Ace-Garageguy

The way things are playing out, it's looking to me that what we were seeing in this thread was the laying of groundwork to eventually get a bunch of front-money from board members to either pre-order these kits (with payment, of course) or to 'invest' in the project. The inflated claims of how complete and "professional" the offering would be kinda set off my stink alarm, and I think that when some of us started poking pins in the ol' hot-air balloon, the scam target morphed into getting as much in cash and kits as possible, quickly. When it's well known that there are indeed people on the internet who have raised a lot of money by lying about having cancer, it's not that hard to believe some little POS would try to scam a bunch of car-modelers out of their 'disposable' income. If Moonshine / Doc Devil are NOT pathetic scamming thieves, now would be a good time to prove it...man-up and take care of the people you OWE, and put the speculation to rest. There are a lot of good people here, and I'm sure all would be forgiven if the suspect trades were completed and whatever money was received was returned.

People who build model railroad equipment from brass can also be a tremendous source of knowledge. These guys are good, and they know tricks like using solders that melt at slightly different temperatures to solder parts that are close together.

Was it stolen, cloned or did someone just use the number?

bobthehobbyguy (Bob Taber) was kind enough to PM me his search terms after I'd given up after a few minutes. His search keywords pulled up the image on the first page of hits, and I'm definitely impressed. It NEVER occurred to me to enter anything containing "Fairmont", 'cause the thing looked to me kinda like a Fairmont, but not actually a Fairmont. Nice job, Bob. Nice job too to GTJUNIOR. His search terms pulled up this image about 1/3 of the way down the page. This is a pretty good illustration of how smart Google is, too. It understands the search-term strings well enough to pull these images out of probably billions. Not too shabby.

Yeah, it's hard to teach some women the meaning of "no".

I was removing the wheels from the sprues on an accurate Miniatures McLaren a few days back, and the plastic is SO SOFT that both the flush-cut clippers AND a brandy-new X-acto blade both deformed the parts. The only way I was able to get clean, no-damage removal was to cut chunks of sprue adjacent to the parts out with a cutoff-wheel on the Dremel, and then lay the parts / sprue sections on the bench so the actual cut line was completely supported, and do the cut with the knife. A real PITA.

Not a gas station, dumpster or shipping container, but I've lived in a few of my shops over the years. Once spent the summer living in a tent on the flat roof of one shop on a hill close to downtown Atlanta, with a fantastic view of the skyline. The girls seemed to think it was cool enough, kinda "romantic" (of course, I was young and decent looking then...). Now I'd just be "that crazy old man who lives on his roof". And yes, shipping containers have been reworked into some pretty cool housing...

Most '40-'48 Ford, Merc and Lincoln wheels look a lot alike other than the clips or bumps that hold the hubcaps on. If you're going to run center caps, nobody will ever know the difference. I think the Revell '40 Ford stock wheels are about the best, and they have nice center detail if you want to use them without hubcaps.

Aluminum, bronze, iron and even carbon powders are routinely added to resin systems to vary the performance characteristics and capabilities for specific applications. Adding aluminum powder makes a brittle resin more easy to machine or tap for threads. Bronze powder is added for making "bronze cold-cast" lower-cost sculpture that doesn't have to use molten metal. Iron filings or powder can dramatically increase a resin's abrasion resistance and resistance to cracking under pressure (iron-filled resin systems have been used to make matched press dies for shaping sheet-metal into stamped parts...as thick as 1/8 of an inch of sheet steel has been successfully stamped as far back as the early 1990s). Carbon powder is sometimes added to make a resin electrically conductive. In general, IF your resin parts have metal powder or filings added, they'll be tougher and harder to cut and shape than un-modified resins. Frankly, I can't see any good reason for adding powdered aluminum to a model car resin casting system. Are you absolutely certain your resin parts aren't just made of a gray tinted resin, kinda like JB weld?

...this is sure to make you smile. PC WARNING: The announcer refers to the aircraft as "she". Consider yourself warned.

Nice use of plumbing PVC.

