Ace-Garageguy

"It" can refer to a lot of things.

Companions are great as long as they know when to keep quiet, and it's good if they have their own hobbies too...which women, in my experience, rarely do. (NOTE: Before anybody reports my "misogyny", I HAVE known women who had hobbies like photography, journaling, gardening, drawing and painting, designing and sewing custom clothing, and even one girl who worked on her own 911 and actively competed in solo SCCA events...but they are few and far between; simple truth.)

No, a SBC manifold will NOT work on a Pontiac for several reasons. The biggest one is that the Pontiac V8 engines have the opposite cylinder stagger from a SBC, so the ports won't line up at all. SBC has the LH head farther forward than the RH head, Pontiac blocks have the RH head farther forward. SBC port stagger: Pontiac port stagger: Two more reasons 1) the water outlet under the t-stat housing on the vertical front surface of the Pontiac manifold that has to be there to mate with the front cover/water pump doesn't exist on a Chevy manifold, and 2) the distributor drive goes through SBC manifolds, while it comes straight out of Pontiac blocks. Note the water port directly under the thermostat location. It connects to the timing cover which is configured very differently from the SBC. (photo below)

Household garbage should not be burned by homeowners (like my idiot neighbors), as it almost always contains plastics that will release harmful, even carcinogenic, chemicals...and it stinks up the whole neighborhood.

Should work fine. Just be aware of the axle centerlines on the new chassis. Nothing looks dorkier than wheels not centered in the fenders correctly. Far as the frame "reveals" go, it's not all that hard to add 'em in if you want the look. This is a set of really ancient AMT '32 rails getting done. A milling cutter in the Dremel makes quick work of the roughing-in... Chasing the shape with a flat-file gets the major irregularities out... Finish shaping with 180 wet followed by 600 wet and this is what it should look like...

Yup, they're wonderful cars, and your model certainly does them justice. There are few engines as visually attractive, to me anyway, than those early ones with the gorgeous polished alloy cam covers. And that sound... I agree with you about the driving position, but the thing is just so pretty when you walk up to it, it can get away with a lot of small things...kinda like a beautiful woman.

"Strainer...stranger...thingsh in hevunn and Earth than are dreamed of (hic) in your philoshopy, Hor...hor...horaaasshhhio" misquoted the drunk Shakespearean actor.

Doing it from scratch may seem pretty daunting at first, but I've done a fair bit of this stuff both on real cars and models, and it's not really hard if you think things through. This 1/12 scale Datsun 240Z widebody convertible was a study for a full-scale project that died on the vine...though I still have the design rights and all of the full-scale parts that were purchased except for the body shell itself. Though it's quite different from the body kit in the OP's photos, the basic techniques for developing the custom panels are the same. Here's the trick to making flares. .010 styrene lips added to the original fender openings. Character lines in the fenders extended outwards and tapered into the body with .030 styrene. Fill resulting areas with bondo. Sculpt to shape. Similar technique is used to do nose cheeks. Bulge has been removed from hood, filled with sheet styrene, 'glass reinforced. ----------------------------------------------------- It all comes down to "make what you see". Doing the Camaro widebody is pretty straightforward, as the sides are relatively flat panels that are molded into the original fender shapes, without a lot of compound curves. Find a good profile shot of the car if you can, resize and print it in 1/25 scale, then make patterns for the slab sides directly from the photos. Make two identical sets, attach them to the main body...paying very close attention to symmetry, and mold it all together with bondo. Again, pay very close attention to symmetry every step of the way. And if you want to get really trick, after your bodywork is done, you can pull molds from the panels and lay up scale-thickness real fiberglass parts. The front splitter is a little more tricky, but if you break it down into simple shapes, carefully make those, stick them all together in the correct orientation, and then mold everything in, it wouldn't be particularly difficult. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I designed and developed this Porsche 904 rebody kit for the 914 for another client long ago, using much the same techniques. This photo shows the almost completed mold plugs on the car, coming out of my basement shop.

Yes, almost. No offense intended, but as I've spent several decades around real ones, there are things that just jump out at me, and I'm not going to pick at them, or pretend otherwise. It's a beautiful model that anyone would be rightfully proud of.

