Ace-Garageguy

Don't feel bad Scott. I lose keys, tools I was working with just moments before and entire trains of thought...all on a daily basis. Misplacing an occasional word or 2 isn't so bad. What did I just say ??

Make mine watermelon-pistachio.

That is funny.

So, how's this going to effect botox futures??

Which is the quintessential ice-cream flavor? Chocolate, vanilla or strawberry?

About the only similarity between the old Rochester units and modern FI is that they're both "fuel injection". The Rochester is entirely mechanical (somewhat similar to the Bosch CIS constant-flow systems from '73 through '94) while today's units are entirely computer-controlled, in many cases without even a mechanical link between the gas pedal and the actual throttle butterfly. Of course, a competent mechanic can work on anything he has specifications and literature on if he understands the function of the particular system or part.

Naturally, and I love that song. Then there's "409", and "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" (Superstock Dodge), "Little GTO", "Drag City", the Beach Boys "Shut Down" and "No-Go Showboat" and on and on and on. Man, I'm going to listen to this stuff on Utube....

Good question. Duplicolor makes basically 3 types of rattlecan lacquer primers. 1) SANDABLE: Gray, black, red, white. It's LOW BUILD, and dries quickly without a lot of film thickness. It's the one you want for bodies that have NO bodywork, or only very minimal sanding of mold lines, and shallow fills of sink-marks (sanded flat with 400-600 grit or finer). You can shoot 3 medium wet coats without ruining details. Shoot 2 slick coats and scrub with Comet, or block sand wet with 1000 grit or so, and you're ready for paint. 2) SCRATCH-FILLER, HIGH-BUILD, or FILLER PRIMER (it's been labeled all 3 at different times) gray, black, red, and white is a much heavier and thicker primer. It's made to fill sand scratches on real cars, and will fill 180 grit scratches on models well (but 400 grit or finer on your bodywork is better; the coarser paper you use to sand your bodywork before primer, the more the primer will tend to shrink into the scratches over time, and this is true on real cars too). You don't want to shoot an entire body with the stuff (unless it's a full-custom with no remaining molded details) because it will fill fine details as well as sanding scratches. BUT...it's excellent if used for what it's made for, which is filling sanding scratches and minor imperfections in bodywork. Be sure to let it flash off completely between coats. Sand it enough to remove any imperfections and re-prime as-necessary with either itself of the Sandable stuff. This is two coats of Scratch-Filler primer over some heavy bodywork. I'll sand it with 600 wet, and re-prime it with the Sandable stuff (NOT more high build, unless there are local areas that need more filling). This is Duplicolor Scratch-Filler on the frame, just-shot. It will shrink in and lose the sheen as it dries. 3) SELF-ETCHING is the other (third) kind of primer Duplicolor offers, and I've seen it in light green and black. It's a very thin-bodied primer with hot solvents. It MAY etch and craze plastic, so test it first. I like it for the color of the green, which is a good approximation of some recent factory E-coat primers (and SOME aircraft chromate primers) and I like the black because of its semi-flat appearance when dry. Not too flat. The nice thing about the Duplicolor lacquer primers is that you can shoot just about any topcoat paint over them...lacquer, enamel, acrylics and hot real automotive paint (if you're careful). Another example...this is Duplicolor Scratch-Filler (high build) over heavy bodywork. The top was chopped about 4 scale inches, all the chrome was removed, and the body lines were severely re-worked and blocked. It was shot wet, blocked, shot again, blocked, etc. I re-scribed the door lines between coats (should have darkened them too). Same car, which was finish-primed with Duplicolor white Sandable primer (to make the color brighter than it would have been over gray), and wet-sanded with 1500 grit. 5 coats of Testors "One-Coat" lacquer, and 3 coats of Testors "wet-look" lacquer clear. The paint has not been fully sanded and polished in this shot.

Like 'em or not, the '32 Ford "Deuce" is the A-number 1 American hot-rod icon, so my vote goes for the obvious choice.

Yup...me dumb. Oops

It took me months to move my home, 1:1 shop, office and studio, and I'm still not really unpacked or set up yet. Just kinda piddling with a few long-term projects as I get more and more tools out and sorted, but man, it's a bugger. The new place is less than half the size of the last one too, and everything is kinda on top of something else for now. Makes it hard to get any momentum up when you have to go digging for every little thing. I need to spend more time organizing, less on the web.

