Ace-Garageguy

It's still resting. Most likely, I'll pull it out again after I finish the two I'm trying to close out now. On both of them, all the cans or worms I opened by going way beyond my original plan are finally emptying, one little worm at a time, and when they're done, I believe I should be able to tackle just about anything (except BMF ). Actually, this one has been pretty much in preparation for doing the rest of the Eddie Dye car. Lots of similar features, similar problems to solve.

Yeah, the various volume levels can be annoying, but it's not hard to adjust the volume on screen, either in the playback or the computer. The thing that REALLY chaps my rump is the fools who upload professional productions with "image stabilization" enabled. The image-stabilization feature was designed to remove the nervous jiggle-cam effect you get with a lot of amateur video, but all it does when applied to professionally-produced films or videos is to produce squirming backgrounds and scene changes. Seasick-inducing stupidity. And most folks don't seem to know any better and just assume old movies were filmed by spastics.

eBay / PayPal have a buyer-protection plan that actually works very well. All you have to do is go through the motions. In well over 2000 transactions, I've never lost a penny because some fool sent me garbage.

Start here. Anything else you need to know, just ask.

rays and moonbeams

Yeah, I'd like the Javelin too, but now that you remind me, another one I want is an American. Can the kit you show be built stock? Not that I'd probably want to, but it'd be nice to have the option (if I ever learn how to do BMF ).

I got to keep a client from being fcrewed. Her power steering (first year PT Cruiser) had started howling shortly after she put engine oil in it. I did a Q&D fluid change with old Mr. Turkey Baster, but the Chewbacca noise didn't go entirely away. Those of you familiar with power steering know that howling is usually caused by air in the system somewhere, and it can usually be bled by turning the wheel lock to lock several times. Well sir, in this case, no luck. I know what the problem is. It's NOT a safety issue. So I told her to drive it and I'd get back to her in a few days. In the meantime, one of her headlights went out, so she took it to the local chimp shop because she drives late at night, and I couldn't get to it. OK. A chimp ought to be able to change a bulb. Next... chimp-boy (who says he's been a mechanic for 30 years and has worked on a lot of PT Cruisers) hears the steering talking, and offers to fix it for around $600. Replace the pump. With zero diagnosis, no test drive, nothing. She calls me up saying she's going to let him do it because she knows how busy I am and doesn't want to add to my stress load. This is the same chick who got screwed out of $700 for totally unnecessary repairs just last year, that I ended up diagnosing correctly and fixing anyway. So I get a little heated, thank her for thinking my time is important, but "don't you remember what happened LAST time you took your car to somebody else?" "Well yeah, but this guy is this and that and has been a tech for 30 years." Phffffft. I FINALLY talk her out of it. OK. The damm car doesn't need a freaking pump. There's a screen in the reservoir in PTs that gets clogged (and can NOT usually be cleaned because it's stupidly made into the inside of the reservoir), impedes fluid flow to the pump, which cavitates, and you get an air-in-the-system whine that won't bleed out...and the top of the reservoir is always wet, as it tends to overflow slightly. Only solution: replace the reservoir, which is a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER than a pump (I know people who've had both the pump AND the rack replaced by "expert mechanics", over $1200, and the howling didn't go away until the reservoir got changed...so the pump and rack replacement were classic throw-parts-at-it-and-pray unnecessary repairs). Anyway, it's got all the classic symptoms. Needs a reservoir. Chrysler shows the part to be obsolete, NLA, as do all the online MOPAR parts houses. BUT...there's a NEW Mopar part number for a slightly different reservoir that fits the application, yet none of the dealers or MOPAR parts houses seemed to have ever heard of it. So I finally find one. $85 shipped. Half an hour to put it in while she waited, two cans of ATF4. $150. Fixed. Damm. And I coulda got $600. The moral of the story: just because somebody's been doing something for 30 years, that's no guarantee that he's any good at it, or that he's honest.

but not tomorrow

Years ago, somebody gave me a couple of OptiVISORs. I can still see quite well unassisted, so I never bothered with them. A couple of my period dragster builds have been hanging fire 'cause I've put off drilling the 8 little .013" holes in the correct patterns in a Spalding Flamethrower dual-coil distributor and a couple of Vertex magnetos. I could see well enough to place the pinpricks for starting the drill bit, but it wasn't easy. And the holes need to be very close together, I only have a couple each of the Flamethrowers and mags, and buggering one is to be avoided. I saw one of the O'visors hanging on the rollaround, all dusty, and decided to clean it off and give it a shot. Ho boy. These things are GREAT. I wish I'd tried one a long time ago. For doing really tiny stuff, it just can't be beat.

