Ace-Garageguy

Time does seem to accelerate for us old fossils. It feels like Christmas comes every couple of months now, so who wants to waste time waiting in the Postal Orifice?

It's pretty good overall. The length and width are right, and it will actually fit the Revell fenders and frame fairly easily, if you want to go that way. Some real '32s did actually get sectioned, and probably some of them got sectioned because they were rotten at the bottom, where they'd been sitting in damp for years. The AMT '32 body shell will build up into a very presentable model too. Here's one of many I currently have in the pipeline. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59708

This is the original source for your Bantam...

The black body is the old AMT version of the '32 Ford roadster. Now you have first-hand evidence of the "sectioning" job AMT did on these. All the AMT '32 Ford kits are too short at the cowl, and take significant rework to correct...if you want to. This is the AMT '32 Victoria, and the amount of meat it takes to get it right (which the Revell 3-window kit on the left, and your 5-window kit are). Same for ALL AMT '32 Fords (except the repackaged MPC-based kits...which are also too short at the cowl, but by a different amount). The chrome frame is from the Revell Orange Crate kit.

Fascinating locomotive, definitely. I've never seen or even imagined anything like that. Very nice re-work too.

No, it's a Spalding Flamethrower distributor...NOT a magneto. A magneto generates its own spark. The Spalding Flamethrower does not. It uses two EXTERNAL coils, unlike a mag of the era, which had its "coils" internally.

Though it looks much like one, it's not in fact a magneto. It's a high-output coil-type distributor called a Spalding Flamethrower Here's a wiring diagram.

The resin kit pictured above does have some significant differences in the shapes of the rear fender flares (including the tuck-in of the shape of the flares into the tail area), the width of the ducktail spoiler aft of the flares, and the resolution of the side-mounted brake-cooling scoops into the rear flares. Which one in right for which version of the car?

This bears repeating...: The blowers in the '60s Revell kits and parts packs are much more authentic. There lies the source of our frustration: they nailed it 40+ years ago (same with the A firewall), there's no excuse for "good enough" now.

I do all my own wiring as well, both house and shop AC, and 12/24 volt DC automotive and aircraft. I've been doing it for more than 40 years and I'm anal-retentively careful. This is the '47 Caddy I'm doing at the moment. My uncle was a radio tech in the Army, really thought he had a lock on wiring and electricity. They found him in his own attic when he started to stink enough to alarm the neighbors. He lived alone and was installing a whole-house fan. Oops. If you don't REALLY understand what you're doing, don't.

If you're not VERY familiar with 120 / 240 volt AC house power systems, function and theory, DO NOT DO YOUR OWN ELECTRICAL WORK. And I mean REALLY UNDERSTAND it. Just one seemingly small mistake, one little thing overlooked, and you or a family member can become very very dead.

If you don't mind them being quite thick, it's possible. You'll be placing the detailed surface down for molding, meaning that in order to get those end panels, you'll have to fill the mold to the level of the edges of the long sides. This will mean grinding material away from the curves in the end panels after the resin is cured, but it will work.

To get parts with all those undercuts, and to maintain that thin section, you'll most likely need to do two-piece molds, because the inner surface of the part has to be molded as well. Impossible to do those in one-piece molds...unless you don't mind the parts being very thick in the middle, and having to do a lot of grinding / trimming after de-molding. This is a difficult one to start with, for sure. You have to learn to think inside-out and backwards, and it can be frustrating, disappointing and tricky. It can also be very rewarding when your work pays off, and you get perfect replacement (or totally new custom) parts.

In reality, it's possible to mate just about any transmission to just about any engine. Some careful measuring and custom machine work is required to build a custom flywheel, or mate a particular clutch to the existing flywheel, or to adapt an auto-trans torque-converter to an engine it wasn't originally designed for. It's usually necessary to make up an adapter to actually bolt the trans to the engine as well. It's been done in the real world for as long as people have been trying to make cars go faster. Far as the Hydramatic Chuck mentions, it's in this excellent old Revell parts pack...which includes a very good starting point for making an adapter too. These are beautifully tooled and are available on Ebay cheap. The line also includes a 427 Ford FE engine, a Pontiac, and a smallblock Chevy. Buying multiples saves shipping costs, and I usually ending up paying no more than $5 per kit that way.

