Ace-Garageguy

What a beautiful model. It's truly inspiring to see work like this.

Big block Chevy with a GMC 6-71 front-mounted blower, custom front cover and blower adaptor; manifold from an AMT engine parts-pack, modified; C5-R clutch housing setup for rear gearbox.

Wow indeed. That is so perfectly proportioned, thought out, finished and detailed.....I honestly think that may be the best model of anything I've ever seen. Wow.

Another beauty....

A beauty.

Seriously cool.

I like everything about it, including your being bothered about what's 'wrong' with it. Great looking model.

Man that's BEAUTIFUL !!! You've got a fine eye for proportion and design, and the skills to bring it all together. Just beautiful.

Speaking of 409s, an acquaintence of mine found a '62 Impala dual-quad, 4-speed 409, red on red, in 2005. The car had about 60.000 miles on it. It was sitting in a carport, outside, covered, on 4 flat redline Polyglas tires. Seems the car's owner was killed in Viet Nam, and his mother could never bring herself to part with it. She finally decided to let it go, and having no clue what it was actually worth, sold it to my guy for $2500.

Lately I've been working more, so I'm lucky to get 3 or 4 hours of bench time per week. I try to get several builds to points where things will need to be bonded and put aside to set up, or where primered parts and assemblies need to shrink in for a while. And, with several builds going, there's always something small I can tackle during a few minute break or when I'm just too tired to put in a full evening. Having several builds going at once often means I have to make notes to remind me what's next when I get a little time for modelling, so I'm not spinning my wheels instead of getting something done.

This is about the bajillionth time this question has been asked, and again why it's SO incredibly helpful to have an idea of how real cars work, and how things are done in 1:1. IN GENERAL. independent front suspension in lowered correctly by RAISING the stub-axles relative to the uprights (spindles). This is done with "dropped spindles" on real cars, if they're available, and the same thing is accomplished on a model by cutting the stub axle off the spindle and raising it the amount you want to lower the front of the car. you can glue it back on (let it dry FULLY and MEASURE CAREFULLY) or you candrill 1/16 holes and glue in a piece of steel axle, welding rod, etc. If you want to lower the car more than you can get that way, you'll have to raise the control arms relative to the frame. IN GENERAL, to lower rear solid-axle suspension, you look at what actually holds the car up on the axle, leaf springs or coil springs, and you figure out a way to decrease the distance between the axle and the frame. Sometimes you can just cut a little off of the coil springs (if the car has coil springs). Sometimes you can shave the spacer between the spring and the axle (if the car has leaf springs above the axle) and sometimes it's necessary to make up new thicker spacers (if the leaf springs are under the axle) or even to swap the spring from over the axle to under the axle (again, for leaf springs).

You can always say "no", but I have no idea what kind of trouble you could get into if you shipped a can by USPS and it did pop. I'm sure they'd be less than impressed.

At first it sounds like a good idea, but even if there was a way to determine how much paint remained in a can (by weight perhaps?) there is often an internal valve clog that renders the can useless for spraying. The biggest potential problem is shipping though. Some postal officials will surely consider half-empty spray cans as hazardous, and the cost of even the cheapest shipping method will soon almost add up to the cost of a new can, as Plowboy said. I recently received some vintage 1:1 parts that were shipped with a couple of cans of engine paint. One had exploded, apparently from exposure to the low pressure in the cargo hold of an airplane.

I like the simplicity of the old AMT '32 kit, which I think gives it a great deal of versatility. Here are 3 of my in-progress takes on it......