Yes, and the primary reason I got out of the collision repair industry, and a large part of my growing disgust with American business practices in general. The "budget" insurance companies would fight tooth and nail to nickel-and-dime us right out of any profit, forcing us to use ill-fitting aftermarket parts, or downright junkyard JUNK. Then they'd refuse to pay to fix the junk correctly (like stripping rust and bondo and 3 prior peeling paintjobs from a junkyard fender..."paint over it" they'd say) or to make the crapp aftermarket stuff actually fit. They would send poorly-trained adjusters with NO knowledge of vehicle structures, who would flat refuse to pay for damage they "couldn't see". Then we'd battle them to fix the car correctly and SAFELY, the battle would delay the repair, the customers would be screaming because their "bargain" insurance company wouldn't pay for any more rental-car time and had been told by the insurance company that WE were the hold-up. I would REFUSE to do sub-standard structural repairs, and several times cars have been pulled from my shop by cheapo insurance companies, only to be taken to hackers who did bodge (but cheaper) work, and would let hidden structural damage slide. Then, if we released a car to a client with poorly-fitting parts (you have to spend additional HOURS to get some of the junk aftermarket stuff to fit, and the insurance companies WILL NOT PAY for the extra work), of if the customer wondered why only the fender was painted and was obviously a different color from the faded-paint on the rest of the side of the car (because the insurance wouldn't pay to tint and blend the paint into adjacent panels) the customers would again be screaming to us, the insurance company, the insurance commission and anybody else who would listen. Then the major insurance companies started down the same road as the cheapos. I finally just got sick of the constant stress trying to comply with the insurance companies blind cost-cutting "policies", the customer's RIGHT to have the car returned to pre-loss condition (make it like it was BEFORE the wreck), the customer's EXPECTATION to have the car repaired correctly and quickly (and to look GOOD when they picked it up) and my own personal sense of ethical behavior when taking money for a service. But unless you're an industry insider, or you have the misfortune to be screwed royally by the insurance company you've been paying into in good faith for years, you don't get a feel of how all-pervasive the ripoffs are, all done in the name of "good business". And it's everywhere. And nobody seems to get it...at least not enough people with the power or even the interest to try to change things.

The thing about the fuel taxes is that, of course, they are fairly apportioned to road users based on actual use. More miles driven, more road use, more fuel used = more taxes paid at the pump. With the widespread use of onboard data collection technology (OBD II etc), it would be relatively easy to monitor electric vehicle usage and charge a "road use tax" based on miles traveled. Pretty easy to shut your vehicle down if you fail to pay your tax bill, too, through a system similar to OnStar. It would be tricky otherwise to add a fairly-apportioned highway tax to electricity used for charging cars, especially ones charged at home. After all, how do you separate out the power used to charge your car from the power to run your washing machine, and only tax the car part? Maybe a dedicated plug with a tax-meter attached to it?? Right now with many jurisdictions offering tax-incentives to buy alternatively-powered vehicles, it's essentially a negative tax (you know, either you don't pay or you get money back)...but that will end when enough folks have made the switch. Governments WILL get their cut. After all, that's their whole raison d'etre.

Just saw this on another post where ferrarijoe is trading away an AMT 427 Cobra. Look in the middle...FE Weber manifold. Just a thought. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=93256

Yes, that much peel will make your color coats look like hell. What kind of primer are you shooting? Coats one and 2 look really good. If there's no bodywork on your model that you need to fill with primer and re-sand to get rid of coarse scratches, you can probably get by with ONE primer coat if it's as lick as your first one. Do the toothbrush-Comet scuff (be sure to look for areas that may need blocking however) and paint. You're getting a little heavy primer buildup at this point...starting to fill the rear door line,,,so you might want to strip her again.

I'd forgotten how nice your work is. Very fine indeed.

Yeah, they ran that one into the ground here a couple of summers back after a bad hailstorm. I was about the only guy on the block who declined the "free offer"...and the neighborhood rang with the daylight-to-dawn rattle of nail guns for months afterwards.

I believe he's asking about the kit of this 1988 car, earlier an MPC kit, which was front-wheel drive 4-cylinder powered (but the kit had a V8 mystery-engine option).

Mazda 12A rotor-motor, 4 wheels, Winters quick-change rear end...

Cool. I've been thinking of hacking one of these into a Metro.

Random Los Angeles 1949 google image results...

Geez...a man who'll give up Stick-Day for his wife is some kind of generous soul indeed. I hope she truly appreciates you. I wouldn't trade getting 7 root canals for spending the day with any of the women I currently know.

If you have the kit, a photo of the V8 engine tree would be most helpful...

Another REALLY easy way to find your thread (I use it, and some of mine have been dormant for YEARS) is just google "art anderson opel admiral". First several hits are your threads here. Looking forward to seeing this beautifully done (as usual for Art) build progress. Kinda nice to be able to see the whole build in one thread without having to hunt, though.

Bill's right about the spoons being great for testing colors and helping get your technique established, especially in figuring out how far away from the subject you need to have your spray head for each type of paint. The only shortcoming with the spoons is that, in many cases, orange peel develops as successive coats are being overlapped when painting a body and a "wet edge" isn't maintained. Part of the technique you'll need to master is holding the body and rotating it (my method) or otherwise moving the spray-fan relative to the body, and getting smooth, even overlaps with each pass that melt into each other and level the adjacent pass. Painting an actual model car body is the best way to practice this, BUT...plastic soda bottles work very well as stand-ins for car bodies, for practice.