Ace-Garageguy

I've shot it on some older kits (experimenting) with no ill effects, and have even shot it over Testors enamels (fully cured) without wrinkling (it is enamel). I have a couple of very sensitive plastics from recent kits. Soon as it warms up tomorrow, I'll shoot some on the softer stuff and get back to you. It's been my experience that the clear styrenes in kits are made of tougher (and more brittle) stuff than the main parts, so I'm 90% sure you'll be OK anyway.

I forgot. Duplicolor Metalcast yellow.

I got some pretty good experimental results with a yellow alcohol-smelling highlighter pen, several coats.

Fitting the Ardun also let me verify that the nose (from a 1/24 Monogram Indy Kurtis) would be just the right width to allow the sides of the hood to cover the heads without blisters. The hood will be continued from the nose section all the way to the rear of the original cowl. It's mocked up here with strip styrene, and will be glassed, filled and used as a plug for a final mold of the part. The lower front louvered section of the bellypan is also almost completely fitted here (as to length), and the frame sides have been trimmed, matched, had more cleanup done. New tubular crossmembers have been fitted, nice and square, to replace the originals.

Evergreen or Plastruct sheet and strip styrene would be my first choice. http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/ http://www.plastruct.com/

The mocked-up Ardun and the semi-fitted center pan allowed me to fit the engine in the chassis, and make sure Lefty could actually drive the thing. Lefty keeps my hot-rod and race-car builds honest. He's an old 1/24 figure, so he would be a pretty big guy in 1/25. If he can fit in the car, most regular humans could. With that much figured out, I can see how much of a chunk of the louvered sections I'll need to do the forward pans. Though I have a straight axle in the mockup, I'll be using a dropped tube unit from a Revell '32 Ford. Dropped tube axles were in use on track cars of the period, though not yet commonly seen on street rods. 4-links were also in use on more advanced track cars (I had thought I'd seen a 4-link front setup on track car in a 1957 movie, and my research turned up photos as far back as '47) but again, they weren't common on the street (until Pete and Jake's). Some careful measuring gave me the amount of drop I'd need on the suicide-style front-axle mount (above the top of the frame rails). The zeed frame, stripped, some of the klugely crossmember stuff removed, and new rough-cut outside rails to reinforce old breaks, the zee, and just to clean it up some...

Yeah, pretty much. Get some junk that looks like it might work, and hack it all together...hopefully into a clean-looking, fast car.

This old Fiat Topolino g-bomb is giving up it's center bellypan for the project... ...and an original Ala Kart bomb will supply the louvered sections for the forward pans. Because the white '29 shell is damaged, I'm fitting the center bellypan to a relatively clean and intact '29 shell. That way, the repops of the pan will fit un-damaged bodies.

Thank you, sir. So far, it's the most fun I've had in a long time, and it's moving along pretty quickly. I've zeed the frame at this point (prior to stripping the paint) and have been able to remove the body shell from the fenders with minimal damage. Some fitting let me determine about where the rear axle height will have to be relative to the body shell... ...and allowed me to tack the nose in place to match the first mockup. I'll be adapting a LaSalle gearbox to the Ardun, using an adapter salvaged from this glue-coated mess from a SWC Willys kit. This is the mocked-up Ardun / LaSalle combo that I'll need to get the engine bay sized correctly.

Having very recently had the opportunity to do some extended model building for the first time in over a year, I wanted to start with something fresh to get the juices flowing. I've got a lot of builds I'll be getting back to shortly, but starting on any of them first seemed more like work than fun. I'm interested in the early years of hot-rodding, and the development of dry-lakes cars in particular. I have a late-pre-war 4-banger close to completed, a flathead-powered streamliner just starting up, a fantasy pre-war build with an Allison aircraft engine in mockup, and Thompson's Challenger One from 1959 about to get re-started...several others in planning. The hot-rod scene was changing fast after WW II ended, and I want to do several models of cars that would be representative of this rapid evolution. In 1949, the overhead-valve Detroit V8 engines were just coming online in production cars (Olds and Cadillac) and hadn't trickled down to the racers yet. Flatheads were still king, and the hottest flathead-based engine of them all was the OHV Ardun head-conversion. The look I'll be going for is something much like this, but Ardun-powered, built mostly from salvaged junk (like a real one would have been) and influenced by the track cars of the period. The chassis will be salvaged from this gluebomb '32 Ford (NOT a '32 chassis, but something of unknown origin)... and the body will come from this gluey '29 (apparently a refugee from the original AlaKart / '29 Ford double kit, judging from the decals)... The chassis is pretty nasty... and the first mockup puts us here...

