Ace-Garageguy

I'd missed this one 'til now. Stance, wheels / tires, interior all perfect. Love that grimy Plymouth shop manual on the back seat, too. Perfect too. And your use of construction paper for the hood insulation...genius.

Here's mine. A snow strainer.

Snow day ! Yes, it's less than an inch of ice and snow, but this is the South. Everyone smart just stayed home and I'm not required to go in. Me? I've been driving in this stuff all my life, but venturing out in it around here, you might as well paint targets on your doors. Hundreds will for sure sled merrily through red lights today while they wonder why the 4WD, traction-control and ABS don't seem to be working. There have been sirens all around all morning as the first-responders rescue the inevitable physics-doesn't-apply-to-me yups from their overturned 4WD Lexi. But my vehicle is probably pretty safe parked in the driveway.

Really really really like this.

Very interesting question to me, being an ex-smoker. So I did some looking on the interthing. The answer is: yes.

On the days when the expendable-income pocket is full (not so much lately...just got paid for the first time since Thanksgiving) I'll spend what I need to to get what I want. If I'm broke, I won't.

Looks great. Good colors for it, and I really like the chrome steels and whitewalls. The subtle flames are a nice touch too, and the way the blue in them picks up the seat belt color. Very nice.

Special parking spots for special people...

All the specs and a tutorial are on their website. Melting point of Composimold is listed as 130 deg F. Says don't exceed 200 deg F. 130 deg F is very hot tap water. If you're making a mold from a modified "styrene" model car part, the usual quoted permanent-damage point for styrene is said to be around 212 deg F. This means you SHOULD be able to make a mold from a styrene kit part with no damage to the part. If you make a very thick part using a 2-part material, there's a chance it could exotherm, which would melt the mold, of course, if you got hotter than 130 deg F. Your results may differ.

Location, location, location...

And hey...who needs a Harley to pick up chicks??

So you want subtlety, eh?

It can be done. Just takes a little doing. You're very correct about the Revell tracknose being less-than-ideally proportioned, but with a little slice-n-dice, it should look really good. I've done or am in progress with several nose-jobs for old Fords, the tracknose versions being based on the vintage Monogram Midget part. I've already done molds for the '34 Ford... One in the works for the '32... An entire front end for the '28-'29 with a Kurtis nose (wide enough to run an Ardun or Mopar hemi with full hood sides)... A Miller nose... And shortly, a tracknose as in Keyser's pix for the '28-'29 bodies.

I use high-build rattlecan primers from SEM (a "professional" product from the body shop...huge can, dries through pretty quick, and REALLY builds), Duplicolor (takes longer to flash and dry through, with medium build) and Plasticoat (seems to me to dry through faster than the Duplicolor, builds well, sometimes hard to find). You really only want to use any of these on heavy custom bodywork, where you want to create a block-sandable surface and fill coarse sanding scratches. They will obliterate fine details like chrome and scripts quickly.

I can deal with the 2 seconds or so it takes to upload one photo. May be an issue with a slow internet connection, or a slower computer.

Yes sir. I forgot to mention it. The nose, hood (bonnet) top and two side panels, plus the hard tonneau and the helmet fairing will all open and be removable, and the decklid will be hinged. What's shown for all of those parts are "plugs" that will have molds pulled from them, and .020"-thick fiberglass copies made for the final model.

Ohhh...that poor jacked-up car. What's it got, a gasser straight-axle? Doesn't really go with the hubcaps. Must be a hyper-cool mixed-genre thing I'm too old to understand.

Great paint, very clean foil work, appropriate colors...and all on one of my favorite kits of one of my favorite cars. Love it.

There was a big ol' crack in the RH side of the body, and it kept opening up while working on the thing, even after repeated gluing. Very small-area butt joint, zero strength. No possible way it would stay stable during bodywork. Made a patch panel to go inside the lower body. I want this thing to look good inside too, and the visible top seam of the patch will simply represent a stitched-in patch on a real body shell...one that had been pulled, rusted off along the bottom on one side, out of the junkyard. This has to be fitted carefully to keep the close fit with the bellypan. The bellypan rear-section got reinforced inside to tie all the parts together. Yes, it looks grotty inside, but this is only the plug for a fiberglass copy that will be on the final model. Moving along nicely on the shaping. Made a new windscreen mockup to fit the revised cockpit opening, and re-contoured the helmet fairing to work with the revised shape. Also started scribing in the panel lines for the nose and hood. Tail view shows the fairing, raised to clear the louvers, and acceptable fit of the deck. I went too fast doing the rough cuts on the decklid side extensions and cost myself more time filling some deep scratches as a result. That's it for today. Thanks for looking in.

I use photobucket. Never ever have to bother re-sizing anything. All automatic.

How many angels can dance on top of a 1:25 scale bumper guard that may or may not exist?

OK boys. This is a SERIOUSLY quick hillclimb / slalom car. It's setup to go over a measured course AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. That's called "racing"...as opposed to "posing"...which is pretending you have a seriously quick car, but you're too stupid to actually know the difference, and involves sliding around making a lot of smoke and noise, slowly, while you destroy tires. It's not some tarded-out super-cambered fashion-BS tires-on-the-wrong-rims, I-wanna-look-just-like-the-other-idiots-that-don't-understand-suspension that doesn't do anything except look stupid, and label its owner as a moron. Notice the camber on this car. It's enough to do the job. No more. It would eat the lunch of ANY of these idiot way-cambered piles. And in case anybody STILL doesn't get it...remember this car? Driven by one of the world-masters of car control, a guy who actually KNOWS HOW TIRES AND SUSPENSION WORK, and proves it every time. Notice the camber.

Here's two real cars with the old, rear-distributor Hemi. Both cars are '28-'29 bodies on '32 rails, which this new kit gives you. If the old Hemi will fit, the later-model 440 and even the 426 Hemi should shoehorn in there.

The too-square front fender corners probably have more to do with the design of the tooling being able to release the molded part than anything else. There's plenty of plastic there to file them rounder to make the necessary correction, and these kits are so great otherwise, I find this minor issue very easy to forgive.