Ace-Garageguy

I didn't realize there was a 1600cc version of the OHC engine. We never got it here. I had a hot 2 liter, and it would rev all day to 7500 and stay together. I'd love to build something really light with a full-house 1600 OHC.

Hmmm...Howard Johansen of Howard's Cams built this twin-tank lakester in around '49. Not too successful if I remember correctly, but interesting.

What a concept ! Nah, never sell.

Yup, my bad. My own Super7 Series II/III had been the London auto show car, and had a crossflow head on a 1340 bottom end (also all chrome suspension!). I just checked the kit and you are absolutely correct (as Mr. Welda's photo confirms), it IS the non-crossflow pushrod head on a 1340 . Still prepped by Cosworth with steel main caps and rocker stands though. To clarify the Pinto thing, early Pintos were available with the 1600cc pushrod "Kent" engine, as stated above. The 2-liter OHC engine, that shared no components with the "Kent" engine, was an optional upgrade. Both these engines responded very well to performance mods like Webers, hot cams and headers. The Kent engine was raced extensively as the basis of Formula Ford, and the 2-liter had an impressive list of racing accomplishments and Cosworth upgrades.

Great looking combination of bits. This is so radical, you might consider something like Sbarro's centerless wheels. Just a thought.

The instructions state it's a "1.3 liter Ford Cosworth" engine, which is really just an English Ford 109E 1340cc 4-cylinder with a crossflow head, Cosworth-built steel main bearing caps and rocker stands, etc., and two Weber 40mm sidedraft carbs, with a corresponding intake manifold and headers. The architecture and appearance of the engine (minus the Webers and headers) is very very similar to the early Pinto 1600cc pushrod engine, which was a development of the earlier engine, itself a development of the 105E non-crossflow English Ford mill.

Great stuff. Love all the mechanical bits and the home-built racer aspect.

Looks good. I always enjoy seeing otherwise unobtainable models created from what's available.

Everything you've done works beautifully. Good stuff here.

Merc driver musta been texting...

Somebody at GM liked it. I thought this was awful the first time I saw it too. I looks like a dress-up costume supposed to be a future pickup for a low-budget sci-fi flick. But I thought it worked on the Honda Element, implying cheap and easily replaced body panels in the locations they are most easily damaged... Same reason I think the black bits work on the Toyota FJ

Looks much like my results back in November of 2012, swapping the rear section of the Olds roof / upper body on to the forward section of the Chebby.

Exactly, and that is a very important point and a distinction it's necessary to make. "Personal taste" and objectively analyzed good-design are two entirely different measuring approaches. Just because someone happens to "like" something, that doesn't make it a "good-design". And if someone doesn't like something, that doesn't make it a bad design. I know it's impossible to exactly quantify "good design", but we can certainly say that some designs are "better" than others, based on how well the designers understood and employed the principles that are their primary tools.

But there ARE principles of "good-design", including the "golden ratio" noticed and employed by the Greeks around 2400 years ago...and probably much earlier in human history. http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/s97b/art.htm The cars, trains, jewelry... any objects designed by humans are far more likely to be perceived as being "beautiful" if principles of good-design are known and observed, than if they're ignored. And this is a perfect illustration of the point I was attempting to make. Thank you. The vehicle wasn't designed to be beautiful (a degree of "pleasing") but was done hand-in-hand with marketing to be "quirky" as you say, apparently, in an effort to appeal to a particular niche market. Marketing-driven design-by-committee rarely produces things of lasting beauty. The little frog-eyed Juke, looking like it's going to hop away at any moment, will surely be forgotten, or remembered as one of the "what were they thinking?" designs, like the equally awful Pontiac Aztek...another one that looks like no two parts belong on the same vehicle.

Good design... Horrible...

Flexible drinking straws can work beautifully, depending on what scale you're working in and what diameter straws you can find.

I sincerely appreciate everyone's comments. She's closing on the point where all the bits will have to be final-fitted and primered. Wish I had more time to work on this, but I'm glad for what little I have.

Yup. ...or... Same basic bits, just arranged and trimmed a little differently.

