Ace-Garageguy

Sounds like some not particularly accurate over-generalizations to me. I build real cars for a living these days, carefully, by the engineering book most of the time. Which is why they work like real cars. There are some relatively simple calculations to run to size your radiator for your available space if you're in doubt. And if you run good quality shrouded fans of sufficient size in a puller configuration, you'll be fine. For instance, on a '47 Caddy I did several years back, with a 350HP LS1 swap, I had to use the OEM available space for the radiator for a variety of reasons. I had a custom 4-row aluminum cross-flow unit built (trans cooler integral) and ran a single 3400 CFM puller fan with a full shroud (that covered the entire core). Worked like a champ...even with the AC on in 90 degree weather. NOTE: The market is full of semi useless bee-fart fans, like the aftermarket "upgrade" ones I'm currently replacing in a DeLorean, that won't do much of anything (but suck).

First in-the-flesh, going-down-the-road C8. Nice car, but for the cheese they want for it (and the lack of a manual gearbox), I'd rather have a well-sorted-and-tuned 600HP C5 Z06, and use the considerable change for years of insurance and gas.

I'm using the stuff on all the custom "chrome" parts on the interior of the '66 Chevelle I'm finishing up. Things like switch bezels, chrome strips that tie the custom console into the styling of the OEM dash, etc. The net effect is that you look at the interior and it looks stock...unless you really know '66 Chevelles....just what the owner wanted, a low-key not-in-your-face-visually car. The finish is almost identical to the OEM "chrome" on interior plastic parts...and it's saved me a lot of grief, with not having to mill everything from aluminum and polish it.

Looking good. I bought several of those old Monogram midgets over the years to do exactly what you're doing..."big car" conversions, and reams and discs full of reference material. You have my attention.

It's my guess there's a suicide spring perch out in front of the radiator on the car referenced by the OP. This (below) is a mockup of such a spring perch on zeed A rails, with a dropped axle to boot. It takes a lot of drop to get as low as the OP's reference car... Of course, with a higher perch, not so much drop is required on the axle. Frame zeeing here...

Yes. I did a frame zeeing tutorial here years ago. HOWEVER...anything resembling a normal zee won't be enough. To get the rear that low, he's going to need to go considerably farther, constructing up-and-over rails like zo...

Geez...where to start. Besides the "unsectioning" of the body shell... ...the lengths of the door and rear quarter ahead of the fenders is different... ...the shapes, lengths, proportions, and curves of the fenders are different... ...the lower body shell of the Zephyr is molded to imply vestigial running boards... ...the roll at the door and quarter tops and into the cowl is different... Frankly, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be much easier to start with a '40 Ford convert and stretch the wheelbase the approximate 10" to get to the Zephyr's 122"... ...but there's still a WHOLE LOT OF DIFFERENCES, but to my eye, there are more similarities:

It's just a '30-'31 Model A coupe body. I seriously doubt the deck area has been stretched. Rather, it's an illusion caused by the extreme channeling & lowering job, plus the angle the photo is taken from that makes the tail appear longer. To get the slight up angle of the forward part of the frame, simply build it on '32 rails. You'll need the additional length to get the proportions anyway. Most of what you need is in the Revell (soon to be re-released?) kit...though you'll need to un-chop the top. The old stock-top Monogram kit in 1/24 is another possible starting point. Imagine this un-chopped, lower, and you're there. (It's the 1/24 Monogram body on a 1/25 '32 frame; work your proportions carefully, and you can get away with it)

Wish you a quick and complete recovery. Really bites to injure your hands. What were you doing?

That would be great. I'm always interested in how guys who got it right went about it.

The buffing aluminum was the one I used most, and I just bought enough cans and bottles of the stuff to last me the rest of my life, most likely. I've never seen another product that could do exactly what the buffing metalizers do, though there's some that look to be pretty close. And I never woulda thunk the stuff would ever go away just due to lack of interest on the part of the corporate parent. Here's one of those niche market opportunities just waiting for some enterprising person to step up and fill...

Me too...

Agreed wholeheartedly. I've been in both ends of American business...the dirty-hands hard-tech service end, and the engineering/product development end. In engineering, I've seen the efficiency of a highly experienced small team with a can-do attitude replaced with bloated staffs of people with little-to-no hands-on experience, reluctant to speak up and primarily focused on blame-spreading, making everything as needlessly complex as they possibly can. Much the same deterioration has occurred on the service end. If the computer in the vehicle can't tell a tech why the car is sick, they'll usually just keep throwing parts at it until it gets better...at the owner's expense...and a lot of today's "mechanics" don't really have a basic understanding of how engines, transmissions, and brakes actually work. But hopefully we'll see a return to rationality. It's not political to say that this Covid mess has pointed out the sheer stupidity of relying on China for so much of our manufacturing and goods. There's plenty of room for a reemergence of the "cottage industries" that underpinned much of the American economy in days past.

