Ace-Garageguy

Here's a tutorial I did eons ago on zeeing that Revell frame. A zeed frame is absolutely necessary in the rear to get a car that low. Another way to get those Revell frames low is to build custom up-and-over rails in the rear, and to modify the front for a "suicide" spring perch. The stock Revell frame is in the foreground, the modified and much lower one in the background. This lets you get the car very low. I've left this one with sufficient ground clearance to be street-drivable, but that same frame will go lower, as low as your reference photo.

Yeah..."and like a good neighther, State Farm is there"...

I think it it weren't for Adblock, I would have shot my computer by now.

And Adblock Plus stops 'em all. https://adblockplus.org/ uBlock does it too. https://www.ublock.org/

Probably a hard one. If I hadn't recognized it, I would have thought it was Russian, maybe Chinese, last choice German. The wrap-around windshield, quad lights and other American styling influences were showing up on a lot of cars those days, but I never would have thought Nissan / Datsun, or even really Japanese. The one immediate tell that it probably IS Japanese would be the front wing-mirrors, but I don't know how many people would catch that hint right off.

Very nice photos, lots of ideas. Danke.

Cool. Another one of theirs I love is Crystal Blue Persuasion. 1969.

Wire "gauge" terminology is used for electrical-engineering reasons, so you know how much current the conductor INSIDE the insulation will carry, so you'll specify the correct "gauge" wire for the design load. It usually doesn't make any difference to an engineer how thick the insulation is, or what the OD is, as circuits aren't designed according to how "big" the wire is outside. If you use a "wire gauge" (the tool) correctly, you use it to measure the wire inside the insulation, NOT THE OD. ANY electrical wire that's correctly labeled is labeled according to the diameter of the wire INSIDE the insulation. SOME wire will specify an OD for the insulation too, but not that frequently. It's more likely to list the insulating capability of the insulation, and again, that can be all over the board depending on the material the insulation is made of, and its thickness. Wire for other purposes, non-current-carrying purposes, like jewelry beading wire, is described by both gauge AND outside diameter. Sometimes confusing, at best. Of course, our Chinese friends and ebay resellers sometimes don't know or care what wire "gauge" actually MEANS, so you roll the dice when you buy this stuff.

Definitive answer...as definitive as possible with the info we have. Heater hose on real cars is usually either 5/8" or 3/4" ID, so call the 3/4" ID stuff about 1" OD on average. Divide 1 inch by 25 for 1/25 scale. That's .040", or forty thousandths. You need wire that's around .040" outside diameter, or OD to be scale-correct. "Wire gauge" should technically refer to the diameter of the CONDUCTOR INSIDE THE INSULATION, not the outside diameter of the insulation. "18 gauge" is listed as .040". "16 gauge" is .051". multiply that by 25 to see that it would be 1.275" in reality, or about 1 and a quarter inch OD hose...kinda fat. All of which is meaningless if we don't know if the "gauge" wire you have is being called by its conductor or by its OD. This is why a cheap digital caliper is a really nice tool to have on your bench. Saves a lot of guessing and second-guessing. For example, "16 gauge" wire, with a correctly-labeled 16 gauge CONDUCTOR, can have differing thicknesses of insulation...which will give different ODs. That's a problem because you need to know the OD to know what to use to look right on a model.

The one I'm MOST sick of hearing is "I CAN'T" when it means "I'm too damm lazy to try hard enough".

Easy-Off makes an Easy-Off branded product that's low-odor and won't do much of anything, but I'm sure you know that. Drain cleaner contains one or the other, but it's really hard on the aluminum too. Do you know what your "blue coating" is specifically? Is this "photoplate" made specifically for an acid-resist photo-etch process? Have you tried any other solvents? If it's a lacquer coating, even the harshest oven cleaner won't have much effect either.

Well you sure as hell can't do it if you think it's impossible, that's for damm sure. And I know people with multiple skills who have had no problem finding work...people who used to be engineers who aren't too proud to work as mechanics or carpenters. I've done the shoestring thing by the way. Don't say it's impossible 'til you've tried. It's still entirely possible IF YOU WANT IT BAD ENOUGH TO WORK FOR IT, SACRIFICE FOR IT, MAKE IT HAPPEN. Oh, I'm sorry. It's NOT EASY.

