Ace-Garageguy

I've never really built a resin model, but these look so good, and I like the subjects so much, that both will have to get in the lineup at some point.

Just try to focus on how much better you're going to feel a couple of days afterwards.

And that's why I WISH we got some of the European fuel-sipping little turbo-diesels over here. 45/60 MPG is WORTH some extra complexity.

Gee, I hope you're still building then. I've got more than 10 years on you and still build real cars for a living...grunting, straining, lifting, bending and getting under the things...in an unheated, un-air-conditioned shop...every day. I didn't know mid-60s was all that old.

What you're asking me to deliver is an overview of a program that would be developed by a very senior, very well-paid engineer. I'll put a little time into it and get back to you.

Sorry. I missed that post. Taking 1000 pounds out of a 3800 pound Challenger ought to be theoretically possible when you take into consideration that a '68-'69 Barracuda is listed as 2899 pounds, wasn't really a "light" car, and was built entirely without benefit of CAD or high-strength lightweight steel. I'd dearly love to be "King of Mopar Engineering" to see if it could be done, at reasonable cost. Somehow, a little Corolla weighs 2800 pounds these days. In 1968, they weighed in at about 1550.

I don't personally care much if the majors quit making V8 engines. I know where to get all of 'em I'm ever likely to need...if I live to be 130. Far as unnecessary complication goes, the current Ford Escape has a 1.6 EcoBoost turbo that gets 10 horsepower more than the vastly simpler normally aspirated 2.5 liter V6. Fuel mileage is about the same in the real world. That little 1600cc turbo engine will be a high-revving, hot-running little screamer, beating its guts out before the 2.5 V6 has worked up a sweat. And it needs a very complex 6-speed automatic gearbox to keep it in its narrow torque band. All that extra complexity and reduced long-term life, just for 10 HP? Doesn't make any sense to me.

See post #69, post-edit

All it takes to do it is the desire. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-09/bmw-backed-researchers-closing-in-on-cheaper-carbon-fiber.html Ford was experimenting with soy-based composites in the 1930s. http://ushistory4you.hubpages.com/hub/Henry-Fords-Hemp-Car Germany has been building all-composite sport aircraft since 1957. Lotus was building composite-chassis cars in 1959 (the original Elite). It coulda been done CHEAPLY by now if anybody had really wanted to do it.

The FAA has standards that just might be a little more stringent than anything the NHTSA / EPA / CAFE have come up with. Oh, and the airplane has to fly, too. Masses of weight COULD HAVE been engineered out of cars many years ago, but as usual, a knee-jerk expedient path was chosen, rather than rational long-term development goals that were attainable. And know-nothing government agencies were allowed to set arbitrary standards, in the "just-pass-a-law-to-make-it-so" SOP. Easier also to continue building heavy, steel battering rams than to take a more enlightened approach and try something different. And the lawyers would prefer lots of steel. It reminds them of boilerplate, and there are no "unproven" concepts to have to defend in court when Mommy stops on the Interstate, is crushed by a semi, and the husband sues the car company. But the world IS changing in a good way, in places. Some gutsy manufacturers are turning to composite materials as the price comes down and understanding of how to make composite structures "crash safe" in the car world increases. Less weight=more efficiency=smaller engines=same performance while burning far less fuel. Now, if there was just some way to get people to actually be competent and careful drivers, every day. Then you COULD build a sub-2500 pound steel car that would carry four.

Yup, and rubber cement works well to glue the sandpaper to sticks as well. I have a Starbucks-addicted friend who saves her stir-sticks for me. I have to agree with the guys who don't much care for the sanding needles. Good idea, poor execution. Grit goes away almost instantly, and there's a big ol' mold seam running down both sides of them.

No. What's "possible" is rarely what's actually done. Feel free to believe that all car engineering departments are making the best, most efficient, most elegant designs "possible" if it makes you happy. I see stupid, barely competent "engineered" solutions every day. Just because someone has a shiny little degree and gets paid to do a job, that doesn't mean they do the job really really well. But part of the problem is that consumers have been trained to expect vehicles to be "safe" no matter how incompetently they're operated, and to protect the driver from his own poor driving. That translates into excessively heavy structures and the additional weight burden of multiple air bags. A Cirrus SR 22 is a 200 MPH, 4-passenger airplane. It weighs about 2300 pounds. It has extremely sophisticated onboard electronics including 2 10" flat screen multifunction displays, navigation, comm radios, GPS, storm-scope, AND A PARACHUTE TO LAND THE WHOLE AIRPLANE. Tell me why a car to take one probably overweight ass to work and back REALLY needs to weigh 3800 pounds.

