Ace-Garageguy

I think many older women really do themselves a disservice by chasing eternal youth with dyed hair (when they're obviously way past the gray stage), collagen-injected lips, botoxed foreheads, clown makeup, etc. I personally find mature women much more attractive if they keep themselves reasonably fit, but accept their years as a badge of achievement and endurance, rather than trying to look forever-21. Nobody is ever fooled.

Nice, and a good reminder just why the '32 Ford, though being only a one-year design, is THE most sought after car for building a hot-rod. The lines and proportions are just so very fine, no matter what style one gets built in. Your model "sits" much better than the vast majority of what I've seen built from this kit. The more I look at it, the more I like it. And please don't take this as criticism, because it's NOT intended to be. Though you have "427" on your engine, it has smallblock Windsor-style heads and valve covers. The only smallblock-based 427 I'm aware of was in the Saleen S7/S7R, which, IIRC, used Cleveland-style heads (and of course, valve covers). EDIT: Wait...I'm wrong. There IS a smallblock-based crate motor from Ford Racing in displacements up to 460 cu.in., and it uses the signature-shaped Windsor valve covers. So your engine could be entirely correct.

Proportions and lines are just right. These are not easy cars to chop well. When one looks good from every angle, like this, you know you've hit the sweet spot.

Love that Olds. She's certainly worthy of restoration. Looks like the body, other than the sat-on roof, is remarkably straight.

If I could talk to the vehicle, please... I've had a similar problem on a 2001 OBD II vehicle, intermittent, symptoms much like you describe, and it turned out to be rodent-chewed wiring to the throttle-position sensor. Intermittent problems are the most frustrating. I won't pretend that diagnosing emission-controlled vehicle electronics is my specialty, but if I have the factory data and the required test equipment, I can muddle my way through. Anything on your vehicle though, with which I'm not at all familiar, would just be a blind guess. One thing however: I have corrected several oddball intermittent misbehaviors by simply cleaning and tightening all the battery and engine and chassis ground connections. And Peteski's suggestion about checking the connectors is a good one. I once had intermittent electric fans inop, and after testing everything and finding no problems, they quit as the client was leaving, and thankfully, she noticed the temp creeping up before any damage occurred. Then during subsequent testing, the fans mysteriously came back on. Although I had checked all the connectors in the fan harness, and they all LOOKED fine, I got lucky and happened to jiggle one connector just right with the engine running, and the fans quit again. Turns out there had been water ingress into the connector, and the junction between the wires and crimped end was corroded and only making intermittent connection. NOTE: You couldn't see anything was wrong, even with the connector unplugged and examined internally, without removing the connector from the harness and removing the crimped wire ends from it. The reason I mentioned OBD II, required as of 1996, is that some of the later systems keep what is essentially an "event log", so with the right equipment (not the normal consumer-grade scanners), you can sometimes go into the memory to see what it was thinking and feeling at the time of the occurrence. This, of course, can make diagnosis easier. Unfortunately though, at least among the OBD II systems I have some familiarity with, there is no "time stamp" recorded when faults occur...and this is one of the reasons diagnosing intermittent problems, even on some of the most sophisticated and "smartest" systems, can be beyond "frustrating"...and something blissfully overlooked by people who sing the praises of computer-controlled-everything vehicles. Good luck.

There's a very real set of engineering problems that need to be overcome to ship a model using the available services. As Rob alludes, "handle with care" gets you nowhere. Consider how REAL cars are shipped: tied down on chassis hooks, or by the suspension. There's not a wad of padding inside the containers, against doors, hoods, or fragile rear-view mirrors and antennas. NOTHING TOUCHES THE CAR BUT THE TIE-DOWNS UNDER IT. Now consider how new die-casts are packed: tied down by the suspension or the chassis, inside a case. In effect, just like a REAL car is shipped. The chassis and suspension are usually kinda clunky, but stout enough to withstand handling shocks. But here's the BIG problem with a PLASTIC built-up model: a well-built model isn't going to have its suspension attached sturdily enough to withstand tying-down in a case. When the box is inevitably dropped, drop-kicked, of falls off the dock, the car WILL break away from its suspension. Maybe installing little screw-eyes in the underside of the chassis, and tying down inside a case is the way to go, but delicate plastic parts and glue joints will still most likely break free. This explains quite obviously why the only models that have arrived at MY place almost completely intact are simple vintage screw-bottoms...and even they are guaranteed to lose exterior emblems and mirrors in transit. There is simply no way (that I can imaging would actually work every time) to pad the exterior of a built plastic model car selectively enough to prevent SOME damage...especially when a moron includes a heavy die-cast model in the same box.

You'll notice on the early-issue T-161 double-dragster kit photo above, the box is marked "200". This was the $2 MSRP. Kit manufacturers got away from putting an MSRP on the boxes for a variety of reasons...but all the kits I referenced still are clearly marked by the companies that made them.

If the typical excessive gloo was used to assemble the model, it may be physically impossible to remove the skirts without damage to them or the body. Both the old-standard tube gloo and liquid "cement" are solvents that literally melt two pieces of plastic into one continuous piece. Just softening the gloo in this case will still not allow the pieces to separate. BUT, all is not lost. Using a very fine photo-etched saw blade, it is entirely possible to CAREFULLY cut around the edge of the skirt, destroying only about .010" of plastic on the edge, where the blade kerf travels. I've used this technique very successfully on several heavily-glooed joints that wouldn't come apart any other way. Some edge repair is necessary afterwards, but it's better than trying to pry parts off and breaking them.

