Ace-Garageguy

Exactly...even though at speed a significant airflow for cooling is achieved simply due to that speed, it won't overcome poor opening and duct design.

Oh really? No. The airflow at the openings to the cooling elements on most aircraft is particularly dirty, turbulent and not anywhere near laminar...especially behind the prop. The WINGS of the P-51 were among the first laminar flow designs to make it to combat aircraft, but the rest of the ship just isn't laminar. And aircraft are required to be able to maintain non-destructive engine temps while taxiing slowly, sometimes in lines, waiting for takeoff clearance...sometimes rather long lines in old combat situations. The P-51 designers did such a fine job of managing airflow through the cooling system that it was almost zero-loss in drag, due to the acceleration of the airstream after the radiator from the added heat energy of the engine coolant...a feat that was absolutely astounding for the time, well before the massive computing power it would take to approach similar results today with CFD (computational fluid dynamics). In maximizing the performance of sport and racing planes (with which I have some little experience) one of the big first-steps is looking to minimize drag and turbulence due to the engine cooling requirements. Silly open-catfish-mouth grilles just are NOT required for surface-vehicle cooling...if the designers and engineers are competent.

All 100% correct. Another little problem with loading pix directly from your computer or other device is that, far as I can tell, visitors to the forum can't see them unless they're logged in. I'll bypass posts that have invisible photos if I'm in a hurry and just want to see who's been doing what, quickly. I've missed some nice work for weeks that way, but it's too much hassle on MY end to log in every time I visit the site.

Kinda what I was thinking. I'm capable of building a fine quality master, but not really interested in getting into production resin casting at this time (though in actuality, it's very similar in many ways to the composite work I'm well versed in). Really interested if all the work would be justified though. How good are the Doyusha guts?

Lotsa power from liquid-cooled engines doesn't require stupid looking vents, troughs, flaps, scoops and ducts all over the place...especially not in the name of aerodynamics.

Agreed 100%. Hard to do a car that's that clean, and still a standout...which is why so many cars have all the crapp plastered all over them. It's easy to hang junk on, make odd lines and silliness. Sort of the later Barris-school of thought. First time I saw a Tesla, I chased it down to find out what it was; assumed it would be a big Jag or Maserati, was pleasantly surprised to read the badging. Fine, fine work on that car.

I agree, but it probably is a REAL hit with the oil sheikhs who can afford it. They're not usually about subtlety and class.

True, but not all of them...

I think it started as a response to the pumped-up hysterical adolescent "attack" styling of the angry-catfish tuner-look. Sadly, it's a fad that's taking as long to die as rat-rods. Apparently SOME car builders are emulating the rat-rod look too, if the rapidity with which many of GM's trucks are rusting away from the bottom is anything to go by.

Ah yes, but in the midst of all the "me too, me-too" styling fads with everyone copying each other in a desperate attempt to please the herd and still be different (without being TOO different), some truly inspired, clean and elegant pieces manage to sneak through...and not always in the rarefied atmosphere of the exotics, where the best designers usually play.

X2. That's the Phantom Vickie '32 chassis from AMT if I'm not mistaken. Nice job setting it up with traditional suspenders. That old AMT '29 body still looks great for builds like these.

Quickest way I've found to get what I'm after is type-in "plastic model car" in the general search window. You'll get thousands of hits. Click on one that looks interesting to you. More-or-less over the photo on the upper-left corner, there'll be a string of search modifiers in blue. Click on "automotive". Again, you'll get thousands of hits, but you'll be in the "automotive" area where virtually ALL the scale model plastic cars and parts are. Right now it's over 100,000. Enter your search term (built-up, junkyard, parts, promo, 1/25 scale, wheels, or whatever you're after that day...simple combinations of terms work well too) in the search box (you'll see it is labeled "automotive" to the right). Click "search". Once you get a list, usually a long list, you can modify it further to display ranked in order of cost, ending-soonest or newly-listed, etc. Happy hunting.

And red wheels...good choices, great work. This should finish up very nicely.

Honestly, it looks good for a first-ever build. Really. It also seems like you have a good attitude about your shortcomings, and rather than saying good-enough or getting discouraged and giving up, you're going to correct what you don't like. Good man. You have learned some invaluable lessons by doing that no amount of reading-about-it will drive home. Since this is your first effort, and you're happy to go back into it to correct your mistakes, you'll be building first-rate models in time. Nice work.

Looks very good, fine, slick, glossy paint...colors kinda remind me of Ga.Tech's model A. This is a kit we don't see built very often, probably under-rated. Yours shows that it can build-up to a very nice model.

Love it (your comment) and I agree completely. This is the kind of ugly crapp you get when vehicles are designed by committee, and are driven by market-research...where the market doesn't have a clue about vehicle styling. Stylists used to get paid to make things look good, and show consumers what looked good. Some were better than others, but now, the market (ignorant, incompetent idiots) dictates what the "stylists" hang together...and you can tell this turkey came out of a lot of meetings where nobody had the nads to stand up and say "but sir...it's UGLY." It would sure be nice to return to the days when actual "car people" designed vehicles, instead of herds of degreed but talent-challenged committee "designers"...who are well-qualified for going to meetings, playing corporate CYA, but not usually great at designing beautiful machines.

If someone built a GOOD DB-4 bodyshell in resin that fit the old Aurora / Revellogram guts, do you all suppose there would be any real interest? The white-plastic old Airfix "Bond" DB-5 shell looks quite good, with only relatively minor corrections to make a very nice representation in scale of the real car, but it's probably pretty hard to find one too.

Most all the front end styling lately reminds me of this...

I've got a few in-progress pieces that fit the genre represented in the mags... Chopped '53 Chebby sedan delivery... Chopped '38 Ford pickup... Chopped, blown nailhead-powered T... Barn-find '32 Hemi-powered roadster... Chopped '54 Caddy...

Yes sir, good looking model. Nice to see one built up...definitely on my must-have sooner-rather-than-later list now, thanks to you.

Left OR right brained, stupid is still stupid.

And...just in case you're running Internet Explorer as your web browser and you're having problems with photo uploads, check out this thread http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=81824 ...or just download a free copy of Google Chrome of Firefox and forget about IE. Problem solved.

I use Photobucket. Never a problem (though some images got shuffled when they did some site mods a year or 2 back), large images work fine, easy to use (from my perspective, anyway). Surprised I use more bandwidth than Harry, but my next-level-over-free account is only $2.99 / mo., and I'll probably NEVER exceed the available bandwidth for as long as I live. There used to be annoying ads running during uploads, but since I've switched to Chrome with Ad-Block, they just don't interfere anymore.