Absolutely.

Tell you what, Lee. I'll apologize for anything I have said that was interpreted as me being a butt. I'd really rather be friends with ALL you guys than have silly wordslinging contests. We can agree to disagree on some things without getting nasty, and like I said, I'll open the apologies myself. I'm NOT the only one, or even the first, to engage in childlike behavior here, but I'll be the first to try to help get back to everyone having a good time.

No pix, but just a little update. I finally pulled the trigger and sprung for 4 sets of the Parts by Parks stacks, and located a can of the right period-Pontiac-engine-blue. Shortly after the first of the year, I should also be in possession of a fresh gallon of the magic epoxy aircraft resin I use to build molds and body skins. All comments, negative or positive, entirely welcome. Anyone who might have photos of the non-blown car's guts, with the skins off (other than what's on the net), please contact me as well.

Glad to know that by your standards, you've achieved excellence in every facet of model building. And in communicating courteously. My own work has a long way to go to come up to that level (my definition of excellence, anyway).

I personally think Moebius is doing consistently excellent work. Revell does it most of the time. I'm glad so many re-issues are coming back on the market too, built to exactly the standards that were acceptable when they were new. In those cases, good enough is indeed good enough. NONE of my remarks were ever intended to be attacks on or severe criticisms of any individual or company, and I too appreciate Mr. Metzner taking the time to explain the process his company uses to get such fine models to us.

I do it on a daily basis at work, and all you have to do is look around on here to see the quality of my modeling. I've NEVER claimed to be any more than competent as a modeler in some areas, and freely admit to lacking skills in other areas. And I'm never entirely satisfied or complacent with ANY of my work. There's always room for improvement, and recognizing this and acting on it makes the next piece of work just a little better. This is the definition of "pursuit of excellence". My builds often get shelved indefinitely because, rather than just throwing some crapp together and expecting praise, I take the time necessary to develop my skills to the point of being able to achieve my vision. Notice, I do NOT make excuses for doing mediocre work. If I can't do something that's up to the level I expect of myself, I work on my skills until I can.

No sir, you try to force contradictions that aren't there. As I wrote to you in a PM, the point of which you continue to fail to grasp: I expect "people ALL do the best they can, to whatever level of talent they're blessed with. I don't expect everyone to be gifted in the same areas to the same degree. What I DO expect is that the man whose innate ability limits him to sweeping the floor does it to the best of his ability, and not leave piles of dirt while making excuses about the broom being too heavy, too short, or not exactly like the broom he's used to using."

Michelangelo's "Pieta" comes to mind.

There's a huge difference between someone thinking they're "perfect" (which no one here has ever claimed or even alluded to) and in striving for excellence in what they do, on a daily basis. It is NOT a difficult distinction to make, but apparently is impossible for those of you who are content to slide through life doing just barely good enough, and making excuses for your second-rate performances. But people who are content with average have always attacked people who aren't, so why should this little microcosm of humanity be any different? I sincerely hope you'll enjoy your mediocrity, because with that attitude, that's all you'll ever achieve. If "good enough" is always good enough for you, that's fine with me. It's NOT good enough for some of us.

JB's post hit one relevance nail pretty squarely on the head, I'd say.

Hey rocket scientist...I didn't type it...it was in a graphic I simply re-posted. Musta been miscommunication with the Chinese subcontractor. And I seem to be one of the few on here who routinely do use spellcheck. Once again, my point was missed entirely. Let's try one more time, OK kiddies? Repeat after me...

Ain't that just a bidge. Like you say...

Already been there, got the T-shirt. Hasn't stopped me yet, though.