That's a lot prettier than mine. My presentation usually consists of dumping the food on a paper plate.

Ain't that the truth (I'm really only 20 pounds overweight, but as hard as it is getting it off, it may as well be 50). Tonight was pretty good, dead easy. Roast orange-garlic chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, mixed greens and tomato salad w/mustard-vinaigrette dressing. Plenty o' chicken left over for 2-days worth of sammedges. And now the real reason I'm fat...a big slice of cherry pie. BUT...I went for a 3-mile hike this afternoon (not enough to offset the pie).

I took the prices right off the ends of the boxes. Anyone around then should recall the price was the last part of the printed kit number...unless it was superseded by an added sticker. EXAMPLE: the de-contented "Craftsman" series kits shown below were manufacturer-priced at $1.00. The annual "customizing kit" on the bottom left has an up-priced sticker.

Nice Mr. Mailman just dropped off a semi-grail, a complete AMT King T/ Wild Dream double kit in an almost perfect box. Not cheap, but reasonable. I want to do as many of the AMBR winners as are available in styrene.

Nice score. As you know, those are wonderful kits. Thanks for the heads-up on the '27. I need a couple.

Every time I've tried to coat buffing metalizer with any clear, it's turned to a dull silver, completely ruining the effect of polished metal. I've found that shooting the metalizer as wet as possible without running produces the best results, allowing the material to flow out dead flat and smooth. I recommend allowing it to dry for 2 hours prior to buffing, and buff with a soft cotton material like the nappy side of an old cotton sweatshirt. If you then allow it to dry very thoroughly, after a while it gets hard and no longer transfers color or fingerprints during subsequent handling...with NO clear...though if you're going to need to handle it excessively for subsequent building operations, I still recommend wearing gloves. This polished Gee Bee cowling still looks like this, years later, with NO clear (the silver cockpit cover is a different technique).

Thanks for the memories. That little piece first made me smile, and then inexplicably sad. I lived through the final days of steam on the B&O, the New York Central, the Pennsy… and though I was young, I realized I was witnessing the end of an era. I remember the magnificent smoke and cinder belching mechanical monsters, their willing, boiling hearts strained to near-bursting as they pulled long, slow coal drags, and the high-stepping thoroughbreds at the head-end of crack passenger trains, with tables in the dining cars laid with white linen and cut crystal. Late at night, the sound of a lonely whistle in the distance, or a big radial-engined airplane overhead, were far more soothing to me than any lullaby could ever be. They meant people were going places, getting things done…things I’d understand and participate in as an adult…beckoning me towards the future. The country was alive and vibrant, healing its war wounds with steel and concrete, glass and rubber and plastic. The US made some of the best products on the planet. But everything changed. Instead of hauling raw materials to our own factories, the mile long trains are now mostly loaded with second-rate goods we buy from China. Noble machines that, with care, could work for their creators for 100 years or more, are all but gone, cut up for scrap, and replaced with insanely overly-complex appliances, designed around the idea of “planned obsolescence”, intended to be replaced again after a decade or less of service. Today’s background music is the incessant mindless din of tires on the interstates, everyone in a desperate hurry to get nowhere, to do things of little significance. True expertise and experience are denigrated and mocked by purveyors of the “everybody’s opinion is equally valid” mindset. Any mention of manners, morals or ideals brings on ridicule and the smug, self-satisfied sneers of the stupid. Freedom of speech is under attack, putting up Christmas lights is looked at as a hate-crime in places, and the country is being torn apart from within by legions of people willfully, gleefully ignorant of history and what it once meant to be an American. No, in ’57 we didn’t have smart-phone apps that let you flush the toilet from across town, or refrigerators that could smell the milk going bad and give you a call (without having to actually…OMG!!!...open the door for yourself), or 60% of the population being obese, cars that could park themselves, or the internet that tends to encourage the most superficial and often simply incorrect information to be endlessly repeated as facts. But we DID have a robust middle class, the best engineering in the world, a strong work ethic, and high-school graduates who could read, comprehend what they read, write, spell, handle basic arithmetic…and little kids who could make change from a dollar without a computer or calculator. For my money, it was a far, far better time to be alive. Ah, but "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there". (L.P. Hartley)

Based on the hull length, it's about 1:81.5. I'll be using one with 1:87 HO stuff...close enough for background.

Number 3:

Number 2:

It would be more accurate to say that all of Monogram's 1/24 '34 Fords are based on this kit:

Yup. That too.

Agreed.

Supremely clean work.

As David says, early slicks were capped on large passenger car and smaller truck tire carcasses. A 6" wide slick would be perfectly plausible. These treads are pretty narrow. Can't say for sure what the width is, but they're obviously on narrow rims too. Could be capped or shaved...hard to say.

If he's kinda thinking the mods through to break 300, he's going to be aware that a "wedge cut top" would create downforce, add drag, and slow the car down. Drag is extremely important to LSR vehicles. In simplified terms, going twice as fast makes 4 times the drag. So going 300, there's 4 times the drag to overcome as there would be at 150. But according to the laws of physics, going twice as fast, creating 4 times the drag, requires 8 times the power. Anything that can be done to reduce aero drag is of paramount importance.

Super cool. I love wild what-ifs when they're thought out with at least a passing nod to the numbers. This is great. May I suggest chopping the top? The reduction in drag up around 300MPH would be significant.