Ace-Garageguy

Brass?? https://www.google.com/search?q=bending+small+brass+tubing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Yes, basically. You'll find it works much better to pull air through the filter than to try to push it. The filter is a resistance to flow, and trying to push air through it will just result in a "puddling" effect, with a lot of back-flow, and air coming at you from out of the booth, instead of being sucked INTO the booth, through the filter, and on out. It's also important to understand the differences in Miatatom's configuration and what you're suggesting. Tom's unit uses the filter to clean INCOMING air before if flows over the model, much like a "downdraft" 1:1 booth. Your configuration, if I understand correctly, is intended to use the filter to catch overspray and errant paint before you exhaust the air outside. REAL paint booths have filters to clean INCOMING air before it goes over the car, and also filters to clean OUTGOING, contaminated air before it's dumped back into the atmosphere.

What chaps my grumpy old fossil ass is the fact that most of these things have become elite objets d'art, and as such have become nothing more than a means to make really rich folks even richer when they get rid of them for some new toy. This car will never again be used for what it was MADE for, which is going REALLY FAST. It's also kinda sad to me that folks pay 10s of millions of dollars for paintings by guys like VanGogh, but the painter himself died penniless. Folks happily bid on and cash in on his talent, with little if any compassion for the obvious suffering of the man. Nice that Nick Mason understands and drives his cars. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7d43d73e-22f0-11e2-938d-00144feabdc0.html#slide0

Hmmmm....getting the windows out if you used a solvent-type glue is just about impossible without damage. That's one reason a lot of guys use other kinds of glue for clear parts. All is not lost however, as the windows are all either pretty much flat, or single-curvature (not compound curves). That means you can make replacements from clear styrene or acetate relatively easily. Far as stripping paint goes, I prefer EasyOff oven cleaner, but there are lots of options depending on the type of paint you used. Try doing a search. This topic has been discussed endlessly. Go to Google in a separate browser window, type in site:modelcarsmag.com, a space, and the the topic you're looking for. Example: site:modelcarsmag.com alclad

Running a bilge blower is probably a good idea, as the electrical components should be "ignition protected" to prevent sparking and causing the explosion that they are installed to avert, and the units are built to withstand over-heating and corrosion. BUT, beware some bargain-basement Chinese fans that aren't REALLY built to any kind of standard, and are just pretend-labeled "bilge blower". Also make sure your 12V power supply delivers sufficient amperage to run the motor without overheating. While it's unlikely that you'll ever get sufficient concentration of vapors to ignite in your exhaust hose, I've seen 1:1 paint booth fires (started by a spark in the exhaust ducting) that ended up destroying the entire shop and all the cars inside. I would also put your blower as close to the outer end of your hose as you can. It's been my experience that these things work better sucking rather than blowing.

I always liked the Coffin...especially the cantilevered-roof and the overall lines. Lately though, and unfortunately I suppose, the face has started to remind me of this...

Interesting, but I've NEVER had an ignition lock problem , on many MANY vehicles over the years, and I've ALWAYS had way too many things on my keychain. Shop and home keys, multiple toolbox keys, multiple CAR keys on the same chain, small flashlight, storage lockup keys, etc. etc. No, it's not probably the smartest thing to do, but it IS convenient to have ALL the keys to everything on one big ring. Like I said, never a problem with LOTS of older vehicles from Japanese, American and European manufacturers. Never. Ever. An ignition lock that's sufficiently robustly designed just IS NOT going to wimp out because of too many keys. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- People tend to carry too many things on their keychains. It's reality, and car designers are supposed to design cars for real-life conditions. It strikes me as illogical that people can bash Ford for failing to design fuel-tank protection that can withstand 60 to 100mph rear-end collisions, which ALMOST NEVER HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE, but they can let wimpy ignition locks slide, when it's common knowledge that MANY MANY keychains are "too heavy".

jwrass has it down, so try to interpret what he's said...it's all sound procedural advice. A couple of things to emphasize...as stated, candy top-coats are only tinted clear. It's EXTREMELY important to watch your number of coats and overlaps of the spray pattern to insure you'll get even color. Any runs or buildup of candy on edges will be much darker than the surrounding area, so practice is a must to get good results. Candy is about the most technically demanding paint job you can do, but don't let that stop you. Work carefully, and PRACTICE on a spare model body BEFORE you shoot the one you care about. You may have to strip your practice body and try it over a couple of times, but the value of practice and the experience you'll get can't be overstated. You need a good smooth base to work over too. Any imperfections in your base will show through your tinted topcoat, so make an effort to get as perfect-as-possible uniformity of metallic flakes in your final base coat. (Again, as stated, bases are typically metallic silver or gold, though you can experiment with others to get unusual and interesting results). Using a white primer for your final primer coat will make your color a little brighter than if you shot it over gray, or something darker. Use good overall prep and primering techniques, and get your bodywork as perfect as you can. Candy tends to emphasize flaws. Good luck, and remember, its fun to challenge yourself and develop new skills.

