Ace-Garageguy

No problem. You simply orient the second crank just as it would be in a straight eight engine, and make certain to orient the cams so that when two pistons are both at the top of their strokes, one is at TDC firing, and the other is at TDC overlap. No magic custom crank or cams required. This is a conventional straight eight crank. The solution should be obvious.

Kewl.

Thanks again for all the extra info. And thanks for pointing me towards Bilek. I found the Dodge radio truck, essentially the same kit as the Italeri ambulance I wanted (different decals...and Bilek did an ambulance too) for a price too good to pass up. I'm really impressed with the kit. Even though it has no engine, I sure would be more than happy to pay for that kind of quality and parts count in larger scale. Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting into building some military subjects, learn some of the great weathering techniques I've been blown away by, and to not feel the need to extensively modify everything like I usually do with cars.

Good looking vehicle. Looks well maintained. I recently semi-inherited a client's 2001 PT she bought back in '03 or so. I've done most all the repairs on it (the few she paid somebody else to do I ended up doing over again), including several cam belts and a head gasket. Little car is pushing 200,000 miles, and the trans won't shift out of second. It's just a sensor, but the paint is starting to go, and she wanted something nicer. Found a 2009 Corolla with an honest 34,000 miles on it for her, looks and smells new, so she's happy. She wanted to either give the PT away or sell it cheap, but it's worth so little, the kind of folks who'd probably buy it won't do the $1000+ cam belt job that's coming up pretty soon, and the little car would end up getting junked. I'm kinda attached to it, it's still entirely solid and reliable, so I bought it for almost nothing. I need a PT like I need another hole in the head, but they're great little light duty trucks, comfortable to travel in, and I can just about fix anything on it now in my sleep. Probably give it a nice paint job when I get out West, and try to find it a good home. Funny thing out where I'm going...you see a lot of older, well maintained cars still earning their gas and oil. Seems like folks take care of stuff better out there, and I like that.

Wishing you well.

Actually, it really shouldn't fit the 1/25 Revell frame all that well because it's nominally 1/24. But numbers are apparently very hard for professionals who get paid to work with them. The body really is quite nice, and is just a little larger in some dimensions than a correct 1/25 body would be. The good news is that there actually are some aftermarket full-scale bodies out there that have been supersized to better deal with the expanding dimensions of the typical American, but still fit on a correct frame. As with everything hot-rod or design related, proportion is important, so just be critical of how everything looks as you mock it up.

Nice model. Captures the feel of the real one well. But speaking of the real one, whoever did the brake line on the diff needs to go back and take plumbing 101 over again.

VERY nice. Thanks.

Yup, my first thought was Borgward too...but then I remembered the classic Wartburg face on the much more common sedans...

Man...I HAVE to have an Enterprise pizza cutter now.

Damm thing was cold, too...

And thanks for dredging it back up. I saw the reference Snake posted to an article on the Shalako back in an old R&C, and just found that issue for not too many shekels. Only took me 5 years.

I agree with just about all of this. When I was young, I learned actual ENGINEERING and MATH from articles in the best of the hot-rod mags. Things like the physics of weight transfer, and coefficients of drag and friction, and how a collapsing magnetic field creates a hot spark in an ignition system. I learned more advanced electronics from tech articles in the model RR mags about control and signal circuits. Early adopters of then-new transistors were regularly featured. Tech articles would often run several pages of TEXT, and would EXPLAIN PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION AND THEORY. Try to do that now, even in an online format, all you'll get is TLDR. Many people's attention spans are about on a par with goldfish. https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/ There's little understanding of or interest in the physical world. The populace is being dumbed-down, with less and less useful knowledge imparted to each successive generation by the "education" system, so the mags are thinner, what's there is mostly advertising and pictures, the writing isn't as good, the understanding of the subject matter is often poor, and as noted above, "tech articles" are infomercials for products being hawked elsewhere in the mags. Yeah, it's a different world. And it's not all for the better.

Domino's Pizza.

It took over nine weeks to get a small packet from Japan, the same size that normally arrives in about 10 days. And like yours, wasn't trackable once it reached the States. It had also been sitting in limbo at the Japanese accepting PO for several weeks prior, and I had started to think it had slipped in a crack somewhere and was lost forever. So don't give up hope.

Who knows? He might discover the secret to table-top cold fusion.

Pillars look good. Nice fab work.

Not much to look at, but I got the suspension re-sorted. Mostly, she just wanted to say hi, 'cause she was feeling left out when the others on the bench got updates posted.