Multiple cans of worms here. I don't know of a brief, concise definition of "good design" as it applies to cars, but I know it if I see it. Things like proportion, interaction of elements of surface, volume and line, a coherent theme...all play a part. Functionality is important too. Something beautiful but useless has limited appeal. Also, much of "good design" is subjective, and skills develop over time. I look back at some of my own early work and think "that's awful" and instantly see things that could have been improved to make more pleasing shapes. Good design rarely comes from the first attempt on anything, either. Designs take tuning to look their best, committees don't do it well (usually) and there needs to be a willingness to be VERY critical of one's own design work to get visually appealing results consistently. I agree with you regarding the slight forward-lean of the grille-shells on most '32 Ford builds, real or in scale, and I usually change it on my own work. The "leading with the tires" look is somewhat due to the location of the front axle relative to the body / frame, and without major work, you're kinda stuck with it (removing the frame horns as in Mr.Red just accentuates it). Pushing the radiator-shell too far forward (blue car below) makes a goofy-looking car, appearing to be about to trip on its own tongue, and seriously unbalancing the proportions. I don't particularly like the rooflines on either of your reference cars above either. The sharp angle and upward slope at the rear of the soft-top is jarring to me, and the rear of the top on the red car is also too high in my eyes. The DuVall-style windshields are usually bought, not designed for a specific car, and the builders often just go with what they get. The look can be tuned to be more attractive, but it's time and money to get there. The windshield on this car doesn't have as much too-wide-up-top as your examples, but this one was most likely made specifically for the car. Here's a '32 with what I find to be a much more pleasing hard-top line, with the forward-leaning grille corrected as well. The width of the DuVall could be adjusted to good effect though. Very subtle changes work miracles. Here's a more pleasing line for an up-top on a '32...and though it's chopped significantly, the same profile could work on a taller top too. Adding carefully-designed additional bows, while somewhat complicated, can have remarkable results improving the flow of an up-top as well. "Stance", though a seriously overworked term, also has an instant effect on the initial perception of a car as being well-proportioned or not. Adjustments of as little as 1/4 inch of ride height, while not obvious to many viewers, can have an almost undefinable but instant impact on a car's look. Formal art and design curriculums exist, obviously, to, at least in part, teach the creation of "pleasing shapes". Art Center College of Design in Pasadena was for a long time THE place to go if you wanted to design in Detroit. Of course, the focus of a design-education is usually more along the lines of "industrial design", developing products hand-in-hand with marketing's perceived needs, and the blend isn't always successful. Here's an article from a January 2009 NY Times on just this topic. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/defining-good-or-bad-design/?_r=0 Here's a design-by-committee, obviously, looking like it was designed by folks who had never seen a good-looking car, and had no idea of what that might be. "Good design"? No, but designed by "professionals" who get paid well enough to do better than this. It's entirely without harmony or theme, and every line, curve, surface and volume seems to have been mindlessly stuck-on by someone who hadn't seen the rest of the team's work.

Beautiful color and paint work. Like the shortening idea and the interior update too. Cool little truck.

More pix at http://s18.photobucket.com/user/PPiira/library/JPS/

Reworked the helmet fairing, lower, more rounded in back. Also fitted the headers this side, cut the hood for them, and relocated the front 4-link to clear. Pretty tight up in front, but everything would clear enough to work. Reworked the nose profile and curvature as well. Maybe not much different to some eyes, but much, much better to mine. EDIT: But now I see a little bump in the curve that crept in due to the different hardnesses of the plastic and the bondo. Gotta fix that. Man, these big photos really show stuff it's easy to miss otherwise.

[url=http://s1019.photobucket.com/user/fastoldcarz/media/Not%20my%20dogs/MARCH%2025%202015%20053_zpsaqxjvewk.jpg.html][/uR The ERA Cobra and GT-40 replicas are among the most-accurate-appearing of all the kits. The ERA Cobras are slightly spoiled for me because they're on rectangular-tube frames instead of the signature round-tube frames of the real cars. Still, it's pretty hard not to love the looks of this car. I think I'm in love.