Ace-Garageguy

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".

I personally think the Revell parts-pack 427 Ford engine kit makes a good, cheap starting point for any FE engine, and the kit comes with 2 4bbl carbs and manifold, a setup seen on some MkIV cars. The kit also includes an optional set of headers, the signature coolant expansion tanks found on these engines during this era, a manual gearbox, and a complete optional GMC blower setup. You can get 4 of them with free shipping on Ebay for $17, or one for about $7. Some folks call these old Revell engine kits "fiddly". You'll need to strip the chrome, and they take some care in squaring up the many parts that make up the longblock assembly, but I think they build into really good looking models. I don't have a good recommendation for something to use for a gearbox, but if you can score an old AMT Coyote kit cheap, all the guts in it should give you a reasonable MkIV, as the old MPC MkIV is the basis for the kit.

Exactly.

Wow. You've taken something that looked toylike and turned it into a great looking scale model. Very nice.

I'll be enjoying seeing this come together too.

Man, that's pretty.

Damm that's nice !

Yes, it is a multi-piece body, and it's one of the more popular kits to complain about. With some care and patience, it can build up into a beautiful model. The hinged panels take some extra time to fit properly, as does the multi-piece body, but great looking models are possible from it. Here's one...NOT MINE...but do a Google image search for "Revell '59 Ford" to see more.

You guys are a riot. I'm still trying to figure out what she sees in me...forever suspicious of any little good fortune, you know? I think it may be that a couple of things I fixed for her actually worked afterwards and stayed fixed. Like Red Green says,

Close enough. The Big Wheel, 1949. Lots of cool old midgets and champ cars, and a 1949 Olds convertible pace-car at Indy.

A lot of guys have recommended looking on Ebay for listings of cars for sale. Often, there are multiple good photos of the undersides, interiors, engine bays, etc. Doing a search of the car you need info on, and then clicking the link to go to the page the photo appears on can yield good results, even if the main image displayed by Google doesn't have what you need. Here's a bunch of photos of a Corvette, with enough of an underside shot to determine the bellhousing is painted. http://www.prestigemotorcar.com/web/used/Chevrolet-Corvette-1965-Clifton-Park-New-York/2033406/

Really depends on the specific car. Bellhousings on automatic transmissions were mostly cast as a unit with the gearbox housing, and were usually left in bare aluminum. Manual transmissions usually had separate bellhousings, sometimes cast iron, and were often painted the same color as the engine and gearbox. Hot-rodded automatic transmissions were often painted the signature color of the builder, like the red on B&M products. Only way to know what's right for the particular setup you're working on is to do image-searches of restored or original cars like you're working on.

Modeling helps keep me relatively sane, I'm sure. It's usually the only area of life that isn't subject to other people's needs, wants, desires and schedules. It's nice to be 100% in control of the design of a project, and to be able to make all the decisions regarding it...and to work on it at my own pace, without the constant deadlines and cost-constraints I'm usually under.

Welcome to the forum, Josh. Glad you came here to get advice before ending up with a disappointing paint job. Like you, I'm hyper-critical of my own work too, and I don't accept solutions that kinda work pretty good most of the time.. I do a lot of heavy mods using bondo as a filler, get consistently good results, but there are several factors to consider. 1) Some of the more recent kit plastics are a lot softer than they were years ago, and react with the primers...often causing swelling, ghosting, or even crazing. All you can do is to apply relatively light coats of primer, and give it at least 10 minutes of "flash" time between coats. This allows the solvents more time to evaporate out the top of the primer, rather than being trapped where they may be more likely to soften underlying plastic. 2) It's imperative your bondo is mixed correctly, which I'm sure you got right. If somehow it got too little hardener, it will shrink every time primer hits it. I had been doing bodywork for years on 1:1 cars and thought I had it down, but mixing the really small quantities you need for a model can be a challenge 'til you've done a lot of it. 3) When you're filling surface details, it's sometimes best to sand them away, leaving a depression where they were, and to build your filler up to the level of the surface again. This can be a factor because, if you don't thoroughly scuff down inside what you're trying to fill, the bondo may not adhere well down inside the filled detail, and may pull away in places, squirming around and making the surface forever unstable. You can't kill imperfections in an unstable surface. 4) I get ghosting of bodywork showing through, just like you have there, all the time now...again, primarily due to the difference in hardness and shrink between the filler and the kit plastic. All I've ever found that works is to do what you've been doing, but when you sand next time, try to only take enough primer off the surface to eliminate the raised ghost-marks, but don't go deep enough to see the plastic again. Spray several light coats, give them plenty of time to flash, sand with 600 grit wet or finer, and repeat as necessary. When you can spray a medium coat of primer with nothing lifting, you're done. Let it shrink in for a week or so, sand one final time with around 1000 grit, wet, and paint. I chopped the top on the car in this link, and the sail panels and mold seams all over the car gave me the same kind of grief you're having. Patience finally won out, and it looks the same today as it did in these shots taken 2 years ago...no long-term ghosting either. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58430 PS: You're going to get a lot of differing advice. The only way to be sure you'll have a solution that works every time for you is to experiment until you have a procedure you're happy with.

Wow. Impressive resto. Very very nice, especially considering you were able to get it to look that good without paint.

Cute little bugger. Nice job. What's the double-blower-sucking-through-Webers-setup from?

"Wrinkling" of enamels is very often caused by shooting a second coat of paint outside of the recoat-window. Most enamels will say on the label something to the effect of: "apply additional coats within one hour or after 72 hours"...or something like that. Re-coating outside of those times, you'll often get the subsequent coat attacking the first coat, and it all wrinkles up as if you'd put paint stripper on it. Variations in temperature and humidity can play merry hell with the recoat window too. How long are you waiting before applying your second coat? And what do the directions on the can say? The most common problem styrene modelers have with Fusion is crazing, as it's a "hot" paint, and will actually attack some un-primered plastic, causing a very fine wrinkled appearance. The wrinkling becomes etched into the surface of the plastic, and pretty well ruins the model surface.

Wow. My cat's about worn out. I'll have to order something from them if they're giving away cute little pussies with every package.