Ace-Garageguy

Another beauty. I can just about hear the tracks clanking.

I'll take the engine.

Never thought I'd have any interest in this one either, but the NASCAR version above would be cool to build. Sure would be unusual. I like really really important race cars, and really really obscure race cars.

I couldn't find a period shot of a cam-driven water pump with a through-shaft to drive the injection pump, but I have seen it done. A good engineer / machinist could have made such a setup in the old days...before everything came out of a catalog. I don't know exactly what this is, but it is very similar to (and may be) a vintage Hilborn angle-drive that could be used for an injection pump off of the mag drive location. The tube on the left goes down into the distributor hole in the block, a shaft runs through it to drive the mag which sits on top, and the injection pump resides on the round flange to the right. BUT...the easiest way for you to set up a gasser to be somewhat streetable would be to take Gary's other suggestion and use electric pumps to circulate coolant. It's period-correct, and easier to source photos and make the bits. Brian Chuchua's front-blown '58 Corvette (1960 record-setting 171mph Bonneville car) is one real example of a competition vehicle that ran dual bilge-pumps to circulate coolant. Though it's not mentioned in this article, trust me...that's what he did. The original article in a 1960 Hot Rod issue goes into some detail about it. To keep this blown engine cooled over a long high-speed run at Bonneville, they must have worked pretty good. http://www.superchevy.com/features/1508-1958-chevrolet-corvette-sets-record-at-1960-bonneville-speed-trials/

There's bazillions of alternative induction setups for the 351W, assuming it's close to accurate. Most of the stuff for 289-302-5.0 Ford engines should fit or be VERY close...assuming you don't want to swap in a 351C, which should be pretty easy too. Lowering the tail is a 5-minute job, and swapping wheels/tires is about as easy as it gets. Lots and lots of optional ways to build on this one.

Wonderfully realistic finish and weathering. Man, nice work.

High-volume electric fuel pumps existed, were often converted surplus military aviation units, and could work with carbureted, blown engines. Blown engines with mechanical fuel-injection would usually require mechanical pumps, as the speed of the pump needs to rise with engine RPM. Mechanical injection pumps could be driven by angle-drives jacked from the distributor/magneto location as well, from an extension shaft that would clear the water pump, or directly from the blower drive. Note the fuel pumps driven from the old distributor location on these blown Pontiacs in Thompson's Challenger I. The magnetos in this case have been moved to the front of the engines, driven off of the blower drives. Another option is a cam-driven water pump that in turn drives the injection pump, and all of it still clears the blower drive.

I have to respectfully disagree. Filling the wheel wells with styrene stock is really quite easy, as is re-cutting the AMT fender-opening profile afterwards. Because Revell got the rear-deck profile so much better than AMT did, I'll definitely be doing a full-fendered car for visual comparison. Here's one wheel-well filled for my Eddie Dye iteration...I didn't set the filler piece completely flush for a variety of reasons, but if I had, a light skim of bondo after cutting the new opening, and a little careful fitting will do it.

Maybe a little off topic, but did you ever think about Coke? You're paying a LOT more for packaging and marketing than you are for the brown sugar-water. (2 liters of the no-name stuff for 50 cents, and they STILL are making a profit...)

351 Windsor. The valve covers have 3 bolts along the bottom edge and are slightly NON-rectangular in footprint. Definitely 351W. Cleveland valve covers have a more-rectangular footprint, and 4 bolts along the bottom edge.

Wow Matt...looking at your photos, I'm thinking the ancient Revell kit actually gets the overall 'look' of the E-type better than the competition here. The curve at the tops of the rear quarters and decklid is certainly more right on the Revell version, to my eye anyway. The coupe windshield and roof look tall to me as well. What series is it supposed to represent? Thanks for posting these. I'm going to have to get a Gunze kit and do some really careful comparisons.

No argument that it's a nice kit, but it really is aimed more at modelers of entry-to-moderate skills, as opposed to those who are highly-skilled. It's also a great starting point for going a lot farther with the subject matter presented, for which I'm particularly grateful. The old Revell kits that are constantly bashed as being "fiddly" and "un-buildable" were targeted more towards folks who took the hobby and developing the requisite skills a little more seriously...whether it was intentional on Revell's part or not. Again, it only makes good business sense to target a broader market if profits are your primary goal...and making things easy to put together certainly helps there. Looking at the market objectively to analyze the skill-sets of the majority is critical to maintaining sales numbers that will keep the business viable...if that's the market you want.

Richard, your work on the Niekamp car looks to have captured the particular curve of the nose and overall proportions very well. Alan, your version looks great too. I wish I'd known about this last time I was in Salt Lake City. Sure would have made time to see it.

