Ace-Garageguy

Future and Ted's are out of stock. RB has these... http://www.rbmotion.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=51

What scale? Styrene? White metal? Resin? Real springs or molded facsimiles?

My vote. Traditional, but not just another minor variation on something that's been done 10,000 times. Also, a car that COULD conceivably be built by someone who doesn't have a billion dollars to spend.

Another el-cheapo Amtronic, specifically for the turbine engines. A nice set of PE saws, and two more of the '32 Ford MCG PE sets that I stupidly lost one of the grill-inserts out of. Heading out later to pick up more styrene strip and sheet stock too.

Ah, the dreaded truth. Opening up flashed-over holes under the chassis is well within the scope of the skills of most entry-level modelers. Carefully and accurately hand-fitting a piece of CLEAR plastic to an opening in the upper body...a fit issue that immediately draws the eye to itself if it's not just about perfect... is NOT. Witness the builds already showing up with both front and rear glass protruding above the roof line. Though I don't have this particular kit YET, I've read all the threads on the glass-fitting procedures that well-respected, highly-experienced and talented builders like Bill Geary have come up with. It's more than a couple of swipes with a file to make it right. I'll be buying multiples of this kit, as I have most of Moebius' recent automotive offerings...and I'll fix the windows, and other things. Some folks don't care and apparently don't even notice if the glass sticks up from the opening. Some do, and will fix it. It might be nice to address this little issue. Like the man said, no bash on Moebius; simply the truth.

Trust me...no matter how politely you try to correct misinformation and post actual truth rather than endlessly repeated and just flat wrong hearsay and opinions with nothing empirical to back them up...even if you really know exactly what you're talking about from personal first-hand experience of many years (and can prove it), and even if your motivation is solely to help... somebody is going to call you out for being a know-it-all, jerk, meany, generally not-nice person of poor-character who doesn't play well with the other kiddies. I personally prefer truth to BS. Apparently, a lot of people don't.

3 methods. Gel pen, typewriter correction ribbon or tape (if you can find it), or tiny paint brush under magnification, acrylic paint that will self level and actually dry.

Love it. Kinda my philosophy of life. Welcome.

X2. Some builders are going to build race-cars, customs, not OOB. Having the holes easy to open up but flashed is better, in my opinion. Might be easier to just modify the instructions to address the holes. Also very much appreciated is your pro-active stance on issues like this. It's nice to know the guys who make the stuff care about the needs of the guys who buy and build it.

Hey...maybe they could run 'em like slot-car tracks.

I know for a fact that one of the reasons Alclad recommends a high-gloss black under their chrome is to get the reflection right. Flat-black won't cut it. Black styrene might have the right look if it's been polished, but as mentioned above, adhesion MAY be an issue. In my experience, resin parts rarely come out of the mold or in the mail with a polished surface. The PVA mold-release or talcum power some casters insist on using imparts a slightly pebbly surface to the part, and that's gonna screw the chrome effect, even if Alclad will stick to it. IF you make your molds from polished masters, and use a non-antique, professional mold-release, you CAN get the same level of polish on out-of-mold parts as the master had. So if you cast them in black, and if adhesion over bare resin is an issue, you should only have to shoot one coat of whatever you choose to use as an Alclad undercoat.

Very interesting, Craig. Really cool you still have the Manx buggy.

Thank you sir !! That's kind of what I was thinking. It looks sort of like several turbines, but has some stuff on it that makes no sense whatsoever from a correct-function standpoint. Rover's Jet-1 turbine car was built in '49-'50, and both Chrysler and GM were also experimenting with turbines in vehicles in the 1950s, so it seemed logical to assume Revell's kit was a reasonable representation of one of those earlier engines. At this point, I'm pretty well convinced it's not based on anything real, but rather a designer's "interpretation" of a turbine, where the designer had no technical knowledge of how a turbine actually worked. Thanks again for chiming in here. I think I'll end the search at this point, and just modify the kit engine to look more-or-less correct. It IS a good starting place for that.

Ummm...if YOU post what you're looking for in the "truck" section, you're far more likely to get a hit than you are asking here in the "general " section. Click here... http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/forum/41-truck-kits-or-parts-to-trade-or-wanted-requests/

Another one that's visually similar...sorta...

Well then. On a kinda wild hair (or wild hare, since I'm going down another internet rabbit hole...) I did a Google image search for "turbine APU" (auxiliary-power-unit, commonly used as part of the starting system for some aircraft, etc.) and I got a ton of hits that look a LOT more like the Revell engine than what I had earlier. Still no exact match, but possibly closer... For instance, this BMW T-312 has the compressor inlet on the end, and the general shape is the same. (This little turbine is used as the APU on the Panavia Tornado) This one differs from the Revell unit though, as it has the relatively huge exhaust port you'd expect on a turbine. It's also a MUCH newer design than the Revell engine could possibly be.

Yeah, baby. I like it. Nice job radiusing those rear wheel cutouts too.

Thanks again. If it works like what it looks like it's supposed to be, the little square flange on the right should be the air intake for the external combustion chamber (though the horrible instructions show the "spark housing" gets located there...which makes no sense) and the 6 big holes on the end would be the main intake for the compressor stage. I've found pix of the things the instructions call out as "fuel control cap" and "fuel line assembly" on some early turbines, but the instructions show them, again, in mostly nonsensical places. I think you've done the best possible job of building this little engine based on what's there and the poor instructions.

