Ace-Garageguy

Have you tried Ebay? Brakes: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=&_osacat=2580&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xbrake+calipers.TRS0&_nkw=brake+calipers&_sacat=2580 Battery clamps: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Model-Car-Garage-2011-x-1-24-1-25-Engine-Detail-Set-Photo-Etch-/191636242581?hash=item2c9e690095:g:uEkAAOxyRhBS5~Lx And there's an S-10 in Italy... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chevy-S-10-lowrider-3-n-1-low-rider-chevrolet-1-24-1-24-REVELL-kit-nuovo-new-/291632030485?hash=item43e69fa315:g:cyIAAOSwnH1WYsar

The bottom line is that oil is STILL a finite resource, and with prices-at-the-pump being low, the American public has zero incentive to give a rat's rear about expecting a coherent long-term energy policy from this or any replacement administration. And if an energy policy can't be spun into a party platform plank, it's ignored by everyone. This isn't a political rant...it's reality. We're going to keep on burning the stuff like there's no tomorrow, and one day we'll wake up and be facing gas prices that Europe has had for decades.

I found that to be true many years back, doing model RR stuff and architectural models, especially with balsa, which usually looks WAY out of scale and toylike. The situation isn't helped by the fact that the majority of the balsa available in hobby shops seems to be significantly looser-grained than it was 50 years ago. However...if you shop for very tightly-grained basswood, you can get nice scale-correct-looking grain effects. The wood in tongue depressors and coffee stirrers is often nice and tight-grained too, and the coffee sticks make good planks for pickup beds in 1/24-1/25. I've recently found some other very tight grained self-adhesive (and THIN) veneer woods that will do the trick too.

Revell's new '48 coupe sure will make it a lot easier to build a decent '41 coupe, if nothing else. I've been swapping the front sheet-metal on an old Testors / IMC '48, and it's not too bad. The scaling on both models (the AMT '41 woody and the IMC '48) matches pretty well.

I bought a 359 snapper a while back, but I've been waiting to get into it until I had a little more knowledge about the 1:1s. Looks like a good one to do some upgrades on, a feet-wetting exercise. I'd really like to do some earlier trucks and I've got a thing for COEs too. I'm blown away by some of the builds over here. Inspiring, to say the least.

Most excellent and helpful links and video references. Thank you, fog.

Good stuff, Mr. Fog. Thanks.

I don't know much about big trucks, but I've always liked the looks of the needlenose Petes...ever since I was a little kid. I'll be following this one or sure.

Gas prices will go low enough for every American and his dog to run out and buy an 18MPG pig of an SUV or way more truck than he needs...because you know that because gas is cheap now, it will be cheap forever and ever and we'll never never run out...and as soon as gas-hog-sales begin to taper off, the fuel prices will rise to $5 per gallon, and everyone who bought a pig will have to run out and buy an itty bitty electric POS., and get 12 cents on the dollar trade for the big'un. Business as usual.

Hell...it'd take them that long to do the environmental impact studies on the kind of paper-clips they used on the project, and that long again to assemble a team that was ethnically diversified and gender-balanced.

Got another Accurate Miniatures McLaren M8B kit. The (sealed) box was badly crushed, but the price was right, so I rolled the dice. It arrived today, perfect inside. The plan is to modify the chassis back to more of an M6 spec, and combine it with the modified body shell of the AMT Coyote to make up a reasonably accurate full-detail McLaren M6 GT.

Damm...that one looks good too. I've been itchin' to finish a couple of woodies I've got halfway through, but I didn't have a good handle on doing realistic wood finishes on plastic. Youse guys are tops.

On the '40 light trucks, the fuel tank IS in the rear, as noted above, and as on the cars (same frame, as stated above too). You see the fuel filler on the rear fender. '41 was the same truck, and the war intervened. Post-war trucks had the fuel filler on the right rear of the cab, and the tank was under the seat. On the '40, storage is under the lower seat cushion, and it has to be removed to access it. The rear seat cushion remains in place....unless it's been modified, and you see a LOT of old trucks that have been bodged and fubarred in the process of making them "better".

Yeah, and you ought to see what I come across on REAL car parts from the mysterious inscrutable East. Things like suspension control arms that are SUPPOSED to be FORGED aluminum alloy, but are actually CAST aluminum, full of voids, with only a fraction of the strength of the OEM part...and sold as "exact OEM replacement parts".

I still use rattle-cans for a lot, but i just made the jump to a high-quality airbrush to give me more control and better, more consistent atomization of certain materials. There are just some things you simply can NOT do with rattle-cans, but they remain a perfectly useful tool where they're appropriate. PS: This version of spellcheck doesn't know the word "atomization". Geez.

Didn't catch the show...no cable...but I'll definitely have to remember the above line next time somebody asks me why I did something incredibly stupid. Frankly, I could just watch the old version of Gillian walk around for an hour every week. No plot necessary .

Best answer.

Man, that looks GREAT !! Thanks. You made my day.

Thank you for chiming in. It's good to hear from someone else who's done it, and understands the procedure.

I got paid, in full, for my last two months of work, and I get to take a few days off before starting the next project. Whoopee !!!

I have absolutely no idea.

Beautiful model of a very beautiful car. Man, that looks fast just sitting there. I need one of these kits. All your extra details really make it come alive.

Beautiful engine. I love steam.

You're every bit as much engineer as you are modeler. Beautiful work on everything, fascinating technique.

Yup...and then, you get the old saw about models not looking "right" if they're accurately scaled, so you have kit designers making "artistic corrections and interpretations" instead of scale models.