Ace-Garageguy

Yeah, they can take the whole idiotic "black Friday" concept and flush it. There's no WAY I'd get in that milling pushing glazed-eyed grappling greedy hoarding horde just to buy gifts supposedly to celebrate...''Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men". While we're flushing things, throw the terminally stupid "internet of everything" in there too. Who comes up with this tard stuff, and thinks it's good marketing to repeat it constantly over and over and over and over and over?... It's as pathetically overdone mindlessly driven-into-the-ground...already...as "awesome". A Space Shuttle launch was actually "awesome". Not a lot of other stuff really is, now is it?

Oh man...when I read the topic header "why are you here" I thought we'd get into some deep philosophy. Oh well. Seriously, most of the cars I build these days are things I'd like to build in 1:1 if I had unlimited time and money, or just wild-hare (hair?) "what if?" concepts. Welcome to the forum.

Very true. The cellulose fibers in model airplane tissue are relatively long, and when wet-out with epoxy or CA, perform exactly the same function as the glass fibers in fiberglass.

Micro works fine as a filler to bulk something up, but has almost no strength. Just remember that if you're going to be doing more heavy shaping on your part, you might like something with more reinforcement.

Gary, I noticed you recently checked in on my Phoenix project over at http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58538. The nice thing about the f'glass technique is that you form the new part right on the car, using the mold you made from the donor. That's my preferred technique. This has the two advantages of 1) letting the new part be made in absolutely correct alignment and 2) you don't destroy the donor in the process. BUT...If you need to replace a large area and elect to splice in good styrene from a donor, it's easier to replace an entire quarter panel or fender, where the seams can be hidden on door cut-lines, etc. Just like on a real car, you don't have to get into making, shaping and finishing splices in the middle of a panel, so doing a much larger section is often much less work, with better results. If you have a smaller area, say just the lower rear section of a quarter panel, cut your donor a little oversize from what you think you'll need. Neaten the edges up, and then trace them VERY carefully on the body you want to repair. Make your cuts undersized on the receiving body, and slowly file to fit your patch panel exactly. I agree that using liquid glue or the combo you've mentioned is better than using CA for the initial placement. Once you get some practice doing these splices, you can pretty well gauge how much your seam edge will "melt'in" when you glue it, and you can get just a little molten plastic squeeze-out as you put everything together. Be sure to let it dry COMPLETELY (and be sure to check your alignment carefully before it sets up; the glued joints like that become quite strong). I also often use plastic strip "guides" on the back sides of joints to get panels aligned, but I also usually remove them after the splice is completely set-up. Even when splicing styrene panels in, I usually use fine fiberglass on the back of the splice for strength. Running a bead of toughened CA (like Loctite Ultra Gel) along the outside of the seam has worked well for me too. If you fit your parts closely enough, you may not need any additional filler. But if you DO need filler, I'd tend to use a 2-part polyester like Bondo Professional Glazing Putty (avaliable in small packages, cheap) The one-part putties like Squadron shrink (in my experience) and eventually, you'll see a seam ghosting through your paint.

I would absolutely positively recommend at least 30 minute epoxy and fine RC model plane glass cloth. Definitely stronger than glass and CA, or straight resin. I frequently reinforce seams with the stuff, and it's just about bulletproof.

Yup, a chisel-tip X-acto and some fine motor control, and you got it. Still a PITA.

Thanks for dredging this one up, gennelmen. Since last September I haven't had much modeling time at all. Real-life has been, as they say, too much with me. But I DID find a resin kit of this experimental prototype OHC Hemi at the recent NNL South event, and it's bumped the Phoenix to the first in line...when I get some more free time.

McKendree Spring, the first album. 40+ years later, it still means too much to me. '69 acoustic. Anybody remember Fairport Convention? British late '60s, '70s electric folk rock, they sometimes sound a little like early Airplane... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMrW46qP4mw

The GMC 302 cubic inch inline 6 was similar to Chevrolet 6-cyl. engines of the period, and was built between 1952 and 1960, if I recall correctly. Though the 302 block is taller and probably longer, in general the Chevy sixes available in 1/24 in the Monogram '53 Corvette kit (a Chevy 235) and the Monogram '53 Chevy kit look much like a 302, and should be a good starting point.

To swap a unibody shell on to another unibody chassis takes fabrication and engineering skills FAR beyond the abilities of most shops. I've seen a couple of attempts that were scary hack jobs under the shiny paint. Yours looks great though. Sure like to know the shop that did the job.

Forgot I had a Goya flat-top mahogany steel string acoustic back in the '60s. Beautiful guitar, but I never got much past playing a bunch of chords. And my fingers were a little too short for the width of the neck.

Exactly. It's a Google search instruction, not a web address, and has to be placed in the Google search box to work. An alternative is to open www.google.com, and place the site:modelcarsmag.com whatever term in the big Google search box there in the center of the screen... You're not going to the Model Cars Magazine site with this search instruction (which your browser thinks you want to do if you put the term in the site url window, and it doesn't recognize "site" as a valid prefix). What you're doing is instructing Google to search the modelcarsmag site for entries relevant to your search terms.

