Ace-Garageguy

Now that IS an interesting piece if information. Hmmmmm.

For me, the most important influence on the hobby has to be the web. In my distant youth, I had to wait for tech and reference articles to come in the monthly subscriptions, and was limited in kits, parts, paint and material availability by what the LHS had on the shelves. I've only been building again since about 2006 or so, and the instant access to every kit imaginable, plus 1:1 reference material and modeling tech info from this excellent site and others has completely transformed my experience. The ability to interact with other modelers all over the world, also instantly, sharing information, techniques and interests has created much more of a community spirit, in my mind anyway. EDIT: Actually, Dave Ambrose said it all for me in post #73. I shoulda read it.

Very interesting technique, and I'm always interested in re-purposing other usually waste materials for modeling. Thanks for the reminder about the styrene yogurt containers too. I'd forgotten the nice molded curves some of them have. I've been using the polypropylene ones for mixing paints and epoxy for years. Looking forward to seeing some photos of your work here.

Great looking build and fine job going by your excellent reference material. Just an FYI...the Revell Miss Deal Firepower Hemi is very well done and has the right valve covers for your build too. The blower is correct as well I believe, but the fuel injection body and the blower drive are not.

Gonna be 61 here tomorrow, and 70 by Thursday. Of course, we've had snow and ice storms as late as March, so who knows?

Really great looking models, and a fine reminder of what can be done with a simple kit to make it a real standout.

Nice build, and a MUCH better job of dealing with the joint between the separate roof molding and the body than these kits usually get. Very nice.

Ummm...not really? Not to be argumentative, but since some of you want to tell me I'm wrong...I've been in the 1:1 restoration business, either directly or peripherally, for most of my professional life, and I also came up in the '50s. I'm quite aware of how high cars rode back then as opposed to now. Nor did I say that ALL restored cars were riding too high...just that SOME that I've seen have been just flat wrong. There's no need to argue the point further. I'm aware that springs settle, and that ride height specs were usually higher than today. We recently had a just-restored '48 Ford convertible in the shop to correct handling issues. The VERY FIRST THING I noticed was the car had close to 12" between the ground and the frame rails. I don't have my spec book available at the moment, but 12" is certainly excessive. Period. Had THAT particular example been used as the reference for a kit, with nobody bothering to check the CORRECT spec, a ride-height issue would certainly have been included in the kit tooling.

Looks like a natural already. Pretty wild. Nice work.

Perhaps some of you guys who are into 1:1 cars will have noticed that RESTORERS of the real ones often get the ride height wrong too. I've seen many many "restored" cars looking like they're wearing flood pants, from springs that have too much arch, etc. I guess it's just too hard to actually look up the spec. Numbers make people's heads hurt, so I understand.

The VAST majority of car sales-people I've encountered have zero technical knowledge about what they're selling. Yeah, they may know it has ABS brakes and 8 cylinders....but they have no clue as to how ABS works, or where the cylinders are. You may as well ask the checkout girl in the grocery store, or a homeless man on the street if you want any hard information about a car. Your answers will be about as relevant. And I've got to take issue with the dealers who still try to load a fast-selling car up with mandatory useless add-on BS like "dealer prep" and "paint sealant" and "undercoating". It would seem the manufacturer only finished the car about half way from all the idiotic stuff they'll try to cram on the sale. I agree with the comment about "extended warranties" too. If the car is so bad that I'm really going to "be sorry" if I don't buy the warranty, I don't want it. Of course, they catch all the idiots on the same play on stereos, washing machines and lawnmowers too. Then there's the instant depreciation that hits a new vehicle as it crosses the dealers curb on the way out. i could go on and on and on about deceptive financing practices that fleece the folks who are too stupid or too lazy to run their OWN numbers, or the typical incompetence of the dealer service departments if there IS a warranty problem with the vehicle that takes some intelligence and thought to sort out. All these (and others) are reasons I'll never buy a NEW car again...EVER. -------------------------------------------------------------- The flip side of this is that most new cars are really SO GOOD, that buying a well-cared for example that's a few years old from an individual will save you many thousands of bucks, and gets you a car that's still LIKE new and will run happily for hundreds of thousands of more miles. -------------------------------------------------------------- Buying a car online? Nah. Researching cars online sure, but there's nothing that takes the place of getting some seat time in the real deal. I was lately thinking of getting into a Mustang, and figured only a V8 would make my lead foot happy. After driving a V6, I came away convinced that the smaller engine was entirely adequate for sane on-road use. No amount of "virtual shopping" would have let me get the real feel of the thing, nor would it have let me realize I didn't particularly like the OVERALL feeling of heaviness of the car. NO SALE.

Monogram chaparrals are 1/24, and without question, the best 1/24 Chevy V8 engines are in the Accurate Miniatures McLarens and Corvette GS kits. The big-block in the McLaren is fuel injected, and the smallblock in the Corvette kits has SIDE-draft Weber DCO-series carbs. Neither of these induction systems is right for the Weber IDA DOWN-draft carbs you probably want.

I would also tend to think that perhaps a part of the reasoning behind Revell's failure to kit the Goldenrod would stem from the typical builder's reaction to the Challenger and Showboat models. I recall even at the time the kits were first issued, they were whined about as being difficult and fiddly. If I had been Revell's product development guy and had heard all the bashing of the kits, after having put so very much effort into producing them, I would have written off any thought of doing something so "difficult to build" in the future. Surely the Goldenrod would have been an even more challenging kit, to build as well as to tool for production.

