Ace-Garageguy

Impalow, I'm really curious about that side-gravity-feed detail gun. I'll go inexpensive it it actually works, but I've bought knockoff Chinee guns before and had the seals go bad after only a few uses. I've also had knockoff guns that oxidized badly fairly quickly, with plated potmetal parts that SHOULD have been brass or stainless. Your results look great though, and I'm always in the market for a decent small gun. How long have you had it? Any issues, other than normal maintenance?

Just checked. Server's down for everyone now. And apparently there have been pretty serious and ongoing /intermittent problems since at least as far back as the middle of November. Yeah, ain't technology grand.

Well guys, I shot and edited a bunch of pix of the Revell and AMT parts side-by-side, but our old friend Photobucket seems to be having a nervous breakdown. Soon as it's functioning again, I'll post. And a BIG thanks to Dave Darby for the excellent 1:1 photos. It's always a huge help to be able to see what the things are SUPPOSED to look like.

Today, Pbucket is loading insanely slowly, uploads are taking forever and dumping some of the photos, etc. I NEVER have any problems, not since 2012. Is anyone else noticing anything like this lately? I know the site was offline a couple days back.

Lots of really GOOD stuff on that site.

I buy their air die-grinders for composite work. You CAN NOT use any lubricants in tools that will come in contact with composite materials during repairs or fabrication, particularly on aircraft. I buy them from Harbor because they're cheap enough to be disposable after they fry from being run dry. I don't think I'd trust my vision to a Harbor Freight welding helmet. Eyes are pretty expensive to replace, a lot more expensive than a real quality welding helmet.

Every release of the '29 Model A roadster ever done by AMT uses the same basic tooling. The roadster bodies are all identical except for color and exact styrene composition. The history of the kit is all referenced in the above posts, but to recap, the FIRST appearance of the AMT '29 roadster was in the ORIGINAL Ala Kart double-kit. Subsequent releases of that double kit were boxed as "Mod Rod", and included ALL the original Ala-Kart parts, plus a '32 grille shell that's not in the original release...at least, it's not in any of them that I have. Later releases of the AMT '29 roadster had SOME pieces of the Ala Kart still in the box; some issues had the fender unit (with the louvers removed), the hood, the top, the bed cover, a modified firewall, the grille INSERT, the body tub, the seat insert, most of the Red Ram engine (the Ala Kart fuel-injection was replaced by a blower on a separate sprue), the frame and most of the suspension. Some issues, far as I can tell, lacked the Ala Kart fenders, frame and body parts. The Ala Kart chrome-reversed rims with bullet centers were replaced by chrome steel rims with baby moons. You COULD get damm close to 2 cars from some kits...like this one...#38073 EVERYTHING to build a stock '29 was in EVERY release, with some extra Ala Kart-derived parts as well. The coming release will have many of the previously-deleted original Ala Kart parts returned, and you should be able to get two cars from it.

I've got virgins of each in stock, can put them up later today...if nobody beats me to it.

I do a lot of 1:1 vehicle electrical work, and I've been having problems with the Lowes / hardware store / Home Depot / Harbor Freight etc. zip ties becoming Chinese-made, not-to-spec, garbage-plastic useless trash. I don't even bother with them any more, and only use the ones from electronics supply houses.

Smer /Merit kit, OOB: Heller OOB:

Coke, of course, ditched their bottle-recycling bottle-reusing program eons ago, citing cost. Lots easier to get sugar water out of a Coke bottle than to get paint out of a tiny bottle. Though I have no hard data to back it up, Id think glass bottles would be cheaper than plastic...where a tough little bottle that's solvent-resistant is necessary. After all, glass is just melted sand. Thanks, Pete. I used the wrong term.

Best answer.

X2. Your work is always better with good tools. While Harbor Freight does in fact have some things that can be useful, you really have to be careful and look hard at the quality of what you're buying. I got a set of clamps similar to the ones shown above, and within a year, every one had snapped. I've bought hole-punches there that were made of such soft steel, you could only get 3 good uses out of them. I've bought files that weren't hard enough to cut aluminum. I once bought a dead-blow hammer that shattered with the first use. Sockets that split, screwdrivers with uselessly-soft tips, wire brushes that disintegrate, etc. I even bought a tape-measure there once that had incorrect markings on it. Didn't line up with inches, though it was marked in inches. It's really smarter to spend a little more and get a few quality tools, instead of getting a lot of trash that's semi-useless.

