Ace-Garageguy

I feel for you. Honest. I hate thieves, and anyone who steals someone's vehicle and burns it really should be put through a wood-chipper. There's no excuse. Period. I've had a few vehicles disappear over the years, but the worst feeling was noticing one of the rollup doors on my shop slightly open when I came in one morning. $20,000 worth of uninsured tools (when that was a lot of money) gone. The shop was inside a gated industrial area that required a code for access, but as everyone had the same code and there were no surveillance cameras, there wasn't any way to get any decent leads on the scumbag.

Find some doors to hammer on that have trashcans in convenient reach for throwing, too.

?️ There will be serious repercussions if CNN or NBC or any of several other mainstream "news" organizations get wind of that.

Yup. Similar port-spacing on the smallblock Chebby and Mopar engines, both have the distributor holes in the rear...

My flesh has become decidedly lumpy. Must have added too much key-lime-pie to it.

Somebody will. That's for certain.

Durn. And I thought it was just kid's crayons in a box, implying the boundless creativity that can be sparked by this hobby...though I've been accused in PMs of having darkly sinister motives behind many of my posts (no other comments I can possibly make without breaking dog-knows how many rules...though every one I can think of would have anyone with any sense of humor rolling in the aisles laughing). Maybe I should just use a dog-whistle for my avatar.

Thanks Bob. She'll be OK eventually, one way or another. I have too much time and effort invested at this point to quit now. I'm always harping on "test on the plastic your model is made of". I've used the SEM self-etching primer on lotsa stuff with no issues, and overcoated it with both lacquers and enamels likewise. But THIS time, the red plastic the old MPC Corvette chassis that's the basis of this model's underpinnings did something weird. I didn't see it coming, at all, and was really REALLY surprised when the topcoat cracked ONLY over the old red MPC plastic. I seem to recall somebody having a somewhat similar problem with different materials not too long ago... But it's just a matter of more work and testing to get it sorted and back on track...and there's plenty of other stuff on this build that I can do simultaneously.

That's a good position to take, sir. The internet needs more people with that attitude. That said, I appreciate the shot of the 409-powered Devin. There were a lot of really interesting fiberglass bodies available in the '50s and '60s, many of which ended up as M/SP drag cars. Here's a few more... https://www.undiscoveredclassics.com/forgotten-fiberglass/fiberglass/forgotten-fiberglass/

Have to wait til the end of the game for the big reveal.

Thanks for your interest and comments, gentleman. Had a little setback on the chassis paint. A gloss dark gray aircraft-engine enamel I've been able to use previously over black etching primer with no issues cracked in several areas over the red MPC portion the chassis is built up on. The chassis is complex, obviously, will be difficult to strip completely, and I'm a little disheartened at the moment. Press on regardless. There is always a solution.

I had one for a short time.

Gee willikers. If it had been a self-driving car, that couldn't possibly have happened, because computers are infallible and never ever crash.

First thing Lambo's built that's as far over the top as the Countach was when it hit back in the dim recesses of time. Not as clean, not as pure, and kinda screams "look at me" in a Batmobile kind of way...but I LIKE it.

I've seen some guys create an effect remarkably like that by spraying through window or filter screen.

Machined aluminum pulleys for the crank blower-drive and water pump. Locating the water pump drive ahead of the blower drive requires extending the water pump shaft, not the best possible idea, but it's better than running the blower drive way out. Lotsa load on blower drives. Not so much on water pumps. Cylinder heads got their huge gaping exhaust attachment holes filled. Block required some mods to be closer to legit too. It's still not 100% accurate, but it's close enough for what will be visible. And the bellhousing is getting modded to better represent the appearance of something with a torque-converter in it, rather than a flywheel and clutch.

