Ace-Garageguy

I realize you work in the hobby industry and actually know what you're talking about, and who your customers are. It's simply that from my own perspective, painting the inside of a clear Lexan body and bolting together some small mechanical bits to get a model that actually RUNS, for not a lot of effort, would be vastly more enjoyable a pursuit to most "kids" than putting together a lot of tiny, sometimes fiddly bits, having to wait for LOTS of things to dry, and having all of your work existing solely to LOOK at. If my OWN mother hadn't been afraid I'd "cut my fingers off" with the props on the gasoline-powered model planes my dad built and flew, I probably would not have become so involved with static models.

Please oh please don't get started on the "chemtrail" thing. It's been common knowledge since the advent of high-altitude aircraft (common knowledge to anyone who pays attention to reality and doesn't buy into every idiotic conspiracy theory that comes along...Jade Helm, anyone?) that what we're seeing here is nothing more than condensed atmospheric moisture, cooled rapidly after being expelled from aircraft engines in the hot exhaust gasses. They are called contrails. WW II, B-17 contrails. These aircraft didn't have enough of a payload capacity to carry a bomb load AND chemicals for making "chemtrails". It's atmospheric water. Period. Some real studies have suggested that if you get enough of these artificial 'clouds', they can have a cooling effect on the atmosphere below by partially blocking sunlight, and so MAY have an impact on weather patterns. End of story.

Are US model companies actually targeting "kids" anyway? I could be way off the mark here, but it seems to me that many kids have no money and it's doubtful the majority of them have the patience, eye-hand-coordination and fine-motor-skills (other than those acquired by scrolling through iPod screens and texting) required to build models. And people are horribly afraid of anything even remotely toxic today...paints, adhesives, etc.; doubtful mommy will let a lot of 'em have "bad chemicals" in a country that's become obsessed with safety and washing every few minutes with anti-microbial soap. Add to that the idea that physical skill isn't the desirable thing it once was, and kids don't really figure into the demographic of the model-car target market. I'm pretty sure American model companies are going after the last few years of disposable income they can squeeze out of us old farts with models of older vehicles, and hoping the enthusiasm we still have for old cars will trickle down to successive generations, bringing enough of them into the hobby to make it a viable business for the future. There does seem to be a growing number of younger builders and enthusiasts in the full-scale hot-rod (I mean traditional rods, not rats or tuners) market, but they're not "kids".

Hasn't Las Vegas taken some pretty dramatic steps to reduce water consumption?

Yes, the coatings were a primary issue. It is also my understanding that on the B2 particularly, some of the structural epoxies were more toxic than had been anticipated. Some epoxies in general civilian use can cause "sensitization" of some individuals, with symptoms including but not limited to bleeding from the pores of the skin. Some of the B2 stuff was worse, by a fair margin. And as you say, toxic materials were generated and disposed of at 51 (in open "burn pits" or trenches) from the early days the facility operated.

