Ace-Garageguy

But it turned out that the reality the video game existed in was a simulation, so I sent in Agent Smith...

The Cash For Clunkers law required dealers to destroy the engines with a sodium silicate solution (liquid glass) instead of oil.

And this should pretty well do a number on the knife...

Haven't we done this before?

The best design will be a scaled-down finger brake, as used for real sheetmetal...only much smaller. Here are some recommendations...

Pete's advice is right on target. Rod works pretty easily, and unless you really need a deep and obvious open end, it's the way to go. HOWEVER...since you already have the tube, watch the video below. Several commercial benders are available that work on the same principle on tube down to 1/8", and if you have some fabricating skills and access to a lathe, you can easily make something similar that will work on tube as small as you could possibly need to go. NOTE: I personally don't have much use for the "spring" type of bending sleeves (K&S etc.). They still allow kinks if you're not extremely careful. They can also be almost impossible to remove if you try to get sharp-radius bends. The oft-repeated "fill the tube with sand (or ice)" works OK on real-world size tube, but you need extremely fine-grained sand to work on model sizes. NOTE 2: For some sizes of tube, you can insert a length of close-fitting soft iron wire in your tube to help prevent kinking. Soft iron wire is generally sold as tie-wire or fence-wire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-O-Nine

Thanks for the review. Camaros are sorely lacking in my collection, and I've been wanting a good '69 to start. So glad I didn't buy one of these, only to open the box and see this misshapen mess. I'd have sent it back to them with a tube of special lubricant. Still very difficult for me to grasp how "professionals" that get paid decent money can get away with putting out garbage like this.

Thank you sir.

Georgia. Though I have the property in Az., I haven't moved yet. I won't cut a tree down unless it's really dangerous. I did have to take down two huge dead pines on the Ga. property I'm on now, but as they were dead, no problem.

OCT. 01, 2019 UPDATE Got the inside of the deck the way I want it. The center hole is bumped up on the real panel to support the center of the outer skin, and isn't actually a hole. Though nobody will ever probably notice, I wanted it kinda right. Filling it gave an acceptable look, but sanding a round depression turned out to be more of a trick than I'd anticipated. The solution was to glue a dot of sandpaper to a short length of round styrene and twirl. Installed back on the hinges, this is what will be visible from the rear when it's open. The body of the car was shot with Ace Hardware black lacquer several years back. All it needed was to be polished up a little after shrinking in more over time, but I couldn't find the can to shoot the deck. I had some Duplicolor Universal Black, and used that. Anybody who shoots real cars will know all blacks don't match. The Duplicolor is blacker, so the whole car will get scuffed and shot with additional coats so all the panels will match each other. The Duplicolor sands and polishes nicely, so it should look decent in the end. Right now the deck is pretty grainy. The right side of the firewall was really tight up against the engine. It's an old resin part I found somewhere, and if I had it to do over, I wouldn't use it as it's kinda rough. Not wanting to backtrack too much at this point, I'm just hogging it out for added clearance, and I'll rework the ribs slightly for a cleaner look. You can see from the shadow that there's now sufficient clearance between the firewall and cylinder head to be OK if the thing was real.

Super bodywork, panel highlighting, & paint. Very nice indeed.

Yeah, as I'm going to be a permanent resident there myself shortly, I'm kinda concerned with that. The whole point of going to Az. was that Az. was Az.

My last place had huge old trees that shaded it from the sun very well in summer. They did such a great job, all I usually had to do to keep the place in the 70s during the hottest part of the year was run the exhaust-fan at night, fill the house with cool air, and close the windows in the morning. My homeowner's insurance people did a surprise inspection and said I'd have to remove all the overhanging trees or they'd cancel me. I said do it, found different coverage 'til I left. Anyway, the new owners cut down every dammed one of them. The place used to be shady and cool and inviting. Now it looks like a desert. And I bet their summer cooling bill is at least $300 per month.

Not unless there's a smartphone app for that. Last floor-sweeper kid we hired couldn't figure out how to turn on the broom and quit.

No snark taken. Yeah, when I used to post a lot, it was kind of a running joke that I had so many projects going and nothing ever got done. And they'd usually start off like this one, intended to be fairly simple, but developing into complicated, heavily re-engineered monsters. At last count, I had something over 65 in various stages. Some of them stalled because I ran up against not-well-enough-developed-skills for what I envisioned. On some, I had to develop new techniques to achieve the vision. Some fell into historical research internet rabbit holes. Some stopped because I couldn't find exactly the right parts to move forward. On some, my vision changed as the build progressed, and got shelved rather than dealing with a lot of backtracking. As my skills developed, I found I needed to get miniature machine-tools to make some of the stuff I wanted, another diversion. And some fell victim to the Homer effect..."Look! A squirrel !!"... I just started on something else that caught my imagination. Honestly, I was having more fun doing that. Finishing things to my own standards gets to be a lot like work. I have to be an adult in the real world and finish what I start. This hobby used to give me a responsibility-free creative outlet, but nothing was ever completed. So I thought, as I have very limited build time right now, I'd take a different tack and see if I could actually stick to one or two and bring 'em on home. As almost everything I build gets highly modified, the most fun for me is in doing the early design work, mockups, and fitting up to determine if what I want to do is even realistically possible. As I've mastered most of the techniques involved in finishing stuff (other than BMF), once I have the basics stuck together and I can look at a viable mockup, with the stance and proportions and "look" I'm after, I tend to lose interest in what can be the drudgery of the rest of it...particularly when things like the paint problems on this chassis crop up, or the fiddly bodywork around the headlights on this one seems to drag on forever. So...finishing a few is an exercise in adult self-discipline in an area where nobody expects anything from me...but me.

Thanks. I believe I've found one.

Even more confusing, the kit I have represents the 1600, with the hood scoop... I see the 1300 is available for reasonable money, so if it does indeed have an engine, I guess I'll have to snag one. I have a Sptint GTA coupe, mentioned by Bill Eh?, on the way too. As all this era Alfa small 4-cylinder engines are very similar visually (but with differing carburetion), I can copy the best one, and import some side-draft Webers from something else (my own long-gone car had a 1750 twin-DCOE-equipped engine). Yes, definitely. After a cursory look, my first thought is that the grille openings and bumpers are too low relative to the headlights. Like a lot of kits out there, it kinda looks like what it's supposed to be, but to anyone with a developed sense of proportion and line, it's pretty far off. Another problem I see coming is a 4WD-looking stance...if the box photos of the built-up are any indication. Still, it's something to start with.