All the above. My parents had Fords (the old man) and Oldsmobiles (mother) when I was a kid, but the first car I remember them having was a Studebaker Starlight Coupe. I saw a lot of the country looking out of that panoramic rear window on the Stude, so I'm partial to those in particular. The old man's '63 falcon had a great heater in the winter, and I ended up driving his '65 289 2bbl Mustang notch a LOT. I still have his '72 351C 2bbl Cougar in storage. I loved my mother's '55 Olds Dynamic 88 convertible, and actually cried when they traded it on the '63 (which I also still have, in storage, and have a fair bit of personal history in). Some of my richer friends had Porsches when I was in my late teens, and once I drove one I was hooked. I couldn't afford one so I built the next-best-thing, a Porsche-engined Bug. Hot Corvairs followed, again because they were similar in concept but way cheaper than Porsches. I was in England in 1970 or so, and saw a Lotus 7. Love at first sight, didn't know anything like that even existed, bought one and shipped it to the States. Quick, nimble, a four-wheel motorcycle, and like nothing else in the world. Never owned another Lotus but I drove and fell in love with the Elans and Europas too. While working for a shop that raced Abarth-tuned Fiats, I got into those, and still love the old 850 and X1/9 especially. Reliability was fine if they were maintained, but the 1/9 was slow. A 124 engine fixed that. The Fiats are all long gone, but I miss 'em. Got my first Porsche, finally, for $600, and have owned and loved several. Sadly, one burned to the ground and two were stolen. After driving the '72 911S, I figured that would always be my favorite car. It still is, though for now I can't possibly afford one. I have a rough '74 Targa (the '74 911 is probably the least desirable of any of them), again in storage, that I'll hopefully get back to this year. Got interested in Jags, probably as a spin-off of the Lotus thing. British cars in general had appealed to me ever since a high-school friend had had a Humber. The Lime approach to doing things in those days was different from the Germans, the Italians, the French...and all of the different design philosophies fascinated me. I bought a totally rusted-out E-type, thought the engine was just beautiful...but insanely heavy. That's when I remembered how nice and light and slim the little 289 Fords were, and one fit the Jag very nicely indeed. My old XJ-6 is probably the best-handling sedan I've ever driven, and I still think it's one of the prettiest 4-door cars ever built. Worked on the 240Z when it was introduced, thought it was the world's best cheap Jag, but didn't get one until many years later. I rebuilt my stolen-recovery Z-car into a convertible, the first one ever done. Bizarrely, it was stolen again, just before I was about to paint it. I always thought the engines, loosely copied from an old Merc inline 6, were terrific powerplants, and i still have a couple of those waiting to go in something. Another love-at-first-sight affair was with the Triumph Stag. Loved the looks, but the engines were garbage, as well as the window lifts, the steering rack, etc. Ended up doing a lot of engine swaps on Stags, mostly Chebbys, and that's when I began to really appreciate the Chebby smallblock as a truly great engine. Lotsa power, simple, strong and reliable as a brick. Speaking of Chebbys...I never owned a Chevrolet vehicle until i really needed a truck, and bought a high-mileage one, cheap, from a friend. He'd been having chimps maintain it, and he thought it was on its last legs. Wrong. A couple-hundred bucks in parts and some TLC, and she ran happily for another 75,000 miles. Finally broke a valve-spring last year, and I just finished building a set of heads for her. Great truck, and now one of my favorites too. My last real shop had a GM step-van (ex donut-truck) with a smallblock that was an absolute blast to go places in. But if I had money to burn, I'd buy a new Ford GT. Just because.

Thanks Scott ! You're installation and wild (I assume it's a wrecker) design look great. Really like your air intake filter, and the realistic finishes you've got on the turbine unit. Thanks for the blog link too. I came across that one during my research, but it didn't occur to me to try to contact the blogger. Great idea.

No, it's an external combustion chamber, but I see how it could look like it might be a crank or eccentric shaft in that photo. Assembled, the engine does somewhat resemble turbines with a single external combustion chamber, like the Rover 1s60, but with the components rearranged.

Thanks for your response. Even though you don't know what it is either, I appreciate your taking the time. That's what I had assumed also, and though it doesn't look like the Chrysler everyone is most familiar with, I thought it was probably based on one of the earlier non-regenerative engines. I haven't found any photos to back that up, though. This shot shows some of the family of Chrysler's turbines, and most of them have the large circular regenerator housings on the sides. I have the Johan Turbine car kit, and that's the engine represented in it too. The AMT Amtronic has 3 turbines in it, one of which is a nicely scaled-down (about 1/2 the size of Chrysler's, but the same basic layout) version of the last Chrysler unit. The other two in that kit have multiple annular combustion chambers like some older jets. That's also a design I recognize. Guess I'll keep digging.

These guys aren't going to pay to watch a bunch of Priusi swish around the track...

You never know until you try...

Long shot here...I'm doing a diesel-punk project that needs a somewhat believable turbine engine, and I have a few of the 50-year-old Revell parts-pack turbines, so I decided to try to use one for the build. I know a fair bit about turbines, and though the compressor and turbine sections are big enough to make serious power if the thing was a 1:1, the general layout is more like an old APU with a single combustion chamber. The exhaust is tiny for the length and diameter of the compressor / turbine too, and the way it exits from the housing isn't like anything I've ever seen. I've looked at lots of photos of turbo-shaft engines from helicopters, and it doesn't look remotely like anything I found, even older Russian units. It doesn't bear any resemblance to Chrysler's experimental turbines...at least the ones I could find naked photos of...nor does it look like the unit in the Howmet car, or the Lotus Indy cars. It looks a little like the old Rover 1s60 engine, and also a little like the Plessy Solent APU, Thing is, there are several mystery parts on the Revell engine that, again, don't really look like anything I'm familiar with. So, before I start re-arranging and fabbing components to make it look like it might actually work, I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone, on a wild chance, may have a clue as to what this Revell turbine is supposed to be...or if it's just an "artistic concept" with some vaguely-technical-looking parts stuck together to give the impression of something that's not piston-power. Thanks in advance for any light you may be able to shed on this quandary.