Wow. Beautiful work. Wow wow wow.

Then if there's no personal accountability, there's something VERY wrong with the corporate organization. This is one reason why I have so little respect for corporate BS excuse making and CYA. All my own life, as a line mechanic, a racing mechanic, an aircraft mechanic, an engineering consultant, a shop manager, a shop owner, and a custom fabricator / machinist, MY ASS IS ON THE LINE FOR EVERYTHING I DO. Period. Besides the fact that I'm driven to do a good job, WHATEVER I do, being held PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN MISTAKES tends to make me a little more careful. I'm sure all these clowns make a lot more dough than I do, too. Maybe a little more personal accountability and a little less hiding in the herd would be a good thing, ya' think ??

Almost exactly what you'd have to do for a real one. Different or modified engine and trans mounts; check for exhaust clearance and buy or build headers; check for firewall clearance and modify as necessary; check for the location of the water hoses on the kit radiator and modify as necessary; shorten or lengthen the driveshaft as necessary. If your new engine will run a blower or a tunnel-ram style induction, you may have to modify the hood to clear it. If you swap in a large, wide engine like a Mopar Hemi, you may have to modify the inner fenders for clearance. Etc.

I've had similar problems trying to download their products from time to time, and they usually seem to get them de-bugged eventually. I've also asked myself exactly the same question...why would anyone want to pay for even more computer problems? I currently have some kind of conflict between Flashplayer and Firefox that limits full functionality, and I just haven't taken the time to resolve it yet.

To vastly oversimplify, many colors and types of paint will polish up beautifully with no clearcoat, if they're sufficiently dry. Enamels generally take longer to accept a polish. There are SOME paints that WON'T look good polished without clear. In my experience, it's the metallics and pearls (the ones with little flakes of sparklies in them) that usually cause problems. Some of these colors will become blotchy and uneven as you try to wetsand and polish them, because the little flakes are uncovered unevenly during the process. The only way to be certain you avoid this problem is to spray a test section of other plastic as you paint your model, and test the effects of sanding / polishing on the particular paint...BEFORE you go on to sand and polish the model. Once you've buggered the surface of a metallic paint, the ONLY way to correct it is to shoot more paint to even out the flake again, and then to clearcoat BEFORE you attempt to sand and polish. There are also some paints like Testors basecoat-clearcoat formulations that, just like in real life, are DESIGNED to be clearcoated. The basecoats alone will produce a flat or semi-gloss surface (sometimes useful for interior or other parts) and will polish up a little, but are intended to be cleared to get the full depth of color and gloss.

Good looking build of that less-than-stellar kit. Great blue too. Looks like a fine-grained pearl. Please, oh please, tell me what the number is...

Is anybody else getting the promotions for Thai girls, live chat, etc., up in the right hand corner of some pages of this site? If not, I'm flattered that googleads or whatever thinks enough of my recent low success rate with women to send me some help. If everyone else IS getting it...hmmm. Maybe the ad should only appear in the "off topic" section, eh?

Yes. Often.

My momma taught me to look both ways before crossing the street and to let the cars have the right of way. She also taught me to pay attention to my surroundings in general. I guess nobody thought of THAT recently.

