Ace-Garageguy

My most sincere congratulations, and commendations for appreciating someone who "gets" you and even shares your interests. I've often wondered if what you have was possible. Glad to know that somewhere on Earth, it is.

The age of the digital camera has made me much more aware of my own failures, mistakes and omissions, and it's also made me notice things on other builders' models that I might not even see in real life. I find a lot of otherwise nicely-built models with glaring errors in panel fit. Making hoods, grilles, doors, decklids, etc. actually FIT the openings they're in, and fit with even gaps to the adjacent panels, well...it takes a little more effort, but it can make all the difference. It needs to be done BEFORE painting, and allowances need to be made for paint and primer thickness, etc. And bumpers should be square to the body, and even...not hanging down in front or to one side. Wheels should usually be in the CENTER of the wheel openings, even on most altered-wheelbase drag cars. I see models that have the suspension assembled apparently wrong, or the chassis in slightly the wrong place, and it places the wheels in a wonky relationship with the openings, too far to the front or the rear. It can instantly ruin an otherwise fine build. Another one that can really spoil a model is seeing a chunk taken out of a wheel rim where it was attached to the tree. It's not too hard to fix, really, even if it's chrome (an opportunity to learn to shoot Alclad, eh??)... or at least put the damaged wheel on the other side of the model, away from the camera. Sanding tire treads for realism is good, but actually LOOK at a real tire. They don't have visible mold-seams running through the middle, or shiny spots on the treads. Sand enough material off to get it to look REAL...not just a couple of swipes with sandpaper. Just one more...real engines and transmissions don't have seams running down the middle of them. After you glue these parts together and the glue is completely dry, sand the glue-seams away with 400 grit paper or finer. Primer and re-sand as necessary to get the line GONE before you paint these parts.

That much HASN'T changed since I was your age in the early 1960s. Building models was more common, but the sports-players were at the top of the pile, and everyone else was second-string. There were cliques and bullies and other kids made fun of anything that their particular peer group made fun of. The lesson: ignore idiots.

The no-texting-while-driving law is already on the books but isn't enforced here. Funny...the I-75S corridor between Marietta and Buckhead is HEAVILY loaded with State Patrol cars in the bushes or on the shoulders, and speeders are pulled over at a very high and visible rate. But I'm sure there would be even MORE opportunities for revenue-raising if unmarked patrol cars in the same corridor were actively looking for texters. Failure-to-maintain-lane and erratic driving in general, two of the primary "drunk" flags, are also rampant with texters and make them easy to spot. A campaign as aggressive as the one that got rid of most of the drunks could have quick results. It's every bit as dangerous as DUI, and it's a conscious decision to do it, while SOBER...unlike some drunk who's TOO drunk to make the adult decision not to try to get home after partying too hard. Frankly, a drunk has a better excuse for being a rolling hazard to everyone on the road with him. After all, he's ...drunk. His logic was impaired when he got behind the wheel. It's not excusable, but at least, I can understand why it happens. A texter on the other hand, is stone-cold-sober demonstrating he (or she) just DOESN'T CARE, or really IS TOO STUPID to grasp that a 3000-pound vehicle loaded with 15 gallons of gasoline travelling 70MPH is a loaded gun with no safety catch, pointed at everyone in his (or her) immediate vicinity.

And more idiot texters... No exaggeration, I had to take evasive action twice within 10 minutes on Interstate 75 just now to avoid being sideswiped by idiots texting. I get to Buckhead, and at the bottom of the off-ramp, there's one sitting oblivious to everything, texting away and holding up a line of 7 or so cars behind her. Finally she notices all the horns blowing, nails the throttle and races through the intersection, narrowly missing cars there. Then, on the surface streets on the way home, I had to swerve violently to avoid yet another ditsy bidge who was too busy looking at her tiny little screen to notice both lanes jogged right, and she kept going straight. And a little farther down the road, some numb-nutz almost runs over the flagman at a bridge construction site, and a minute later the same bozo is driving down the ONCOMING lane, and happens to look up in time to avoid a head-on. WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT that people have to stay connected every waking minute of every day? Are all these seeming-fools really working on cures for cancer and world peace, faster-than-light-travel and endless free energy, and their input is SO necessary constantly that they have to text while driving?? Somehow, I doubt it.

That about sums it up. Kinda makes you wonder how things keep working at all, and makes it a little easier to understand when they don't.

When I'm not making much money, I spend what I can on the little cars. When I'm making pretty good money, I spend on the big cars. When I'm making NO money, I just work on what I've got, with what I have on hand. It's all relative.

Yup, I remember a fella in a brandy-new Jag XJ-12 passed me on an off-ramp, a curved off-ramp with a decreasing radius no less...passed me like I was standing still (I was in my old '68 Fairlane 500) and ended up sliding it sideways into a light pole. Nice horseshoe-job on the Jag, and I don't know if he walked away or not. Smart enough to make the $$ to buy the thing, way too effing stupid to drive it.

