Ace-Garageguy

Hmmmm...maybe I don't really want to live forever after all.

Bike racing isn't my field of expertise, by any means, but I know there have been some structural failures of carbon fiber frames that sustained light damage previously. The brittle nature of carbon in a resin matrix also makes it susceptible to failure caused by what look like fairly insignificant nicks. Carbon doesn't fatigue like metal does, but a small impact-crack in the resin can travel completely through a frame tube, and it's not necessarily obvious. Once the fibers are no longer supported by resin, they fail. Building a heavier carbon part somewhat offsets this sensitivity to minor damage.

Whoa !! You can do the press thing with the clamps you have here...It looks like the one on the far left should have enough height. Support the tire with a ring of PVC pipe, and press the wheel through it using the screw (with an appropriate round washer to feed the load evenly into the wheel). You may need a taller C-clamp to get everything in there, with the end of the clamp under the bench, of course, but it ought to work.

Great idea, Steve. What would work even better (if you have a reloading press) would be to make up a mandrel that would support the tire, and another one to support the wheel. You could then put slow and controlled pressure on the thing, watching all the time. If you have w workbench you can screw something to, you could make up a little press to do this job from a couple pf lengths of steel stock, some bolts, and a door hinge. Kinda elaborate, but if you really want to save the wheels AND the tires...

Exactly. I pulled a '53 off the shelf and opened it up, tried the same thing just now. Though I didn't glue it, I taped the center and ends of the frame to the "glass" very carefully, then fitted the mocked-up assembly to the body. This seems to be the hot setup, and will correct the poor fit at the ends of the frame to the body as well. I also checked my '57, which uses different windshield frame and glass tooling. It fits well, as is. Perhaps it was corrected in later issues?

X2. Just a thought...I've found that this hobby and the many models and supplies are like the best of all possible friends in some ways. They'll wait indefinitely for you to deal with what you have to deal with, they don't get impatient or demanding, and when you have time for them again, their presence in your life is as rewarding as it ever was...on whatever level you prefer to enjoy them.

...which is probably the smartest approach, as carbon-fiber is almost completely transparent to X-rays, so even low-power equipment in the field should work.

They'll probably move it. I'm 99% sure I have that kit in stock. I'll have a look and see if I can think of anything...unless someone beats me to the optimum solution. Even though it's a curved windshield, I don't believe it's a compound-curve. In that case, one fix is always to make a new one rom clear styrene or acetate sheet. Clearer, and more scale-thickness too.

That's a tough one. Have to be careful about temperature, or you'll permanently distort the rims (though that older styrene is probably a lot more thermally-stable than the garbage kits are made of now). Boiling, around 212 F, is the average temp where styrene deforms forever. Hard to save both the tires AND the wheels in a case like this (where the tires are no longer pliable enough to roll off) but there's always the possibility of carefully grinding off the back-side of the rims adjacent to the tire. Save the tire, save the part of the rim that shows. That's all I got.

Love these things as gassers. Looks great.

Bernard Kron has made some nice DIY decals too, with his own-design logos, etc. Maybe he'll chime in here.

Boop-oop-a-doop.

Decent filters should catch enough of it for whatever remains to be negligible. Dry particulate matter and atomized paint (lacquer droplets will be dry by the time they reach the filtering medium, and enamels will be sticky enough to stick to it nicely) are really pretty easy to control. Even a furnace filter should catch 99% of it. I used stacked (2) furnace filters on the output-air from a booth where I shot gelcoat in a composite shop. Never a drop of white gelcoat on my dark-blue XJ-6 parked right behind it.

Here's an idea for combining Round 2's recent '32 Vicky re-release and this coming release...built by Ira Dahm back in 2008. http://sonic.net/~joymkrs/Dahm/AVIC.html

If you really love your airbrush and the manufacturer doesn't supply a solvent-resistant O-ring, you can try a little re-engineering yourself. Teflon (PTFE) O-rings (and other solvent-resistant compounds) are available from a variety of sources. Here's one, with some good information. NOTE: Some industrial suppliers will still give you samples in small numbers for "evaluation". And while some industrial suppliers have minimum orders, others will happily sell you just one. http://www.coorstek.com/resource-library/library/8510-1182_teflon_o-rings.pdf

