Ace-Garageguy

NICE !!

Clifford Brown, With Strings. Never heard it before.

As part of my continuing quest to nail down as many '50s big American cars as I can find, I bought this little 1/26 Maisto '55 Buick in CHP livery...cheap. Though it looks pretty rough in the photo, it cleaned up nice. It's a pretty decent model, much better than I expected, for not much money.

Very interesting...

Yes, beautiful...just beautiful. Lately I find my interest in old, heavy trucks to be on the upswing, and this really lights my jets. NICE.

It's amazing what a great job the USPS is capable of doing, and even more amazing how uneven and sporadic the service is. I still have those sewing machines to photograph, too.

Last time I shot B&W, it was Tri-X, Pan-X, Plus-X, Ilford HP-5, etc., some time in the early 1990s. In the '70s I'd routinely push ASA 400 Tri-X to 1600 for motorsports shots, as high as 3200 for available light. I miss the darkroom part of the work, where the graininess or reticulation was an artifact of the film chemistry and processing, and not an artificially introduced effect. I lost my darkroom equipment long ago, but this thread has got me interested in getting out the old cameras and seeing what's still available in B&W film. Maybe after I'm moved...

I just checked the parts-pack version...no manufacturer cast in, definitely. And I could almost swear I've seen real ones with Stromberg 97s too, three-bolt pads...but I could be wrong. EDIT: See the flyer copied in my post above for engine availability: All Chevy V8, Pontiac and Ford V8, Pontiac OHC 6, and Chevy inline 6

Could be several things. First Man-a-Fre was about '62, IIRC...but could have been earlier. EDIT 2: Further research indicates they were not made for Caddys: EDIT: Quoting from https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/meet-man-fre-guru-makes-carburetor-injector-systems-look-like-new/ "Speed Mechanics (Dec. 1962 and Feb. 1963), Hop-Up, Custom Rodder, Speed and Custom (Jan. 1963), Car Craft (Oct. 1964), Popular Hot Rodding (May 1966), and HOT ROD (July 1968) all ran stories about the system. It was also featured in Petersen Publishing's Basic Fuel Systems Spotlite Book and the Custom Rodder Handbook No. 4."

Glad he's OK. A good guy, and I need to buy some of his outstanding resin wheels.

And it has a beautiful French cousin, the Ford Comete, with bodywork by Facel. This is a '54 Monte Carlo coupe...

Seein' as how you get multiple vintage parts-pack trees (that I'd assumed were long lost and gone forever) that bring pretty fair money for the '60s releases (and that I've been buying up for years 'cause I thought they'd never be back), this kit is a pretty sweet deal. Just the original "roadster accessories" pack with the axles, springs, and hairpins routinely brings more than this whole kit is going for. Looks like they may have addressed the slight short-shot problems that a lot of the later chromed Revell engine kits had, causing sink marks that didn't appear on the original runs. Bravo Atlantis.

I'm still pining for a Borgward Isabella coupe, or a Rennsport.

I think it's great, though I have zero interest in movie or TV cars. What I see in the kit's future if I ever buy one is a cleaned up nose and tail, a heavy chop, slammed...with a turbine-electric hybrid powertrain if I'm feeling really ambitious, and live long enough. Anything the manufacturers can generate a profit on floats my boat, as more money means more chance of new or reissued geezermobiles.

Kinda sad, but not too many people even know what war that was, or who was in it, where it took place, what it was about...or care.

For what it's worth, USPS has an online contact / complaint page. https://www.usps.com/help/contact-us.htm I've used it once when I started having recurring mis-delivery problems, and packages left in the driveway, at the street on the ground next to the box, on cars, and in the yard in the rain. They got back to me soon, I saw the route driver going around with (apparently) his supervisor in the truck, and for now, everything's working well enough.

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.