It appears to have a clevis on one end, as well as a bleed fitting on top. Because of those indications, and its location between the gearbox and engine, I'd tend to suspect it MAY be the clutch slave-cylinder. PS. In case you haven't seen it, here's a build thread on the Tamiya 1/24 kit. There's a reference book early in the thread that might give you some more pix. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/72670-tamiya-jaguar-xjr-9lm-124/

I think it would be lovely, but maintaining such tight tolerances as possible with "digital-control" I personally see as overkill. I can adapt and paint in any conditions, but 30-60% humidity and 60-80deg F. to me is ideal. Getting that window on demand would make me happy. But then, I have a dislike of a lot of "digital control" on most machines these days, because it's usually impossible to repair if the manufacturer doesn't support it for whatever reason, and it's usually far more capable than the end user. How many folks ever REALLY learned to program the VCR to take advantage of everything it could do?

In my experience, TWO people behaving as inconsiderate jerks rarely accomplish anything. ONE person needs to rise above the rudeness, and behave as an adult, in order to make things better.

Yes, absolutely excellent points all. And consider the probably millions of gallons of fuel wasted and fumes spewed into the atmosphere by mindless stoplights that are on a fixed cycle, and take no consideration that there are NO cars waiting to get across an intersection, but needlessly stop traffic anyway. I see this a LOT, and the relative cheapness of intelligent systems to observe and adjust traffic-light cycles based on ...traffic...should make this a relatively easy fix.

Part of the problem is the type and size of the dust. In painting aircraft in the desert where I worked, the dust was very sharp and hard...not at all like the wimpy, soft East-coast dust that sands and polishes out, usually, with no trace. The hard-grit in the desert can attach itself to your sandpaper and make a series of deep scratches, almost before you know it.

Boy, do we agree on THAT one !!

Hmm...rule says right-on-red is legal. YOU decide to IMPEDE someone who'd like to get where he's going, because YOU define him as "annoyingly impatient". See the hypocrisy there?

A good friend of mine paints full-scale $100,000+ sport aircraft in the desert (Kingman, Az., in the middle of a large hangar) and the wet-floor, painting in early morning, less-wind method works well for him. There's NO dust in his finished paint, but it ALWAYS requires wet-sanding / buffing. There's an almost constant wind out of the south. I've painted a couple of projects there myself.

Thing is, to build a REAL "climate-controlled" booth, you'd need a sealed "glove-box" style enclosure, with a fairly high-volume temperature-regulated air supply coming from something like a simple room air-conditioner. Kinda overkill for models, but it would be nice.

To run your two, 12-volt, 4-amp fans simultaneously, you'll need 8 amps available from your 12-volt power source, and put a 6 amp fuse on the hot side of EACH fan. I tend to over-engineer, as running with excess capacity sometimes keeps things from overheating and melting. One simple rule-of-thumb is that total circuit load should be no more than 80% of circuit capacity. Based on that simple assumption, 10 amps on your power supply should be fine, but more amperage available is always better IMHO. Run 14-gage wire to your fans from your power supply, and you should be OK. The wire is on the heavy side for what is done these days, but heavier wire is like running a slightly bigger water pipe or hose...it doesn't hurt anything, and it lets all the electrons squeeze through it easily. A computer fan, again IMHO, doesn't really move enough air fast enough. Two bilge-blowers may be more that you need, however. What is the CFM rating of your proposed fans??

"Dead Skunk" song

And I thought they all lived in Atlanta... We have right-on-red too, but apparently it means "only if you're not texting, screaming into the cell phone with much arm waving, shouting over the seat at the kids in back, talking to the neighbor in the car next to you, trying to haggle with a hooker, etc."

Not really. Yes, for enough $$ you could get a high-res scan and a set of high-res parts printed, but the cost would be prohibitive. The accuracy you would need isn't readily available to the small-time consumer yet, though it does exist in industry.

There's a lot of truth in that, and... Many MANY people, and young people in particular (yes, I can remember that far back) seem to have a desperate need to fit in with their peers. It becomes a herd thing, and everybody wants to be trying to do what everybody else is doing, and making fun of those who do something different. But TRYING to be "cool" is the guaranteed absolutely best way to be not-cool. If you're interested in a creative and technically demanding hobby like modeling, you're already ahead of the game. You will be someone who actually DOES things, as opposed to some boring me-too twit who tries to follow all the latest trends and goes along to get along. Know and follow your own head, your own likes and dislikes, your own mind, your own taste in everything, even your own ethics and moral code., and you will be that rarest of all things these days...an individual.

Everything old is new again. When I was a wee boy, one very popular topic was "the dang nooculur bombs is changing the dang weather!!!" And another one, folks. When I was a wee boy, I remember a LOT of folks in sunny southern Florida had concrete front yards, painted green.

Besides the old Revell parts-pack version, you might have a look at the equally ancient AMT parts pack version. It's very clean and crisp, accurately scaled, and It also comes with an aftermarket, deep-sump pan and a single 4-bbl manifold. It includes a nice gearbox adapter, too. (The included gearbox is an old in-out style, though the parts-pack the Chevy comes in includes a Borg Warner T-10, on the Chrysler engine tree.) I think if I were building a "period" car, I'd go with the Revell engine, but if I were building a current-tech, alloy-headed smallblock-powered drag car, I'd go with the AMT engine.

Recently? Revell's Rat Roaster. Though it's a nice enough kit, there's just not much in the box. I was used to getting a lot of stuff in Revell's '32 ford kits, especially the 5-window, and the low parts-count in the RR was a big disappointment.