Ace-Garageguy

Yeah, that's the thing. With 18+:1 static compression to begin with, IDK how much boost you can possibly run before you blow the crankshaft out the bottom of the block. On the other hand, those old 2-stroke diesels are really pretty poor air pumps, and needed a blower just to run at all. Not really entirely within my sphere of knowledge.

My last ex was driving.

I'm thinking he may be thinking hoppers. if so, here are some links. https://www.google.com/search?q=hoppin+hydros&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

EVERYBODY has more money than I do.

Anybody have any ACCURATE 3-view drawings of a Cheetah...and / or the Redhead streamliner ?

Greg, where'd you get all those shots of my last ex's parking techniques??

Jeff, I see exactly what you're getting at. Again, that's why I tend to hedge on how, if at all, this setup works. There may be additional boxes that bolt over these notches and close the whole mess up, just as the side plates of the main box are missing. The Detroit diesel 6-71 engine, on which I THINK the 24V-71 is based, lists a compression ratio of 18.7:1. Gasoline engines that are supercharged usually run much lower compression ratios than their normally aspirated brethren, but I honestly do not know enough about 2-stroke diesels to understand entirely all of what is going on with this beast. Maybe some of our more knowledgeable truckers, or marine engine guys, will chime in. However it works, you gotta love it. Sometimes American "wretched excess" just makes you grin.

This has been bugging me. I came back and looked closer and found I missed a couple of things, and I got a couple of things WRONG. MORE INFO. SEE POST #10, and revisions to post #7.

Nor is common sense.

Great project. I have to credit seeing my own father building models for getting me interested in seeing how things went together, and how things work. That interest, curiosity and the resultant skills have combined over the years to provide me with an income, and I still usually enjoy what I do for a living as a result. All that just from building models as a kid. There's not a lot of understanding these days, as you say, or even interest in how and why things work, and how to fix them. An associate recently hired a nice kid in his late teens as a trainee in aircraft composite repairs. The kid had never been exposed to actually fixing or making anything, and didn't even know how to change a lightbulb in his truck, or a tire. Giving your kids a leg up on understanding the working of the physical world (that comes from model building) can only help to make them more engaged and capable adults...even if their interest in modeling is short-lived.

Cutting thin metal stock without curling is always a problem. I've had good luck cutting .010" aluminum and brass by clamping the work to a wood or MDF base with a steel straight-edge, and repeatedly drawing the tip of a razor saw along it. You'll have to lightly dress the cut with files and sandpaper, but it will work. Scale-Master and comp1839 both do a lot of top-notch work in sheet metal. They'd be the ones with the best answers. Their work has to be seen to be believed.

I think that may be universal.

Since well before Christmas, I've been moving my home, shop, studio and office from the house I've been in for 15 years to a much smaller place. Fitting everything in has been a royal pain, and the new place was pretty much derelict...took a ton of work to make it habitable. That, coupled with some medical and logistical issues have pretty much stopped me from working on anything else, big cars or little. But the end is in sight, sorta.

I've seen it done in some of the larger scales using one of the slightly gritty pencil-shaped typewriter (remember those?) erasers with the tip turned down to an almost-point, chucked up in a low-speed Dremel. Perfectly convincing.

Thanks Casey. Much appreciated. Looks like I didn't search quite hard enough.

Thanks, Charlie. Good to know.

Wow.

I've read through the thread and Casey's link...no pix. Does anyone know if the replacement pad-printed tires are the full-width WIDE whitewalls identical to the decal versions?

If I ever finish one, I'll think about it and get back to you.

Yes sir, that is one of the greats. Seems like with that much visual cool, it would have been kitted by one of the biggies, but then again, it's somewhat obscure (only old fossils like us and vintage race-car aficionados would buy it, right?).

I scanned through the entire Revell '50 Olds thread looking for info on the replacement pad-printed tires, so I'm asking here if the pad-printed replacement tires have the full WIDE whitewall identical to the decal version. The question came up at this week's ACME club meeting. One of the guys built an absolutely stellar box-stocker, but the tire decals just ruin it.

I've done way too many stupid things to count, some hugely stupid ones, and remembering some of them makes me cringe. Over the years, I've learned it's actually better to think carefully BEFORE committing to a life-changing course of action.

Didn't Harry build one of those MPC locomotives fairly recently, or am I still morning fuzzy-brained?

EDIT: !!!!! IMPORTANT !!! I really can't say for sure if and how this actually works. There could be more to the manifolding than what shows in the photos. On MORE CAREFUL examination of the top photo in post #7, it appears that the blower drives will run in sealed chambers BETWEEN the actual blower outputs, so what we were seeing as massive air leaks won't be, when the side of the airbox is in place.

Here's a shot of the blower airbox. The way it's shown here, the huge holes for the blower drive belts would at first appear to render any supercharging effect negligible...BUT, on closer examination, the drives are actually in chambers BETWEEN the blowers that appear to be sealed apart from the blower outputs (or will be, when this side of the airbox is in place). Also, UNDER the lower plate of the airbox, there appear to be MORE blower housings (note the ribbed-looking things, with ribbing similar to the blowers on top) possibly drawing air from the box. With the large amount of horsepower it takes to drive one big Roots blower, it's difficult for me to understand how power would be improved. He's right in that the blower boxes would have to be custom fabricated. As vypurr59 (Jeff) and DonW alluded to, it was common practice (before CAD, and still is in non-CAD shops) to mock-up parts in non-metallic materials prior to expending a lot of time machining and fitting. That could explain the wood. On the other hand, the blowers themselves could well be hollow shells with no impellers. Housings that have swallowed debris and are too damaged internally to be saved can be had cheap and polished. Again, this was common on show cars, and I've even seen hollow blowers with a carb mounted INSIDE on 4-stroke gas engines, so the things would actually run on and off their trailers. As far as the blower's functionality and history go, the GMC 3-71, 4-71, 6-71, etc. blowers we're all familiar with were originally used to allow 2-stroke diesels to breathe, were mounted on the SIDE of the block as shown below on a 4-71 (where they blew air at slightly-above-atmospheric pressure through passages and ports inside the block) and were developed by hot-rodders into superchargers for 4-stroke GAS engines. The blowers were cheap and plentiful on the military salvage market after WW2, as these engines found a variety of wartime applications. In the photo below of the engine in the OP, the red rectangles on the side of the box appear, on closer examination, to be over-pressure popoff valves. I can not state one way or the other if or how the multi-blower setup is supposed to work without more information, but I CAN say the top-mounted injectors are almost certainly non-functional, as these diesels use cam-driven, timed direct injection, and older diesel engines are NOT normally throttled, making the butterflies superfluous. They run at WOT (wide open throttle) and speed and power output are controlled by the amount and timing of fuel injected. Diesels also already have insanely high compression ratios, so massively supercharging one would be an interesting proposition indeed. One other thing here that IS suspect is that the amount of 'wrap' of the Gilmer belt around the blower drive-pulley closest to the viewer is woefully inadequate. Big ol' Roots blowers take a lot of power to drive, and if that one was pumping away, the belt would be jumping cogs...guaranteed. Photos from open internet sources, under "fair use" provision in copyright