Any wide-5 VW Beetle wheel will have the right look and bolt pattern. Any wide-5 Porsche wheel from 356 kits from Fujimi are also correct and excellent. Just for clarification, your post header says "Spyder" but your post copy says "Speedster". Though the correct period wheels for them are pretty much identical, they are two entirely different cars. The Spyder is a mid-engined tube-frame car with an aluminum body, while the Speedster is an all-steel unibody design, rear-engined, and very similar in layout to a Beetle of the period. Most of the photos of "Spyders" you'll find on the web are actually fiberglass replicas, and have incorrect 4-bolt VW-pattern wheels to accommodate the late-model Bug and Ghia disc brakes. A real Spyder or Speedster wheel looks like this...

Spectacular work on these two models, and great to see these long-term projects finished so beautifully. I've always been fascinated with the building of America's infrastructure and the Hoover Dam in particular, especially that it was built with then-unproven techniques, and was finished well ahead of schedule. Your models are a fine reminder of the period in history that made America great, and the can-do attitude in the face of adversity that was so much a part of that time.

Nice work ! I did a tutorial a while back on a technique that works for just about anything you want to do "flip-nose", and it guarantees the nose fits perfectly every time it's closed. It's simple and quick. Maybe it will help you out. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70025

Nice to see you're filling the notches in the front frame horns. That's almost always overlooked by builders of the Revell '32 fords.

It was sure pretty this AM in my part of the South, but the temps are up, it's melting, and the now slushy roads are entirely navigable by vehicles with decent tires. I missed the "Armageddon, disaster, catastrophic" part. Darn. What a gyp.

Damm Tom, that's some deep s*** ! (snow )

The Atlanta area weather conditions are deteriorating, now with freezing rain and sleet beginning to seriously weigh the trees down. The roads are slicker than they were this AM, but you can get around easily if you have chains and a limited slip diff in the rear. M&S tires will still get you where you're going if you pay attention and go slow. I just got back in from another tour of the town, and there's just about nobody on the roads, and everything is closed. I put some bird food out, under one of the trucks that just happened to be parked on the lawn. A flock of robins was under it when I came in (where no ice had fallen) digging for bugs, so i figured I'd help them out a little.

Happily for all of us Yankees down here, all the smarter Southern folks who realized they can't cope stayed home today. I've been out lookin' around, and there's no real traction problem with this particular mess, right now, even in a pickup, if you have good M+S tires. The stuff is crunchy for the time being, and offers decent bite...unlike last time's sheet ice. Still, folks staying home keep the roads nice and clear for those of us who know how to drive in the stuff. There is SOME ice buildup on trees etc., and I just heard a transformer blow not too far away. But my power is still on and I've got a stack of firewood, blankets and candles just in case. Happy motoring everybody !! SNOW DAY !!! WHOOPEE!!!

Do you have a photo of the 1:1 part?

Carl Slusher and Scott are both right...it can be sanded and polished off if it's not too deep, but it's a lot easier to just replace it. Plastic model glue is a solvent and eats into the plastic, which means you'll have to remove material from the clear part down to the level of the deepest damage the glue has done, and then polish the gloss back up. If it's not very deep, start with 600 grit sandpaper wet, and progress up to 12,000 grit (just as if you were color-sanding paint). Then polish with a fine abrasive like 3M Perfect-It. If the damage isn't really deep, you CAN remove every trace of it if you work carefully. Be careful when you're sanding that you don't make the windshield wavy from sanding too aggressively in one area. Avoid the problem in the future by using one of the PVA glues made specifically for clear parts.

Well, they missed it today, but it looks now like they may have it somewhat right for tomorrow. The fair-sized snow and ice storm that was in Texas earlier has grown considerably, now stretches from Birmingham, Alabama (the leading edge of cold rain), freezing precipitation is falling on the middle of Mississippi and the Louisiana / Arkansas border area, and back a couple hundred miles into Texas. It's coming our way and should reach the Atlanta Metro area in about 3 hours, judging from the radar animations I have access to. The freezing precip that's part of the storm should be here about an hour after that. This could get nasty, as right at the moment the storm is larger than the last one that paralyzed the ATL. Still, it's much warmer, so road icing may again be a complete non-issue.

"The storm could be a "catastrophic event" reaching "historical proportions," the National Weather Service said in its warnings. Forecasters cited potentially crippling snow and ice accumulations, and they expected widespread power outages that could last for days. As much as three-quarters of an inch of ice is forecast for Atlanta, and wind gusts up to 25 mph could exacerbate problems." The above is quoted from a National Weather Service statement re-posted by AOL at 11:43 AM today. So far, we've had a very small amount of snow and sleet, zero accumulation on the roads because the temperature is well above freezing, and what had prettily stuck on lawns and roofs is rapidly melting as I write this. Columbus, Ga, weather radar shows the entire first system has now blown past the Atlanta area. A complete non-event. The Lawton, Ok. weather radar shows a fair-sized snow and ice storm on the Texas / Oklahoma border, moving east and currently about to cross into Louisiana. Apparently it's expected to be over the Atlanta Metro area sometime tomorrow. But with the warmish ground, and lows forecast to be right around freezing, I'm kinda betting against any significant road icing. I suppose there could be some icing-related power line damage and outages, but again, I'm betting against the "catastrophic event" of "historical proportions" quoted above. Let's see how I do versus the really well paid and well staffed weather forecasters.