"@jwrass, "diameters were fixed based on the manifold you had". What would determine the manifold size to begin with? Would the manifold size be according to the intake size of the head, or of the power that a racer was looking to get? Was there back then such a choice of sizing? " -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you bought an F.I. manifold from Hilborn (or Kinsler or Enderle, other builders of similar systems and components that ran on Hilborn's principles), if you got a manifold for a smallblock-Chevy, you got a manifold designed by Hilborn to work with smallblock Chevy ports, etc. There were often a couple of different configurations available for a particular engine, but I don't personally recall having any "options" on intake-runner or injector-body diameter. Obviously, a 392 Hemi is going to have much larger ports than a 283 Chevy, so the injector bodies and velocity stacks would be sized accordingly. jwrass is spot-on about tuning the old systems. Having a "feel" for tuning was a lot more fun than having a black-box to play with...it just isn't as fast. Do some image searches for the old MFI systems, and you'll find many many photos that you can obtain correct in-scale dimensions from if you take time to figure out how to interpret them. Here's a little more scientific info on the theory of "ram tuning". It's relevent to both intake port-runner length, and to "velocity stack" or "ram tube" length... Visualize the intake cycle of the engine as air flowing down the velocity-stack, through the injector body and intake manifold runner, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder. Everything is fine and dandy until the intake valve shuts. Here is where the concept of inertia becomes important -- because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion. But the air can't go anywhere because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve like a chain reaction accident on the freeway. With one piece of air piling up on the next piece of air on the next on the next, the air becomes compressed. This compressed air has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold runner in the form of a pressure wave. (When it hits the open mouth of a velocity-stack, the pressure wave reverses, almost as if it had hit a solid obstruction) This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it is drawn into the engine. This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a form of "supercharging". In order to create this supercharging effect, all of the variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time. This combination of synchronized events is known as a 'resonant condition', and many variables can effect the exact necessary length of port or tube to get the desired effect at the desired RPM. There's a fair bit of math involved to make it all work, and the length of the ram-tubes only work WELL in a particular RPM range. Generally, short tubes work at high-RPM, and long tubes make more power at lower RPMs.

Hmmm...in combat, you kinda expect to die if you're any kind of realist, or you shouldn't be there. Not so much an expectation of death when you get in your car, because of sloppy engineering, compounded by sloppy record keeping and blatant cover-ups...at least in my experience.

Go Fujimi, or the Revell re-issues of the Fujimi kits as Rob mentioned. The bodies are well proportioned, but there are differences in bodywork through the years, and several of the Fujimi kits reflect these differences. Do your homework if you have a particular "look" you're after, as the differences are subtle but obvious. The IMC kits Rob mentioned have some odd proportions and are also more challenging because of all the extra detail and opening doors, but the extra detail and doors are NOT done particularly well. There's also AMT and Union reboxed IMC kits, and an old Aurora (reissued as Revell/Monogram) Ford GT with a drooping-pointy nose and wire wheels. The LS/Arii kit is so bad it's not even worth mentioning...proportions all wrong. If you want to make a full-detail car from the Fujimi kits, trans-kits are available, or you can swap in smallblock or big-block Ford engines if you like modifications and some scratch-building. Here's a recent thread on this exact topic. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=67630

So what IS appropriate? Just to say "oops, my bad", while smiling a cute little boy smile? Somehow, if someone I loved was one of the "statistically insignificant" deaths, "oops" wouldn't quite cut it.

Don't think of it as horse crapp on the trail...think of it as free fertilizer conveniently delivered almost to your door.

The Y-block engine in the '57 Ford kit has approximately the same exhaust-port spacing as the smallblock Chebby, so that opens up your choices considerably...though there are no "contemporary" headers made specifically for the Y in kit form, far as I know. One thing about the Y-block though... because of the location of the spark plugs almost directly under the ports, many headers for these engines in reality tend to go up and back to give access. If you do a google image search of "Ford y-block headers", and compare the pix to an image search of "smallblock Chevy headers" you should get some ideas of what you can get away with to look accurate. A lot will depend on whether you want to do fenderwell-style gasser headers, or something more streetable that will fit inside the stock aprons, but any kits that have 265 through 350 smallblock-based Chevy engines (not LS) are possible donors.

Great paint and color choices, and I like the slightly-weathered leather look, and the just-beginning-to-rust exhaust. I sometimes forget how good looking these cars really were, and seeing one built so nicely stock is a good reminder. Nice job.

But it's more pervasive and runs deeper than just gadgets and gizmos. I first noticed many years ago (LONG before cars became rolling entertainment and communications centers) that Mercedes would use 15 tiny little bolts and nuts, plus various clips and brackets, and hide them all so they were almost impossible to get to...when two or three larger bolts, properly located for easy access, would have done exactly the same job. Mercedes engineers seemed to all be drawn from a genetic offshoot of the human species that obsessed in making things completely and unnecessarily complicated just for the sake of complication. This mindset has spread like a disease through almost every manufacturing industry...even into software...so much so that to me, it's a REAL source of pleasure when I encounter a well-designed, well-thought-out, and SIMPLE part or assembly in ANYTHING. Frankly, it's HARDER to make something simple and clean that works well, so piling on meaningless detail and clutter often is the sign of mediocre or uninspired designers and engineers who really don't understand FULLY what they're doing.