Ace-Garageguy

Sounds like an entirely logical idea to me. A great idea. Solve the whole problem BEFORE it becomes a problem.

Simply because IT'S NOT A PAYING JOB TO BUILD THEM. AND NOBODY IS ASKING FOR PERFECT. JUST ACCURATE BODY CONTOURS AND PROPORTIONS.

That is certainly one bizarre vehicle. Some of the metalwork looks remarkably good for something so...ungainly, and some looks rough as a cob. Sure would be interesting to know the story behind it.

I forgot..."thou shalt not mention glaring errors because the model companies will all take their toys and go home". My bad.

82 could be an LED-readout sign for saying clever things to the following driver. 84 might be a reach-around sandwich warmer. Handy on long trips in cold climates.

Well, I could almost swing the $27K, but no way in heck could I manage $275K. And it would be a lot easier for me to stand on the gas and slide the old sprint car, knowing its replacement cost.

Greg, that Watson-Indycar-nosed roadster in post 13 was one of my favorites from back then. I've been collecting the bits to model it. I've never seen the mid-engined one below it, but it's a real idea-starter, for sure. Far as the OP car goes, you couldn't build it for the asking price. And it has provenance as a real race-car with a history. Fun track-day car.

Crank.

Kinda cool but mostly plotless film about a guy's desire to become a top-fuel driver back when there were still a few front-engine cars running in the class. Lotsa shots of Lions, Irwindale, etc. in the mid-6 second, 220mph days. Other drag classes too, including pre-wing altereds, and the old twin-engined Freight Train gas rail. Mostly car shots, with just enough plot so your girl wouldn't go to sleep from total boredom if you took her to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pskc4AY_Oro For some more great old drag action, be sure to check out the film "Old School Drag Races" too.

Agreed, and too heart-shaped at the inside top as well. Another one of the really important identifiers of this car that should be 100%.

A new definition of "hell".

I don't recommend brush painting if you can avoid it. Brush-strokes look like little kid work, and a relative few rattlecans can provide all the colors you'll use, mostly, for underbody and engine bay bits. Nor do I recommend painting parts still on the trees. You'll almost always have to touch up the spots where they were attached, and getting the mold-seams removed is made more difficult as well. I paint small parts several ways, including the ones mentioned in posts above. Drilling a small hole in a face of the part that won't show after assembly, and using a toothpick or wire, possibly lightly glued in the hole, is preferred. For flattish parts where both sides will be seen when finished, like a hood for instance, I'll use double-sided tape to hold the part to a wooden stir-stick for painting...one side at a time, obviously. As far as glue drying during assembly, I only use liquid cement for sub-assemblies, and you can just hold the parts together for the minute or so it takes for it to do its thing. You can make other creative jigs and fixtures from old wood clothespins, alligator clips, various kinds of tape, etc. For clear windows, I find it's best to very carefully fit the parts dry, and then tape them in place with masking tape. Get it right. Then use a white PVA glue made for windows. Don't use too much, and don't get it on the taped areas. For parts that have to be attached to a painted surface, you should strongly consider carefully fitting and pinning them prior to paint. Remove before painting, after painting clear the holes very carefully, and again, use a drop of PVA glue (or perhaps epoxy if you want more strength), being careful to not allow it to squeeze out on to the finish. Here's a thread that has info on fitting and pinning of parts. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69765&hl=pinned#entry868383

Never take your brakes for granite. I understand one optional braking system available in this model was a bucket of nails in front of each tire, under the car. In the event a panic-stop was required, a system of cables and pulleys would dump the nails, flattening the tires, and slowing the car dramatically. The drawback found during extensive testing was that the system only worked once, and was expensive and time-consuming to maintain if used frequently.

The "mini-tub" thing on the '32 chassis is pretty common...stepping the rails inward at the rear. We just had a set of rails modified exactly like that go through the shop, and they were snapped up immediately...by somebody wanting to put a '29 A body on them. One unfortunate thing I DID notice on the built-up orange car is what appears to be heavy-handed engraving of the coach-line on the side of the cowl. It's not as wide, to my eyes, as it is represented on the model. As this is one of THE iconic standout markers for this body, it might be good to get it exactly right.

Really? Then how was it even possible for companies like AMT and Johan to produce dimensionally and proportionally accurate models before laser-scanning, massive and cheap computing power, digital photography, instant transmission of vast amounts of data, CAD and CAE? They used film cameras, rulers, measuring tapes, calipers and pencils on paper. And there weren't armies of men making prototype models and tooling from them. There were a FEW very highly skilled individuals (who were reasonably well-paid, but not paid anything like what executives got). And it was pretty obvious on a lot of old models that the guys designing the kit parts actually had some understanding of the functions of the real parts they were modeling. That's not always the case these days. The more technology advances, the more excuses are getting made about why nobody can do their work to a standard that was established 50+ years ago. And an American model company really should be able to hire a small team of locals to do accurate measuring of a 1:1 subject for what amounts to chicken feed. Then transmit accurate data to the Chinese tooling designers, if necessary (though there seem more and more US injection-molding companies and rapid-prototypers online every month). And are there REALLY no Americans left who can measure a car and make a tool without breaking the budget? If that's REALLY the case, this country (and the West in general) has gone much farther down the toilet than I'd like to believe.

For me lately it's been a lot of nagging real-life stuff getting in the way of me being able to sit down and enjoy building. Several minor health, personal and financial issues have combined to kinda kill my interest in doing much of what's not absolutely necessary. Funny thing is, when I force myself to make some bench time, all the BS disappears for a while, and I enjoy myself. It's just getting started each session that's tough right now. I'm also trying to break a long-standing habit of making fun and creative starts on projects, and then putting them aside to start something else when some technical difficulty arises. I have plenty of real work to do in my life...model building isn't that much fun when it gets to be work too...recently, anyway.

If you look at a lot of photos of the real car, and carefully analyze the exact shape of the windshield, it looks to me to be a really tough one to get right. In some shots of the real car, the center of the top of the glass appears to be flatter than the model, while the corners appear to have more wrap. In other shots, the windshield as-modeled appears to be exactly as the real car is proportioned and curved. Based on what Bill Geary's had to say...a man who's posted numerous well-documented and photographed threads on correcting flaws in kits, who spots what's wrong easily, and who's seen the actual kit up close and personal... I'd be inclined to accept that this kit is pretty close to spot-on.

Exactly. I wonder just why this seems to be so hard to grasp.

Oh please. This has been hashed to death over and over and over and over. To scale something down, you measure it accurately once. You divide the measurements by the scale. Once. You then have an accurate model. How frigging hard is it to measure and divide?

Budget constraints and short time-to-posting don't allow, unfortunately, for posters to always do that. Editing a post for grammatical correctness and using spell-check take time, and everybody knows time is money. Spellig, gramor, sintax and other facets of Engligh should all be considered "close enough" if you can kinda get the point across.

Nice work. That body has some serious mold-registration issues, and it looks like you've done a fine job correcting them...far better than some folks who've been doing this a long time. Way to go.

Damm Miles...not many 'Merikuns woulda spotted the Dolomite. Well done.

Sometimes it'll work differently depending on the phase of the moon, your browser and browser settings, etc. I use the "img" option at the bottom of the "Photolinks" choices. Left click it and it turns yellow momentarily. That's the "copy" function. Or if it doesn't turn yellow, highlight it and do a manual "copy". Then go back to the page and post you're trying to put the picture on. Do "Ctrl v" which is also "paste". The "img" code will appear in the body of the post. When you enter "POST", the picture will be displayed.