I used to play trumpet but lost my chops about 15 years back. Looked into a reed mouthpiece but never followed through. Sang and played a little bass with a couple high-school bands. Always wanted to play keyboards, bought a teach-yourself rig for the computer as a self-gift for this Christmas. Got an Irish tin whistle and a harmonica too.

I've been experimenting using frisket film for masking, cutting it into perfectly circular masks with a cutter tip in a compass. Rattle-can white vinyl spray made for car interiors works great on soft tires. I've also had decent results using an acrylic gesso and a good quality paint brush, putting a cut down wheel or wheel back in the tire, with an axle of some sort to slowly rotate it with a rechargeable drill. Gesso has very good coverage, will dry on vinyl tires (enamel will stay sticky) and dries to a flat finish. It takes some experimenting to get it thinned just right, but when you hit it (if you use a good, soft camel hair brush) the brush strokes will flow out as it dries, and you can control the edges of the whitewall quite well. All of that is not entirely easy though, which is why I've been working on the masking / spraying technique.

Sacre bleu . Je ai oublié que "frog rods" pourraient ne pas être politiquement correct .

A lot of you may already know this guy's work. If you don't, you should. Click here...http://www.garycampesi.com/concept-drawings-2/

"Superleggera" refers to the construction of the coachwork using thin-gauge alloy panels over a framework of small diameter steel tubing for support. "Lightweight" in this case refers to a particular variant of the DB4...with a lighter chassis intended for competition and bodied primarily by Zagato with, I believe, a chassis number suffix of "L" .

This is really great. An old Aston, on narrow tires, handily eats the lunches of several MUCH newer and "faster", more "technologically advanced" cars (on wide modern tires) at Donnington. Porsches, Ferraris, etc. Love it.

I have some earlier versions of this kit that don't look so badly proportioned, in large part because of smaller tires. It makes a difference. I also tend to think there's possibly some odd distortion and foreshortening going on with the camera lens here. All in all though, a nice job, especially considering what there was to work with.

I was just about ready to put the head back on the PT Cruiser from hell. Doing a final clean up of the cylinder bores, and noticed some vertical scoring of the bores on # 2 and 3. Looks like she may have stuck rings...or at least may have had at one time. Not too surprising, as it's been overheated a lot by a woman driver who doesn't seem able to grasp the concept that the little temperature gauge being pegged means STOP NOW, not "drive to the next convenient place".

Speaking of downpours, I was pretty well pleased that I seem to have beaten (at least temporarily) the roof leak in the shop. Was coming in over the mill and compressor. Not recommended for extended tool life.

Part of what I do for a living these days involves chopping 1:1 vehicles. As noted, planning up front is extremely important. Though windshields are made from laminated glass that's fairly easily cut, it's not uncommon at all to go through several windshields when doing a chop on a significantly curved piece. When you chop a top, usually the width of the top and bottom of the glass opening stay the same, but of course the distance between the top and bottom edges changes, This changes the angle of the edge of the opening to the top and bottom. Laminated glass will bend somewhat, but again, it's not at all uncommon to be almost home and to hear a "pop" and watch a break spread across your expensive cut windshield. It's the change in angles at the sides that makes the problem on a deeply curved piece of glass like you find on the mid-'50s Chevy truck. And though the curve here is in only one plane, not "compound", it's still somewhat difficult. Stock... Chopped... If you do a radical chop and try to take all the meat out of the glass on the bottom, it won't fit well at all. The bottom of the cut windshield will be narrower along the cut edge than the lower edge of the opening for it, and a "pop" is almost guaranteed when you try to get the glass to spread to fit the opening. Same goes for a model, and that's why, if you want a chop to look really good, you should just figure on making a new piece from acetate or clear styrene sheet as mentioned above. The material is easily cut to shape with scissors, can be trimmed very accurately the same way, and will happily conform to your new non-compound-curve opening. Simply make a template of the chopped opening using masking tape rough cut, put it on the flexible material, and fit, fit, fit. Large clear or tinted "pop" bottles make an excellent source of window material. In this case, the "pop" is a good thing. EDIT: Once again, plan first. We had a radical '49 Merc in the shop last year that had been chopped and painted before we got it. NO planning as to how to get a windshield in the thing had been done prior to painting, so this build that had already absorbed well over $120,000 was stalled indefinitely...the owner so disgusted and disheartened that a lot of his expensive work (done elsewhere) would have to be re-done entirely in order to get glass in it. There are "cheats" to getting a windshield to fit in a poorly chopped car, like gluing it in with urethane and splitting the gasket and gluing it on as well, but the pillars in this old Merc were so misshapen that no amount of creative engineering would solve the problems. PLAN FIRST. TEST FIT BEFORE PAINT.

Or a little V8-60...

Impressive. Very impressive.