Ace-Garageguy

It's pretty simple to figure this out, really. First, determine what breaker each receptacle is on by plugging in a lamp, and getting somebody to turn each breaker off in turn (and on again, of course) until the lamp goes out. Do this for all the receptacles in the room. I've encountered some bizarre logic-free wiring in a lot of houses, and just because one receptacle in one room is on a particular breaker, you have no guarantee they ALL are on the same one. Make a note of the amp ratings on the breakers for each circuit. This is the total load that will "trip" the breaker. Most breakers will only handle about 80% of this number. Look at the labels on the things you want to run off of one breaker and add them up. A lot of household circuits are only 15 or 20 amps. For reference, a hair dryer or small space heater rated at 1500 watts will draw about 13 amps. Some houses will have overhead lighting on the same circuit as receptacles too, so bear this in mind. You may need to do some math, because some appliances, power supplies, and tools show ratings in amps, and some are only marked in watts. You'll need to convert watt ratings to amps so you can add them all up to see if your breaker will handle the load. Bear in mind that the starting current of some things is higher than running current, too...so your compressor might pop a breaker when it starts, though it would theoretically run fine. Here's some help... https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/conversions/common/watts-amps.php https://www.homelectrical.com/understanding-capacity-your-circuit-breaker.6.html

About the only things I buy in diecast are subjects that never have been or probably never will be available in styrene or resin, and then usually only damaged models that aren't too bad, but are really cheap. I've often been able to buy several messes with enough parts to build one nice one for a fraction of what a decent model would cost, but I've ended up with a few disasters too...like a crumbling '55 Pontiac that's not savable. Only thing I don't have that I kinda want is a bullet nose Stude Starlight Coupe.

Trash resin can sometimes be porous, and no matter what you do, you'll never get all the release agent out of it. Couple that with some folks using silicone-based release agents, or bizarre cheapo "just as good" release agents like Pam, olive oil, Vaseline, talcum powder, or dog knows what...well, you can get some really oddball problems. The only thing I've found that will reliably remove silicone contamination, by the way, is isopropyl alcohol. And if the substrate is porous, fuggedaboutit..

Man...he's got some kewl stuff. Not cheap, but nize. I've been stocking up in case he disappears.

My new baby is a '96 5-speed Land Rover Discovery with about 90K on the clock. One owner, from the same guy I bought the white XJ6 from last year. He's getting older and downsizing his fleet. One of the reasons we've been friends for about 100 years is because we have similar interests and taste in vehicles, so I've been getting first dibs on some keen stuff. The Rover includes a spare low-mile takeout engine, and a pickup load of parts. I'd intended to buy a 4X4 after I got moved West, but the deal on this thing was too good to pass up, even if I have to pay to get it there. Both the Jag and the Rover will be coming home in a couple months, after I move a couple cars down to the shop. EDIT: Just bought a brandy new 1000 + page factory manual for the thing too. I must be planning to keep it. Happily, it's OBD II, so I can talk to it when it's not feeling good (though I'd rather have the earlier SU carbs and a distributor).

No comment.

Yesterday was the last day of support for Windows 7 from TinyLimp. Win7 was not broken, still works just fine for everything, but in order to be relatively safe online from the countless security holes TinyLimp always leaves in their operating systems, I was forced to "upgrade" finally. It's the same as if you had a car that ran just fine, but after it was 10 years old, could only be driven back and forth in the driveway, never again on the road.

I'm just not seeing how you get "short and squat" out of the redesign. It's lower, more aggressive, and if it were real, would remove at least 1/2 a ton of useless blubber.

Properly mixed thermoset parts made from decent materials are generally very highly solvent resistant. And with lacquer paints, which dry by solvent evaporation, all the solvents that could have affected the resin should have been gone years ago. But without knowing exactly what this poor thing was made from by doing a chemical analysis, anything is pure speculation. However...in 5 decades of working with thermosetting plastics, and seeing the problems some folks have, the single most common failure point I've encountered...by a LARGE percentage...is operator error of some sort on the part of the resin user.

Thanks for your interest and input. Over the years, I've always learned more from articles or any technical sources if there was a "why" you do it some particular way rather than just a "how", so I generally tend to include the "whys" of what I'm trying to accomplish too.

The materials "resin" model car parts are made from belong to the thermoset plastic family, related to but different from epoxies and polyester. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosetting_polymer Good quality resin parts are very stable over time. Poor quality parts made from old material, extremely cheap material, or sloppily mixed with little regard for exact mix-ratios (very common among some cowboys who think it doesn't matter) will exhibit shrinkage, warpage, and embrittlement over time. This is why we have to keep record samples of every thermoset plastic mix used on a structural aircraft repair, and usually send samples for testing by an independent lab prior to the aircraft being returned to service. I have a few bodies that are warping, but not as severely as yours. They've never been painted, but were just made with crapp, or poorly. The most recent one that came in is an early Falcon sedan delivery, as swaybacked as an old horse. My SOP these days, when I get a resin body that's something really unusual that I really want, is to immediately pull silicone molds from it to preserve the 3D information in the event something like this happens.

Yup. "Best Damm Garage in Town"

Looks great to me.

Is it 7/8 of 1/25 scale?

I like that a lot. Nice simple as-built working truck.

I know what it's based on, and I don't want to know any more.

Yuck, rather like beauty, is largely in the eye of the beholder...even though yuck usually defies accepted "good" design definitions. That said, I kinda like the see-through wheels...for a show car (I wouldn't run 'em at speed on anything I trusted my life to), and have been working on a full-scale vehicle design that uses them as a pretty integral part of the whole first impression...as well as looking into the possibility of assembling my own using CMS spun alloy rims.

Cool. I have a soft spot for bringing other folk's cast off trash back too, and using as much of the original material as possible. You have my attention, sir. Bear in mind that one thing a lot of Cobra models seem to share is much heavier rubber than the cars would actually run, especially on the street. The big-footed-puppy look is favored by a lot of full-scale kit-car builders as well, and I generally think it kinda spoils the proportions and look of lightness the cars have. I'd respectfully suggest looking at lotsa in-period shots of the real cars if you want to present this one as fairly correct.

Thanks Ray. I had to do it like that to maintain the proportions established in the mockup. They'll still need to go a little lower to get them as far down as the mockup has 'em, which is a big part of the "look" of the car. Another reason I did 'em that way is so that I can possibly replace the plastic rod with brass tube later. I always kinda wanted to do working lights in this one, and I finally found some really small LEDs that will work, even in the taillights, and wire fine enough to run inside a 1/16" brass tube. Did I say small? I'll use the brass support for the ground, and run the power wire inside it. That's the plan, anyway...but I have to get everything fitted dead-on with plastic first. I think I already also mentioned the mounting allows me to easily remove the lights to display the car with different rolling stock, and a tonneau instead of the windshield. Stripped and set-up for dry-lakes racing, in other words.

Thank you both, very much. Your appreciation means a lot.

Excellent proportions, and your design of the painted highlights perfectly accentuates the body lines.

Thank you. Most useful.

Yup...that's the first thing I thought when I saw them. 5-MPH wheels, tops.

Great stuff happening here. As I was around at the end of the Indy "roadster" period, I have a deep love for the cars. Though I've started several models of them, I've held off due to scale and fit problems like you're addressing. What you're doing here is inspiring, and I'm learning a lot. Thanks.