Just WHAT is so damm unreasonable about expecting professional people TO MEASURE ACCURATELY before committing to cutting tooling?? IT'S NOT HARD.

Bull. Perfect? You too? Nobody EVER ASKED FOR A DAMM PERFECT KIT. GET OVER IT. We pay money for people to measure things and scale things correctly. If they DON'T measure and scale things correctly, they're taking our money and giving us shitt in return. I'M EXPECTED TO DO MY WORK CORRECTLY. AND WHAT I MAKE HAS TO FUNCTION, TOO. I DON'T GET TO MAKE EXCUSES. I EXPECT WORK I PAY FOR TO BE CORRECT TOO. NOT PERFECT. JUST REASONABLY ACCURATE. I haven't "dismissed" anything. Maybe you need remedial reading comprehension, eh? I've said SEVERAL times much of this proposed kit looks GREAT, and I'll buy multiples just to get the good bits. Did you miss that part? But day after day after day, I have to re-engineer, re-design, and re-work expensive REAL parts made by well-paid "professionals" that don't fit or function without modification. I'm sick to death of wiping the collective asses of people who just don't try hard enough. I don't need to have to re-work half of the parts in every model kit just to get them to the point they SHOULD have been in the first place.

Great car, Brad. The Olds-in-Ford was pretty popular back in the dim recesses of time. Made a nice fast car with more power stock than a fairly radical flathead, but lots more streetable...as I'm sure you know. Cool car, definitely.

For anyone contemplating hanging shelving on a drywall surface...get yourself a cheap electronic stud-finder. Use it correctly, and you'll avoid any problems associated with screws simply pulling out of the sheetrock. LONGER screws simply have no effect if what you're screwing into is soft and brittle...like sheetrock. A stud-finder allows you to locate studs accurately, and the 1/2 inch nominal thickness of most sheetrock means you'll only need a screw a couple of inches long, at most, to give you 1.5 inches of purchase into the stud, and to do the job correctly. The little plastic "anchor" inserts that supposedly "reinforce" holes in sheetrock are pretty much useless too. They WILL pull out if moderately overloaded. Moly bolts are better, and expand behind the sheetrock face, but still only distribute the loads into a relatively small area in a relatively weak material. Toggle bolts are better still, as they make a larger footprint on the weak drywall.

Tell you what, Tom ol' buddy...your appraisal of me is about as accurate as your incorrect identification of the grille-shell on the car you described for us all so eloquently. Come to think of it, if you can't tell the difference between a '32 grille shell and ANY model-A shell, it's no surprise you're among the most vocal defenders of the kit companies that keep turning out stuff that's just flat wrong. Everything now makes sense. No wonder they love you so dearly. And also come to think of it, we're lucky you're in 'event coordination' or whatever it is you do in the "pharmaceutical industry". If you were in the labs, with your approach to understanding and imparting accurate information, there'd be a lot more dead guinea pigs.

OK, let me put it this way. If you shell out $25 or $30 US for a model car kit, what percentage of the parts in the box do you have a reasonable right to expect to be pretty close to accurate? While the blower issue is not a deal-breaker on this kit, if it's off as badly as it looks like it may be, it certainly won't be the first time a problem like this could have been avoided by breaking out the ol' measuring tape BEFORE the tools were cut. You can get a reasonably accurate Chinese-made tape measure for about $5, and it would only take about 10 minutes of work to use it and record the numbers, and e-mail those numbers to a tool-designer in Chinaland (including converting the numbers to metric, or grains-of-rice laid end to end). This is surely well within the cost constraints of even the most frugal new-kit development budget.

Yeah, I never answer those if I'm reasonably sure I'm not calling myself.

Just the thing to get my vegan friend for Christmas...a full dozen.

Look again. It's a chopped '32 grille shell. OMG !!! Was that stalking??

Pathetic.