Ace-Garageguy

All this talk about cheating and balls... I've always just assumed that cheats have no balls.

You can put a "remote mounted" booster anywhere in the car it will fit. What you have is a straight mechanical / hydraulic master cylinder hooked to the brake pedal. From there, a hydraulic line runs to another hydraulic master cylinder which is attached to the booster. The second master cylinder on the remote booster simply transfers hydraulic pressure from the pedal. Like zo. There are several variations on this theme, and they were fairly common on British and US vehicles at one time. Here's one mounted sideways in the engine bay, in a place there's room for it, far from the pedal / primary master cylinder.

A real shame about this, as I've seen his products and was very impressed by the detail and what must be exceptional quality of the masters. Guess I should have bought some at the show in November. Health issues can be a very real drag on our abilities, especially as we age. I've had my share, and they've cost me a lot of business. Communication is key however. If clients are kept in the loop and continuously updated, with realistic projections as to when things might shake out, or refunds offered, there's often no long term damage done to one's credibility.

I was under the perhaps-mistaken impression that the blue ones were Goodyears, as Goodyear had a lock on the name "Blue Streak" for several of its lines.

Woke up at 4:00 this AM with the full-blown flu. Had been feeling unusually tired for a couple days, started getting a headache, body aches and a cough early yesterday afternoon, but worked through the end of the day. Just feel too horrible to work at all now. Think I'll go back to bed and try to sleep.

Agreed 100%.

All he needs is a 12-cylinder, dual-coil distributor in the same location as the stock distributor. Easy. Or, if he wants to be esoteric, he could put 2, six-cylinder distributors side-by-side, on a common oval gear housing, on top of a distributor driveshaft, again in the same location as stock. Think of the housing as a little transfer case. One gear in the middle on the top of the original distributor drive shaft, and two gears on either side of it, driving two short-shaft distributors on top. The gear arrangement spaces the distributors far enough apart, and makes them both turn in the original direction. Split-timing would be easy, as all you'd have to do to change the timing on one set of plugs would be to rotate an entire distributor. With a single distributor, you'd have to remove the cap, and rotate one point plate relative to the other one. Doable, but a little fiddly. Either way would work in 1:1. Something like this...but perched on top of the original distributor location and driven from the bottom, rather than being driven by a shaft from the timing chain, as this setup is. Porsche used two distributors on the 4-cam 4-cylinder engines, sometimes like this... '28 Chevy, with 2 distributors... The point is, come up with something that looks plausible, and there you go.

Really perfect lines.

Here's another old one. Hint: model cars are used as stand-ins for the real ones in one scene.

Kool!! I never noticed. Have a couple on the shelf and will definitely have to find a use for one. Thanks.

I'm more critical of my own work than anybody else is going to be, believe me. I usually point out the flaws myself first, just so I don't have to hear or read them. Simplifies everything. What I'm not too keen on is folks who'll start off on their particular taste in color, or some other purely personal-preference-style point. If you would have painted it red with purple seats, by all means, paint YOURS red with purple seats. Then there are the ones who tell me I did something wrong when the "wrong" was intentional and explained in the thread text, and if they had bothered to actually READ the thread instead of just looking at the pictures and mouthing off, they'd already have their answer. On the other hand, if someone has an idea as to how I can improve my model building, something they think might be appropriate to add or delete on a WIP, or catches a technical error, then, by all means, let me know.

I wouldn't paint a real car with a brush (I have slopped on some Rustoleum primer that way, to protect cars sitting outside) and I wouldn't paint a model with a brush. Back in the days of carriages, sure, they brush-painted stuff and rubbed it down. Yes, you CAN get a beautiful finish, but why bother? Kinda like using two cans and a string instead of the cellphone, you know?

Somewhere along the line, someone DID reverse-engineer the AMT kit to produce the Lindberg tooling (and as Casey says, the tale is it was Palmer). If you compare the parts VERY carefully, you'll see subtle differences that prove beyond doubt that the two kits do not come from the same molds. Very similar yes...identical, no.