Correct.

That's the reason i elected to use the Revell body for the Eddie Dye car rather than the AMT body I'd started with. It's a subtle difference, but if you look at the 1:1 cars all the time, it is noticeable. I DO think the old AMT body is a little nicer in the lighter-weight and thickness of the molded-in character lines, and the coach-line on the cowl side. But if the slight heaviness of the Revell version bothers you, it's very easily corrected. The rear wheel arches on the Revell body are easy to correct too, if you should want to put it on the AMT fenders.

Yes. It does. The rest of the parts swap around pretty well too. Top, interior insert...pretty close, not too difficult to swap, especially considering the tooling for the two kits was done over 50 years apart.

And GM is supplying the ignition switches. I hear they have some lying around, available at a VERY good price.

And just where does this happen?

Very interesting. looks Like a good starting point for an Ira-style hot-rod too.

What he said (though I haven't sprayed the non-aerosol Duplicolor clears yet, Steve's work speaks for itself, and he has me convinced...and I'm not easily convinced of anything).

Here's a little food for thought. Internal combustion engines run happily on hydrogen with relatively few modifications to what we have now. The only significant emissions are water vapor and oxides of nitrogen (which you get when ou burn ANYTHING with "air", and which we know how to control effectively). The water vapor coming out the tailpipe is recycled naturally by the planet itself. Honda's R&D has already indicated it's possible for a household to cost-effectively generate its vehicle-power needs by cracking H2 from H2O (wastewater-sourced) using a rooftop solar array to provide the electricity to do it. The rooftop plant sits there making hydrogen all day, and you couple the vehicle for re-fueling to the system when you get home in the evening. The economics have been worked out to make such a system feasible pretty much immediately on a small scale, it grows as the "economics-of-scale" begin to kick in and prices come down (as the prices of ALL newly-implemented technologies do, given a little time), and it generates operating profits for the utility companies (who would own the rooftop arrays and charge for the electricity and fuel produced). All this, at a cost that's in the ballpark with what we're paying today...and none of the money goes to the Middle East. The dollars stay HERE, and jobs, well-paying jobs, are created. This is not the only good solution, but certainly one well worth integrating into a well-thought-out energy landscape. No batteries with questionable lifespans (that have to be replaced several times during a vehicle's service-life) made of expensive, exotic and toxic materials that have to be disposed of and-or recycled...using even more energy. No massive rebuilding of the entire power grid to take the vehicle energy load from liquid petroleum and put it on generating plants. Very long life for hydrogen-fueled engines, because of zero oil-dilution and few combustion deposits (though positive-crankcase-ventilation is particularly important with H2) But will we do it? Probably not in my lifetime...if ever. It's entirely too logical.

Hmmm. Maybe I'd actually get some model-car-building done if I put my monitor AT the bench, instead of 15 feet away. Nah, probably not.

As someone who's actually been hands-on involved in the alt-fuel bit from time to time...off and on since the mid 1970s...I'm just always amazed that this is still even an issue. The technology has existed to end our dependence on fossil fuels for decades, natural gas was the perfect bridge-fuel to get there, and nobody so far has done diddly to make it happen on a large scale. I've got fed up and walked away from the alt-fuel game several times, because, like most human endeavors now, it's mostly endless meetings, conferences, hand-wringing, and cover-your-butt-blame-spreading-in-case-there's-a-problem-down-the-road. There is, apparently, no will to change and no individual or small group of motivated individuals (in positions of power) who have the brains and guts to pull it all together. All electric cars do at this point is to centralize emissions. The real energy numbers just aren't that good, but there's a widespread belief that somehow electrics will fix everything. Dig deep into it, do the research, do the math, don't be swayed by "experts" pontificating on things they don't understand and media and political spin-doctors, and you can see for yourselves. Yeah, right. Let the whining continue.

If you're old enough, you just MAY remember a business marketing ploy that advertised "we pass the savings on to the customer". It had more to do with buying raw materials in large volume than to the fluctuations of the cost of commodity items, but it sounded nice. Today's marketing strategy consists of concepts like "NEW PACKAGE !!! SAME GREAT PRODUCT!!!"...but when you do the numbers, you see you're getting LESS in a SMALLER package for MORE money.

Yeah, kinda like Coke. The contents of the can are essentially worthless, but you're paying for the can, marketing, distribution, etc.