Ace-Garageguy

Agreed. The oft-cited "optical corrections" as being necessary for a model to look "right" in scale is absolute bunk. Photograph a correctly-scaled model with a good lens that doesn't distort the image, from the same angle you'd view the real car. It will appear identical to a similarly-sized photo of the original full-scale subject. A competent designer or photographer will realize this. I have personally designed things, built models in scale to develop the appearance in three dimensions, and then built the full-scale version exactly from the scaled-up dimensions. Surprise...the full-scale one looks just exactly like the scale model. It works in reverse just as well.

I really appreciate your input, and your work looks great. I'm glad this came up before I put a lot of time into a Fujimi, only to be disappointed when I really looked at the thing. Hmmmm...now, to decide what to do with the Fujimis, and whether I really want to replace all of 'em, or maybe narrow them a little and build weathered after-the-race versions where the discrepancies in proportions wouldn't be quite so obvious...with a Heller as a clean, more definitive example of the design.

So...the Heller kit is clearly closer to being scale-correct in width, anyway, than the Fujimi version. I wish I'd known this several years back when I bought multiples of the Fujimi to do several important cars, assuming that, based on reputation, the kits would be accurate. I only have one of the Hellers, acquired recently, and it's the one that brought the scaling problem with the Fujimis to my attention. The Fujimi kit is a very fine kit anyway, and would make an outstanding model...as long as you don't park it too close to a Heller, or particularly care if models actually look like what they represent.

No worries. Heller on the left in white, Fujimi on the right in blue.

OK. I came home for an early lunch, got both kits out, did some measuring, and scaled a few things from the last drawing Matt posted. Based on the 2300 mm wheelbase shown in Matt's last drawing, the base of the windshield scales out to be 976.5 mm at the widest point. The Fujimi kit measures 46.36 mm. Multiplied by 24, the full-scale dimension would be 1112.64. The Heller kit measures 41.28 mm at the same point. Multiplied by 24, the full-scale dimension would be 990.72...clearly much closer to scale-correct. I'll post photos shortly. Photos below.

Fascinating...

I do, and was intending to do the comparo. However, I was also intending to scale some dimensions off of the drawings Matt posted so the comparison would have some factual relevance (let the rivet-counter slurs begin). It's a couple hours work. I don't have a couple hours right at the moment. Anybody else wants to jump on it, feel free.

Believe me sir, I understand.

The hobby will certainly change, just as model railroading has changed over the 60+ years I've been watching it. Though it's much smaller now than it was (like cars), the quality and variety is better now than ever before...with prices high enough to allow short runs to be reasonably profitable. And there's enough beautiful vintage stuff around to satisfy any nostalgia junkie. Some of the train guys I know routinely build layouts or modules that would have been magazine cover material way back when. The variety and availability of aftermarket stuff for military aircraft and armor is still staggeringly impressive to me, and the quality of builds is, again, often off the charts compared to decades past. I kinda suspect that's the way the model car segment is headed. There's fantastic low-volume stuff available for those who can afford it, and the really "serious" builders will doubtless keep the car thing going just like trains and planes and armor...better and better quality, more historical accuracy, higher and higher prices for limited production but really good products, and a smallish but highly dedicated core of enthusiasts. Being able to produce one-off parts, masters, and injection-molding tooling using CAD, CNC, and various types of rapid-prototyping (3D printing, etc.) will certainly contribute to the hobby's longevity, negating the need to sell a bazillion units to stay in the black, too.

^^^ Nice rig. More impressive than anything I've ever had. Last time I had a pretty new box was back in early '77. Since then, I've bought smaller mostly clean-one-owners (but some real cheap dogs for bodywork and fab, as they tend to get beat), usually keep each set for just one particular kind of work; everything electrical in one set, fabrication tools in another, diagnostic and AC stuff in another, body tools all separate, composite stuff all by its lonesome, general hand tools in yet another, etc. Usually used to have different kinds of jobs in several bays going simultaneously, rolled the box I need to the job, usually had enough overlap so I wouldn't do much walking back and forth. These days, I work out of two shops not-mine, have a limited set of just what I need at each, keep the big boxes, machine tools (except the mill) and most of the good stuff at home.

Wow. Thanks, Mr. Bacon. Guess that about nails it, as far as anybody could reasonably want.

Or cut new ones...

But here's the thing...you can not assume that ANY of those drawings are accurate. "the-blueprints.com" regularly posts drawings that are kinda like the car they're supposed to represent, but not really accurate. It's common. Of the drawings posted, I'd tend to trust the top one that looks like it might be an actual sheet from Porsche. The others I'd take with much bigger grains of salt. If the windshield width (as referenced in an early post in this thread) is taken as a definitive place to measure (as it's doubtful it changed during the closed-cars evolution), I'd suggest the method I described above to get a ballpark figure.

