Ace-Garageguy

What bothered me about Facebarf was the fact that personal info I HAD NEVER PUBLISHED miraculously showed up in my profile. Beyond acceptable limits of "intrusive", if you ask me.

Several years ago, after being very disappointed in the under-scale of the kit body in question, I did some measuring to see if it could be used for ANYTHING with reasonable accuracy. Turns out it's a pretty decent starting point for a '34 Fiat Balilla, a car that was much smaller than the Ford, but had similar styling. The Fiat Topolino was a popular body in the "altered" class, and I don't see any good reason a Balilla couldn't be the basis of a "what if" model that represents something that actually could have been built. Stretching the rules a little, even a gasser-class car of similar size to the popular old Anglia is also feasible.

I really enjoy seeing this kind of project. These were great looking cars, IMHO. I just bought a '60 Imperial to do much the same thing with.

Due to a thread posted elsewhere on the forum concerning the Ford "cammer" engine, I sprung for an unmolested Tom Daniel-designed T'rantula, mostly to get those lovely rocker covers. I have several cammer-powered builds in the lineup, but they've all stalled due to large (to me) scale and appearance inaccuracies with the engines. We'll be seeing what it will take, or if it's even possible, to build a correct-looking cammer from these covers and other bits I have in stock.

If you need to go 3mm (3 scale inches), turning the spindles upside down is definitely your best option. The spindles in this kit do NOT have steering arms, so the typically-necessary swapping side-to-side when you invert spindles is NOT required here. HOWEVER...the spindles do appear to have a very slight amount of camber designed in, and the mounting pin (where the balljoint would be) on the lower end is slightly larger than the upper...so a slight amount of massaging the holes in the control arms will be in order.

Even painting REAL cars can be a serious problem in hot, humid climates. One summer here not too long ago, all the body shops were painting in the middle of the night and using the maximum amount of retarder in the paint to combat solvent-popping...which can NOT be polished out, and requires a strip to repair correctly. Are you airbrushing, or rattlecan? If airbrush, moving your water trap AWAY from the compressor will allow the compressed air to cool more prior to going through the trap, and will have much less water vapor in it as a result. Also, what clear are you using? There are some that are relatively insensitive to humidity-blushing, and some that will stay milky-dull almost forever. If you're airbrushing lacquer, retarder (from the body-shop supply store) can be used to minimize the blush reaction too. A dehumidifier in a fairly well-sealed room will also be of great help, but you're going to need a hygrometer to gauge its effectiveness, and try to do your spraying only when the humidity is under about 60%, and air temps under 80F.

This basic question gets asked repeatedly, and the answer is that you do it just like it's a real car. Maybe I need to post a tutorial that addresses all the variations, once and for all. I have the retooled version of the kit in question, and checked the parts. As Mr. Muppet alludes, all you have to do is cut the STUB AXLE off the SPINDLE, and move it UP on the spindle the exact amount you want the car to come DOWN. This is identical in effect to replacing stock spindles with "dropped" spindles on a real car. To hit it right the first time, you really should mock the car up sitting on the stock suspension and measure the ride height. Then remove the suspension and mock the car up where you WANT IT TO BE, and measure that ride height. The DIFFERENCE in these two numbers is the exact amount you will need to raise the stub-axle relative to the spindle. NOTE: Cut carefully, measure carefully, and use plenty of liquid cement to reattach the stub axles. ALLOW TO DRY THOROUGHLY, and the joints will be plenty strong to support the car. I do this all the time.

If you cut carefully, you can get accuracy to a couple of one-thousandths of an inch, which is plenty close enough...even if you're working in very small scales. Model car kit manufacturers regularly make measurement and scaling errors all over their models, probably averaging in at about one-scale-inch. This equates to 1mm in 1/25 scale, which is about .040". The typical model builder is simply unaware of discrepancies in this range. The whole point of the thread is to illustrate that computers and CAD and 3D-printing are completely unnecessary if old-school techniques are applied with a reasonable amount of thought and skill. HOWEVER...the thread is based on going from an original design, or something real that at least some section drawings and dimensions are available for. Developing accurate section drawings from 3D models is outside the scope of what's presented here, but as I mentioned, it's relatively easy to someone versed in CAD. If you'd like to get started working with CAD, which is really helpful for anyone who makes things (whether you have the old-school skills or not...the old and new techniques complement each other), I can highly recommend the free version of SketchUp. It allows users to become familiar with working in a virtual design environment, with no monetary investment, and at their own pace. https://i.materialise.com/blog/en/first-3d-model-in-sketchup-tutorial/ I know several people who started working CAD in SketchUp, and have gone on to do some really amazing things.

Yes, 3D models can be used to develop cross-sections for building a buck. A board member here, Pico (Pico Elgin) has developed 3D models and printable files from sources as obscure as video-game representations of several vehicles. Generating cross-sections from a 3D model is relatively simple for someone who's familiar with manipulating the software, but 3D printing them out adds unnecessary expense. Cross sections can simply be printed in 2D on paper (in the correct scale, including full size), and traced on to plywood or other flat stock to make the actual "stations" of the buck.

