Ace-Garageguy

Here's a link to the story of probably the most famous of the Bonneville Studebakers. http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/1953-studebaker-coupe/ Here's another link, to a tech tutorial on making hinges for a flip-front-end that fits right every time. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70025 And as far as filler goes, you can't go wrong with Bondo Professional glazing putty, #801. It comes with its own hardener, in modeler-friendly packaging. Here's a link to a current project of mine, and you can see that it works very well (post #36) http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=96942#entry1324599

It's also very easy to burn the paint (and instantly dig through several layers, right down to the plastic) depending on the exact speed of your unit, the shape of your particular buff, the material it's made of, and what compound you're using. Practice first. One tiny slip or moment of inattention can ruin a beautiful paint job.

Bend time? Easy. Get a job you hate and marry the wrong woman. You won't have any more modeling time, but every day will seem like eternity.

From Hemming's Daily... The Batmobile’s history actually begins a couple of years before Lincoln debuted it as the Futura. During the development of the Continental Mark II, the Continental division briefly considered building the Mark II as a retractable hardtop convertible. Coachbuilder Hess and Eisenhardt of Cincinnati was then commissioned to build two mechanical prototypes for that project, basing them on 1953 Lincoln chassis stretched three inches to the Mark II dimensions. Only one such prototype, later known as MP#5, was built, so John Hollowell, who was in charge of that project, sold the other modified chassis to the Lincoln-Mercury division sometime before late 1954 for $17,000. Lincoln-Mercury bought the chassis specifically to use as the basis for the Futura, a car that Lincoln head stylist Bill Schmidt began to sketch in 1952. Lincoln press materials claimed that Schmidt got the idea for the Futura when diving in the Bahamas, but as Jim and Cheryl Farrell wrote in their book Ford Design Department Concepts and Showcars, 1932-1961, while Schmidt did indeed vacation and dive in the Bahamas with Bill Mitchell (who, of course, took inspiration from the sea life he saw to create his own legendary concept cars), Schmidt actually took much of his inspiration for the Futura from jet fighters, as did many other stylists at that time. His double-bubble canopied, canted fendered two-seater concept quickly got approved to become a full-sized and functional concept car, and in late 1954 Schmidt sent the modified Lincoln chassis, a complete set of plans and a full-sized plaster model over to Ghia in Turin. Ghia then took just three months to hammer out a body from metal, paint it a unique iridescent bluish-white, and send it back to Dearborn. Lincoln then added the Plexiglas canopy and debuted the Futura in January 1955 at the Chicago Auto Show. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company. The Futura was Lincoln’s last show car until 1963 and really their last dedicated show car not based on a production car until 1987, so the division continued to exhibit it until 1959, when Barris somehow convinced Lincoln to lend the Futura to Arcola Pictures and MGM for use (painted red) in the film It Started With a Kiss. After filming it went back to Dearborn, then again to Southern California, where it split the next six years between the MGM studio lot and Barris’s shop. As the Farrells wrote, “during that time, the tires went flat, the paint faded, one or two of the wheelcovers were lost and the car generally deteriorated.” Barris continued to work with Ford and Lincoln through the 1960s, however, and sometime in 1965 he convinced Lincoln to sell the Futura to him – reportedly for $1 – then negotiated with Twentieth Century Fox to provide a Batmobile for the upcoming Batman television series. (As an aside, Dean Jeffries told Tom Cotter that he was originally tapped to build the Batmobile and had proceeded to cut up a Cadillac to do so, but the studio moved up the timetable on him, thus giving Barris the opportunity to provide the car. “The producers didn’t like working with Barris, but they were locked into him because he had the rights to the car,” Jeffries said. “They said, ‘We’re not going to deal with him again,’ so that’s how I ended up building the Green Hornet car and Wonder Woman’s car.”) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article states that after filming of "It Started...", the car (then red) was returned to Dearborn. It could well have been used during production of the Ford promotional film, already painted red, at that time.

Good looking traditional rod. Nice work.

Again, absolutely positively 100% correct. I highlighted Arron's irrefutable logic that backs this up, and puts paid to the concepts that it's impossible to manufacture anything cost-effectively in the US anymore, and that everything MUST be made offshore to be profitable. It's time business analysts face these self-evident truths, and stop accepting the old tired excuses.

Absolutely positively 100% correct.

OK, I'll bite. Why? In case of spontaneous human combustion??

'34 Ford pickup w/ Ferrari Boxer engine / gearbox

Too bad it wasn't Cerberus instead of Cerebus. Coulda made a cooler logo than the ol' goat...

"We see all kinds of foreign objects like nails or pellets, but...usually not a turn signal from a 1963 T-Bird,” Gotta be the medical quote of the year. You just can't make this stuff up.

Agreed 100%...and I happen to like Fiat anyway What is tragic is that no American capitalization stepped up to keep the US identity, return US ownership, and retain the profits in the US.

Ah yes, the world-famous Chrysler cheese... or perhaps Chrysler Pasta...

Exquisite work. I could read 30 or 40 pages of this kind of thing and still be wanting more.

