Ace-Garageguy

Exactly. And the front-end lift under hard acceleration leaving the line is misinterpreted to be a nose-high stance while standing still. There's been a lot of argument over it in the past, of course. Great photo, by the way. Man I miss those days.

Now there's a man adept at making lemonade...

If you read back through the earlier rules, that wasn't always the case. The 24" to-crank-centerline rule was instituted to stop folks from building stupid-nose-high cars. Sorry...I don't recall what year (early to mid-'60s) but it's not there one year, it is the next. Far as "sets the front ride height" goes, it doesn't so much set it as limit it. Sorta. It's a maximum, as you note. Still, the front of the car can be raised and the engine lowered in the chassis to conform to the 24" rule...though why anyone with a semblance of a brain would do that, I just don't know. However, the nose can also be in the weeds and the engine can be raised in the chassis to the maximum height...the reason being to get better weight transfer from the heavy engine being as high as possible, but better aerodynamics from the body nose being closer to the ground. Once the trap speeds on gassers hit around 130-140, aero lift and scary, squirrely handling on the top end became a serious concern with all the air piling up under the front, so getting the nose down became the norm on faster cars.

Good man. The silly nose-high cars bother me too (though there were a few who did that in the wayback, it was wrong then, it's wrong now). Anyway, that's the nice part about building your own suspension. You can get your model to sit exactly the way you want it to by fiddling with the amount of arch your springs have, where you put your spring hangers on the frame, and using a dropped axle if necessary to get it in the sweet-spot...all things real car builders did too. The M/SP Corvette build I directed you to sits as shown, correct for the class and period...as well as gassers.

Page 3 of this thread shows how to fabricate a straight front axle (with posable steering) and parallel leaf springs for a gasser or similar vehicle. It's really not hard.

Use PET available for FREE from soda bottles...and it doesn't scratch easily.

I have absolutely no idea... EDIT: ...but I have an inkling who the designer might be... EDIT 2: Got heem.

Exactly...and an accurate rendition of your example in scale would be a show-stopper.

Yeah, that was what I was kinda thinking.

If you're interested in more of these early "kit cars", here's one of the web's best resources. https://www.undiscoveredclassics.com/forgotten-fiberglass/

Much more-better-making going on. Much as I like this kit (though I've never completed one due to all the issues you've already identified...mostly), it's certainly not a high-point of kit design and tooling.

Well, you're wrong. Car bodies are thin sections and as such usually bleed enough heat into the adjacent mold to prevent a runaway. A 1/24 scale engine block is a relatively thick section and CAN runaway exotherm...and so can the container the material is mixed in if the user isn't careful...which is why material designed to be runaway-exotherm-resistant is preferable. I've had as little as a 14 gram mix of epoxy get hot, smoke, and sputter violently. FOURTEEN GRAMS is hardly "looking...through the eyes of someone who has done casting on a very large scale".

Now 7:12 PM EST it seems to be happy for the most part. Occasional hang-fire, but nothing I can't live with.

The problem, as I mentioned above, is RUNAWAY exothermic reactions when materials are used by the untrained or inexperienced.

There are lots of Alumilite products. https://www.alumilite.com/products/resins/

It depends on the size of the parts, primarily, but there are other variables to consider. In general: "Casting resin" is usually formulated to reduce runaway exothermic reactions that can easily occur if parts the size of an engine block (in 1/24) are cast in a warm environment. Runaway exotherms happen when the heat generated by the resin and hardener doing their chemical thing go into a "feedback loop", with more heat speeding up the cure, making more heat speeding the cure, making more heat... etc. The effect is anything from severe bubbling throughout the casting, to the whole mess bursting into flame. I've had it happen. Casting resin is also thinner, less viscous, too...which helps to fill voids and air pockets, and release air bubbles introduced during mixing. Though you "can" cast parts with epoxies designed to be used as adhesives, you're better off using "casting resins" for casting. OVERVIEW OF "EXOTHERM": https://www.systemthree.com/blogs/epoxy-files/epoxy-exothermic-reaction All that said, most molds for model car parts today are made from silicone, and the parts cast in them are usually made of some variety of urethane. Most of the manufacturers of the materials you'll need have GOOD videos of how to choose and use their products, and they're much more complete and useful than any advice you'll get here.

Yup. Even before I logged in to the new improved post-update version the first time. Still hanging occasionally pretty much all the time now.

Look ma !!! Poseable steering !!!

Very clean. Clean is good.

Couple more interesting diesel locomotives in HO scale. These were listed as "EMD EF-7" locos (?) but are in fact AHM-Tempo Fairbanks-Morse "C-liners", another of the somewhat obscure designs (to non-RR people) developed to compete with EMD's market-dominating "cab-unit" E and F series diesels. A side note on these...the passenger version had a very unusual 3-axle rear truck to carry the weight of the steam generator, used for train heating. The freight-hauling version had 2-axle rear trucks. This model was, again, in production for many years, beginning in 1954, and the separate wire hand grabs on the nose (can't see 'em in the photos) identify these as relatively early versions made prior to "cost engineering" cheapening. They've been "worked on" over the years, mostly bodged (like the ridiculously unusable too-close Kadee coupler mounted on the LH unit), but there's still enough there to restore. A little history: Fairbanks-Morse was a major player in the railroad industry going well back (tracing its heritage to an 1823 maker of plows and stoves), manufacturing all kinds of heavy RR infrastructure, including wooden, steel, and concrete coaling towers for steam locomotives (a cast-concrete version shown to the left of the F-M diesels below), and even marine diesel engines used in submarines in both WW I and WW II. Both of these models are powered, in kinda rough shape, but run. They need work, but I'd rather spend a week and a few bucks making a well-detailed, good running engine from something lotsa folks would throw out than buy a brandy-new one for several hundred. One immediate drawback I noticed is that these early ones have very deep flanges on their wheels, much deeper than RP-25 specs, and hit the spike-heads on code-85 or shorter track. But hey...I have a lathe. Lotta "experts" say these cheap old locos are trash, run poorly, etc., but there are still RR modelers who, like me, enjoy making something really nice from "trash". It's kinda like building hot-rods used to be.

Cool stuff.

Batteries are a means of storing electrical energy, but they won't store it indefinitely.

I also have the identical tool. They come with a pocket clip. https://ascscientific.com/geology-field-equipment/rock-pick/king-tools-giant-scriber/

Missed this one. Seriously cool.