Ace-Garageguy

Have you seen the fairly recent Dan Webb / Craig Naff hot-rod version?

What Pete said hits it exactly. And a world market has nothing to do with making second or third rate crappy tools that get marked up a dozen times and are finally pawned off on folks who don't know any better. It doesn't matter where a tool is made. It DOES matter HOW it's made, at least to those of us who actually know HOW to use tools.

Yes please. Love those things, and there's bunches of versions possible too. Or at the very least, a pickup version of that body style in the beginning, leading into a stretch cab and frame based on the first gen tooling maybe? I'd just really like to have the option of building the pickup with correct, detailed guts under it.

Yes, thanks.

Pico Elgin of the ACME club here designed and had this one 3D-printed by Shapeways in 1/24 scale. It may be available there, but it's the body only. The frame, wheels, radiator, etc. were all scratched by Pico.

Fascinating conversion to a representation of a product of one of the last American coachbuilders. Very nice work. For those who don't know, H&E also built stretch limos (including JFK's), armored and otherwise, and did two of the Continental MkII convertibles for Ford.

It wouldn't, but with really intense care in setting up the suspension and getting the wheel offsets EXACTLY right, plus shaving the lips from inside the wheel openings and possibly heavily modifying the inner wheel housings, it's possible to get ALMOST that much tight fit between the arches and the tires and still be able to drive the car in the real world. The rear suspension only has to go up and down, so depending on the arc described by the movement of the top of the tire during bump, it's possible to get something pretty close to the model in the rear. The front is the real tricky part, obviously, because the tire has to steer as well as move up and down to accommodate the suspension movement. The extreme camber on this setup is often a cheat, with the top of the tire leaned inwards just enough to actually clear the fender during movement. I've seen a few cars at shows that i thought couldn't possibly be driven because the fit was SO tight, but they fired up and cruised away...though usually slowly and carefully. This is the reason I'm not a fan of the style, though I like the low low look. All that excess negative camber ruins handling...which is one of the big things an Aston Martin is all about...and practical drivablilty is sacrificed just to get a static look. The idea that if a little negative camber is good, more must be better is just wrong, and comes from endless, mindless repetition of incorrect "knowledge" of vehicle dynamics. Obviously also, this much negative camber will wear all the rubber off of the inside edge of a tire in short order, which is a huge waste of money...again, just to get a fashionable look while the car is sitting still. All that said, I'm NOT criticizing the model. I think it looks great, and it's closer than most "stanced" models to representing what IS possible in the real world.

Hard to beat a BRG Aston, any year, any style. This particular Aston is so sexy, clean and well integrated in its styling, I think it's one of the most perfect cars ever built. Though I'm usually not a fan of the "stanced" style with its extreme handling- and tire-destroying negative camber, I actually kinda like this one because it's not TOO extreme, and the factory wheel arches are pulled out just enough to work very well with the lowered-and-cambered look. Nice job.

Very clean, very nice, good colors for it. I think this is becoming one of my all-time favorite kits. And you guys who do such fine BMF work are making me NEED to learn the skill.

Yeah, and you could even put the McLaren Chevy engine in the back seat. Make a mid-engined Toronado...sorta like the "Hemi Under Glass", or half of a Hurst Hairy Olds.

?? Purple car in the photo is an Oldsmobile Toronado., about '66 I'd say.

Beautifully sculpted by someone with much talent and skill.

Unless you're familiar with some metal forming and joining techniques, fabbing your tank will be easier and more forgiving with styrene. If you have an ACCURATE cardstock mockup, just follow it carefully and if the plastic splits on the scribes (which it MAY, depending on how deeply you scribe it), just glue it back together with LIQUID cement. It will set up quick enough to handle and stay together, and still be pliable enough to adjust the rest of your pieces as you go. And since you're working in 1/8 scale, you may find it considerably easier to use a much thicker styrene sheet than .040". CA glue with baking soda added is used as a filler by some folks, but the baking soda really adds no strength. I mean...it's baking soda. It's not a structural reinforcement like glass fibers. Once you get all your pieces cemented together and symmetrical, let the plastic cement harden up. Then add a bead of toughened Loctite superglue to the seams for reinforcement. I've used this technique successfully for scratch-building many things.