The point, gentlemen, is that America has been selling off her "seed corn" for quite a while now. Just because it's been happening and has been accepted as the "way of business today" doesn't make it smart for the long run. And just because we seem to be pulling out of the "recession" doesn't mean that continuing business-as-usual is smart either. Most American capital wheeler-dealers would rather be in idiotic financial "products" like derivatives that have no more intrinsic value than Monopoly money...and as a result pretty well brought the world economy to its knees...than investing in plants, facilities, and factories to actually give people places to make things...including a good living. Henry Ford proved the viability of the concept of paying factory workers enough to buy the things they make. It worked for generations, because it's logical and creates an in-country loop of monetary exchange. But unbridled greed of unions, short-sighted management stupidity in much of the American manufacturing sector, and the entitlement many folks seem to feel to get something-for-nothing have taken a set of relationships that worked and made it impossible to sustain. "Wise old farmers have long had a saying: Don't sell your seed corn. In simple terms, it means that every seed that comes through your hands has the potential to either be sold or planted for next year's harvest. You need to make sure that your farm always has enough seed corn to replant the fields on your land so you enjoy another harvest next year. If you sell your seed corn, you won't have anything to put in the ground and you lose the farm. Your family starves. You are broke." To continue the analogy, you no longer have a farm that can feed all the people who work there AND sell excess corn for a profit. You are forced to go to work for someone else, for subsistence money, working for someone who had the wisdom to buy your seed corn and plant it, rather than selling it off cheap because planting it was "too hard". Welcome to the emerging "newer, better" America.

What probably few Americans realize is that the name "Fiat" itself is an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, founded in 1899. Interesting that an old Italian company sees value in an old American manufacturing company, where American capital investment apparently sees none. Also interesting that the Chinese have been buying up American aviation companies like Cirrus, Mooney and Continental engines, again where American capital investment sees zero value.

I have to agree with most of that. I have an extensive collection of late '40s through '70s hot rod and sports car mags for reference / research, and that's where my primary automotive interest lies. Almost every time I pick up a current car mag, I'm disappointed by the lack of hard-tech info, and the preponderance of advertising and gee-whiz-this-is-written-for-guys-with-clean-fingernails fluff as opposed to substance. As I'll never willingly own (or probably even agree to work on) anything ever again built after 1996, I just have no further need to subscribe. I don't give a damm about bell-and-whistle laden electronically overcontrolled production cars, including exotics. Even if something will run 200mph right out of the dealership, just exactly what relevance does that have to reality, where can anyone possibly use that performance (an entry level Kia is more car than most drivers will ever learn to control at its maximum capability), and what do you do with it when its vast over-complication leaves you immobile in the middle of the road? No new mags for me. Anything I NEED to know, I can find in 30 seconds or less on the web anyway.

At my house, it's cold and windy inside.

Similar to the setup in the '55 Chevy, yes.

She's a real beauty, for sure. Looks great in white, too.

Two words: finish something.

Yes indeed. Many Americans are somehow now too "good", too "busy" or too "modern" to work up much of a sweat doing anything, or to get the least bit dirty or uncomfortable in the process. Why on Earth would there be any incentive to maintain a strong manufacturing base in this country, which is the ONLY means to create real wealth (or to even bother to retain American ownership of a dwindling number of historically important US companies) when it's so much easier to let the other "less developed" countries make most everything for us, while, as a nation of middlemen, we happily rake off the profit crumbs and have plenty of time to text incessantly, attend an endless stream of CYA meetings, and make sure our facebook status is current. Most of us now are too "professional", too busy and too modern to even mow our own lawns. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would also tend to imagine that the armies of millenials asked if they'd ever heard of "Chrysler Corporation" by the inevitable market-researchers prior to the name change have no clue that Chrysler was once synonymous with "American Excellence in Engineering", of if they'd give a damm if they DID know. There's just no app for that.

Basically the same idea, yes, but with some important differences. Here's a side shot of the '55 Chevy setup. Between your photo of the drive unit before it was painted and the one above, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on here. In your photo, you can see a large plate bolted to the end of the engine to support the drive. Then comes a roughly egg-shaped transfer case to get the drive output shaft lower in the car (to compensate for the engine being mounted very high, probably to clear the front suspension and crossmember in the '55 chassis) and also, possibly, to change the speed of the output and to reverse its rotation. Then there is a cylindrical housing, most probably for a conventional multi-disc clutch, to which is bolted a conventional automotive gearbox. All pretty straightforward, and some ideas could be used on your Allison-powered model...or not. Depending on whose story of the original Big Al you read, some references are made to Lytle using a somewhat unusual war-surplus reverse-rotation Allison in order to be able to use an automobile rear end made for the conventional automobile-engine rotational direction, and avoid a rotation-reversing transfer case as it appears the '55 Chevy uses. One of the Allisons in the P-38 was reverse-rotation to counter prop-torque effects, so that was possibly the source. It's also relatively straightforward (but somewhat involved too, if that makes sense) to convert an engine to rotate backwards from it's original design, and involves primarily different cams and piston mods or replacements. It's been done quite a lot over the years to adapt engines to odd applications, so your Allison could conceivably be running backwards...just like some descriptions of Big Al would have it. If you say you're running a reverse-rotation engine (either military original surplus or converted), then all you need is a big can (bellhousing) to contain a multi-disc clutch, and your choice as to whether to use a gearbox, like the '55 Chevy does, or not...like the original Big Al. Here's some more info on Allisons, from a reputable source. http://www.aceallisons.com/

Almost as bad to breathe as asbestos.

Great looking model, Dave. Like I said, guys have built some really attractive pieces using the Revell snapper, and this one is a perfect illustration of why this kit is the best 1/25 3-window '34 out there.