Ace-Garageguy

My local HobbyTown has been selling used model RR equipment lately. The guy who runs the train department is extremely knowledgeable, is a local club member, accomplished scratch-builder, repairs RR equipment right there in the store occasionally, and is a member of NMRA (National Model Railroad Assn.)and NRHS (National Railroad Historical Society) too...fascinating guy to talk to...and he turned me on to the pre-owned kits and rolling stock. It's kinda like going into a real hobby shop used to be. Anyway, I bought all the "craftsman" kits and several nice pieces of rolling stock, most already equipped with Kadees, for a fraction of what they'd go for on eBay. A big plus is that they have a large stock of model and real railroad mags from long ago, and they're FREE. I almost feel guilty taking a few every time I shop there, but they want them gone, and it's got me going back much more frequently (great marketing on their part, as I always buy something to "have in stock", particularly styrene, as the "supply chain issues" threw a huge stopper in the pipeline, and it's just now beginning to trickle back in). A couple examples of the craftsman kits I snagged, below. Caboose Hobbies Silverado Mine kit, trading for $150-$200...if you can even find one: Centennial Models 103 Silver Belle Mill kit, trading at $50-$70 Rio Grande Models Jordan Spreader kit (milled wood shapes, some scribed siding, and a lot of lost-wax castings), still in production and sells new for $66: A couple of different Timberline Models D&RGW Water Tank kits, selling for $40-$60 each, including shipping: There's more, and too many freight cars to list. Also ran across a stall at one of the local flea markets selling new, in-the-box Athern freight car kits for $5, and used ones for $3...

I've read the reason Checker came up with that odd front end was to eliminate or minimize the prospect of sheetmetal contact with the front tires in the event of a fender-bender...contact that could damage tires and/or take a vehicle out of service. The design was introduced in 1939, when war was already on the horizon and rubber (for tires) shortages were anticipated. Anyway, here's a link that includes a video showing these things in service in NYC. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/vintage-photo-1940-checker-model-a-landaulet-open-top-bizarre-front-end/

Pretty little truck, great color and finish,

Exceptionally clean workmanship and fit. Well done, indeed.

Looks like a vacuum excavator to me.

Whoa...NICE !!!

PM'd.

Beautiful clean work, great firewall, gorgeous color, nice Dzus-fastener detail too. If the completed model is up to this standard, it'll be spectacular.

Always a pleasure to see another builder who works as though he's building a real car that has to function, and who has the real-world knowledge to get it right.

It was a heavy-grained rubberized material, over wood framing and padding. Production press-dies for cars weren't yet large enough to form an entire steel roof in 1932, so that built-up assemblage covered a gaping hole. It's very common on real hot-rod builds to form a sheet of steel (on an English wheel) into a matching 3-dimensional curved panel, and weld up the hole...so that's what your mod would represent in reality.

Some kind of open-wheel racer judging by the tubular control arms, small rollover hoop, small diameter steering wheel, and the knockoffs. They both started out as the same tree, but the shorter one appears to have had some gates closed off on the left end...judging from the necked-down main upper and lower sprue runners. Sorry I can't be more specific. All my open-wheel race car kits have already moved west, or I'd dig through 'em fer ya.

Looking good. Multiple small upgrades go a long way towards making a kinda turkey kit into something to be proud of. The awful OOB stance of this thing has stopped me from ever buying one, but seeing how much your improvements are adding, I may have to reconsider it.

Beautiful indeed.

Yes, thanks. I've seen several resin-drop taillights from a few sources, even some that get the split-color orange-over-red like the correct ones. But they still lack the fluting and other details of the real ones. Probably because I've seen so many of the real lights, they are one of the things that jump out at me. The plan at the moment is to cast clear resin copies of the Tamiya 330P4 lenses I have, and color them with Tamiya transparent colors. I've already sourced aluminum tube that's the exact diameter for scale-correct trim rings. Cutting it into narrow enough rings is a little challenging, but breaking out a new unworn miter-box and a fresh 32 TPI razor saw should probably ease the job considerably. This is just another of those things that invariably crop up on my builds, taking what started out as a "simple, quickie curbside" and turning it into a succession of forays down endless rabbit holes...and that usually result in my sidelining builds for "later, when I have more time."

I wonder if he'd sell two for $999.50...

Thank you, sir. Will do.

Unknown parts-box source. They measure out correctly for the 7" H4 bulb/reflector/lens/bucket assembly that would have been used on this car. I've seen the very popular Lucas 7" buckets used on all manner of Euro-built competition cars, and photos of the 275P where the headlights are visible show a very visually-similar mounting. Real Lucas buckets look like this, and they're very easy to mount to flat panels, hence their popularity with race-car constructors. Ferrari sometimes used production Lucas lights in other applications too. The retainer ring would be chrome in this period. The lenses I found (that luckily fit my chrome-rimmed reflector buckets perfectly) have a lens-fluting pattern similar to period H4 units from Cibie, Lucas, Marchal, Carello, Magneti-Marelli etc. Similar lenses are available in many Tamiya and Fujimi sports car kits, and I suspect that's where mine came from. (EDIT: I just looked in the Fujimi 330P4. It has the correct lenses.) The lens fluting is decidedly different on period 7" Euro H4 units than on US 7" sealed-beams of the same period. Period Marchal lenses, below. While we're on the subject of lights, I've opened up the holes in the rear body panel because they were heavily gloo damaged, but also in the hope of finding correct taillights. Photos show the 275P apparently used an earlier, small-round-reflector version of this very popular Carello (I think) light unit that was, again, used on a wide variety of European competition and production cars. I actually bought a relatively cheap Hasegawa Lancia Stratos thinking I might get lucky, but the rear lenses are this later, wide rectangular reflector version. EDIT: The Fujimi 330P4 also has the correct-for-the-275P, small-round-reflector taillight lenses.