Here's the thing...the engine doesn't really care if fuel is in a gaseous state (vapor) or a liquid (atomized droplets) state. All that matters in an internal combustion engine is the proportion of the particular hydrocarbon fuel molecules (gasoline, propane, etc.) to available oxygen molecules. That's it. SIDE NOTE: This is why "nitrous oxide injection" works, and requires a richer mixture: the nitrous adds additional oxygen to the mixture in the cylinder, so additional fuel added as well makes more power. There's a thing called "stoichiometric mixture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air–fuel_ratio , which is simply the ratio of fuel to air that achieves complete combustion with no fuel left over. And it doesn't matter whether the fuel is liquid or vapor. Cars used to be tuned to run pretty close to this theoretical ideal, but these days, emission-controlled engines are often set up to run towards the lean side...more available oxygen than there is fuel to combine with it. This tends to make them run hotter, which increases the oxides-of-nitrogen that are produced during combustion of fuel in air, and necessitates catalytic converters to mitigate...and it rapidly gets a lot more complicated than I can possibly get into here. While there have been some pretty wild claims that engines have been able to use "vapor carburetors" to get extremely good mileage, the idea defies known physics and chemistry, and verifiable real-world or lab testing has never confirmed the claims. Gasoline that's been "vaporized" takes up more physical volume in a combustion chamber than liquid droplets, and the net effect is reduced volumetric efficiency, resulting in reduced power output. Other gaseous fuels, like propane, natural gas, and hydrogen do have some interesting and worthwhile side benefits, but they're also usually lower in energy content than plain old gasoline...resulting in lower power and poorer fuel economy. I've worked with gaseous fuels and alcohol off and on a good bit over the last five decades, doing repeatable and verifiable experiments. But in short...there is no free lunch when it comes to this stuff, no matter how many "proofs" are claimed to be floating around. NOTE: There MAY be some validity to very high mileage claims made by one particular experimental engine that essentially lived in an insulated container, and was supposedly set up to get usable work from almost all the energy produced by burning fuel in air. When you remember that IC engines typically WASTE as much as 70% of the heat the burning fuel produces, dumping it out the exhaust and cooling system, the idea, if ever really developed, has at least theoretical merit...though to get it to work for very long, it would probably need to be made from exotic ceramics that could withstand the heat. SIDE NOTE 2: There have been some very successful experimental and limited-production engines optimized to take advantage of the particular characteristics of certain gaseous fuels, including a hydrogen-burning bus engine that's said to make as much power and torque as a comparable diesel. Pretty impressive IF it's true.

Thanks for the interest and comments, gentlemen. I hadn't realized until just this moment that anybody had looked at this thing recently. It's still resting real close to the bench. Honestly, I'd been intending to get it "trailerable" in time for the November ACME meet here, to show along with my big 'ol 1/8 '32 Ford. This will definitely be my last year here in the Southeast, and I'd wanted to go out with something kinda special. But since the crazy health mess, it's not going to happen. For what it's worth, this build has inspired me to start putting together enough stuff to build something very similar in full scale. Lotsa the old parts are still surprisingly affordable.

What's crazy these days is how many people of apparently reasonable intelligence can get sucked into believing all kinds of stuff that entirely disregards physics, math, observable reality, and documented repeatable science. Taking the word of "experts" isn't always the wise course of action...but it's a lot easier than searching out the actual truth.

Unless you bolt it on at the top of a very long hill and roll to the bottom with the engine off most of the way...

'Bout 99.77285% sure I know what it's based on, but I just can't find it...

I agree about it being a beautiful kit. I've managed to get all the 250GTO kits that are out there for anything like reasonable money, and other than the odd rear wheel openings, I like Gunze's rendition of this particular car the best...even though it seems a little inaccurate shape-wise (to me). Most of the real 250 GTO bodies have always looked just a tad squashed immediately forward of the windshield to me, and Gunze's rendition appears just a bit less so (to me).

This is pretty much inevitable when relatively small businesses that cater to niche markets...like modelers...get swallowed up by big corporations that don't have any understanding of the particular niche the small business catered to. As far as Rustoleum is concerned, any shiny black paint is just shiny black paint, and talent free / skill free bozos who spray runny, drippy messes on their lawn furniture and think it looks great are a helluva lot easier to market to and satisfy than modelers...who are essentially artists.

Which has basically been the downfall of much of American business. In the beginning, the idea was "we want to make good stuff that people want, and we'll figure out a way to make enough money doing it to keep making good stuff that people want". Today, the idea is primarily "we want to make a ton of money, and we really don't give a rat's rear what kind of garbage we make (or WHERE we make it, or even IF we make ANYTHING), as long as we make a ton of money... ...and we'll spend insane amounts of money on marketing and advertising to make people THINK they want the garbage we sell, rather than making really great stuff that sells itself because we spend real effort on product development to make really great stuff.

Sorry to hear that. I just finished a bag of burritos, nachos, and tacos...and a Killian's Red. Feel stuffed, but good.

I worked hard and ate healthy all week, so tonight I'm going to load my gut down with Taco Bell. Yes...I really like Taco Bell. Must be the chihuahua in me.

Only real interest I had in that series was the engines, which I managed to snag long ago for not-insane money. Had to get 'em both so's I could do a blown 392 in a '34 Ford drag car. Kinda wish now I'd picked up the chassis and bodies too, but they're not anything I'll be after in the foreseeable future...

Don't ask me why, but I finally sprung for a reasonably priced Gunze 250 GTO with the engine. There are 3 versions of this kit, one purely curbside with a molded shut hood, (but with PE wheels and cast metal chassis and bits), another version with an opening hood but no engine (and all the parts rendered in plastic), and the full-detail kit, again with PE wire wheels, various detail parts, cast metal chassis and underpinnings, and a cast metal engine with separate spun metal velocity stacks, etc. The two engine-free kits I've already started as American V8-powered hot rods, but this one I think I'm going to do as it's intended. I haven't built a challenging multi-media kit since my last HO scale locomotive decades ago, and this thing looks like the build will be a gas.