Ace-Garageguy

Just for fun I did a search, NOT a reverse image search, as if I were trying to find it based on what it looks like. It IS there, but remember, details are important. So are the terms you use to search.

OMG!!!!! The dog ate my book!!!!!!!

I came across another dumb-write wonder today: somebody explaining to someone else they didn't "real eyes" what something meant. I guess the writer didn't realize the meaning of "real eyes".

Sure was a different world. Amazingly, people didn't pay attention to their driving even BEFORE smart phones and texting.

I have no advice, but I'm sincerely sorry you had that happen. Good luck with the salvage operations.

That's some driving.

There's still a lot of equipment and ships on the bottom in the vicinity of WWII Pacific island battles. Judging from the diver's equipment, I'd think this was fairly shallow and warmish water, which would be consistent with that.

This is one I heard more often than you'd believe, while working as an estimator in a body shop..."the car wrecked". In most cases, the cars were certainly smarter than their drivers. BAD CAR! BAD BAD CAR !!!

It's just part of China's new toxic-waste-problem disposal program. They mix it all up and put a little in every product they ship out of the country. Pretty soon, no more problem...for them. I think it's a follow-on program inspired by the baby-formula-with-melamine test run back in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Holy cow. What beautiful work. Makes my little plastic dragster look pretty pathetic.

Thanks for the interest and comments. With the rear end in the final position, I was able to modify a seat to clear the rear of the QC. My research confirmed more than a few front-engined slingshot dragsters were set up exactly like this. Kinda thrilling if the rear end blows up, and scatter-shields were common. Having the seat in position also let me mock up the steering linkage in the right place, and make up a steering shaft support / instrument panel. Put a couple light coats of SEM self-etching primer on everything. The old Revell and Monogram plastics in the vintage kits I'm using here are more solvent-resistant than a lot of newer styrene formulations, and the self-etch works well, slicks out nice, and bites without having to scuff a somewhat fragile frame like this. Just as an FYI, I reinforce all the 'welds' on the chassis with fillets made of the toughened Loctite brand gel superglue. Works very well, makes realistic looking tube joints, and makes the entire structure a lot stronger than simple liquid-glue joints. Put everything together in the tail, just to get an idea of the thing in all one color. The slicks are '60s vintage AMT no-name narrow piectusts.

Wow. Very realistic weathering, great proportions, perfect for what it is.

I agree the plastic dip-coating material could also be out of scale initially, but as it's a single-component product and dries by evaporation, it should be possible to thin it to get the desired film-thickness remaining after the excess drips off. Probably take some fine-tuning to hit it just right, but once the reduction ratio is dialed in and recorded, it should be repeatable. I can see how both the shrink and the dip methods could possibly produce very realistic harnesses.

Sean's giving you good advice. You'll need someone with pattern-making skills to repair the missing letter, and who can also make a mold and cast a replacement part. This is WAY beyond a simple "brazing" repair. Good luck with this interesting project.

The only double-blower setup to run a pyramid manifold like that (that I know of, anyway) would have been from Romeo Palamides (later to become American Speed Equipment), and dates from the early 1960s, but the fuel injection setup on your model, with the butterfly valves visible in front, is a little later. Dating the parts on the car to a particular time-window is step number one, and then fitting the setup of the model into the drag rules for that time window is step number two. A quick scan of the '63 NHRA rules, for example, would put a car like that in either the Altered (AA /A or BB/A, supercharged) or Competition (AA/C, supercharged) class. The specific class would depend on vehicle weight, engine displacement, and exact modifications and other specs. Here's a list of links to the drag rules of the general time, and going through them to determine exactly where your model would fit is your best bet. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/87579-link-to-nhra-rule-books-1958-to-1960s/ The FI units on your model appear to represent the very popular Enderle "Bugcatcher, Birdcatcher" style, which was in wide use by 1965.

I was thinking more in terms of the wall-thickness of the material, but at 1mm diameter, it should be pretty thin. I'll be interested to see your results. Heat-shrink works well for a variety of other tasks in modeling, so it may very well be a good option in this application, depending on the desired effect and scale.

Heat-shrink tube is going to be WAY oversize for a 1/25 scale harness, and it's not really all that flexible, either. But do what you want.

Yes, the Stone-Woods-Cook Willys cars were were built for the gas-class, "gassers", and at the time, operational equipment was required by the class. As Force said above though, it depends on the class and fuel a particular car is running, and a blown car like your model above could be correct with no cooling system other than a crossover / fill tube, and coolant in the block and head water passages. Many of the dry-lakes land-speed-record cars even ran closed cooling systems, no radiator, and simply circulated coolant from an onboard tank through the engine. Consider some of these cars ran for several miles, flat out.

The great majority of rail, altered, comp coupe, etc. style drag cars in that time period ran pretty much zero cooling system....no radiator. The coolant that was in the block and heads was all there was, and a lot of supercharged cars didn't even run a water pump to circulate it. Some cars would run a crossover tube between the front of the heads, with a radiator cap on it, to facilitate filling. Here's a blown 392 in a rail. You can see a crossover with the radiator cap below the blower front cover, just behind the belt tensioner support plate. On this injected early Hemi, you can see how the factory-style crossover tube, with hose neck in the center, bolts to the water jacket ports in the end of the heads.

I think it's really cool on a model, where someone has achieved a very high level of realism like some of the builds we see here from time to time. But on a REAL car? Especially a 'glass car? Lame.

I've fiddled with this experimentally, and though I rarely do late-model cars that need this type of harness, I've found a trick that works well. Get some REALLY fine wire, twist it into a harness with stubs coming out in logical locations that fit your engine or engine bay, and then dip the whole mess in something like this. Let the excess drip off, and you can produce quite realistic looking results.

All best possible wishes for a speedy recovery.

Lance has an excellent point. The heat required for brazing can rapidly destroy a thin-gauge stamped steel part, and if the part is brass or copper, forget it. What's the material, and can you post a photo of the badge so we can see the damage that needs to be corrected? Making a composite mold of the badge, as suggested by Lance, really isn't that difficult. Specific resins are manufactured for just that purpose...to make press-dies (1/8 inch thick steel tank-wheel centers have been pressed successfully)...and I've personally used them to reproduce aluminum parts accurately.

Just my personal opinion...I like to see a "survivor" that's been pulled out of a barn, had the manure and bird droppings washed off, made to run, and otherwise left pretty much as-found, in silent testimony to its history...especially old race cars that look like they were put up hot and wet after the last run, and just kinda forgotten about. I don't find 'fake' weathered lettering applied to a legitimately weathered old truck, when it's actually being driven as a working shop truck, to be too offensive either. I also kinda like to see a "traditional" (?) hot-rod built with a low-cost paint job, and less than Ridler-winning detail. Cars that are made to be DRIVEN, and driven HARD, appeal to me more than cars that are primarily for display. Though I fully appreciate the work, skill and sweat that goes into building a world-class showcar, I'd just rather drive something than look at it. And saying that, to me, there's no excuse for poor workmanship or engineering. A MACHINE deserves a certain amount of respect-for-function, and if you can't or don't want to bother learning how to do decent work, please find another "creative" outlet. But overall fake patina? Nah. I really despise fake anything...including the oddly shaped lumps some members of the other gender seem obsessed with attaching to themselves.

Thanks to all for your interest and comments. It's a trade name for fumed silica, a very fine thickening agent used for a variety of products, widely used in composite adhesive applications. It's much finer than talc or microballoon. http://www.eagerplastics.com/cab.htm