The most realistic looking way to do it will be to form a hook on each end of each spring and put it through a drilled hole in each collector-support flange...kinda like this...

Of course not...not overnight. But education is the single most important qualifier one needs to get a GOOD job, and to maintain a country with an economy that DOES provide jobs. Education is freedom. Freedom to rise out of an "economically-disadvantaged" life in a crime-ridden ghetto. Freedom to USE the opportunities available to Americans to become entrepreneurs. Freedom to start a small business on a shoestring and grow it into a success that DOES provide jobs. Because education allows people to UNDERSTAND how things work. And when you understand how the system works, not just the part of the system that hands out foodstamps, you CAN make a decent life. If you can't make change, or read instructions, or write an e-mail that someone else can understand, how do you think you're going to get ANY kind of job that pays a living wage? The pie-in-the-sky preoccupation with creating "jobs" for people who have no marketable skills is idiocy. Short-sighted, un-thinking, knee-jerk idiocy.

Ok, I'll stipulate property owners are getting somewhat screwed. So, since it's an issue of national importance, as important as maintaining the military, every CITIZEN should have to shoulder a fairly apportioned part of the cost of basic education.

OK...I agree with THAT entirely.

No, but education is a completely different animal. I don't think I should be exempt from having part of my money go to support the military...even though I have no personal quarrel with governments or factions that wish this country harm. I DO have a problem with the creeping IGNORANCE that's destroying this country from the INSIDE, and it can only be combated by education. You can wipe out every welfare or entitlement program, I'll be a happy guy. Give people GOOD basic education, you won't NEED entitlement programs anyway.

So...you're saying that YOUR property taxes were sufficient to cover the entire costs attached to your 3 childrens' public school education? Somehow, I doubt it, but of course that's just my own perspective. I KNOW my own property taxes have never been sufficient to cover the education of just ONE child, or even, assuming a class of 30 children to divide the costs over, 1/30 of the cost. Say your property tax is $1000 per year. That's ONE teacher, getting $30,000 per year to teach 30 kids. In a field. No walls. No roof. No toilets. With no books. No lights. No administration of any kind. The ONLY way it works is if EVERY property owner pays in to the system. And I HATE having to pay to support most of the government and their idiocy...BUT...one of the few things I don't have a problem with paying for is universal basic education...even though I have no kids in the game...and I think the current state of public education is a joke.

Are you using the "low odor" oven cleaner, or the baddass lye-based (sodium hydroxide) oven cleaner? If the coating is anodized, a sodium-hydroxide or potassium-hydroxide product will take it off, though you may have to bag it to keep it wet for a while.

A mold will reproduce exactly what the master is. Exactly. So if your master has a hole in the center, your mold will produce a part that has a hole in the center. Making molds requires adjusting your thinking to operate in negative space, and of course you realize that a one-piece mold is only capable of reproducing one side of a master. This would imply you only want the outside, the part that shows through the wheel, to be molded. So, you make your master with detail only on one side, with the exact size hole in the center that you want your part to have. You attach the back, flat side of the master to the mold-box floor, with the detailed side up. Pour your mold material (silicone, I assume) over it. When it cures, pull the mold out of the mold-box, and remove the master. You now have a one-part mold that has detail on one side only, and a slug of material sticking up in the center that will be the hole in the center of the part. But as Mike says, that's a lot of trouble to go to to make something, and you can buy ready-made resin brakes, some with beautifully photo-etched rotors, from a variety of manufacturers.

