way wrong. Look at the real car shot; the line is straight, almost dead parallel with the line at the top of the doorskin. On the model, that line over the door glass starts sloping down almost immediately. The discrepancy is not a camera or lens artifact. It's just wrong. There are other issues, but that one jumps out and does indeed make the roof look too low...though it may actually be too low even at the front.

Yup, real pretty.

That, sir, is really really cool.

IIRC, the original Renwal version had an electric motor to turn it, whereas the repops have a hand crank. They also had what looks like an early Hydramatic automatic gearbox (non functional) which the repops lack. Either way, they're not really good kits for the inexperienced. Joining all the clear plastic parts together without making a nasty mess takes some skill and forethought, and the operating parts require patience to get assembled accurately and working right. I bodged one badly when I was a kid, only fairly recently bought an original Renwal glooey mess to get the trans and electric motor parts, and a repop for everything else.

A very large part of what I see as the cause of some of the questionable engineering emerging from the OEMS is that they're plagued with a "we know nothing about how it was done well before and we don't care, because we're so smart and educated that we can reinvent the wheel every time; after all, we're tech-savvy, not like those knuckle draggers who preceded us". Engineering should be more evolutionary than revolutionary. Any truly competent engineer takes historical precedent very seriously, and analyzes what has worked well in the past to understand why, in order to see how to implement lessons learned into future designs.

So tell me more. Will milk really put out the fire if you get hot pepper juice in your eye?

"Cigar Guy" stands behind his products forever. Lifetime warranties. If his stuff is failing, he won't be around for long. Small companies just can't screw ya like the big ones can. There's no shortage of late-model many-speed gearbox failures and vehicles sitting for months on dealers' lots due to zero parts or replacement gearboxes being available. And the owners are still making the payments while they sit. I know of several right here in my little ol' neck o' the woods. Today especially, there are people who are WAY better at what they do than OEM engineers and their bean-counter overlords. EDIT: There was, by the way, a little company called B&M that took pretty good GM auto boxes and made them into almost indestructible drag-racing boxes, and changed the face of drag racing forever. They worked similar magic on most of the well known US automatics, and are still in business (though, like many other iconic hot-rod businesses they've been absorbed by mega corps). Ring a bell?

Pretty much my exact thoughts.

Bent rules are one thing, but just ignoring them for whatever reason...and I have my suspicions as to why...is something else entirely.

One's a '58, of that much I'm certain. I'm 98% sure the other one's '57. They both look for all the world like a factory promo, with excellent (but obviously not sanded or buffed) two-tone paint jobs and the same perfectly-masked silver paint treatment of body chrome as I've seen on other promos that were most definitely acetate. Neither one looks at all like it was done by a modeler, unless he was VERY good at replicating factory promo finishes.

Very interesting, and the typical curated response from that source, carefully non-judgmental and never ever negative to anyone who could possibly be a source of advertising bucks, and always certain to rebleat the PC dogma-du-jour if there's any way to work it in. Far as "ride" goes, I haven't found any late model trucks that ride significantly better than my '92 Silverado extended cab, which is in large part due to the massive amount of unsprung weight more recent trucks have with their unnecessarily heavy/tall wheel/tire combinations. Late model pickup frames are more rigid, which makes tuning harshness out easier, but I'd just about bet anything that if I boxed my Silverado frame rails, I could tune the suspension to ride noticeably better than the new stuff. For that matter, everyone who rides in my '89 GMC single-cab longbed fleet stripper seems to be flabbergasted as how nicely it rides, apparently having been convinced that older pickups ride like buckboards. And the "servicability" line is just ludicrous. Find me anything easier to work on than a smallblock Chevy in a huge engine bay...other than an inline six in the same engine bay. Little Googli hasn't heard of having to lift the cabs of a lot of the late-model garbage to get access to relatively simple stuff, apparently. I won't even get started on late-model engine and trans failures and recalls and grossly unnecessary overcomplication, rust issues, poor long term reparability, etc.

Sorry. It got kinda loaded up today. I cleared a couple just now...and found one from you back in 2018 that it looks like I never responded to. My sincere apologies, sir.

Yup, really really cool.

"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth" Plato "Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth" Todd Wagner

I have an acetate early '50s Pontiac promo that was badly warped when I bought it, it continued to warp, then started breaking into chunks, and the body now is literally dust. I also have two late '50s Oldsmobile promos that I assumed would be acetate, but they have not warped or shrunk at all. I can only surmise the non-warped ones are made from something other than acetate, which as far as I'm aware, will continue to deteriorate forever.

World events sometimes defy rational explanations.