because momma says

Another grail that I'd kinda forgotten about until one came up on the auction place everybody hates but uses addictively anyway. Almost virgin. No glue, no parts bodged from being twisted off trees, everything present and correct, and a very good box. I scored a red promo a few years back, but I wanted the original-style kit with the stock guts (not the racecar version). Really impressed with the quality of the engine in this too (as I was with the engine in the "70 Eldo). Lots nicer than the blobular engines in earlier Johan offerings (well, except for the hole through the block for the wire axle).

You can do it man. I'm counting on exactly that.

I'll be following. I've got the kit and a 1:1 Dynamic 88 convert to start on sometime.

Man, I hear ya'. Inking drawings was real stressor when I was in school, and early in the engineering part of my career. One slip, one drip, you start over. CAD and big printers rule...but it kinda peez me off that draftsmen, designers and engineers today get off so easy. I learned how to process photographic film and make prints too. It just ain't fair that anybody and his dog can just point-shoot-print.

Whatever the boxing, I sure wish everything in it had been rendered correctly by the kit designers. It would be an absolute goldmine of parts for building period diggers, and would make several terrific builds right out-of-the-box...but alas...any old geezer who misspent his youth at drag strips should instantly recognize there's something very off about the way these things look built up. It's still a pretty good source of some stuff, but when they went to all the trouble to cut entire new tools, it sure seems like it would have made sense to get it right.

Hmmmmm...that's interesting. And that's why I was griping earlier about people putting up stuff on the web that's supposed to be "reference" material that is in actuality gooey, smelly, brown stuff. I don't mean you. You reasonably assumed published "reference" material would be correct, and tried to help. Which is admirable. Unfortunately, NEITHER drawing is 100% accurate, though the lower one (above) is better, and both are close enough to be instantly recognizable as "Mangusta" (but the front and rear views are awful...not really very close at all). A more correct rendition of the car would use elements from BOTH drawings...which is pretty weird. We went through something like this about Porsche 904s not too long ago as well, and the published "reference" drawings were off by a mile...which I pointed out and made a few people mad in the process. This garbage data obviously creeps into kit design too, where there's not an anal-retentive design consultant available (or thought to be not necessary) and the kit designers, not really "car guys" to the extent that some of us are, just assume too much.

No, actually. The OP car and the original Eddie Dye car use 1928-'29 Ford Model A roadster shells, not '26-'27 T shells.

I started building a "correct" one back in 2015, because the shape of the then-new Revell A roadster body in the rear is actually considerably more accurate than the old AMT body we all know and love. The Revell line makes a difference when trying to capture the initial impression of this exquisitely-designed car. The Eddie Dye car (and the recent version shown by the OP) is an exercise in subtlety, rather like the DeTomaso Mangusta. Ham-handed renditions that look "kinda like" or "good enough" don't do either car justice.

Yessir. The upper drawing above is from the first page of this thread, and is, I believe, from the "Polish" source. The lower drawing, which looks pretty right much better to me, is from the carbluprints.info site. Very different proportions, lines, and details. Compare the carblueprints drawing to this...much closer to right with the exception of some subtle differences, including the top of the "vent" window, the base of the windshield, and the forward roofline. The rear roofline isn't quite right either. It's actually several gently blended curves, not the continuous curve that's usually portrayed in drawings. And the real Goose windshield has a little more curvature at the bottom than at the top...visible in the photo (as the base of the windshield is forward of the pillar bases). I once had one of these in my shop that had been punched in the LF corner hard enough to displace the base of the pillar rearward (some "restoration" chimps had glued the windshield in with several tubes of silicone, because the fit was so terrible...and shortened the front of the door-shell too; pretty impressive workmanship) and I became VERY familiar with what's going on shapewise with these cars as a result. "Correct" Mangustas do, unfortunately, exhibit a very slight nose-up attitude, like the blue car below. And like Panteras, they are NOT symmetrical side-to-side.

Except for a little "oops" where the arithmetic should have been.

The Eddie Dye Roadster from the early 1950s has always been one of my favorite cars of all time... https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Eddie_Dye's_1929_Ford

pie and RC

Interesting to see how you layer color. Like a painter.

I'm curious. Fords is plural of Ford. The title of the post, Ford's, means Ford owns something. Ford's what?