Ace-Garageguy

Mmmmmmmm...chrome pie.

Well, I have a few neighbor gripes too...like the clowns who don't even start their loud weekend moron music until after 11:00 PM when county code says it has to be quiet, the ones who insist on burning their household trash late at night (also illegal) when I have the windows open and the exhaust fan running in lieu of AC to cool the house (filling the place with the acrid stench of burning plastic), the ones who leave their dogs' poop at my mailbox, and the drive-through local landscaping trucks that use the entire street as a private dump. I'm leaving as soon as humanly possible.

Good advice at times, but sometimes not. The aero fairing for the roll bar on the red-oxide primered Ferrari 275P below gets painted body color, and is intended to be glued to the main body shell. Obviously painting this in place is quite impossible. I've carefully fitted it, and drilled both it and the body shell for locating pins. Though the legs of the fairing are only about .060" thick at the base, I was able to drill .020" holes sufficiently deep to retain the pins, which I attached with CA to the fairing. Small drops of PVA will be quite sufficient to hold it in place at final assembly. The front lower pan and the rear body panel were glued in place however, with the seams smoothed as appropriate prior to priming and paint.

I drill and pin everything like door-handles and mirrors and windshield frames and use a tiny drop of the PVA glue Matt mentions above. I prefer the Microscale Micro Krystal Klear, but Elmers will work. You drill the body and part for the pin before paint, glue the pin into the part, then carefully re-drill the hole on the body after paint, and assemble with PVA...or a little epoxy on the inside of the body on the end of the pin. The pin positively locates whatever you need to attach, and if a little PVA squoozes out during assembly, you just clean it off immediately with a damp Q-tip. Unless you have baybays playing with your models, this is entirely sufficient to retain anything.

Hungry hippos have invaded my local grocery emporium.

MGB? MG TD? Lotus 7, Europa, Elan? Mazda Miata? Any Ford T or A or '32 or '33-'34 or even later? Datsun 510? Datsun or Toyota pickup? Old Jeep? '33 Willys? '40 Willys? Anglia or Thames panel? Henry J? Revell '50 Austin? Ancient Revell Austin Healey? Bugeye Sprite? Triumph TR3? Lindberg Triumph GT6? '60s Alfa Romeo Spyder or coupe? BMW 2002? Any smallish Japanese RWD coupe or sedan? These little engines can easily make a reliable and streetable 150 HP naturally aspirated, 200+ blown or turboed, up to around 400 in racing tune (still with the original-style SOHC head), and don't weigh much. https://www.hotrod.com/features/2-3-ford-august-1986-982-1362-23-1 That's plenty to be entertaining in a light car.

Today's weather here is much as I remember England. Cool, overcast, rain showers off and on. Good day to sit in front of the electric fire watching old British mysteries. EDIT: And we had an earthquake about 09:00. It rattled the house about the same as a tree or large limb falling, but went on for several seconds.

Long about now, I'm feeling a bit peckish.

PM'd

Yes, two sidedraft Weber 40 DCOEs on a 2-liter, with headers and a cam. Very quick for what it was.

Thing a thong of thixthpenth, a pocket full of rye.

it kinda looks like yellow alien brains busting out of a tinfoil skull.

What's so hard about putting the scale (if it's not 1/24-1/25) in the title?

One of those things I really shouldn't let get to me, but it's been mentioned here recently so here goes. I had to go out to fun a few errands, and everywhere I went, some clown had parked all wonky sideways over-the-lines cockeyed crooked. Grocery store, PO, drug store, and bank. I don't know what's going on with people's sense of spatial awareness, but a lot of 'em seem to be having a hard time maintaining their own lane when they're moving too. And the clown who cut in front of me from the RH lane just about 75 feet from an intersection to get in the far LH turn lane, narrowly missing several other cars that were slamming on their brakes and blowing their horns. And the wizards "resealing" the grocery store strip mall parking lot who thought it would be smart to block the two main entrances at the same time, making people have to go way out of the way, or turn around and come back to enter. Plus, the quality of the work looks like they're doing a sticky black paint job rather than a real asphalt sealer...and working out of pickups with no company names, like the property manager got tricked into a super "bargain" deal by a bunch of con artists. The lot was, by the way, in excellent shape, and didn't look to me like it needed anything.

Your work always has value, just seeing somebody with talent and skill building cool stuff. That's what we come here for. Thanks for posting the photo above too.

"Living large" is kinda fun if you have money to burn, but if you burn too much too fast, you'll be standing in line for welfare eventually.

Yup, very cool project. I'd never seen one of these next to a '53 Stude or an Avanti until a couple weeks back at the Savoy Museum near me, and even though they're all on essentially the same chassis, the "small" Lark looks at first glance as being based on a larger car.

Be respectful of my wanting to rest, and don't pester me with inane trivialities every half hour just because you know I'm not working.

Yup, looks like a 2.3 L4 from a Pinto or Mustang or Ranger, with a slushbox... You'll need a cam cover and an exhaust manifold EDIT: The old 2.0 L4, a vastly superior engine IMHO, looks quite similar, but only has two freeze plugs on the block.

"Nam" was a turning point in many lives, a time of coming-of-age for some, loss and tragedy for others.

Thanks for the reminder and the photos. I've been meaning to buy some of those for quite some time. Glad to see they're still available and really do look great.

Cool project, and interesting offshoots too. Many years back I started an AMT '36 Ford on Revell '40 rails (the chassis are basically the same from '35-'40 cars and '35-'41 pickups) to do a replica of an old friend's Caddy-powered '36. I got pretty far along, but after he went to the big junkyard in the sky, I kinda lost interest. Your build here might inspire me to drag it across the line.

Another 1/24 Heller E-type coupe, this time molded in white. Unfortunately the kit had been cherry-picked for its rear suspension and much of the interior, but after all was said and done, I can't complain about the price. Though not buildable as a factory car, it may become a Ford smallblock-powered hot rod, with a 9"-based rear end... ...kinda like my Pontiac-powered Ferrari 250 GTO hot-rod.

"Custom" is an interesting word, when used as a noun meaning a behavior that most people in a given group do similarly, but when used as an adjective meaning something specially made that is unique and outside the norm.

Make hay while the sun shines, or forever hold your peas.