The harmonic balancer is the BIG pulley on the end of the crankshaft, not the little pulley-looking thing on the "water pump". A water pump won't have a "balancer" on it, harmonic or otherwise. You're right about the braided lines running from the block ports, where the water pump normally attaches, to under the engine, and there are short lines not connected to anything yet, from the water ports on the heads, where the crossover and thermostat housing attach on a nailhead Buick, which this engine is. While there are many designs for electric automotive and marine water pumps, here's one that is visually similar. My guess would be that the kit designers may not have fully understood the function of the part, and therefor didn't really try to get the appearance 100% prototypically correct. That has been known to happen on occasion...believe it or not.

Agreed, but cutting weight would be more to the point across the board. The current Challenger, for example, is much heavier that its '70s namesake, in spite of all the ballyhooed implementation of high-strength steels, etc. Really tight engineering ought to be able to shave 1000 pounds out of it, or at LEAST a couple hundred less than the original. Less weight to drag around=less horsepower required to do it=less complexity needed to achieve power from a tiny engine=more robust product=longer lifespan=less cost to maintain.

Paragraph 1. 1920s racing cars, warbirds, et al aren't currently deployed operational military aircraft. The B-52 is, and one reason it is still capable of performing its (obsolete) job is that it has much added contemporary technology. It's a blend of the old and new, and it works pretty well. Paragraph 2. I mis-typed 777, meaning 787. The 787 has composite wing spars. It doesn't get any more "structural" than that. The Cirrus SR 20 and SR 22, which I spent a significant part of my professional career designing field-repair procedures for, are ALL COMPOSITE STRUCTURES. So are the Columbia, and several kit planes. Also just about every sailplane manufactured in Germany since 1957. These aircraft are regularly re-certified for more allowable hours on the airframes, as properly designed composite structures don't fatigue. I'm not opposed to technology. I'm opposed to needlessly complex technology. Any engineer can cobble up an overly-complex mess. It takes a good engineer to do the same job with simplicity and elegance, and to make it as easy as possible for the poor SOB who will eventually have to work on the thing. One idiotic design flaw I just recently encountered...almost EVERY front end suspension component in a well-maintained 150,000 mile 2001 vehicle I had the pleasure to do extensive work on is completely worn out...simply because the designers failed to incorporate any means to lubricate the tie-rod ends, ball joints or "sealed for life" wheel bearings (which require the suspension to be entirely dismantled to replace, at significant expense). Another $5 to $10 per vehicle (at most) would have saved the current owner somewhere around $1000, once everything is replaced with OEM quality components. By contrast, my own 275,000 mile truck has a nice, tight, son-squeaky front end that doesn't wander all over the road and holds alignment...simply because it has grease fittings at the wear points, and easily-serviced bearings that only require removal of the wheels to access.

Not my point, and it always gets misinterpreted, just like I'm always attacked for wanting "perfect" kits when I make valid criticisms of glaring errors. I'm pro-technology, when deployed rationally and intelligently. I am fully aware that without onboard electronics and advanced computer-modeling of engine specifics, vehicle internal combustion engines running on gasoline couldn't achieve today's levels of exhaust cleanliness. But so much of what we get today is needlessly complex, and poorly thought out, and knee-jerk reactionary design rather than pro-active lets-make-it-efficient AND relatively simple. Every week, I see or have to work on something that, had the designer given any thought to how you'd service the thing (which should come from working with your hands, in the field, BEFORE you get the cushy design job), could have been a piece of cake, or might not have failed the way it failed anyway. There are usually better and simpler ways to do most everything I encounter, and it has nothing to do with cost. Occasionally i DO run across something that is very well thought out, easy to access, and robust enough to last well into the 2nd or 3rd owner's possession.

Three minor points...the B-52, which entered service in 1955, is expected to continue as an operational aircraft into the 2040s. Metal commercial aircraft have operational lifetimes determined by structural metal fatigue limits, and are usually on the order of 30 years. It's yet to be seen how long all-composite-structure airliners like the Boeing 787 will fly. I've seen many large aircraft grounded and scrapped that probably could have delivered many hundreds or thousands of additional flight hours, because the engines, wing airfoils, and avionics / electronics were hopelessly outdated and inefficient. Cheaper sometimes to just start over, if you do all the numbers, than to try to keep old tech operational. BUT THESE ARE HUGE, REVENUE-PRODUCING AIRCRAFT, not something you get to the corner Wendy's in. Far as front-line fighters go, both America's F-22 and F-35, very complex and technology-dependent, are now pretty much universally regarded as being unfit for combat, out-performed easily by the much simpler Russian Mig 29 / 35....which is also MUCH more easily serviced in combat conditions. What a concept. A combat aircraft you can work on in combat conditions.

