Ace-Garageguy

Fine looking model. Captures the look of one of GM's best designs. Good color for it too.

Your valve covers on the engine now are for the second-generation Hemi (426) so be sure to get your distributor in FRONT. The "slots" are for breathers, like this... To answer your most recent question: Your valve covers seem to be on upside-down. The more-square corners go to the bottom...like this...

You should be able to work out the '29 from the top pic, and the lower pic is '32.

Norm Veber's e-mail for RepMin is replmincomd@aol.com . He's very prompt about answering. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/20270-how-do-i-order-products-from-replicas-miniatures-company-of-maryland/ And you can order a current catalog.

What I'm finding pretty amazing is that I'm seeing these kits built, painted and foiled... with the windshield sticking up over the front of the roof, as in your "before" photo.

Pete is 100% correct in everything he says. Finding someone with the skills to make one perfect master is not easy...or cheap...whether in scale or 1:1; finding someone with the skills to make good molds is also difficult, but not as hard as finding someone to do the master-work...and this is why some guys who do masters send them off to less-skilled craftsmen to do the mold work. Making the first prototype of anything is where a large part of the cost comes in, and clients are often horrified by the number of hours even a relatively simple part takes, and the subsequent cost. As Pete says, "To do this work requires a skilled craftsman, not a 16 year old in the basement". And expect to pay a minimum of $25 per hour, even to a retiree who doesn't much care about the money.

I assume you want down-drafts, as that's what every Cobra I've ever seen ran. The Accurate Miniatures carbs are side-drafts, and they're different. There seems to be a widespread misconception that all Webers are the same, when they're not. You don't just slap side-drafts on a downdraft manifold in reality...the float bowls are oriented in such a way that all they'd do is spew gasoline everywhere...and anyone with any familiarity with the 1:1 carbs would notice instantly on a model. The AMT Craig Carter IMSA Camaro also has side-draft carbs. The particular Weber carb you're going to want is most likely a 48 IDA down-draft. The more common Weber side-draft carb numbers end with a DCO()... suffix. Look the two types up (IDA vs DCO) on Google image search, and you'll see immediately why they're not interchangeable. Obviously, you'd only need one correctly-scaled 48 IDA master to make as many copies as anyone wanted.

Very interesting thread. I've seen the cutters in action before, and you've done a fine job showing the potential. Nice work. Your print quality is certainly improving too. The block as-installed in the chassis is certainly to the minor-cleanup-and-primer-to-be-perfect point.

I like it.

Started getting the 404 message again recently while trying to respond to posts in the school-failures thread I'd started. Attempting to quote the relevant post, and quote a passage from an online-article, with my own commentary, I got 404 and then knocked off the board for an hour. Now, if I try to quote ANOTHER post in the same thread, the software has saved my EARLIER attempt to quote and crams them all together into an essentially unintelligible mess of unrelated quotes in a cascade. I've reloaded the relevant pages and retried. Nope. I've cleared the browser cache. Nope. I even tried getting to the board through Firefox, rather than my usual Chrome. No-go there either. I thought something IN THE POST itself was triggering the 404, along with my IP address, so I modified the post considerably and tried again. Nope. Obviously, I can post in THIS thread. Odd and frustrating.

Knockout model of one of the best looking US cars of all time. Beautiful.

The "No Child Left Behind Act" was passed in 2001, but still leaves state and local jurisdictions a lot of leeway in interpreting how to implement it. Though fine in concept, again, the implementation seems to be failing...14+ years on. The US needs to have a long, hard look at how the countries where the concept IS working are teaching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

A couple o' pix for folks who don't click...

Wow! indeed. That's a beauty. Clean lines, doesn't look like anything else, not all covered in semi-useless "aerodynamic" frippery. I LIKE it.

Ever hear this?..."if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". I guess we know where you choose to stand. "Apathetic" isn't an adjective I particularly want used to describe me, but there's an awful lot of it around. You have plenty of company.

At first glance, the concept as you state it seems valid. The problem is that the way it's being implemented, and the whole "teach to the test" methodology, are deeply flawed. Read the very valid comments made by those above who have experienced the problems first-hand, read the links I've posted about the level of graduating students' reading comprehension, communication skills in general, and the math skills of the population as a whole, and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test and see if you think it's working.

I have one of these too, about $20 for a decent one. Quite handy for making multiple holes in styrene sheet without a lot of fiddly setup. 2 problems...the cheap ones have poorly-hardened cutters that get dull almost immediately, and it's not great for making dots, as it can be difficult to get them out of the cutter barrels.

Great black-light pix, great technique to mask the lines to fluoresce like that. Should be a good way to do the red lines on the first-gen Batmobile, too.

I do so admire your continuing thoughtful, incisive and to-the-point comments on a variety of subjects.

Spectacular model, by far one of the most realistic I've ever seen. If photographed in daylight on an appropriate base, it would be almost impossible to tell it from the real thing, and that's about the highest compliment I can pay any model.

Yes, very nice. Seeing your builds is beginning to spark my interest in this type of car.

Just a point I'd like to make again and reinforce...I didn't start this thread to make fun of people. I started it because there are some very real problems facing this country many of us love, and they are all SOLVABLE with some effort. But before they can be solved, they have to be identified and acknowledged. A good, solid, BASIC education providing the ability to read and comprehend, write coherently, and use arithmetic well enough to be independent of a calculator should still be considered as rightfully owed to ALL children. But if you read what's out there, that's NOT what they're getting. Is a model car forum the best place to address this? Well, maybe not the BEST, but certainly appropriate, because this hobby crosses all age and ethnic and even many national boundaries...without any need for politically-correct sensitivity enforcement. We're united by our interest, and as artists and craftsmen. We have to observe, think critically, develop manual and intellectual skills, and be continuing-learners to do what we all do and enjoy. Those of us who are Americans are probably proud of that fact, even though it's just a lucky accident for most of us to have been born here. But to continue to live in a country that merits a sense of national pride, it's time to DO something about the apparent steady decay of what it means to be "American". There was a time in the not too distant past when the concepts of "American know how" and "American ingenuity" were common, but we seem (to me) to be heading down a road that ignores those particular values, and will inevitably result in this country becoming a second-string player, dependent on other parts of the world for our survival. Solid, simple basic education and a healthy respect for hard work, including dirty work, can turn this trend around. It's not too late.

You have a point. Sweeping generalizations aren't fair to the people who aren't defined by the generalization, but included in it. Unfortunately, incompetence IS becoming the norm. I have a friend who's a dealership lead tech and shop manager. He's an old fossil like me, and he knows his stuff. He's been unable to find competent technical staff among the younger people who are willing to work for what the dealership is willing to pay. His is a very common complaint within the industry now. So the problem is really two-fold. Dealerships are wanting to get labor for cheap, and the starting pay is so poor there's no incentive for young people to put in the effort to get a good automotive technical grounding...especially since most of the schools don't offer any auto-shop classes any more. Yes, there ARE some young kids who are wizard mechanics. I just don't know any right now, and since I'm in the biz and exposed to a lot of different parts of it, they can't be all that common.

Do-da-do-da-do-da-do-da. Hmmm...that doesn't sound quite right. Maybe it's do-da-do-da-do-da-do-da. Still not right. How about do-da-do-da-do-da-do-da. Yeah, that's it!