I think a Ferrari V12-powered Toronado would be just right. Chop that top a little and make up some 18 or 20 inch rims with the Toronado centers...yeah baby.

Though the build quality of many Ferraris was all over the board (I once had a 308-based car in the shop that had factory welds on the windshield frame structure that looked like they were done by drunk monkeys), a 1" variation in door length sounds a little extreme. My guess is that there had been crash-damage somewhere that was repaired by sub-human "experts". By far, the most awful things I've seen on any exotics were the result of "repairs". I DID have a Mangusta in the shop once that DID have a short door on the driver's side. Then I noticed the windshield pillars on it weren't parallel, so badly that the gasket area had been filled up with black silicone. It turned out that it had been hit HARD in the left-front wing, and never actually straightened structurally. When the morons put new parts on it, they had to cut and fit. Pathetic. That said, your remark about Luigi and Guido rings entirely true.

Man, that engine-internals shot is just plain sexy. Love that billet con rod.

That's why I suggested using the complete chassis from the Daytona, instead of getting into all the fiddly mess of converting a US chassis. Also, making a "solid axle" out of a "transaxle" would in reality create something with MASSIVE unsprung weight. Not good at all in a real car. Using the rear chassis of something US that already has IRS, like a Mustang variant or a recent Mopar product would allow the transaxle to be used in place of the original diff, but it's a LOT more work than just using a complete front-engined Ferrari donor chassis and simply lengthening it. The recent Revell Ferrari 575 Superamerica is front-engined, appears to have a full-detail chassis, and is available on ebay currently for about $18 plus $7 shipping. The Revell Ferrari 612, also front-engined, appears to have a full-detail chassis as well, and is available for similar money. 612 chassis tree with suspension. Transaxle at upper left.

And yes, that's entirely feasible. The real Porsche 944, for instance, uses a transaxle designed originally to be mounted directly to an engine, and places it in the rear of the car, connected by a driveshaft running in a torque tube. I'm currently designing a 1:1 hot-rod that uses a Datsun 240Z engine in front, and the Porsche 944 Turbo gearbox in the rear of the car. All it requires is careful measuring and some custom machine work in full scale. In a model, it only requires an understanding of the function of the components to get something that COULD work in reality.

Many front-engined Ferraris already have a rear-mounted gearbox and diff ("transaxle") so you'd be ahead of the game by starting with something that's laid out like you want in the first place. That, of course, avoids much scale engineering. For instance, i have a full-detail Italeri Ferrari 365 GTB Daytona coupe on the shelf, with a very nice chassis that would be an easy stretch to accommodate a big American body shell. I'm sure there are many modelers on here who have other recommendations.

Look at Art Anderson's recent thread on doing a Merc woody. His colors are about the best I've ever seen, and he explains the process. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=86997&hl=+mercury%20+woody

Beautiful, both.

True enough, but it helps to avoid the "hair-part" look a lot of models end up with, having 4 wires, all the same length, on each side of the distributor. And it's just another detail that SOME folks like to get right in the pursuit of realism. Kinda like throttle-return springs that don't actually DO anything. For every additional detail, or level of detail, you could conceivably say "what good does it do?" What good does it do to put plug wires on a model, at all? For that matter, what good does it do to even put an engine in a model? It won't run anyway. And so, some folks are content to build 'curbsides" with no internal guts. Each builder has his own definition of 'enough accuracy'.

Long-term, long-delayed project, soon to be rebooted.

Do you mean PLYMOUTH Belvedere? No such thing as a "Pontiac Belvedere". And no, the AMT Plymouth Belvedere kit does not come with dual carbs.

Wow Bernard...I love the early short-wheelbase blown dragsters, and yours is absolutely period-perfect. Great looking model.