Ace-Garageguy

I love this guy. And then there's the gangsta wannabes. Couple weeks back, I overheard this white-bread daddy-yup in the bank talking ghetto to one of his neighbors waiting in line next to him, all this jive shitt about how he was going to be hangin' in the hood all weekend. Tough guy. Yeah. Billy bad.

I would posit the first manned aircraft to have the honor would be one of the early X-planes. Pre-Phantom and Starfighter. I'll have to check dates and altitude records to be sure. Bell X-2. 1956. Over 125,000 feet, aerodynamic flight controls almost useless.

Dude...that's amazingly awesome !!!!!!!

I don't cast model car parts (OK, I do a few for myself), but I HAVE made a fair number of masters, silicone molds, and urethane copies for product-development R&D. presentations, etc. One thing I've found helpful when dealing with my own problem pinholes (from when I got in a rush and didn't do it right) has been to screed or squeegee 2-part polyester (bondo) glazing putty into the holes. It's sometimes very difficult to get enough primer shot on a part wet enough to fill holes. It can be frustrating to watch them open up again as the primer solvents flash off. You also run the risk of filling surface details by pounding on the primer. Screeding filler into the holes and then sanding the soft filler off before primering (repeat screed / sand as necessary) has worked very well for me in the past. Polyester filler is much softer than superglue, and avoids the "hard spots" problem referenced in the post immediately above this one. If the holes are very small, you can also screed in a single-part filler like Squadron green, or even a slurry of primer...but because these materials (single-part putty or primer) are AIR-DRY materials, you need to give them plenty of time to harden up, as they don't get much exposure to air down in those little holes. Another note: Those holes can be significantly bigger BELOW the surface than they appear to be ON the surface. You're sanding a hole in an air bubble, a ROUND air bubble, and a 1/32 inch hole on the surface can have a 1/8 inch bubble beneath it. This is another reason why screeding a filler into the holes may work better than just hammering on the primer, as you can force-fill the bubble.

...and of course, quite similar in meaning to "at the end of the day" is "the bottom line..." Actually, I kinda like that one. Spare me the lawyer-speak boilerplate CYA meandering justifying BS, and just read me the frigging bottom line. Yes, I know it originally meant the accounting-speak bottom line. Oh well...it is what it is.

In my experience, white gel-pen is the most controllable of the "painting" options. If that won't work, sanding / decals is about your only option.

PS. Every bloody thing that's not "awesome" being "amazing".

Mmmmm...tasty.

Did anyone mention "caboose"?. Now all we have is a stupid flashing-light "end of train device".

All the above. (I'm sick of that one too). "Turbo" when whatever the subject is has nothing to do with turbocharging and couldn't possibly BE turbocharged. To follow on from Mr. Geary's remarks: there, their and they're used indiscriminately. Same goes for to, two and too. How hard IS it, really? And hey...'53 means 1953. 53' means 53 feet. Oh yeah..."thanks for sharing". What, are we all in group therapy now? And "Enjoy!", which often follows "you got it!". "Let's do this!". OK office Rambo, go get 'em. I'll watch. "Wheels up"; "Lock and load"; "My personal best". All I have to say to anyone using those is "whatever". (Please see Mike_G's definition of "whatever", above) Far as "awesome" goes...jeez...please stop. I've actually seen a couple of awesome things in my life: a Saturn 5 launch, a B2 bomber flyover, and one of the last of the Concordes landing. That's it. A salad doesn't really stack up, does it?

It's caused because the guys doing the casting didn't bother to de-gas the resin during the casting process. In some cases, the resin itself will release gas if it goes off too quick and "exotherms". The usual cause is that air gets whipped into the resin during mixing, and if it's not removed or minimized somehow, the parts have the problems you notice. Some casters place just-cast parts (in their molds) in a "pressure pot", a variably-pressurized sealed chamber which can shrink the bubbles as the pressure rises. However, the best way to handle the problem is to "vacuum de-gas" by placing the mixed resin in a vacuum vessel prior to pouring it in the mold. Vacuum will literally "suck" the bubbles to the surface, where they pop. When the bubbling stops, the resin is ready to mold. Lotsa "experts" say it's not necessary to do either, and the result is what you've got. The reason folks would prefer to skip the step is because it takes longer, pure and simple. A fast-setting resin will sometimes start to gel before the de-gassing process is complete, and it's useless once it gels. Rather than simply using a slower-set resin and de-gassing, some casters use a faster-set resin and just skip the step. Sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you don't. There ARE some lower-viscosity casting resins available that claim to be thin enough to release the mixing-induced bubbles to the surface prior to casting, making vacuum de-gassing unnecessary.