I currently build real hot-rods and customs for a living, primarily these days as a subcontractor to this company. http://millscustoms.com/ The answer to your question depends mainly on how far apart the front mounting points for the radius arms are, how the front mounts are bushed, and how heavy and stiff the bars themselves are. In general, the farther apart the front mounts are, and the stiffer the bushings and bars, the less necessary it is to run a Panhard bar. The simple rear end setup shown below can get by without one, though it would still be a good idea. (Actually, a Panhard bar introduces its own small lateral motion in the rear axle due to the geometry of the swinging link; it would be better, particularly in view of these very stiff links, to use a Watts-type linkage to help control lateral movement, for reduced 'bind' and more precise tracking). But speaking of 'bind', if you think about it, the setup below is fine for letting the whole axle bump up and down to the same degree (like going over a speed bump) but because of the stiffness of the whole affair and the widely-spaced front mounts, the suspension will encounter resistance when only ONE wheel needs to go up relative to the chassis (like driving over the end of a speed-bump, with one side of the car on flat pavement). If you put the forward ends of the arms closer together, you allow more freedom for the suspension to react to bumps on only one side, or for the car to lean in a turn. But as the front pivot points get closer together (with coil springs) the axle can tend to pivot around the mounting points in the horizontal plane, twisting and breaking things as Dennis mentions, and very importantly, allowing the car to handle erratically and unpredictably as the rear-end tries to steer the vehicle. With the old familiar "split wishbone" geometry and a transverse leaf spring (the stock un-split geometry had both wishbones attached to each other at the front of the torque tube), you could get away without running a Panhard bar, for the reasons Dennis cited. The torque tube and the wishbones located the axle fore-and-aft, while the transverse spring located it side-to-side. But when guys lowered their cars by running long shackles, the axle could (and did) move sideways in an uncontrolled manner, making the car unstable to the point of being un-drivable. The first "anti-sway" bars (the term now has come to mean "anti-roll" bar, a different animal entirely) were early hot-rod applications of Panhard bars that limited and controlled side-to-side movement of the rear axle, and resulting self-steering. The "triangulated" rear bars in favor now go back closer to the original geometry of the un-split wishbones attached to each other in front. Coil springs do very little to limit side-to-side movement of the axle (like the old transverse spring did), or the tendency of it to pivot around the mounts, which lets the rear axle steer the vehicle in an undesirable manner. You need a Panhard bar with a rear-end setup like the one in the Revell '29...assuming you want to do things right. But I've seen plenty of real hot-rods built by guys with absolutely zero regard for or understanding of suspension geometry and correct design, so if you build your model lacking the right setup, it'll still be accurate somewhere.

Exactly. Anyone looking at the photos of the real car and the model...anyone who has an eye for proportion and line, that is...will immediately be struck by the very obvious deviations from reality this "interpretation" makes. The result is a model that loses much of the graceful, clean look of Starbird's actual lower-body design. I always wondered just why the model looked so stupid compared to the real car. Now I know. Though I've never been involved in the hallowed and mythical "model car" tooling business, I HAVE been involved in depth with pre-production and prototype scale-model development of real vehicles and other items. Accuracy to the original design, in the real world, is critical. There is no room for "creative" interpretation on the part of model-makers, and I've fired people on the spot who seemed to be too "artistic" to get the dammed measuring right.

There are some modelers here who can do a truly remarkable job of paint-detailing the old blobular chassis plates. Not me. I'd just paint it black and concentrate on the topside. I hope some of the guys who are really good at it will post photos of their work on this thread.

My nearest window ledge is only 4 feet off the ground. My luck, I'd just break a leg, wouldn't be able to work, and end up homeless. And speaking of Area 51 toxic waste...fact is, some folks involved in the B2 and other stealth programs developed some apparently fatal health problems after exposure to certain chemicals used in and on the aircraft. Cool airplane though.

Old credit cards (cut up) work even better. You can even cut custom shapes or curves that will make building character lines, etc. MUCH easier. The little plastic clip-tabs that bread wrappers are sometimes sealed with work well for one or two uses, too.

The "seam" between the rear wheel-well fillers to the body, only visible from underneath the car, would very likely be present on a real '29 that had that wheelwell treatment. The "seam" you can see from the side is the mating line between the chassis and the body. The rear rails are pinched in to allow a narrower rear track, with wider tires. The "seam" would be gasketed on a real car built like this, and quite visible. Though I've been critical of some things on this kit, Revell got this detail dead-nuts on. PS. I've been getting around to starting this one, the Eddie Dye roadster (upper left, obviously) for several years. The Revell kit is gonna be it.

Yes...I put up a shot of the real car not too long ago.

Revell '29 A...2 of them really. I have a very special '29 I've been putting off building for several years, and now that the Revell kit is out, I think it's gonna be the basis. Gots to have some of those other parts parts parts too.

Pretty good trick getting those parts to work together, but I'd say you pulled it off. Nice job.

I dearly love old tools, and have a lot of positive feelings towards people who save and restore them to as-new, useful condition. Brilliant.

You can always just say "no". I finally had to learn to do that without explanation when "friends" would continually ask me to look at, listen to, work on or advise them on their turd cars. There are two people on Earth whose cars I'll work on as a "favor", and they'd both do pretty much anything for me. And have. Everybody else gets "no".