Not the thermostat if the engine's coming up to operational temp on the gauge. Most likely it's either the heater control valve, that diverts hot coolant through the heater core...OR...the probably WAY over-complicated electronics and/or stepper motor that works the poor thing. Gone are the days when a simple, robust cable got the job done, and would do it for half a million miles. Though some cars do still use cables, they're routinely much smaller and weaker now, with cute little delicate plastic parts that get brittle and fail after a few years. Heater cores do occasionally get clogged too, sometimes the result of the wrong coolant having been used, or stop-leak having been added somewhere along the line...and that's often because a head gasket is failing, and stop-leak is an expedient and cheap temporary fix. Good luck.

A man with your other skills should have no trouble at all. Watch a lot of videos. Some are good, some not so much, but if you watch enough you'll get a feel for what's the real deal and what's baloney. This one's not one of my favorites, but he deals with making a mold set from a hand built master without destroying it.

Paint looks great! One of the "secrets" to building really good models is just keep doing things over until you get them right. Yes, it takes patience and perseverance, but your results prove the value of raising your own bar. And next time, you'll have a much better idea of what it takes to achieve excellence the first time...or second, anyway. If I had a dollar for everything I've had to do over, I'd have a pretty big pile of dollars.

Though very nice results can be obtained by modifying and detailing the kit one-piece seat tub, I elected to liberate the seats and scratch a new tub from styrene sheet. The glooiest of my available tubs went under the hacker's saw... Seats separated and cleaned up, with a mockup spacer to help me determine the dimensions of the new tub... New under-construction tub fitted to chassis, allows more prototypical footwell length. While that was going on, I made up some tight-fitting mounting pins, so the body would always go back in exactly the same place. I find this to be helpful sometimes in maintaining centering of the wheels in their arches, and exact ride height and stance. The nose is getting treated to a little more meat under the leading edge, so the rounded contour of the alloy bodywork can be more accurately represented. Lower body panel being close-fitted prior to bonding, too. Also, the side-light holes are being elongated and deepened, again to better represent the prototype, and to allow me to use close-to-correct lenses. After carefully establishing the ride-height, I made up some Q&D supports for a wire axle that's compatible with the new front wheel centers...and these will figure later in the build. I'm happy with this ride-height and stance, wheels centered correctly in arches. Note the glooey and unsalvageable windshield has become the first mold (the first "master", actually, with several more steps required to get to a correctly-sized vac-form mold) for a vacuum-formed replacement in clear PET or styrene. Interior tub progresses, with seat supports, separate frame cross-tube. I can paint the parts separately, get a nice texture on the seats, and use buffing metalizer on the alloy panels, all prior to assembly. Everything mocked-up together. Now comes the cutting of the outer walls and fabrication to match the interior door openings of the real car. Getting there (note the cross-bar holding the rear of the windshield mold in rough alignment; this won't be on the completed model).

Closeup of the "junkyard" diffs I'll be using. Real Ford guys or car builders will recognize that the more oblong rear cover shape is much more typical of OEM Ford 9" housings...and the fact that the rear covers are welded to the housing, not removable as portrayed in these two kit parts (the white one is from the Revell '32 Fords, other one is a reinforced-housing NASCAR kit piece).

If you get it done, I want one. If I was finished moving, I'd offer to do molds and casts and vac-forms, as I've done lotsa silicone molds and polymer parts for product development and presentations over the years...but alas, I'm not set up at the moment (though I have vac pumps, pressure pots, etc.). Good luck with that one. I'd like to see more showcars available in resin.

Listen to Mr. Downey (Zoom Zoom) and Mr. Guthmiller. They use different materials and techniques, but their finished work is exceptional either way. If you're looking for valid advice, weight the advice most heavily from people who can demonstrate the soundness of said advice. That said, I use both Duplicolor and Timiya primers, as I find they're both excellent products, and they do different things well. Case in point: it's hard to beat Duplicolor sandable or high-build primers over extensive bodywork. As the majority of my models feature heavy mods, the fact that Duplicolor primers are intended to go over real-car bodywork and fillers means they do an excellent job of "holding down" sand-scratch swelling in both lacquer-based spot-putties and polyester ("bondo") fillers. In some cases, I'll use the finer-grained Tamiya primers over the Duplicolor, maybe to get a brighter surface, or to get a primer layer under the final color that requires less sanding just prior to paint. Sometimes, where the whole model is heavy bodywork, and where there's no danger of obliterating fine details, I'll even use 2K urethane primer/surfacer made for real cars. It was the ideal solution on this build. Something to remember: every modeling situation is slightly different, and what works extremely well in some cases may just not be the best material or procedure in others. But the real bottom line is that, if you want exceptional paint jobs, somewhere along the line you have to put out exceptional effort. There's no magic combination that will give you perfect results every time, and even those of us who've "mastered" the art of painting still find the need to do something over...occasionally multiple times...to get it right. The willingness to put forth the effort it takes to get exceptional results is the single indispensable tool...whether in model building, or any other endeavour in life.

Very, very cool.