Ace-Garageguy

You're a man after my own heart, Miles. One of my favorite things in life is dragging home a new, cheap parts car for an ongoing project. Sometimes, the parts car ends up being nicer than the 'good' one.

The proportions of the built-up model of the Surf Woody are a little clumsy compared to the real thing, similar to the somewhat 'off' proportions of the built-up original AMT version of Barris' Ala Kart. Not really too hard to tweek to get it very close to right. Compare this with the box-art photo, and if you have a good eye, you'll see what I mean. Frankly, i think this is one of Barris' best looking show rods, and quite nicely proportioned in reality. The dual-Paxton blower setup on the smallblock Ford engine is pretty cool, too.

The "pebbly" dished spokes are simply supposed to represent an "as cast" look. You paint 'em gray or one of the metalizers with a brush...done. These wheels in reality would have been cast-aluminum alloy, with the rims and centers machined and polished. Very common. The texture of the spokes may be a little heavy to be scale-correct, but that's just the way it is. Some descriptions of the car, and the illustration above, have it with wood-faced spokes, similar to Don Tognotti's King T.

Honest to bejeezum...sanding it RIGHT and taking enough TIME and EFFORT to polish it RIGHT...WILL fix it, and if you do it RIGHT it will look better than new. Snacktruck67 is telling you true. You just gots to be careful about supporting it while doing the above, 'cause clear styrene is typically a little more brittle than the opaque stuff, and it will snap if flexed too far. I've snapped a few.

I know it's almost impossible to believe in this totally enlightened fairy-tale age of rainbows and unicorns where everyone seems to live by the golden-rule, but some people actually still are crooks, pure and simple. It's not uncommon to see posts on the model boards of some innocent acting clown asking how to re-seal kit boxes so they look like they've never been opened. So...ummm... just exactly WHY would you want to do that, sir? And it's nothing new. When I was 11 or 12, I got a petroleum tanker (ship) kit as a gift. Sealed in the crinkly cellophane they used back then. Opened it up, it was partially built, glue smeared over parts, other stuff missing and broken, some parts painted...poorly. Showed it to my parents who took it back to the store to complain. Of course the store denied the very possibility that THEY would sell a re-sealed kit, so the kid (me) must be lying after having f'ed it up himself. Guess who got to take a whipping for lying?

Nothing too terribly exciting. Got one of these old ones specifically for the Goodyear Blue Streak Sports Car Specials...2 sets in the kit...but I've kinda wanted a gen one Mustang fastback for some time anyway. First impression is that this is quite a nice kit. Not high parts-count, but the body seems well proportioned and the engineering and fit are good too. The add-on front air dam / spoiler is a little too heavy looking, but it's an easy fix. I LIKE this kit.

Thanks Gergo. I've been dithering as to whether to use the twin-blown V10 as shown, or going to something a driver could see over, or using the over-large new Hemi from the Revell Magnum (just because nobody would ever notice and I would really like to be able to use it for something). I had to pull the grille shell out too, as I had it in a little wonky and couldn't finish the molds up to it until it was square. At this point, I'm pretty strong on staying with the big blower setup, going for a beach-movie useless vehicle kinda vibe, like they made in the '60s. Probably going to go with the overscale Hemi though, just to use it up, and go back to the original plan of using the Viper V10 in the updated Ala Kart build, below.

Suicide doors? Great idea!

There's a certain perfect symmetry to the concept of a print magazine about an online forum.

Where'd you get that photo of me? Last time i paid those guys, they swore the negatives had been destroyed.

Yessir. That's the kind of stuff that made this country great! I'm sure plenty of Uncle's people partake of the pleasures to be had there too...on our dime.

You betcha. "Hookers" get expensed out as "contract administrative assistants, temporary" and "coke" (make mine single malt scotch though) under "meeting supplies and refreshments" .

Plus expenses, of course.

I searched "ugly Irish sports car" and I got these. Not Irish, but they sure are ugly.

Ummm...no. He's just taking a free ride using up server space on ebay to repeatedly relist his insanely overpriced parts. Only fools buy stuff for prices like that, but there are plenty of maggots willing to make suckers of fools...and find ways to get paid for doing essentially nothing, 100% skill-free.

I guess I'm too stupid to get your point, but I'll be happy to for $100 per.

This was following a multi-million dollar government funded study documenting the profound impact model building has on the price of petrochemical feedstocks that should be used for fuel too, right?

I used to have a friend down here who financed his Triumph TR 250 race car outings by running relatively cherry sports-car parts up to the rust belt. This was back in the late '70s. He did pretty well.

This topic has been hammered on a few times, and like most of you, I don't have a problem with somebody parting a kit and making two or three times in parts over what the kit costs whole. The only thing that chaps my backside is the guys asking as much for a set of wheels or tires or one bumper as you can buy a whole kit for...and their damm listings run to the thousands...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... That, and the guys starting bidding at $39.95 for a gluebomb literally covered in animal feces, dirt and bugs, when some other guy is asking $.99 (that's 99 cents, by the way) for a not-too-bad one. Who are the clowns who buy this stupid-money garbage and then post glowingly positive feedback?

That's really interesting. I just did searches for both and came up with zip this time. OOPS !! I lied. Just looked again ..."car"... image search brought up this green one about 1/3 the way down the page.

X2. Looks like Road Atlanta in your photo. I was there. Looks like you've already made a good choice in wheel upgrades too.

Gonna take some mighty effort to make it stock. It's sectioned through the belt-line and hood for one thing. But if it has a fairly stock chassis...big IF...tooling a stock body shouldn't be cost-prohibitive. Still, I can see it being a great start for something more radical...man...I already see a LOT of source material here...and I'm gonna graft a fastback roof on one...that's for sure. The car has nice lines... ...but it be needin' this tail. Think I woulda preferred machined billet 18" sombreros too. Kinda like this but different...

I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that vehicle crash-energy management today is vastly superior to what it was in the past...certainly not me. And even most entry-level shi-boxes stop and handle much better than many old hi-performance and sports-cars. No argument there either. But all the safety improvements have provided an idiot sense of false security, so many folks just don't give driving the attention it NEEDS because the cars are so "safe". Also, many vehicles today are insanely complicated for no really good reasons..."it's just the way everyone does it now so we little sheeple designers will too". Complication simply for the sake of complication, or because the engineers / designers aren't good enough to figure out simpler ways of doing things, just isn't good. And a 1950s car is just as "safe" as a 2016 car IF YOU DON'T CRASH IT INTO SOMETHING ELSE. But crash avoidance...which demands continual vigilance and taking personal responsibility for your vehicle... isn't taught and the concept of it never even occurs to a lot of folks, again because they think the cars are so "safe". Or they just don't think at all. Cars ARE safer. Drivers are STILL morons. Think of how many MORE lives we could prolong (not save...everybody dies, you know) if drivers would all just pay attention and put the damm smart phone down.

Interesting material source. I'll have to try it. I've been making real fiberglass / epoxy close-to-scale-thickness parts for years and they're very strong...much stronger that styrene or resin. They DO take rather a lot of effort though.

I recognized this one right off from research I did a while back on fiberglass sports car bodies of the 1950s. I couldn't recall the name, but remembered it had been referred to as "the Irish T-bird". A google photo search brought it right up. Then I tried the more generic "1950s fiberglass sports cars" and it came up again, first page.