Ace-Garageguy

Unusual, to be sure. Looks great too.

Sounds rather like the behavior of several social-media sites with whom one posts commentary not strictly in line with the dogma-du-jour...

Sent a client in to what USED to be the only alignment shop in town that could get anything correctly aligned. $200 later, her dammed car STILL pulls right just like it did before. Naturally, the "old guy" who actually understood alignment retired, and the phone-obsessed bozo dwerps working the racks now seem to be incapable of much at all.

This thread is full of explaining the actual reason for crazing...solvents in the material being too "hot" for the substrate, and etching into it (this is the same reason that lacquer sprayed over enamel will more than likely cause the enamel to wrinkle, as the hot lacquer solvents leach into the enamel, causing it to swell and detach from the surface). Also read my previous posts in the thread. I describe more of the mechanisms of the problem, and possible means to mitigate it. Humidity is nothing but water vapor in the air. Styrene is impervious to water, hence it's not going to craze anything. A very slim possibility, as I mentioned earlier, is that the slower flash-off you get under high humidity (because the air is already saturated with water vapor, there's nowhere for the solvents to "go" as they want to evaporate out of the material just sprayed) could conceivably cause the surface to stay "wet" longer, allowing more solvent penetration into the plastic substrate...but I've never seen it happen. EDIT: Folks need to be careful about trusting Rustoleum and Krylon as the fix, too. Rustoleum and Krylon products come in many different flavors, chemically. The special "for plastic" and "fusion" products, for example, have ruined more than one model on the boards over the years. TEST TEST TEST EDIT 2: decanting Duplicolor primers and airbrushing has a good chance of succeeding where spraying "mist" coats from a rattlecan will more than likely make a grainy surface that will either obliterate detail, or take a lot of careful sanding to prepare for color. An airbrush allows control of the amount of fluid coming out the nozzle in a way rattlecans can't, and a very finely atomized mist from an airbrush can indeed solve crazing. On doing REAL cars with "sensitive" substrates, I've often been able to achieve high builds of "hot" primers by carefully controlling my air pressure and fluid adjustments...exactly the same idea as airbrushing decanted primers on models.

Nope. Humidity causes "blushing", slow flash-off, slow drying. I'll stand on my 5+ decades of experience with this stuff.

I haven't tried it yet. I'm about to do some testing under hot Duplicolor rattlecan colors...as soon as I have time. Steve Guthmiller may know the answer.

Weather has no significant effect on crazing (other than high humidity slightly slowing the flash time, allowing hot solvents to remain longer on the surface). It's simply the hot solvents attacking the plastic substrate. You CAN mitigate the crazing effect by shooting "mist" coats from farther away (which allows for some solvent evaporation prior to the primer hitting the surface), but this also causes a grainy or orange-peel surface that has to be addressed prior to color. Either way, you're screwed. Scuffing, however actually CAN have a slightly adverse effect. Injection molded plastic parts have a slightly harder surface...the part that was in direct contact with the hot mold...than the underlying plastic. Scuffing, even the gentle scrubbing with an abrasive cleanser I now favor, can exacerbate the tendency towards solvent crazing...and I know this from experimentation. So in short...TEST, TEST, and TEST before committing to using ANYTHING on a particular model. I feel your pain, but I thought this one was pretty much ruined. In the event, saving it was really pretty easy.

Bottom line: we've got a lot of people who don't know squat about engines doing tooling for models.

^^^ Great photos. I need to build that thing. And the distributor drive is particularly interesting...

I've had a lot of semi-disasters using various primers in recent years. The regular Duplicolor crazed one badly, but I was able to save it using PlastiKote "scratch filling" primer...but the formulation was subsequently changed and it's crapp now. "Scratch-filling" primers are nothing but higher-solids, high-build versions of the regular automotive primers, chemically pretty much the same. But kit plastic formulation is all over the board these days. You can safely use some hot automotive primers on SOME issues of certain kits, but they'll turn other issues into a wrinkly mess. I've about given up on automotive primers for most full-body paint work now, especially on recently manufactured kits. But Tamiya works beautifully and lays out slick and smooth if I shoot it wet like I USED to be able to do with Duplicolor et al. Yes, it's more expensive, but I'm OK with that as long as it actually works.

Yup. With the economy in a state of flux for the foreseeable future, and looming destabilizers like widespread civil unrest probable after November, and a possible "resurgence" of the coughing thingy forecast for the cold months, I'd be wary of expecting rental property to be a safe bet on your future right now.

Awesome !!!

That's rough. I genuinely wish her well.

Until the recharge time is comparable to filling a petro-fueled car's tank, and until the reality of the "renewable" segment of the grid can provide enough energy to run all these things in lieu of fossilality, they'll just be glorified golf carts to me.

I suggest you shelter in place until 2050, and when you DO come out, don't get within 1/2 mile of anybody on a motorcycle.

Excellent. THANK YOU.

Same stuff irking me today as every day: mindless rebleating, sheeple in general, willful ignorance, cowardice, laziness (both intellectual and physical), lies, greed, etc. But I'm not going to let it affect my own productiveness and calm...'cause at this point there's not a dammed thing I can do about any of it.

Interesting that Sturgis is going ahead, with an estimated attendance of upwards of 250,000. https://sturgis.com/ Naturally the media are painting it as a crime against humanity.

Cool cool cool. The aluminium looks great. One of my absolute favorite cars in full scale. I still dream about the S2/S3 I stupidly sold back in the '80s. Stupid stupid stupid.

Two buildable "core" engines, a 305 for my '89 GMC longbed, and a 350 for the '92 Silverado crewcab. Both of 'em are "early" style engines, which means they don't really want to work with the existing EFI intake manifolds...which is fine. Both vehicles are out of emission-reg compliance and I've been running the '89 on a Rochester 2GC for several years anyway, since the EFI breathed its last. Both engines will be going together with air-gap dual-plane manifolds, small Holley 4-bbls, shorty headers, and low-end/mid-range cams... but maybe a little rumpity in the '89, 'cause she's got a manual gearbox The 305 in the '89 is also getting backdated to V-belts...a whole helluva lot easier to fix by the side of the road, and if you lose one, the rest of the systems remain functional.

Explaining reality usually is these days.

And even though the body is carved on a huge 5-axis CNC mill, the final surface development is still done with clay, scrapers, and manual skill.

I agree. I have 2 '59 Buicks, this Poncho, and a '60 Olds...all slated to be ground scraping customs.

Thank you sir. I will indeed.