Ace-Garageguy

Great job, Harry. Now see what you can do with the unfortunate and way-too-high nose (very Opel GT-like, as Ray mentioned...)

And if they build this, I WILL have a Mustang again...

The first Mustang concept car. Obvious roots. Interesting how much of the styling made it all the way through to production.

I always kinda liked this angle on the mid-engined Mach II concept car from '67...

Only 25 or so, if memory serves. Operational from 1941 until 1960 or '61. And they were BIG.

Cool idea. Different is always good when it looks good.

Man, you do nice work! This is some of the finest scratchbuilding I've seen in smaller scales. Outstanding, and a real inspiration to watch your progress.

That's a good general answer from Greg. Part of the rest of the story is that typical "just-a-model" kits are mass produced by large machines, made of poly-styrene plastic, using a process called "injection molding", under extreme temperature (to melt the plastic) and pressure (to force the molten plastic into molds). The development of the tools to make these models may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. "Resin" kits or parts are made by hand, one at a time as Greg notes, usually by pouring a 2-part liquid plastic compound (that hardens as it cures) at room temperature, into a silicone mold. After curing, which takes from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the exact material used, the hardened part is removed by dis-assembling the mold. The cost to produce these 'soft' molds is far far lower (under $100 if someone does all the work themselves) but it takes a high degree of skill and a lot of labor time to do a quality job.

Whoopee !!! Thanks Charlie. You made my day. I've been a fan of steam since I was very small, when there were still some large steam locomotives in revenue service. But I've never seen a real Big Boy, either static or under steam. Pretty cool indeed.

Maybe a reason not to use floor wax on a model car?

How about this one. Dollar store calculator. Enter full size dimension. Divide by scale denominator. (For the math challenged, this would mean divide by 8 to get 1/8 scale, etc). Pretty basic.

Don't feel too bad. I get in trouble for answering questions.

Ummm...the Heartbleed bug isn't a "virus". It's a FLAW in the SSL web security cryptographic protocol, left in by the code writers, and not caught until now. Nothing at all like a virus. It's an error, a mistake, a f---up in something that is important in keeping web-transferred information secure.

Yup. Amazing? How can it be that a piece of code almost universally used to improve "security" and written, checked, and updated by very well-paid professionals, has a massive flaw...an open "back door" vulnerability...and that it's taken this long for anyone to notice. I guess Microsoft doesn't have a lock on sloppy careless codewriting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Avivah Litan on the April 9 Gartner.com http://blogs.gartner.com/avivah-litan/2014/04/09/open-ssl-heartbleed-vulnerability-affects-much-more-than-just-websites/ "As we all know by now, this is mega-serious and affects all users of Open SSL 1.0.1 through 1.01.f – so those who kept their Open SSL code up to date were in effect penalized. For information on the vulnerability, see kb.cert.org I’m just trying to understand why all the news reports are focused on individual communications with websites. SSL protocols, including Open SSL, are used in most ‘trusted’ machine to machine communications. This bug affects routers, switches, operating systems and other applications that support the protocol in order to authenticate senders and receivers and to encrypt their communications. See list of affected companies here kb.cert.com What this means is any trusted communications traffic using this protocol is ultimately not trustworthy – it goes way beyond individuals’ ‘handshakes’ and communications with websites. Forget having to plant back doors in encryption libraries, as the NSA allegedly did. The backdoors are already built in. So criminals and other naysayers can essentially eavesdrop on any sensitive communications using Open SSL 1.0.1 such as payment processing, file sharing and more, (although as my colleague Erik Heidt pointed out – this would require a compound attack since Heartbleed enables an attacker to recover anything being processed in memory on the server – rather than a direct attack against in-transit communications). We’ve all been acclimated to the fact that our sensitive data is no longer well protected while it is at rest. We’ve also learned over the years that retailers, financial services companies, ecommerce providers and others who accept our sensitive transactions can’t always stay ahead of criminal exploits that steal the information. Now we need to get used to the fact that we can’t trust some of the implementations of the protocols that secure data in transit over public and private internet networks. Until now that was the one area that looked relatively safe, at least to me." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No. It's not amazing at all. Just another example of slackers not doing what they get paid to do...which is GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. But wait. Why bother to do a good job, if nobody notices and you still get your salary?

Depending on which Porsche gearbox you use in the real world, you don't necessarily have to invert the 'box. You simply swap the ring gear from one side to the other. A big ZF gearbox like in the Pantera is available in one of the old Ford GT-40 kits, as is a Colotti. Also, the big Hewland from an AM McLaren would be ideal. A Porsche 914 gearbox will hold a couple hundred HP in reality, though the Revell version leaves a lot to be desired. Another option is a Corvair box, turned around. These were commonly utilized for one-off mid-engine cars in the '60s. The Hardcastle / Mccormick Coyote kit should also have some kind of gearbox for a mid-engine layout. There are several other donors for suitable mid-engine 'boxes. Here's a mass of info on possible mid-engine transaxle applications for GT-40 replica builders. http://www.gt40s.com/forum/gt40-tech-powertrain-transaxles/ Here's another thread from Grassroots motorsports. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/transaxles-for-longitudinal-mid-engine-setup/44319/page1/

Are we talking women or stamps?