Me too. I really like the old SK stuff. Most of what I have in SK came from pawnshops after I got cleaned out (uninsured) back in '77. They're all still working just fine. Yeah...I started seeing that way back when I was working at a Datsun-Triumph-Fiat dealership (don't see those anymore). I'd have head bolts on new 240Z-cars snap before getting to 65 lb/ft during retorque. A lot of the Japanese fasteners were junk then. The English stuff was by far the best of the three. Now the stuff is all over the board. Scary thing, some years back, we started getting lots of sub-standard "genuine" paper-trailed "aircraft" fasteners. They had all the right documentation and looked real pretty, but they were offshore fake crapp.

Agreed. Helpful. And as your posted drawings attest (with very obvious differences in lines and shapes), the published sources often disagree, or show different versions of the cars with no supporting data to permit making really meaningful assessments of the accuracy of the drawings. Scaling from a known dimension, like a 15" wheel or the wheelbase, both easily verified on all the drawings above, and deriving the width of the base of the windshields in each drawing would be a start to have something meaningful to compare the same dimensions on the kits to.

Probably after the pent-up feeding frenzy for the roadsters dies back.

One point overlooked by a number of folks singing the praises of "the same warranty" on cheap tools is the way the tool fits the fastener it's intended for. The SnapOn "flank drive" line (that every decent manufacturer copies now that the patents have run out) contacted the bolt head or nut on the side faces, instead of the at-the-time common contact at the tips. The result was that a SnapOn wrench wouldn't round off stuck fasteners, and it would usually remove fasteners that had already been buggered by chimps. Those of us who always worked commission appreciated the fact we'd waste less time getting things apart that had already been "worked on" somewhere else. All the combination wrenches (only the box-end was "flank-drive", obviously) and sockets benefited from the same design, and while the patents were in force, SnapOn was really the only choice for better mechanics. As I mentioned, every quality manufacturer uses a version of "flank-drive" today, but there are still a multitude of cheap wrenches out there that don't. The accuracy and method of broaching the hole in a box-end wrench is also critical, as is the accuracy of the opening and steel hardness in an open-end wrench. These important aspects of tool design are often lacking in the cheaper stuff. I've seen cheap wrenches spread and round off fasteners when a decent wrench would have turned them. And to quote Don " Old saying, not the boxes that make you the $$$, it's the tools inside and the guys skill that swings them that pays the rent." Yup. There have been times I've been roundly ridiculed...and I mean seriously made fun of...when I've gone into shops with my crappiest boxes, looking like something I pulled from a dumpster. Funny how it always stops as soon as the time sheets go in.

I pulled the kit out and looked...kinda hard to tell. Sorta blobular, and I didn't spend much any time trying to figure out if they were supposed to represent anything real.

Pretty cool, but give me internal combustion, or give me death.

I always kinda liked Rooney. Good actor. But I wonder what he had that made him so attractive to the babes?

Cool. Definitely something you don't see every day.

Though there may very well be a ridiculous twin-carb adapter that bolts to the stock intake manifold, to get any meaningful performance increase, it would be necessary to provide more "holes" for carbs, rather than trying to flow them both through the flange intended for one on the OEM manifold. Welding on additional flanges was one way it was done in the early days before catalog-everything. A typical twin-carb cast manifold replaced the OEM, like this... EDIT: For lotsa alternatives in reality, Google image-search "twin carb adaptor stovebolt 6" or similar.

Agreed. Tool "feel" is important to anyone who lives with them day-in-day-out. That's what I loved about SnapOn back in the '70s, but after I got robbed and cleaned out, I started replacing much of the really good stuff with adequate. Far as hammers go, one thing I forgot to mention is that, in my experience, the off-brand dead-blow hammers get brittle and crack after a few seasons, but my old top-line stuff is still going strong. Different resin. And occasionally, top-line tool-truck stuff goes bad too. I'm still waiting for a new set of hoses for the ones that turned to goo in a fuel-injection pressure test rig.

I've bought some secondary rollarounds, engine stands, jack-stands, hammers, and other entirely adequate stuff from Harbor Freight. Making a tool-box from steel sheet doesn't require any special or exotic technology, only the ability to fold sheet cleanly on a brake, and spot-weld it together. The drawer slides in my secondary boxes are just fine if they're not overloaded, the paint is as good as tool-truck boxes (in appearance, anyway; how well it lasts I probably won't live long enough to find out), and the casters and fasteners are appropriate for the application. I'd expect the tool boxes shown here to be pretty much as good as anything off the tool truck, just lacking the SnapOn or Mac snob appeal...and the easy weekly payment plan that makes the tool truck operators a nice income while you pay about double for everything. As far as other tools from HF, I've seen less-than-stellar quality on combination wrenches, air tools, screwdrivers, anything electronic, wire ties that disintegrate in a few months, etc. Though I haven't bought any recently (already having three of pretty much everything I'll ever need), some of the best "no-name" tools I've found are the Husky brand. The combination wrenches I have, for example, are just about identical to SnapOn "flank-drive" wrenches that were top-line until their patents ran out.

Probably a good thing the blades are removed, eh?