Ace-Garageguy

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.

Wow...that little '27 track-nose job is just about perfect. Holy cow. Going to be stellar in 1/8.

Maybe in part because the stock engine will get you from 0 to 50 in just a tick under 40 seconds, and flat out is less than 60 MPH.

Wouldn't THAT make a cool little shop truck with a 4-cylinder Ecoboost engine and a six speed gearbox swapped in ? A natural for an old Jag IRS unit too.

Beautiful models. Good info.

This is one of those things that comes down to "how bad do you want to do it?" Depending on your photo editing capabilities, you could take a straight on shot, raise the contrast to stark black, and reduce it to the size you need. Again, depending on your printer's resolution, you could print it on clear decal film in black or an additive-color gray, but like the man said, no white. That could look pretty good on a lightish color car. Or, you could go to all the trouble to make your own PE parts. Plenty of reference material out there on doing it. Here's a little kid demonstrating making PE circuit boards. Same technique can work for PE parts too. Fun with modeling !!

Oh yeah...some colors that will have you saying "man, I've got to build something just to paint it THAT color !!". Many of the pearls have very small, more scale-correct flakes than Testors metallics and some Duplicolor products, too.

My furry companion, reminding me that if I don't get back to work on this, I won't be able to drive it. The cat's been with me for about 12 years, was a stray that wandered in after being dumped in the neighborhood, moved in after a couple of cans of tuna. She just recovered from a bad infection that required surgery and almost killed her. Some of my non-"pet-people" acquaintances just couldn't understand why I'd spend money on a "free" "stray" cat. She's an indoor-outdoor creature, still gets in fights (which is where she got the infection) and looks forlornly out the window if I keep her inside for her "protection". I understand her need for freedom, and her desire to have a warm, welcoming place to come back to.

Looking great, Bernard. Clean chop. nice work on the back window, LOVE the color...and thanks for the info on how you got it. Everything you're having to deal with regarding the zee and the channel job is exactly the same as building a real car. This is always one of the things I try to remind people...younger and older builders alike...you can learn a HUGE amount about real cars, how they operate, and how to modify them from building models.

My personal all-around favorite of all the cars of its genre. Great, well-balanced car as built by Chebby, lovely tight-winding engine, huge potential to be better.

Looking great. Nice work keeping all the fiddly bits straight and square. I'd completely forgotten that this wild thing was mid-engined.