Force is right about the Fronty OHC parts for a T engine in the '27 tubs. As far as model-A engine stuff goes, the AMT '29 Ford roadsters (all derived from the Ala Kart double kit version) have 4-banger speed parts, as do the AMT '29 woodies. The best A 4-bamger speed parts are in the Revell '31 woody (1/25 scale...not the 1/24 woody) and all the derivatives that use the same engine and chassis tree. There are 2 different head setups. If you REALLY want to know, I'll look in my kits and let you know which is which.

Unfortunately the urge to cheat seems to be hard-wired into rather a lot of humans, and studies of other primates seem to back this up. NOT cheating is a moral choice, which relies on a conscious decision, and conscious decision-making is supposedly one of the primary things separating us from the rest of the animals. But if following a baser instinct is condoned and acted-out by a parental role model, it's a never ending cycle.

There's more to it than that, and it's an insidiously creeping part of internet use that no one seems to get too upset about. Data mining is taking on a whole new aspect, and it's intrusive BS takes computing power from the machines it's interrogating. I watch the programs running in the background on my own machine, and who's trying to talk to it about what I do. It's a fascinating exercise in totally uncontrolled access to information, and there's more all the time. Aschango.com is one that looks at what you're doing HERE. And just look at the "users" online at any given time at the bottom of this site. Google, Yahoo and others are there, constantly looking over your shoulder, trying to generate data to sell to marketing firms, tailoring ads targeted to YOU in this very space based on what you type in, and to identify the next trends. Add to that all the useless marketing crapp masquerading as "content" on every site you visit, and the scripts trying to run, and the idiot advertising animations screaming at you to buy stuff, everywhere, and you HAVE to have a hot-rod machine to keep up with all the processing requirements to run all this BS. My old XP machine used to run online video content seamlessly, perfectly, no jerkiness (everything from youtube to PBS)...just fine. Recently and more and more, the playback is becoming compromised, even though I only have the one program running and have no-script and ad-blockers installed. I can only surmise that computing power is being hijacked by hidden data-mining BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH, that I have no way to block or even know about. So, to run all this garbage and get the same playback quality I used to have, I'm supposed to "upgrade" my entire system, hardware and software, to accommodate all this shitt. That's the way I see it, anyway. Somebody in the industry tell me I'm wrong.

I don't think "allow" would have anything to do with it. A creative interpretation of existing anti-trust and market manipulation laws, and a massive class-action suit by the abandoned XP users should "spank" Tinylimp pretty effectively. If GM stopped manufacturing and selling repair parts for all of their vehicles, I sincerely doubt they'd be "allowed" to prohibit anyone else from supplying parts to keep them running. Same thing.

Yes, but if I were the CEO of an AV provider (whose business it is to stay on top of happenings in his own industry), with the long-known abandonment of XP by Tinylimp looming, I would have been looking at developing an AV product specifically targeted to helping the multitude of XP users to protect their machines. It's just common sense to realize that not everyone is going to buy all new stuff to accommodate Tinylimp's decision. For that matter, I'd also have seriously investigated the possibility of taking up where Tinylimp left off, working on continuing to identify and patch security issues in XP, and offer the continuing patch-service to my AV customers for a reasonable annual fee. A HUGE potential market after Tinylimp's withdrawal... but of course, it would have taken a little out-of-the-box thinking, which is against the grain in most business scenarios

Probably not all that surprising that this spun off into being a "money thread" with an opening line like that (post #1), eh?

Building "season" is just about to be starting again for me. I STILL have about 2 weeks to finish my move (I've been saying that for months now), but the for-sure end is finally in sight. Of course, with full-time employment starting up again, multiple 1:1 car projects of my own, a couple of model-related obligations to honor, and nice weather for outdoor activities like hiking, canoeing and flying coming up, bench time may be a little limited for a while yet. But it will be nice to have the option to work on models, which I haven't had since well before Christmas.

I recall when I was a wee boy, some of the other kiddies would bring in work that they'd OBVIOUSLY had big-person help on. For credit. And sometimes the parent's work would get the top grades. Kinda same thing. Some of us still do...except sewing the upholstery.

I use those general numbers too. Problem is, I'd have to be making $2500 a week to have the same buying power as my father 50 years ago. And minimum wage 50 years ago was $1.15/hr. It's not $11.50 now. The rise in income has not kept pace with the rise in prices.