Pretty much the same method, yes, but slightly different. And yes again. It's the first project slated to be done after I move, with a 600cc liquid-cooled Kawasaki 2-cylinder. In the last week of August, I also began talks with a supplier of 25 HP electric motors, currently used in self-launching sailplanes. The construction method in the video should be quite familiar to anyone who's built balsa model airplanes, too.

This is the model train layout of Mr. Hans-Peter Porsche. He is the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche (the designer of the VW Beetle, and the founder of the company that bears his name).

Ever thought about building a custom car body or parts (models or real cars)? The old methods still work just as well as they ever did, and are easily accessible to backyard-shop builders. No intense computer-rendering training or multi-million-dollar full-scale 5-axis CNC tables required.

I appreciate the responses. I've done some digging, and apparently there is some malware that specifically targets AdBlock. Like some of you, I've also encountered sites that require disabling AdBlock to access them. I won't play. The info is always available elsewhere. The new AdBlock site has a voluntary-pay page that previous versions didn't. I appreciate not having my internet experience marred by a constant barrage of marketing stuff I don't want and won't buy, so I have zero problem paying for AdBlock...just as I voluntarily pay for access to WikiP, (and always paid for P-bucket, still do, and it's still working fine at the very old rate) though it too is ostensibly "free". I'm wondering if the mystery uninstall of AdBlock was a subtle hint that they're now accepting money for service. Like I said, I have no problem paying for something I use, especially something I use heavily and rely on. If it WAS indeed initiated by AdBlock however, I really would have appreciated a straight-up request for pay-as-you-go...but I'm not saying it was. As far as Windows being "trouble prone", I personally don't have much of a problem with it. Since I last upgraded my OS from XP to something newer several years back, I've had a corrupted mouse driver. Fixed it myself. No other issues. Wait...there's more. Occasionally when Windows updates, it destabilizes my non-Microsoft photo-editing suite. So far, it's always been an easy fix too.

The printed tire data (small letters) on the piecrust Racemaster slick also appears to be printed out-of-register on the sidewall, with the smallest lettering being in the groove or on the rib...whatever that is...where it wouldn't be in reality. At least the rotation arrow is fairly easily masked with a touch of something white and opaque. Not so out-of-register printing.

Boy, I sure wish I had access to your sources. More often than not, I have to spend weeks looking for either NOS pieces, or serviceable used pieces, or working closely with upholstery people to develop ways to accurately simulate the OEM parts because repops just don't exist for the vast majority of plastic stuff. And more often than not, in the world I live in, even the "hard" mechanical parts that ARE reproduced are poor-quality offshore garbage that doesn't fit or function like the original stuff, and are usually made from inferior material.

So...lemmee get this right; this issue comes with the whitewall cheaters AND the piecrust pad-printed M&H slicks AND 4 wide-white street tires?

Anybody else have this happen? This AM, I started noticing ads were coming up on this site, and then on YT as well. The AdBlock icon was gone from the upper RH screen. I've since reinstalled it, and it's working fine, but I wondered if anyone else has had the same thing happen.

Me too. And though there's rather a lot of sculptural detail going on here, what the mags like Car & Driver used to refer to as "tortured sheetmetal", the design elements work together and are more all-of-a-piece than many others we've seen.

What do you wonder, exactly? There are some intelligent people here, with knowledge and ideas and opinions. And though we're brought together by a common interest, like in any meetings of people who are brought together by common interests, conversations inevitably spring up about other things. Happens at club meetings, the PTA, after church, etc.

Overtly political...(and I'm exercising a great deal of self control in preventing myself from making it more so) because of the timing of the allegations against the SCOTUS nominee at the 11th hour of the confirmation hearings, and the political leanings of the accusers vs. said nominee (as well as the political leanings of the main-stream media who are making a circus of the whole thing). Also, it's interesting to me that the "presumption of innocence" when one is tried before a court USED to be one of the basic RIGHTS guaranteed to Americans, but now, a trial and conviction in the media is becoming the norm.

Exactly. I wasn't there, I don't know the truth, I'll never know the truth, and frankly, I haven't been following the witch-hunt. But just because a lot of people are in the street with pitchforks screaming "burn him !!! burn him !!!", I won't join the slavering throng. I know enough about the justice system, from personal experience, to know IT IS NOT INFALLIBLE.

I like 'em both pretty much equally. While a huge US-built 4-door sedan is "far far far" from what I'd choose as a recipient for my own effort, they're BOTH exceptionally clean, well detailed, and appear to have been built (or simply maintained and detailed) with a high degree of skill. I think EITHER one would be great fun to own and drive.

Let's see...eight letters. H O R R I B L E maybe?

All pretty horrible, but surely no worse than the Nissan Juke or the Pontiac Aztek.