Got a little closer on this baby too. The bodywork fairy came by and finished up roughing in the LF wheel arch mod... So I made a transfer template so the other side would match... Moving along nicely. That's when I realized the '62 doesn't have chrome around the front wheel openings, but does have a molded-in bead that's pretty obvious. A little .030" half-round should get it. Nobody ever would have noticed, especially 'cause this is supposed to be a clone body anyway, but hey...I'm a glutton for punishment.

OK...those wheel backs and the way the brake drums fit them was really bugging me. I found some mystery chrome backs and made a test rim from one. Assembled, they just didn't do it for me. They're about a scale inch smaller than the old 16" rims, and though you can't see both sides of the tire at the same time, the finned drum didn't look right with no clearance around it either. That's the '50 Olds generator getting its bracket finished up on the right. What to do? I remembered I had a gluebomb AMT '40 with the old 16-inchers. Trashed, not restorable, but 2 of the rims looked salvageable. Red too-small test rim on the left, a black 16" rim salvaged from an AMT 16" wheel, and another wheel...plus the wheel and tire that'll be on the front of the car. These things were a double-barrelled bugger to work with, as they had the tire-melt blues, and one insisted on crumbling a couple of times. Got two done and primered, finally. Had to turn down a dowel to make a tapered sanding stick to do the insides without breaking the damm things. Assembled with the right amount of clearance around the fins... Yup. This'll work. Painting the things has been a nightmare too. OLD can of Testors dark red enamel, almost no gas left in it, and it wants to bubble more than anything else. I can't believe I'll be sanding and polishing inner wheel rims. Oh well. Then they'll be done. (I shot the wheels years ago with the same can, 'cause it glossed so nicely with no additional work; that's procrastination for you.) Made a shim for the back of the hood and dialed in the fit at the cowl and radiator shell to my satisfaction too.

Something completely unnecessary but kinda fun, a couple sets of 3D-printed jack stands. The adjustment hardware is a little overscale, but I think they look great...and they actually work just like the real ones.

Now for the really cool part (I think so, anyway). She'd crazed down in the panel lines, and it also looked like by the time I had everything blocked, some of tthe lines would be getting pretty shallow. So I bought a set of the Tamiya panel-line engraving tools. Expensive, and they took over 60 days to get here due to the Covid mess...but boy damm howdy, are they great. Made a transfer template of the new wheel opening to insure the other side will match, with some reference marks. Getting the wheel arches round is simply a matter of finding something with the right diameter and sticking some sandpaper to it... Body with wheel arches done, puttied, and all the crazing sanded out, panel lines deepened...Even though the surface is level and smooth at this point, the effects of the crazing are still evident here. But I didn't want to get too aggressive and start losing body contours. In the event, the green was a good guide-coat for showing some mold lines and other imperfections. That apparent crack on the decklid was why I got a pretty good deal on this thing, too. Now fixed, permanently. There's a learning curve with the scribing tools, and you can see where my hand slipped a couple of times, but nothing terminal, and easily corrected. Two coats of Tamiya fine white surfacing primer. Another first for me...and damm is that stuff great too. If you want good work without having everything go wrong, spend a few bucks for top-line materials. There are a few tiny flaws to address, another coat of primer, and she's ready for paint. I'm really happy I was able to save this one relatively easily...especially since I knew better but buggered her in the beginning anyway.

It's been a while on this one, but I've been doing some testing, learning how to deal with some problems, etc. I tried a couple of different methods of shooting the body with HOT self-etching primer, in part because I'd wanted to leave her in chromate green through the build process. And she crazed like crazy no matter what I did. Even though this particular kit misses the accuracy mark in a few places, overall I just prefer this rendition of the 250 GTO to even the real one...except that odd rear wheel arch. Adding material in the form of .030" strips... While that was setting up, I started addressing the wheels I want to use. They're 1/25, and fall through the 1/24 tires I want. Solution: a strip of .020 styrene around the rim. And it's OK. Some of the earlier Americans had really thick looking rims. After painting, they'll look close enough to possible period-correct for this build. Raised lettering is being removed from the tire as well. Took some more experimenting to get that working 100%, too. Sculpting and rounding the first wheel arch...and the primer crazing is really apparent here. This is a fairly expensive kit, and giving up on it wasn't an option I liked. About done with the first phase of the wheel arch mod...

Just got in an Italeri 245 Dodge 4X4 with an anti-tank gun. Next target is the Italeri 226 ambulance. Not many out there, but sage advice here has led me to a Bilek repop.

That looks like fun. Great copy on the box blurbs.