Ace-Garageguy

The Hobby Town near me always has several open, pilfered kits on the markdown table. They're usually expensive kits, like 1/24 scale aircraft, or the Renwal military repops like the "Atomic Cannon". I don't have any idea HOW anyone could open this stuff in-store, but the last 1/24 aircraft kit I looked at there was missing the clear tree, the engine tree, and the decals.

And consider this: if it DOESN'T dry "diamond hard" and "level like glass", I smell a billion-dollar class-action suit.

Wha...wha...WHAT??? There you go Steve, RUINING the FUN again. ()

Espo makes an excellent point about the depth of the window openings. I like these AMT Chevy kits a lot, but what's always driven me to distraction about them is the toylike thickness of the material surrounding the windshield and rear window. It takes some careful effort with a Dremel and files to correct it, but in my opinion, it makes the model much more realistic. As the front and rear glass on these cars is a single curve (as opposed to compound), it's easy to make much more real looking "glass" from clear soda bottle stock, too.

The nice mailman brought me an original-issue Hawk-boxed 1/48 San Fran cable car today. Already had a Testors re-box missing parts, so now I otter be able to come up with two. Not a model, but a fine reference resource, the 2001 printing of Model Railroader's Cover's just a little rough, but at $40 off the cover price, s'OK.

Looks GREAT Ray. I want one.

Au contraire. I believe you have a very subtle and sophisticated plan, a seemingly-random yet well-structured emulation of natural entropic decay at work.

Could be worse, like something with a World Trade Center theme.

Most times, the sellers seemed willing to make a partial refund, at least, so I let it go as honest mistakes, got a little money back, everybody was happy. The couple of times the sellers got surly, PayPal and eBay's conflict resolution process worked in my favor. So far, I haven't lost a cent on eBay deals. I think most of the folks on eBay are pretty decent. I recently bought a "new" Fujimi kit, and before the seller even shipped it, he'd voluntarily refunded my payment after he discovered it had in fact been started. I ended up buying it anyway, and appreciate that kind of up-front honesty. There are, of course, the gouge artists, and those who hide behind "looks complete, I'm not an expert, haven't inventoried, no refunds" too. So it definitely is "buyer beware".

And not terribly uncommon to open a kit bought off eBay as "complete", only to find it's been obviously cherry-picked. Not exactly common, but it's happened to me several times.

Yup. And at times, Corvettes with their tops up could run as gassers, but at other times, or sometimes with the top off, they ran SP. Slightly heavier mods put them in M/SP (one of my absolute favorite classes)...which pretty much allowed "sports cars" built to "altered" rule specs. But keeping up with the rules and changes every year was part of the fun too.

That rule for Street Roadsters was instituted in 1962 in an attempt to keep the cars more closely related to their "street" roots, rather than drifting off to pure-competition cars approaching the"altered" class. I don't know how tightly it was enforced.

You miss the point entirely, as did Mr. Hardesty by posting photos of recently built wannabes, replicas, theme cars, etc., and insisting that PERIOD gassers were built that way. The poster in the other thread that got this all started ASKED SPECIFICALLY ABOUT CARS BUILT TO "NHRA RULES FOR AN OLD GASSER". He wanted to build a PERIOD CAR, HISTORICALLY CORRECT, and COMPLIANT WITH THE ACTUAL RACING RULES IN EFFECT AT THE TIME HIS BUILD REPRESENTED. Anybody reading a bunch of ego-driven mumbo-jumbo psychobabble into answering questions regarding FACTS, and correcting MISINFORMATION is out of line.

It was a wonderful time to be involved in the sport. Backyard engineering and innovation was the name of the game, no two cars were alike, and all the constant tinkering and trying new stuff contributed to rapid evolution of the cars, and established the solid foundation that they're based on to this day. I remember when the "theoretical" lowest possible ET, based on then-available horsepower and carefully worked out frictional coefficients of tires and surfaces, was 10 seconds flat...until the day somebody went faster. Kinda like bumblebees flying because they didn't know it was "impossible" according to humans' understanding of aerodynamics in the earlier days. All the engineering behind today's race cars, and everything else, is the result of trial-and-error, with what "works" recorded and turned into repeatable numbers and formulas. Great fun.

If you mean the "new tool" version, NO, it does not. It can only be built as the Ala Kart (out of what's in the box, anyway). These are both the same "new tool" kit. The ORIGINAL, "old tool" DOUBLE kit includes the Mod Rod stuff.

Looking good. Perfect color for this build style, and the wheels work just right.

Beautiful. First time I saw the Angels was around '58, at NAS Lakehurst (NJ). Flying F11Fs back then (I think), and I can still remember the low-level passes like it was yesterday. Lakehurst was a blimp base, and they'd regularly fly right over my house on the way to or from anti-sub patrols. It was a good world to be a kid in. Last time I saw 'em was at Dobbins/NAS Atlanta, and the RATO-equipped C-130 was part of the show. Later, the Marines did some jump-jet demos. All before the airbase neighbors got to be too uptight about airshows. Good days. Thanks for the memory trigger, too.

That's a nice score. I'm still flogging myself for failing to order from M'haus before they closed.

Cool. Hope you'll do an open box review of the boat.

Yeah, I bought one on a closeout some time back, cheap. Since then, I've been seeing the prices climb, so when something for a fairly "reasonable" price came up, I bit.

I don't know if they're exactly rare, but they are out-of-production, and most times they come up, the sellers want more than I'm willing to pay.

Your seat solution looks great. Perfect. Double extra points for doing the math.

Pretty wild. Pretty cool. I love to see something built from what most people would throw in the trash. BIG thumbs up. They could. Looks like you thought it through well. The intermediate drive plate for the blower could be machined to house a water pump internally. Probably easiest to drive it by the nose of the cam. It'd take a little creative engineering, but it's definitely doable. Nothing wrong with the induction and exhaust...though she might be just a tad over-carbureted. But what the hey. She's a showcar, right?

That's rough. Rough beyond words. You have my sincere best wishes. It sounds like he'll make it just fine, but as you say, it'll take time ...and a lot of caring from everyone around him.

Pert much level... ...launch...