Ace-Garageguy

I almost always have an idea, a pretty explicit idea, of how far I'm going to go with a particular build. When I reach that point, i quit. That said, I've stopped in the middle of quite a few builds because either my skills weren't up to the vision I had quite yet, i changed the vision as the build progressed, or I found I needed to do a lot more research for one reason on another. I certainly don't strive for anything approaching perfection, but my concept of good-enough is pretty high, so it takes a while to get there, and usually a lot of do-overs to get to the level I'll settle for.

FREE ONLINE MOLD MAKING VIDEO SERIES. http://www.freemansupply.com/video.htm NOT amateur youtube stupidity, but professionally produced REAL and CORRECT information. Produced BY A COMPANY THAT MAKES THE MATERIALS, how to do it RIGHT. The FIRST TIME.

You might consider carefully wiping your model down with 70% isopropyl alcohol before you re-commence painting. Use CLEAN, WHITE cheapo paper towels. I've had SEVERE fisheye problems after letting a lacquer-primered model sit around before painting. Contaminants from the air most probably settled on it, and could have been anything from furniture polish to pollen. Once I started ALWAYS wiping down carefully with iso (I do in now on full-scale work too), no more fisheyes.

I've been impressed favorably across the board with the quality and accuracy of Moebius' offerings. I also think it's incredibly funny that the new-improved-oh-so-much-better digital and outsourcing means of producing models is being blamed for the delays in production and poor accuracy (I assume in your competitors' products), as all of this new-improved stuff was SUPPOSED to speed and simplify production and lower costs. Interesting how that has all played out in reality, eh? NONE of the excuses or reasons cited in ANY WAY EXPLAIN 2 SCALE INCH discrepancies in roofline height, or supposedly 2 identical engines in the same scale that are 1/4 inch REAL difference in length, or an engine released in approximately 1/32 scale in a 1/25 scale kit. Small errors are quite acceptable and expected. Gross errors like I mentioned above (NOT Moebius' products, obviously) are sloppy and incompetent. I'm also fully aware of what IS and is NOT possible in working in CAD, and how long it takes to perform "corrections". Again, CAD was SUPPOSED to SPEED the development of product and streamline the correction process, and the fact that digital "drawings" can be transmitted instantly to just about anywhere on the globe, corrected in a matter of minutes or hours at most, and re-transmitted for approval (we used to have to wait for our drawing corrections and revisions to be physically mailed, AFTER they were drawn by hand and THEN turned into blueprints... if you recall) would make one wonder where, why and HOW the bottlenecks are occurring.

Man James, NICE striping. Wow.

Really like how you did the injector plumbing. Your front leaf-springs and the use of scale-correct plug wires look great too. And those MicroNitro wheels are things of real beauty.

It's an OK smallblock Chevy with a 4-speed trans. It can be built several ways and includes rams-horn exhaust manifolds, headers, and a blower setup too.

The flip-nose on yours certainly fits better than most of these that get built. Nice job with that.

The real '36 Ford hood opens like this...not easy to do with a model in 1/25 scale. One of our members built the model in this video, and if you watch, you'll see that if you fit the hood sides carefully and glue them to the hood top, you can remove the entire hood assembly to view the engine.

Well, Casey makes some of the best looking, cleanest, most defect-free parts I've ever seen, period. I make fiberglass parts that are pretty nice too.

If you look around a bit, you'll see that just about everything on the forum between Nov. 25 / 26 and yesterday is gone. Hopefully it will be recovered shortly.

Google "model railroad snow". Everything you could want to know. (That rhymes. )

If you're interested, this company (that makes a full line of the products professional tool and model builders use regularly) has produced an excellent series of FREE videos on master and mold making, including release agents, available to watch online HERE... http://www.freemansupply.com/video.htm

SiliconE. SilicoN is sand. Don's absolutely right by the way. The mold will duplicate even the TINIEST flaw on the surface, including talcum powder, and transfer that flaw to every single part you make from the mold. My own molds will have a 400-grit-sanded surface if the final sanding of the master was done with 400, a 1000-grit-sanded-surface if the final sanding was done with 1000, or mirror-polished if the master was mirror-polished. The parts made in the molds duplicate that surface as well. Baby talcum powder most likely also has some kind of skin conditioner like lanolin in it, and unknown chemical contaminants should be avoided.

Maybe all the forum posts after Nov. 25 or 26 have fallen under somebody's bench, and the cat ate them.

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.