The AMBR winner is a very attractive car to me, but far as I can see, it doesn't break any new ground...except for maybe the color, which I like a lot... or raise the bar any from a design standpoint. I'm sure it's detail-perfect, and I'd love to own it to DRIVE, but much as I love '32 Ford hot-rods...it's just another really really nice '32 Ford. This probably sounds pretty odd coming from me, a traditional-car kinda guy, and I'm NOT knocking it, not by any means. It's just that, in the past, some pretty radical cars have won this award, and it seems today we're seeing a lot of the same-old same-old recycled with only subtle changes. Again, don't get me wrong. This is a beautiful car, and there are still a bazillion more ways to build a '32 Ford. I'd just like to see something a little more imaginative for a change.

Last line under Bernard's tech-specs post... "Press the button and the motor delivers 200 watts to the crankshaft" That's roughly equivalent to 1/4 of one horsepower (.25 horsepower). At maximum load, I'd guess the batteries could only deliver that for a matter of seconds. At maximum load, like climbing a hill, a human cyclist puts out 400-500 watts, or roughly .5 to .7 horsepower. A world-class cyclist can maintain around a 300-400 watt-output over an hour. There would definitely be an advantage to having a 50% power boost while you were hill-climbing, but it wouldn't last very long. To put this in some kind of perspective, think about how long your cordless drill will keep on running long deck screws into tough wood before the battery needs recharging. One-half horsepower is about average, and the motor in that case is almost at stall, and that's roughly equivalent to what you'd be asking the bicycle power-unit to do if you were climbing a long hill.

Here's a real one... http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/0705rc-la-tub/

When I started running Adblock Plus under Chrome, it sped up loading pictures from my computer considerably, and eliminated the annoying marketing crapp in the bargain. It's been working fine for two years with the ad-blocker installed, and only recently began acting up. It's not just me and a few users on this board having problems...it's net-wide. My storage is nowhere near full, and I pay for additional monthly bandwidth. Even when the server is up and responding, the site is glitchy now, and requires some workarounds, different from the way it's worked since I've been using it (2012).

Again, thank you all for your interest and comments. Matt, I'm sure that Saoutchik, as well as Figoni et Falaschi, and even Capt. Nemo's car from "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" were all at least strong subconscious influences on the looks of this thing. You guessed it. This one will use a large turbine made up from the Revell kit, in the front, powering a generator that drives wheel-motors and charges a battery pack. I have something somewhat similar going that uses two small turbines in the rear in a setup inspired by the Jag C-X75. I've been experimenting with faux-bare-metal finishes for a while, and in keeping with the kinda dark tech-noir feel I'm after for this one, I'll probably be doing something like what finally worked out for my Challenger I a couple years back.

I'm always amazed (and saddened, somehow) at the lengths people will go to to cheat. I'll take earned self respect over winning by cheating any day.

Here's an older thread with additional information: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/16547-liquid-glues/

Weld-On 3 is excellent stuff, also because it will work on butyrate plastic, which some Plastruct parts are made of. Some of the other common liquid "cements" won't stick it very well, if at all. If you can't find it at a hardware store, any shop that fabricates plastic signs will have it, as it's pretty much the industry standard.

Here's a thread from October that addressed solvent-type plastic cements and more cost-effective bulk substitutes in some detail...

I see it in your photo, and I see it on the instructions, and I believe you. Good to know, anyway. I made my statement based on the fact that it isn't in either of the two original-issue Ala Karts I have, which I bought supposedly as "complete and inventoried" and paid a pretty fair pile of money for. Of course, neither of mine were sealed, so I guess those grille shells went missing somewhere along the line (and who knows what else at this point, because I haven't inventoried them myself, other than a quick glance to make sure all the wheels, tires, and major components were there). I see the '32 grille insert on the chrome tree too, in your photo, and it's been removed (now that I look carefully) from one of mine too....and I honestly never noticed it on the other one, but it's there. I appreciate your correcting my misinformation. This has always been one of my all-time favorite kits, and I'd also love to see Round 2 restore it in its entirety. Maybe one reason I never noticed the '32 grille parts is because the yellow box-art car on both of my original Kart kits has the '29 grille. Building one close-to-really-accurate Ala Kart from parts of the early and late kits has been on my list since I got my first copy of the latest version.