Thanks for the re-heads-up on the Guide headlamps. I've seen this reference before, but forgot entirely which kit had 'em. Gonna get me some.

Looks kinda like the 2013 stamp.

Spent about 10 minutes looking for this thing, came up dry. I'd be very interested to know the search terms those of you who found it used to get it. I back-traced the photo and know what it is...and of course I don't cheat... but it's not an easy one to find.

I forgot to mention...typical Harry looks-like-museum-quality work. Always inspiring.

About this I know NOTHING, but I sure would like to hear from some folks who DO know.

Probably works very well, and the CFD numbers must be good, but it sure ain't pretty.

Man, don't hold back...tell us how you REALLY feel.

COOL model! Love it, gotta get one. I'm sure your premise that "by gearing both wheels there's less stress on the drive wheels than if only one was geared, and you reduce the chances of breaking a gear tooth" is correct, and that 4 wheels driving would give superior traction on slippery metal rails than only two. All these parts would have been cast-iron, and though iron is 'strong', it's somewhat brittle. It wasn't until the mid 1800s that the Bessemer process ushered in the age of industrial steel. Cast-iron's brittleness would surely have been a factor in designing those gears to try to avoid breaking.

Sheer genius.

The 1997 Mercedes F300 concept car pictured above is a three-wheeler that leans like a motorcycle and uses a parallelogram-style front suspension to allow the front wheels to lean the same amount as the single rear wheel. You'll notice the tires have rounded treads like motorcycle tires, and this tire design is the ONLY design that will work with leaning suspension. It's fine for a light little commuter / grocery-getter, but not well suited to optimum cornering force. It's an interesting design, and it uses suspension very similar to what I originated for my own company's experimental 3-wheeled vehicle many years earlier (first designed in 1985). Here's some info about that, if you're interested. http://contest.techbriefs.com/2010/entries/transportation/871 You might also be interested to know that in 1995 or '96, we looked at a front-axle steering system somewhat similar to your idea at the top of the thread (though it only had one steering input) which used a pivoting beam axle. It was invented by a fella in England, and promised very simple, inexpensive production and low unsprung weight. Scale-model simulations didn't seem to offer the kind of handling precision I was after, so we abandoned further development.

Hey, don't feel bad. I have my share of "duh" moments every day, and I've been doing this stuff seems like forever.

I get several free subscriptions to professional magazines because I still function as an engineering consultant from time to time, and I'm still listed as the owner of a small engineering company. Lately I've been getting calls from "subscription services" saying that the scrips are no longer free due to rising costs and blah blah blah. Of course, the callers wanted a slew of information they would already have if they were legit, plus a credit card number. Yeah, right. I'm stupid, but not that stupid. So I told them just to cancel, and then I called the real subscription offices. Of course they've never heard of the crapp, said the scrips are still free, etc. etc. Apparently some enterprising little nest of thieves has stolen contact databases from some of these publications, and is soliciting over the phone for money that will never see what it's supposedly for...and collecting credit card info to boot. Beware.

New ideas should be encouraged, but it's good to have some background in what's already been done in any given field, and why it works, before trying to modify existing technology. I have considerable experience in the field, and lyseder is correct in his assertion that modern suspension design, in general, strives to maintain the wheels at a 90 degree angle to the pavement in order to maximize the tire contact-patch at any given time. Independent suspension control arms are specifically designed to force the tire to lean relative to the vehicle in order to achieve this; the effect is that as the vehicle leans away from the apex of a turn due to lateral weight-transfer, the geometry of the control arms forces the outside (most heavily-loaded) wheel to remain perpendicular to the pavement in order to maximize tire tread contact with the road surface. Suspension design is a fascinating subject if you enjoy applied math and geometry, and has come a long way since the advent of computer-modeling. What we used to have to plot with strings, cardboard cutouts and thumbtacks can now be modeled virtually instantly in a variety of computer environments, and modifications can be tried and proven or rejected just as quickly. Here's a fairly good basic overview of suspension development over the years: http://www.automotivearticles.com/printer_Suspension_Design_Types_of_Suspensions.shtml