Looking good.

Just caught up to this one. Pretty slick. Looks like a road-racer. Lotsa nice fab work going on.

Interesting philosophy. I've always used my top-line tools on any race car I've ever touched. The cheap screwdrivers, sockets and wrenches, besides "wearing out", also tend to damage hex-fasteners, and wallow-out screw slots and Philips, Allen-head or Torx fasteners. Nasty Chinese sockets can fail to give you an accurate torque-wrench reading, too. And don't even get me started on cheap torque-wrenches. To insure my client's cars finished races, I always tried to give them top-line precision workmanship...always...with precision, quality tools made from good material. Different world-view, I guess. Few things chap my wrinkly old rear more than going into some guys shop to work with HIS tools, and finding that he has a box full of cheap junk. I've yet to see a good mechanic who had garbage for tools. A lot who thought they were, though.

Wow Ed, I didn't know that. I just assumed all the early ultrasonic units used piezo crystals. Did a little research and read up on the hammer-striking arrangement. Far out, man.

Yup. Common bolt-in swap, and the engines look alike..

What scale? What size hose fittings?

Lotsa odd things are possible in the weird, wacky and wonerful world of electronics, but this one's got me stumped. TV remotes operated on RF (radio frequency) up 'til about 1980, after which they switched to being mostly infrared (IR) devices. Almost impossible for an IR remote to be able to talk to a car (though some early car-remote-controls did operate on IR too) but the clunky ones you refer to were almost certainly RF. Either way though, something inside the car would have to be capable of receiving a signal from the remote, and amplify that signal to the point where it could trigger the starter relay AND energize the hot-wire to the ignition coil. This assumes some things connected together inside the car that usually...aren't...and circuitry in the car that normally...isn't. Today's cars' remote key-fob door-unlock thingies operate on RF too, and some cars today have remote-start capability, so it's conceivable an old RF TV-remote MIGHT be able to communicate with one (though the key-fob signal is usually encrypted to some degree, making it difficult to spoof). But most old cars lack anything that could even detect a signal from a remote, much less do anything with it. It's possible the old Chrysler you encountered had been modified by its electronics-hobbyist owner to allow remote-start. A fair number of folks DID fiddle with making gadgets in olden times. Anybody here remember Popular Electronics magazine? Barring that, it oughtta be an upcoming episode on X-Files.

I have almost no resin, but I'd be interested in single-cab versions of each. But like gtx6970, I'm a real stickler for quality. Accurate scaling, symmetry, straight panel lines, things like that. No frame, no glass, no problem.

Though I've enjoyed being able to take some time off, I've also been a little apprehensive since I essentially worked myself out of a job the first week of January, when I finished up my part of the '47 Caddy build. The foreseeable future looks reasonably solid as of today, with the '33 Plymouth I did for Mills finally coming out of the paint shop (after almost 3 years!). I'll be doing the buildup, wiring harness and electronics in the client's facility, and I picked up a total re-wire / custom harness and FI-install on a '66 Chevelle ground-up pro-touring build, set up with FAST fuel-injection and a Dakota Digital analog dash. There's a '64 Corvette convertible (punched in the rear) waiting for me to do its fiberglass work and paint too...just have to find some shop space to do that one, as polyester glass work is nasty. Looks like I'll be eating for a while to come.

That about says it all.

Pretty cool little display base there, sir. Now the ship itself makes me think of an articulated Gundam or Transformers-style giant cyborg turtle.

Have you seen the little add-ons that run under Windows or Mac and make "typewriter" noises as you hit the keys on your computer keyboard?

Thanks for the heads-up on the availability of the Heller kits of this iconic car. I've got a couple of the early Revell Roadster, which looks quite good in proportion / line. I also bought several of the Aurora / Revell / Monogram kits, based on the beautiful box-art renderings...and having no idea how horribly distorted the actual kit-bodies would be. I'd assumed that the Revell / Monogram boxing implied that the contents were derived from the first Revell offering...the good one...and was very disappointed when I saw how poorly the Aurora kit designers had "interpreted" the beautiful E-type lines (yes, I do think it's very beautiful, and the engine is a wonderful piece of classic mechanical design...but heavy). The Aurora / Revell / Monogram kits I have left will only ever be donors for other projects, and I've been hesitant to build the virgin first-issue Revell versions up til now. The Heller offering will at least get me a nice E-type in the to-build-someday lineup.