Just a thought...and I haven't been inside an old Nissan alternator in decades...be sure to check the diodes one-at-a-time if you have it apart. One bad diode and it won't charge at max output, if at all. Again, I don't remember this particular unit, but diodes in alternators very often require a special press-tool to remove and install them with no damage. You do NOT want to hammer one in if you need to replace it.

Pretty baby. Looks almost real.

Concrete Blonde did some music I really liked a lot.

If you want to stay Y-block, of course they could be bored and stroked like anything else to get the displacement up to the class limit. There was some pretty trick stuff for the old Y, like this extremely rare Hilborn injection setup. Note the orientation of the special twin-shaft throttle bodies because of the Y's odd intake passages. EDIT: Note the white car below has had firewall work done to allow more engine setback, and is running a Scintilla/ Vertex-style magneto. Here's a bunch of info on Y-blocks... https://www.oocities.org/yblockhead/ EDIT: Available here in 1/25... https://www.shapeways.com/product/RBETP6KAJ/1-25-y-block-injectors

Snake on a plane, May 7th of last year.

One of Snakes many interests was aviation, as a lot of you know. He was very knowledgeable, and was active in the aircraft modeling community. Carl Slusher reminded me that he'd posted a photo of himself with a glider and asked me to find it for him. Here's Snake in May of 2023, after recovering from his stroke back in 2022, standing next to a Schleicher ASK 21 sailplane. The ASK 21 is a 2-place trainer, and Snake was able to take a flight with an instructor pilot (who sits in the back seat) which he enjoyed immensely.

Paintings on cave walls sometimes have a surprising similarity of style, even thousands of miles apart, and done at different times.

Just a thought...the engines in a lot of kits aren't particularly accurately scaled. For instance, major dimensions of the Buick nailhead in the Monogram 1/24 Orange Hauler are just about identical to the old 1/25 nailhead from Revell, and the later Revell nailhead too. The point being, something like a big ol' honkin 1/25 Chrysler Firepower hemi probably wouldn't scream "underscale!!!" in the engine bay of a 1/24 baby Bird to anyone other than somebody who'd spent a lot of time looking at old T-birds and old Chrysler hemi engines, and who had finely calibrated eyeballs. Fact is, the vast majority of modelers never noticed that the engine in the more recent tooling of the Barris Ala Kart was closer to 1/32 than 1/25 the kit was supposedly made in, even though to anyone familiar with the little Dodge Red Ram hemi in the real car, the underscale was instantly and very apparently awful...and still there were people who would argue it was right (the first issue Ala Kart from the 1960s engine WAS right).

Tattoos on beautiful women are the same to me as 3rd rate graffiti sprayed all over great art and architecture...not an improvement, just vandalism.

I well remember Mr. Snake trying hard to get folks to drag out and finish some deaders. He even almost got me to finish something...and that takes some real doing.

Second post after the OP I said I'd never seen it...or heard of it...and subsequently asked what it was supposed to be...black chrome or trim black, which in the real world are two entirely different things. BMF "black chrome" I'm familiar with, and it's an attempt to produce an actual black chrome effect...which is why it's shiny. Clear now? EDIT: Model Master used to make several different "metalized" finishes I've used to good effect over many years. I wondered if "black chrome" was one I'd somehow missed, as it IS available as a real-world paint product. https://www.dna-paints.com/shop/chrome/black-chrome-2/

"Scene" is a word that often comes between "crime" and "investigation".

Because "black chrome" is a real thing. It's chrome. And it's black.

Time to wrap everything up and get on down the road.

Big ol' arugula, spinach, Boston lettuce and to-mater salad, with one glass of a very nice cabernet sauvignon. Back on the lose-the-winter-lard routine, 'cause I'm just not taking the time to exercise enough to burn it off fast. The trick is, of course, to not eat anything else later. But adults are s'posed to have a measure of self-discipline, right? EDIT: OK...I had 1/2 pound of fresh fat juicy sweet strawberries too. I'm so healthy it hurts.

(Wild) parents often lack the skills that would make them competent to perform life's single most important job.