Ace-Garageguy

More than anything, specific storage conditions of temperature and humidity influence the deterioration of acetate models. I have an early acetate Midget from Monogram that's almost perfect, and another one that's badly warped and shrunk. I acquired them at different times, from different sellers, but they were made at the same time, though were stored differently. The closest thing I've found so far as to the actual "science" regarding the deterioration of models is a site looking at factors contributing to the deterioration of acetate film stock. https://s3.cad.rit.edu/ipi-assets/publications/acetate_guide.pdf

Revell Jag XK SS. Second one, this time as a donor to do a full detail D-type from the nicely proportioned ancient Lindberg kit. Probably overpaid, as I understand it's going to be re-released in September or so, but instant-gratification, you know? And a Fujimi Ferrari 365 Daytona Spyder. Pretty good deal on this one. One more...a Monogram '59 Chebby convertible. I've had a hardtop body shell with no guts, so this will take care of that. WAY under market price, too.

Stylin' and profilin' often had no regard regard for...or understanding of...vehicle dynamics; some things never change.

Interesting. I'm just the opposite.

Most excellent !! EDIT: I lucked into a resin repop of that some time ago. You've certainly provided inspiration as to what to do with it.

It doesn't take a song... EDIT: ...other than the sweet music of an internal combustion engine lighting off.

I missed the post that asserted "old cars are trouble free". Could you point me to that one, or quote it?

Only if it comes with Beverly D'Angelo...

The Alfa's a real beauty. Shoot her in bright sunlight, with shadows, and no intrusive background elements, she'd be hard to tell from the real thing.

Testors Ferrari 512S. NOS unmolested kit in perfect condition. While it's a beautiful car in its own right, I'm already thinking of rebodying it as a 512M in Sunoco-Penske colors, or a 612 Can Am car, or even the Modulo show car. If I live that long.

Maybe because the storage environment isn't very well controlled? My house here isn't AC'd, barely heated, just like both the shops I work with. I just today checked a plastic-packaged quart of polyester glazing putty I'd used half of at one shop 6 months ago. It's unusable for customer finish work, though I can still use it for under-layers making plugs for custom fiberglass parts. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs, the "thinners" like styrene monomer, acetone, etc.) seem to me to evaporate right through the plastic containers. Metal-packaged material lasts much longer if properly sealed, but it separates pretty badly and requires thorough mixing after a few months, once opened for use. The polyester fillers have been acting this way for as long as I've been using them, something over 50 years. EDIT: Maybe I'm doing it wrong. EDIT 2: Of course, bodyshops use most filler material within a week or two, so longer term stability of opened material isn't one of the formulation criteria anyway.

It depends...on what I'm working on, the time of day, the day of the week, what kinda mood I'm in, etc. Classical baroque is usually good for working on just about anything. Saturday nights I'll often stream the Atlanta PBS "Jazz Classics" program through the main amp and speakers, other times I'll steam some ambient or techno or epic stuff I find online, sometimes '50s rock, lotsa other stuff. Or...I have two, 300 CD changers that alternate random tracks from albums I particularly liked when I was buying CDs...and there's music from just about every genre imaginable in there. Like I said...it depends.

To the best of my recollectory, everything up through the 633, which is about where I lost interest, had timing chains. Hence, I've never really noticed whether those engines are "interference" or not...as I've never seen a chain in one fail. CAVEAT: I'm not a BMW guru by any stretch of he imagination, and there's one helluva lot I don't know about them.

...and set up all the subsystems as "dumb" standalones, you have a very fast, comfortable "luxury" car that you can drive pretty much forever.

I'm sure a lot of you have noticed, but some Ford guys apparently thought rather highly of the 633 too...

BMW went the way of almost all the other "sports" car manufacturers. What started as fairly low-production, technically-sophisticated but still relatively simple cars (like old Porsche 911s) aimed at driving enthusiasts became bloated, "luxury", gizmo-laden status symbols. And like the man says, now they're perfectly lovely cars...until they're out-of-warranty. The upside is that their market value plummets within just a few years, so those of us capable of maintaining or fixing an older one can get terrific image and performance for chump change. But the parts cost and maddening complexity have kept me away from the more recent ones...and buying one with problems really cheap is always a roll of the dice.

I call 'em all Beemus (rhymes with emu) because nobody else does, and the oh-so-cool BMW guys think I'm a total drooling ignorant idiot when I say it.

EDIT: I spent a some time with a gram scale developing just the right repeatable mix of West and micro; don't know where the notes are, but they're sure to surface during packing to finish moving.

Different strokes and all that. Last Beemus I have any use for were the 633 cars. https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1977/29/road-test-near-perfection-the-bmw-633-csi Pretty much loved everything they built up to that point, then they seemed to me to go off the rails in a mad rush to make them hell to work on and unnecessarily complex. 2002s are wonderful, light, simple, well balanced, fun to drive. 2.8 / 3.0 CS were also wonderful cars, remarkably fast and fine handling. The sedans from the period were kinda sleepers too. I got in a highly illegal on-road race (me in a 2800 sedan) with a Pantera one night long ago, and he could never pass me. Part of town I used to live in decades ago, the yups drove 3-series (the E21 replacement for the 2002), thought they were hot stuff....but my hot-rod 2-liter Pinto would smoke 'em all. EDIT: '73 3.0 CS, below. It's every bit as good as it looks.

Yes. They're kinda unusual, but appeared on a fair number of vehicles in the time period you mention.

It's good stuff, but as we've discussed here at length previously, unless you do a LOT of model building, or are in the real-car body business and have access to small amounts as necessary (like me), it will dry out in the container and get hard to use long before it's used up.

Friendamine's wife has a bought-new last-generation MR2 at the Yotyto dealer for over a year, after she lost the key and had some cowboy come to the house to "fix" it. He busted up parts of the dash and scrambled the wiring, confused the computer security system. Dealer just flat will not touch it, as nothing is available new. She got me involved, I found all the parts used, can re-flash the computer, but the dealer doesn't want to release the car until the "bill" for doing nothing is paid. Same folks I saved a '95 Miata (also bought new) from the crusher for, after a shop had written an insane $7,000 estimate for what was really just a fender bender.

Yup. The first trucks with those lights came with four glass halogen sealed-beams. Pretty good light for the time. They scrapped the individual glass bulb design for one-piece molded plastic, OK when new, but subject to fogging and yellowing after a couple years, just like everything else clear plastic. I've got the parts to backdate to 4 glass bulbs...which I think look lots better too...but haven't ever looked for better replacement bulbs. Probably just mount two big 7" hi-low driving lights forward of the grille and be done with it.

Thank you. I'll definitely look into those. Good memory. The GMC has single rectangular lamps, pretty much the worst of the available sealed-beam configurations, and the Silverado has quads.