Luc is right about it making a good business case to target modeling's lowest-common-denominator (think snappers and low-parts-count), especially if there's an entertainment 'hook' tie-in to add sparkle to the package. Non-real modelers (whatever they are) are far more likely to buy a kit that practically self-assembles, requires little effort and almost no finishing skills (molded in COLOR !!), and the ones who actually DO build them and don't bodge the things horribly are certainly more likely to get more involved with the hobby. Those of us who want to go farther with a particular subject get a decent starting point. Makes pretty good sense, actually.

I'm hardly an insider-marketing-expert, but I'll take a stab at it. It's just like 1:1 kit planes and kit-kars. The manufacturer doesn't really give a damm if anyone builds them, so long as they buy them. AND...TV-show memorabilia collectors aren't going to give a rat's rear if the thing is accurate or has current tooling tech in it. A low parts-count won't bother them either, especially if the parts that are there are already RED.

Had a black vinyl-roof, 351C powered one that was pretty quick. Sold it to a kid who totaled it in the first week. Also had a metallic-orange one with a 351W. Bought it for something like $250, just for the engine and gearbox. Had a burned valve, running on 7. Did the heads and kept it for a backup driver for years. Never had any interest in replicating those, or the S&H car, but the LeMans runner posted in the 'gone' thread really got my interest. Might actually get fired up to do a NASCAR version too. Patiently waiting for the remainder of the review to address the accuracy and proportions of the body. And hopefully, whatever the verdict is there, it will be accepted as a statement of fact for the sake of information, and won't ignite another personality-bashing firestorm. The chassis here looks fine to me. Long as the exhausts and suspension aren't molded in, and the shapes of the floor pans and frame structure are reasonably close, I'm happy. Pity it's molded in red though.

In my youth, I liked the parts-packs better than buying complete models, actually. My impression of the drag and roadster chassis, body and accessory kits was that they gave great starting points for building nicely-accurate replicas of the kinds of cars that were running at the time. Some modification and fabrication was always required to build cars from the packs, but it's not unlike what you have to do to build a real car, so it always appealed to me...and helped prepare me for a world where everything isn't an easy bolt-on or perfect fit. Over the past several years, I've collected multiples of most of the old Revell parts-packs, and a couple of the double-drag kits as well. Glad I bought when I did, as the prices are getting really stupid on ebay. I've probably got enough to last the rest of my life, but I'd definitely buy multiple re-issues anyway, if they ever materialized.

Great looking model, photos nicely staged too. I always loved these little buggers in 1:1, built and prepared numerous H/P and F/P Spridgets back in my SCCA days.

Models viewed from the scale equivalent of a 20-story window MAY not look like the cars you're used to seeing on the street simply because of the angle and scale distance you're viewing from. I've found over the years that an accurate model, viewed from a scale-equivalent height and angle (as you'd see the real thing on the ground) DO indeed look just like real objects, and photograph like them as well if the correct focal-length lens, aperture and camera placement is used. To see a model as it really looks compared to a real car, it's also sometimes helpful to only view it with one eye, eliminating the stereo-vision effect you get otherwise. I'd personally prefer to have have my models be SCALE reductions of 1:1 reality, rather than subjective "interpretations" made by someone whose vision and brain-processing software isn't identical to my own. All the talk about having to fudge dimensions is illogical from this standpoint: why is it that little photographs of real cars STILL look exactly like the real cars? Assuming a distortion-free lens with no fisheye or foreshortening effect, the argument that "scaling-down won't look correct unless it's interpreted" is repeated and repeated gibberish. If you blew the photo up to full-size, it would STILL look the same. Just because industry "insiders" and industry "experts" claim the same old same old countless times doesn't make it so. What was "known fact" about many many things at one time has been proven false by people with open minds who refused to accept the prevailing "wisdom" handed down by "experts in the field". Kinda why we now know the Earth isn't flat, and isn't the center of the universe either. Note: (The TRUE center of the universe is my last-ex. Just ask her. She knows.)

Beautiful model, beautiful car. The Gunze kit really has to be the best-proportioned of all the available 1/24-1/25 E-types

"Platerpants XKE" ?? Ummm...I think you mean Plastheniker's XKE. There's a lot of confused and confusing information floating around about the available 1/25 E-types. Of the fairly inexpensive ones, the old Revell kit, in this box, is actually quite well-proportioned. It needs some TLC and modifications, but it will build into a very fine model. The kit has been re-issued in this box... Stay away from the old Aurora version (reboxed in several versions as Monogram/Revell), as the body is very poorly proportioned and bloats and droops where it shouldn't.

It's cool this AM (64F), and I have today and tomorrow off to get caught up on some things. Just dug out the crashbook data I needed to finish up an estimate on a '63 Corvette that got punched in the tail, I feel pretty good sorta OK all-things-considered, and I have a date with a very pretty girl this evening. Life could be a lot worse.

If I spent as much time actually building models as I do on here, I'd actually get a couple of models built. I probably ought to work on that little issue.

Still following. Should be a beauty in full living color.