See post #41, post-edit.

The man gets the point. And a reasonably competent shop could repair those vehicles, even if the owner couldn't. Shops that can actually diagnose and repair the ever increasingly complex vehicles are increasingly few and far between. But believe whatever you want. I know what I experience in the business, day in, day out.

Of course, manufacturers are going to do their level best to make sure the vehicles make it through warranty. And that's ALL they're going to do. The point is...if you buy one of these things or keep it AFTER WARRANTY expires, you're going to be screwed. I see enough earlier EFI-computer-equipped pre-insane-complexity vehicles scrapped or abandoned (because their second or third owners cannot possibly keep up with the repair costs) to have a pretty good idea where this trend is headed. Increasingly complex and tech-dependent vehicles will become rapidly obsolete and disposable, like smart phones. It will not be cost-effective to repair them, so consumers will be forced to keep the new-car-needle stuck in the financial vein. Even now, there's no good support for a 1989 EFI American vehicle. I've had to convert one of my trucks back to a carb. There just isn't going to be any way to do that when something being built now is that old. A typical owner of my '89 truck would junk it, or face more repair cost than it was "worth". If you live under the hood every day, I'll respect your opinion. Otherwise, well...

There's also the issue of insane complexity and just exactly what you're going to do with the turbo-charged tiny engines AFTER they're out of warranty. The car manufacturers don't really give a damm about that, but consumers just might want to devote a little thought to the issue. Servicing will be complex, and expensive. Parts will be expensive. Small-displacement engines asked to make big horsepower, even with turbochargers, can only do it with high revs and high boost pressures. High revs and boost pressures mean more rapid engine wear. More rapid wear means earlier engine replacement or major repair. Think about it. So far, in my somewhat broad experience, I've seen a lot of turbos needing replacement at around 80.000 miles. These things spin at 30.000rpm, run practically red-hot, and have internal seals that fail, letting the turbo "coke up" with burned oil. The turbo slows and stops. You lose whatever power it added, and you're left with a tiny engine trying to drag around an unnecessarily heavy vehicle. Gas mileage and drivability go to shitt, and you have a BIG repair bill, coming directly out of YOUR pocket. When there was just a little rationality still loose in the world, one of engineering's basic tenets was "the best solution is the simplest solution", widely known as KISS...keep it simple, stupid. Unfortunately for the real world, the blind obsession with "progress" comes at the cost of idiotic levels of complexity and shortened service live, and the resulting VERY high cost to keep a post-warranty vehicle operational. Research the Ecoboost under-warranty problems and fixes, and extrapolate the cost of maintaining these things once the factory no longer foots the bill under warranty.

Looks fast just sitting there. Perfect color, love the hood scoop and head-fairing.

Great project Bernard !! I have only one tiny disappointment regarding it...you've beaten me to the punch. I started a very similar build several years back, now on the "resting" shelf, having solved the scaling issue by extending the lower part of the body shell the same as you have. A masterful decision on your part, if I may say so. I'd started to make the car first Ardun- and then old-Hemi-powered, but found a gluebomb chassis from an AMT Watson Indy-car that would take a flathead, but nothing wider. Recycling the Watson chassis into a different form of race car seemed to make a good story, as many the last of the big Indy roadsters got recycled into super-modifieds, and it wasn't uncommon to rebuild race-cars that were almost completely destroyed in those days, sometimes into something entirely different. I love seeing your project, and will be following along as it progresses. Best of luck getting her done by deadline. I imagine she'll be quite a hit at the show.

Very nice work.

The PT Cruiser that was such a total PITA is performing perfectly, the owner is happy as a clam, and wants me to do the rest of the remedial work it needs (everything in the front end is worn out, because Chrysler didn't bother to spend the 15 cents extra per unit to put grease-fittings on stuff) to be back in good-as-new condition. It's nice to do work for people who have an emotional investment in their vehicles, and would prefer to keep a paid-for old friend running right than dump it for a shiny-new-car-payment.