Most of the V8 engines in '57 Ford original or restored passenger cars I've ever seen were red. The valve covers could be different from model to model...black, silver, cast-alloy. Silver air cleaner housings. In the F1 pickups, I believe the six was red and the flathead V8s were Ford dark greenishbluishgrayish. I've seen references to "bronze" colored V8 engines in these, but I've never personally seen one in the flesh.

Steve knows. Just look at some of his beautiful models, and it's obvious he's got the bugs worked out of the process.

Several answers have been close on this, but here's the rest of the story. This particular design of headers dates back to the "dry lakes" days of dual-purpose cars being built to drive on the street for transportation, and for racing to be able to uncap the megaphone-style header with only 2 or 3 easily-accessible bolts. Open headers usually make more power than having the exhaust running through restrictive mufflers. In the beginning, it wasn't about noise or stylin' and profilin'...running open pipes is about making more power (but of course, law-enforcement and average citizens prefer vehicles to be nice and quiet). These early-style "lakes pipes" give the option of power or relative quiet. The term "lakes pipes" evolved over time to also mean side-pipes (running down the running-boards or rocker-panels of bigger cars) that usually had caps on the rearmost ends too. And Tim, The model looks great. An out-of-the-box build was just exactly what we needed to see here.

Longbox55 makes a very good point. Another habit I've developed over the years...change your sanding water and wash out your water container between sanding grits. Wash the car body and your hands as well. I know this seems like a lot of additional messing about, but there have been times (on big cars too) where a piece of grit from a coarser piece of sandpaper has come loose and made a scratch when I've been sanding with a much finer grit. Changing out the water and washing off the model and your hands gets rid of anything that might scratch on the next successive step. And keep your sandpaper or pads CLEAN. A single drop of detergent in your sanding water will act as a wetting agent too, and may help to keep your sandpaper from loading up. When polishing, I'll complete an area about 1/6 the size of a credit card...about as big as the first joint of my thumb. Finish it, check for scratches and a nice clear gloss, and move on, overlapping into the next area.

Thanks for putting up the photos of the Lake Mead shoreline. That part of the world has always been one of my favorite places, and I was fascinated by Hoover Dam as a kid, read everything I could find on it. When I finally saw it, as an adult, it still blew me away. All that water in the middle of a barren desert has an otherworldly kind of beauty, and the dam itself is really something. It has its own very stark and functional beauty in its form, but there are striking decorative elements as well. Simply a great feat of engineering, especially impressive when you consider the time period it was built. I've been saddened for years that the lake levels are so low, and that overuse of the planet's water resources are having such a visible effect on some areas.

If you're still seeing scratches after polishing, it's because either you left deeper scratches in the paint that you didn't get out during your progressively finer and finer sanding, or you haven't polished enough. Many modelers tend to not put enough effort into the sanding phases. Each successive sanding step is intended to remove, entirely, the deeper sanding scratches left by the previous grit. Just lightly rubbing it around on the car isn't getting the job done. Polishing, unlike what a lot of folks seem to believe, isn't just "wipe it on and rub a little bit", either. Polishing is an ABRASIVE process, and its purpose is to abrasively remove the last of the 12,000 grit scratches and restore the surface to its original gloss. Do it all right, you won't see any scratches in the surface. We do exactly the same steps on the big cars, but only sand to 3000 grit or so, usually. Polishing the final 3000-grit scratches out is done with a machine, but the same advice applies. A cloudy, dull surface or visible scratches simply mean the job isn't done yet. Polishing is what brings the gloss back, not wax.

Just beautiful.

Great to see this going together with up-close shots. There's a lot to like about this kit. Obviously, the Buick finned drums and what appear to be Ford brake backing plates look very good. The dropped front axle is also a much needed, long overdue piece. It's made so that a correct-looking conversion to working steering won't be too hard. I already need at least one of these kits just as an under-car exhaust system donor. The nicely detailed and separate floor will certainly help in building a right-looking channeled car, and the front shock / headlight mounts, and the center crossmember / trans support look good. Thanks for taking the time and effort to show how this kit builds up.

One of the many things about this kit that DO appear to be very well done is the separate and fully detailed floor. This will be terrific for anyone who wants to do a realistically channeled '28-'29 Ford that looks as good from the bottom as it does from the top. The rear tires that appear in this kit are perfect for some vintage and period rod applications too. I've been looking for something like these for years.