Well then...with the steering mocked up, I was able to get some exhaust pipes in place to make sure I could get them in prior to permanently locating the steering. Two pipes are peeking out under the fender. All of 'em can be straight, except for the forward left (driver's side), which will have to make a little joggle to clear the steering box. The chassis is pretty much done at this point, with the exception of cleaning up some "welds" and final painting. The bracket for the steering box is in, and the Pitman arm will just clear the spring perch, with the drag-link running forward to the spindle. The bracket with the hole in it, in the corner towards the viewer next to the steering shaft, carries the brake master cylinder. From the rear, with the revised rollover hoop (removable so the body can come off for display) and the steering column-drop in place. Steering shaft in the center of the cockpit, and nice fit of the rollover hoop pass-through. Squiggly thing on the left is the brake pedal arm. This little car is going to run front disc brakes (probably junkyard XK-E), so it will need a longish brake arm, as there's no engine vacuum with a supercharger to run a conventional brake booster. Even after being obsessively careful to get the suspension dead square, I noticed a little tendency towards only 3 wheels touching the ground. Most annoying. Turned out I'd drilled the center of one front wheel slightly off. It's been filled with 1/16" rod stock and machined flat. I'll try to hit the actual center next time.

As a dessert topping? A tasty dipping sauce for fruit? A thickener for hollandaise sauce?

Yup yup yup.

And that right there is the reason I avoid using credit cards on the web (yeah, we all know I'm a Luddite who doesn't trust much of anybody when it comes to gee-whiz-ain't-all-this-convenience-great techie stuff, but I don't get billed for stuff I didn't authorize either).

Pocketa pocketa.

Sorry to hear that. I have a bunch of those that are just fine, but another bunch that were short-shotted with bad sinks like you describe. It's a crappshoot if you'll get a good one or not, as the reissues in the yellow packaging had very spotty quality. There's another Pontiac, a nice one, in the vintage AMT parts-pack #8158. There are 4 engines in the 8158 kit...the Poncho, a Chrysler FirePower 392 hemi, a Corvair, and a front-blown smallblock Chebby, plus custom bumpers and grilles, and the engines are not plated. https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMT-ERTL-1-25-BLUEPRINTER-PARTS-PACK-MODEL-KIT-8158-1993-NOS-VINTAGE/202749858390?epid=1600605512&hash=item2f34d55256:g:d84AAOSwV7NdECqU

Here's a little vid for inspiration. Though the specific clips aren't dated, I'd opine they're from about '65-'68. There's a '37 Chevy that sits just slightly nose-high at rest, but when it launches, it's easy to see the nose come up under hard acceleration. Generally note the level or slightly-nose-high stance of the cars at rest. Sky-high noses were never the norm. And pay attention to the angle the rocker panels make with the ground. I think people get confused when they see the front fenders sitting high over the smaller front tires, but don't realize somehow that the rear of the cars are raised to clear big slicks, and the cars are high, but basically level at rest...not stupid-nose-high. And you can definitely see a trend towards slight nose-down static attitudes as the wrinkle-wall slicks Muncie mentioned came into play, and trap speeds were high enough to make nose-high cars virtually undrivable at the end of a run. Cars with the rear slicks extending well outside the rear fenders would be '67 and later, according to the NHRA rulebooks.

The wording of the rules can seem to be a little ambiguous, as could be the interpretation by a car builder. The prohibition against "raising the car body or frame to gain weight transfer to the rear wheels" can be sidestepped by the builder claiming the car wasn't lifted to gain weight-transfer specifically, but simply has to sit as high as it does in order to reasonably clear tall rear slicks, traction-aiding devices like ladder bars on the rear, etc. Somewhere along the line (and I should know exactly when, as we've been over this enough times), a rule was instituted limiting the center of the nose of the crankshaft to a maximum of 24" off the pavement. This was partly done to counter some of the stupid-high-nose cars that were built, and which became wildly unstable at speed. There was also a rule requiring rocker panels to be more-or-less level with the car at rest, though I'll be dammed if I can find it right now. In general, build what you see in period photos and check the dates the photos supposedly represent. You can't go far wrong that way. Period cars generally sat level at rest, or close to it. The characteristic nose-high attitude that many "nostalgia" builders go for these days is just flat wrong for cars raced under national sanctioning bodies' rules back then (though you'll occasionally see a period dork running one in a non-sanctioned event). The trend towards stupid-nose-high developed due to a widespread misinterpretation of photos of the in-period cars' attitudes at launch, when the nose does in fact come up significantly. One thing to remember that's not obvious and a lot of folks miss...in '65 and '66, the rules required the rear fenders to entirely cover the width of the tires. This was relaxed in '67.