The squiggly line running to the top of the cylinder head is water temp. Absolutely positively. You're correct about the braided line being fuel, but your reference-engine photo is carburetted, not injected. The float bowls attached to the fronts of the throttle bodies is the giveaway. The cam-driven fuel pump would make perhaps too much pressure for carbs, and there SHOULD be a fuel return line somewhere to keep from overpowering the needle valves. An injected car would also have a return line, as the injection mixture is adjusted by fitting various size restrictor pills in the return line. Bigger hole in the restrictor, leaner mixture. The black line under the squiggly water temp line is probably fuel pressure. It goes to a guage, obviously, and it's NOT H2O or tach. The tach appears to be the large gauge in the center of the panel (and appears to be an electronic unit), and the small line running to it appears to be a wire for an electronic trigger from the mag. A correct vintage car would most likely have a cable-driven mechanical tach, with the drive most likely running from a camshaft (like where the fuel pump is on your ref. pic.) or from an angle-drive on the base of the magneto.. The translucent yellow line is most likely the oil-pressure line to the gauge. The other end would run to a hole tapped in the oil-gallery on the block. The line used in the photo isn't really right for oil pressure thiough, so it COULD be manifold vacuum (it kind of looks like yellowed vacuum hose too) but race cars rarely use vacuum gauges on the panel. It COULD also be fuel pressure, but using that type of line is insane for fuel. IF it's NOT oil pressure, then the top black hose to the dash COULD be oil pressure. My best guess on the line zip-tied to the water pipe is the above mentioned fuel-return line, probably going around the front of the engine from the carbs. I really don't know what else it could possibly be. A pre-WWII midget would not have AN fittings, nor would it have braided line. WWII and post-war military surplus AN fittings were often green zinc-chromate color.

Very nice. Good to see a full-fendered '32 with an up-top. Great job making all those parts work together.

Really nice save. Great job.

Man, that is really fine.

That is really nice. I keep coming back and looking at it over and over. Great color and masterful weathering.

If your '48 Ford is supposed to represent a '48 Ford in 1949 or later, the "normal" distributor could be correct. If it's supposed to represent a '48 Ford in the 1990s or later, a serpentine belt COULD be correct. It's been done.

Probably because I have an engineering background and build 1:1 cars (and other machines that have to actually function) for a living, I have a respect for function and tend to try to get my models to represent correct real-world practice. However anyone chooses to build is entirely up to the builder, but to me, the difference between a "model" and a "toy", is that a model is a model OF something, even if that "something" is only correctly represented engineering, while a toy takes liberties with scale, function, etc. and is more for pure enjoyment and expression than trying to represent reality. Maybe "miniature automotive-based art" would be a more PC term than "toy". Most of my builds use suspension that COULD work, visual modifications that would still be able to accommodate a human driver, structural mods that would be do-able on a 1:1, etc. At the same time, I rarely obsess over correct firing-order or whether I've got all the wires on the firewall represented. Detail is a matter of degree and what the builder enjoys. Leaving detail off of a model isn't a matter of laziness, but a matter only of what the builder finds enjoyable. I ENJOY getting things right, and doing research to be certain I do a fair representation of things I'm not familiar with. If someone else DOESN'T ENJOY going to that amount of effort, that's perfectly fine. This IS supposed to be a hobby, about enjoyment. All that said, in all honesty, it does kind of bug me sometimes to see models built with obviously very little knowledge of function of anything, and no effort made to find out how things actually work. I think some of those models are the reasons why SOME 1:1 car guys look down their noses at model builders, because it can actually be HARD to get everything to work on a real car that's also built for "enjoyment", and the working out of functional details is part of the pleasure. At least to me.

Very good question. In reality, any of the Ford V8 flatheads can be converted to a "normal" looking distributor by substituting a '49-'53 -style timing cover that has a 90 degree drive for the distributor shaft, so if you do it, your model will be accurate. On some 1:1 applications there may be belt and other interference problems. Also, over time, the tubular wire looms got left off on many engines, particularly where a hotter ignition had been fitted. The close proximity of the wires to each other in the looms could cause inductive cross-firing, and if the insulation on the wires had deteriorated, the looms made an easy path for the spark to jump and avoid the more difficult path of firing the plug.

Really cool, and brings back memories. When I was in the Ga.Tech Sports Car Club back in '69 or '70, a guy had a seriously lowered Meyers Manx with a Corvair 140 in the tail. Blisteringly fast slalom car, with Goodyear Bluestreak Indy-car rear tires. I don't think it was ever beaten.

Last time I was in Az, I found an old Stude coupe exactly like that at the bottom of a ravine. The property owner said I could have it if I'd pull it out. I was tempted, as it wasn't badly rusted, just beat to jell from rolling multiple times. Reason prevailed, as the restoration would probably take longer than I still have to live. Very convincing techniques you have. Cool diner project by the way. Do you have digital design files of it? Looks like a US injection molding company could produce it. Surely such a neat moidel could be expensive enough to justify limited US production.

Great job on the little Pie Slicer. I learned to fly in one of these. Also found a gluebomb not too long ago for less than a buck.