Different modelers have different preferences for prepping bare plastic. DON'T bother with the adhesion-promoter. As Longbox55 said, it's made for flexible plastics on real-car bumpers and interiors and is entirely a waste of money on a model. This is what works 100% right for me, every time. Scrub the bare plastic body or part with warm water, an abrasive cleaner like Comet, and an old toothbrush. This will give a nice 'tooth' to the surface for good paint adhesion, and will get in to nooks and crannies you can NOT possibly reach with sandpaper or other means like Scotch-Brite pads. Sandpaper tends to 'dull' or round-off surface details, and you don't have to worry about that with the Comet method. The cleanser will also do a good job of removing surface contaminants like mold-release-lubricants that may be on your new model. Rinse with plenty of water, very thoroughly, and dry. At this point, I take another step some consider to be unnecessary, and I wipe the whole thing down with 70% ISOPROPYL alcohol (cheap, simple rubbing alcohol from the drug or grocery store). It will remove any remaining contaminants, and is excellent insurance against fisheyes. I got in the habit of using the alcohol wipe on full-size aircraft and custom car paint jobs, and it's never let me down yet. I prefer to primer everything, because I find I get a better paint job in the end. The downside to primering is that it's another opportunity for the dreaded 'orange-peel' to creep in, and if it does, it has to be sanded out. Spraying paint over orange-peely primer will look like carp. There are some primers some guys swear by, like Tamiya, that I'm not familiar with enough to recommend...but they say they lay out smooth and slick once you get the hang of using them. That's what you want, if you want to avoid having to sand out 'peel'. I use Duplicolor and SEM primers made for real cars, and they're a little "hot". Duplicolor has two basic kinds...high-build "scratch filler" and a thinner-bodied "sandable" version. if you haven't done any bodywork, and have no deepish scratches that need filling, the "sandable" version slicks out nicely. If you choose to use a primer, and if you can shoot it slick, I'd still recommend scuffing it with Comet, and cleaning it again with alcohol before painting. Practicing and becoming familiar with the way different materials work and handle is the only way to get good at this stuff, so don't get disappointed. DO try to practice on something other than a model you care about FIRST. Plastic pop-bottles make good practice targets for learning how to shoot paint. Prep them exactly as you would a model. The point is to find out EXACTLY what works for YOU. This car was shot with Duplicolor primers and Testors "one-coat" paint and clear. I'm sure everybody here is sick of seeing it on every other how-to paint thread, but it's an example of the results you CAN get from rattlecans.

WAIT!! We didn't explain thoroughly enough, and used a term we're all familiar with, but that someone new to this stuff might not know. In the context of paint, terms like "hot" refer to the aggressiveness of the thinners / solvents in the paint, and how likely they are to attack and craze the plastic a model is made of. Testors and Tamiya lacquers are formulated to be gentle to kit plastic, with solvents that are not too aggressive, less "hot". Duplicolor and other paints formulated for REAL car use tend to have "hotter" solvents in them that allow them to 'bite' better, to adhere better, on a car that will be living in the real world outside. But these "hotter" solvents also make them more likely to craze the plastics models are made of. Some hardware-store paints supposedly MADE for plastic are also too hot for our model use. Krylon Fusion is one such product that's caused a lot of grief among newer, less experienced modelers.

Bottom no-BS line is that there's really no "why" any cars of any period used anything, other than that's what the designers and engineers and management agreed on, for specific reasons peculiar to the vehicle in question, using available technology and then-current engineering practices. Very expensive coachbuilt car, oddly shaped door, difficult to engineer hidden hinges in FRONT... Very expensive coachbuilt car, oddly shaped doors, difficult to engineer hidden hinges in BACK...

One of the simple truths the vast majority of the population seems to be too dense to grasp is that advertising and marketing are now such a significant part of the cost of most products and services, a large part of what they pay for ANY major brand is going to support the legions of marketing people trying to get them to buy the stuff, NOT FOR THE PRODUCT. It's not too hard to read the labels on products like antacids, cold medicine, or aspirin...or to compare the quality and taste of the store-brands of mayonnaise, salsa, etc...and to see that you get EXACTLY the same for much less money by buying generics. Yet, a lot of shoppers firmly stick to a brand that's a rip simply because the advertising has them brainwashed. Sheeple. Tell 'em what to do often enough and loud enough, they do it.

Look at profile shots of the two cars side by side. The 3-window door is much larger. Steel is heavy...and this stuff was thick, MUCH thicker than what car doors are stamped from today. The window on the 3W is also considerably larger than the 5W door window. Glass is also heavy. More is heavier.