There's a thread on here started a few weeks ago showing some dual-plug Ford flathead heads., and the plug placement is pretty obvious. Flatheads flow pretty poorly in general, and flame travel is poor. Dual-plugs could achieve more complete combustion, and add a little power. Porsche used a 12-plug-terminal cap for its dual-plug flat-six engines, with 2 coil inputs. This distributor cap is for a 12 cylinder '31 Caddy, and is also set up for 2 coil inputs. An old 12-cylinder distributor like this could be modified by a very competent hot-rodder to fire a dual-plug head on your Hudson.

Here's a simple schematic, for a real car. DC circuitry is DC circuitry, whether real or model. Delete the LS1 "dome light" and one of the switches. The "car battery" will of course be the AAA battery pack, or whatever you decide to use. L1, L2, L3 and L4 are LEDs wired in parallel. Your LEDs may require resistors, or may have them already attached.

You may find that the small "coin" batteries will not provide sufficient amperage to run multiple lights, or last very long in the LED application. Check the specs for available amperage-over-time from the battery you want to use, and determine the total system current draw with the number of LEDs you want to use before committing to a system design. The typical loads the little coin batteries are designed for are about 1/100 the load of one LED lamp. Click link: http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/cr2032.pdf The "simulated application test" shows a load of .19mA. Remember that the load of one LED (post #7, is around 19mA...or 100 times greater) Here's the spec sheet for a typical AAA alkaline battery. Draw your own conclusions. http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/E92.pdf Remember also that your power supply requirements will be quite different if you want your model to sit for hours at a show with the lights on, compared to what will be required to illuminate the LEDs for a few seconds at a time (for which the cigarette-lighter power supplies are designed).

Now THAT is slick !!

Beautiful proportions...better than the real one, which is just a little too squashed at the cowl. Very nice work.

How's 'bout another oldie?

That's great, but that big ol' 9v battery is massive overkill for LEDs which draw very little current. 5mm LEDs are available in quantities of 100 for $2.72 including shipping from China (!) that only take 2V to 3.4V forward voltage (depending on color) at 18-20mA. You don't add the voltages of the LEDs. They should be wired in parallel, total system voltage still being 2-3.4 volts. Two AAA batteries in series will give you 2.5 to 3 volts with enough amperage to run a long time. (4 LEDs, roughly a couple of hours, depending...)

Thanks for the link, Matt. I have a lot of tech stuff on the Ford GT40s, but not that book. It'll be here shortly. Sounds like a good read.

Put a pair of outer tie-rod ends in the PT from Hell yesterday. Turned the little car from feeling like a worn-out piece of junk on its last legs into a smooth, solid, noise-free ride. Measured the rod ends carefully, and installed carefully, compensating for the 5.5mm difference in length. No alignment necessary, tracks straight, wheel centered. Also put the lie to the $800+ she'd been quoted (by several "mechanics") to replace the wheel bearings, CV joints, lower balljoints and a rebuilt steering rack...which the other guys said were all worn out and dangerous. Did the whole job in about an hour, $55 parts.

I think I've seen this one on another forum. Once again, a very nice blending of different kit elements to make a coherent, nicely proportioned car. You have a good eye for design.

And welcome to the forum, Jacob. Here's a bunch of tips on making opening panels like doors and trunks... https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amodelcarsmag.com+opening+doors&oq=site%3Amodelcarsmag.com+opening+doors&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.5932j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

You can easily fabricate a battery box from styrene, with brass contacts epoxied in place. LEDs use very little current, so you can use a tiny battery. Check the current draw of the LEDs you want to use, and size your battery accordingly. Ebay has LEDs from China very very cheap. I got 10 for less than $1 once. Some of them were bad, but you can't beat the price. Ebay also has micro-switches. In a 30-second search, I just found a 2-pack of SPDT 3-pin, two-position slide-switches (smaller than a penny) for $4.25, including shipping. Or 50 micro toggle-switches (8mmX4mmX5mm) from China, for $6.99 including shipping. If that's too costly, just twist the wires together for "on", untwist for "off". NOTE: There are many momentary-contact style switches much cheaper, but they won't stay "on" unless your finger is on them. Understand what you're buying. LEDs also produce almost no heat. A PVA (polyvinyl acetate) white glue that dries clear, used by many modelers for gluing clear parts, lights, canopies on aircraft, etc. will work fine for gluing lenses "cleanly".