Ace-Garageguy

Excellent.

Exactly, again.

It's the other way around. The Revell kit is the repop. Accurate Miniatures was a vary small company making very ambitious, highly complex, and beautifully detailed models. For my money, they did a great job in spite of the issues, and the necessary corrections aren't seen as being "necessary" to the vast majority of builders. But this build highlights the fact that a spectacular and accurate model can be built from a "difficult" kit with some applied intelligence, effort, and skill.

Probably plastic gears or silly cables in the bed-cover retraction mechanism. Not good to have a failure at only 1500 miles, but it's also typical of early production vehicles to suffer from detail problems. The part of the review that I was particularly interested in is that the vehicle seems to be capable of performing as a real, useful truck, as opposed to the fashion statements most pickups are today. Of course, even Yugos usually made it past 1500 miles. It'll be even more interesting to see how the thing is doing after 100,000 miles of working for its living.

Exactly.

No. The size and shape of mold cavities carved in heavy steel blocks don't change appreciably over time. "Degradation" appears as "flash" as the tightness of fit of mold elements to each other is allowed to loosen, and molten material squeezes out the resulting gap. Degradation also appears as misalignment of mold elements, resulting in exaggerated or "stepped" parting lines, caused by uncorrected wear of mechanical alignment pins and other alignment means. On model car bodies, misalignment of mold elements can manifest itself as slightly different body thicknesses from side to side, and in worst cases (probably where "repairs" have been made incorrectly) as misshapen roof pillars and sail panels. Exaggerated "ejection pin" marks are also caused by wear of moving mechanical parts within a mold. "Sink marks" aren't due to mold wear, but are caused by slight short-shotting (not injecting quite enough material during production), running molds slightly too hot, or de-molding too early. Early de-molding is also what causes "warping", not mold wear.

Nice to see a high-quality build of a stock lower-line car like a lot of people actually used for basic transportation.

One of these? Wow.

I started one of these some time back, got fed up, and put it away for a rest. Let's just say at this point that I have some experience making something nice from awfulness. The real problem is that the nose just doesn't fit the rest of the body at all, and nothing lines up, no matter how much fiddling you do. It's not symmetrical either. The only real solution...short of buying a one-piece body and cutting the nose off...is to carefully fit the nose to the body, paying particular attention to getting the tops of the fenders in a straight line first. Then glue it to the body. Sculpt the lines in the coves, get everything else right...and then cut it back off. WAY more effort than I felt like expending at the time, but I was doing it primarily to illustrate here that it is indeed possible to fix the issues. If you really enjoy a challenge like I do, it's worth it. Otherwise, it's an exercise in frustration.

Fine fine fine piece of work.

Beginning to become concerned as well...

The side-draft Webers most people are used to seeing are 40 DCOEs. Each venturi is 40mm. BUT...Weber also made 45, 48, 50, 55, and 58 DCO-series side-drafts that look like 40s, but bigger. (NOTE: those are the only sizes I'm certain of; there may be more) They were seen on exotic production and racing engines in the '50s and '60s. The Grand Sport engine ran four 58 DCO3s. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/chevy-4-x-58mm-sidedraft-weber-inlet-manifold.1002358/page-2

All the above. ^^^ AND...along with BPA (found in many products, as well as canned food liners and plastic water bottles) and certain derivatives of soy, they're testosterone killers (NOTE: The soy data is inconclusive) https://www.peaktestosterone.com/Phthalates_Testosterone/ There are some extra special folks who refuse to acknowledge it, but average testosterone levels in men of every age are about HALF of what they were 50 years back. https://myparla.com/decreasing-testosterone-levels/ While the exact causes of the mostly global decline are still somewhat cloudy, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that these things DO have a measurable negative impact. https://www.vaulthealth.com/blog/articles/Phthalates-BPA-and-testosterone Don't want to trust my sources? Do your own search.

True, but the alloy disc wheels available in the Lindberg D-type and the Revell XK-SS kits, or Randy Ditton's beautiful 3D printed 15" wires fix that issue up nicely; though I'm not certain if those wires are right for a Jag, they look great on just about anything.

Maybe injecting some reality into expectations? It wasn't an easy kit for novices when it came out. It's not a kit for builders wanting a shake-the-box-and-a-model-pops-out experience. In the hands of an experienced builder with some skill and patience, it's every bit as good a kit today as it was 5 decades back. EDIT: Most kits with working features like doors, decklids, steering, etc. leave a lot to be desired in OOB fit and function. And that hasn't stopped a good number of builders from creating exceptional models from them. Life is choices.

Big smile here.

One of the things I like to do is take mechanical things out of context, to create abstract designs. EDIT: This would be stronger as an abstract if it was cropped a little tighter at the bottom. Hmmmmm... EDIT 2: Fixed.

Not on the road exactly... I was over at the airport when I heard big radial engines, looked up to see this landing, waited around for him to taxi in to park "Texas Raiders" B-17G "flying fortress"

Love these things. Coolest motorized doorstop ever.

Ummmmm...trade it for gas?

Wow. Just WOW !!!

That was worth the wait.

Can I have her flying monkeys?