Ace-Garageguy

Very nice, sir. Learning the old skills gives you an entirely different perspective to see the world from. Great work. I have some body tools I re-forged from old leaf-springs. That's some good steel.

Looks good, like she's well suited for playing in the dirt.

Man...I'm really surprised this isn't getting more attention. It's a spectacular piece of work. You really should ask the moderators to move it to the large-scale section. There will likely be a few more folks over there who "get it".

Just catching up on this one. Nice. I've got the axle half and tire if you need 'em.

You know Rob, the "everything new is awesome and everything old is useless junk" shtick gets pretty tiresome too. I LOVE computers, I LOVE trick new tech, and I LOVE smart people (old OR young). The 700 WHP car I'm currently building for a client has 7, count 'em 7, onboard computers and ECMS, they were NOT designed to function together, and its been a large and very enjoyable part of my job to make them all play nice with each other. But the self-same level of performance could have been achieved without ANY of them, with vastly reduced potential for side-of-the-road failure of anything mission-critical. An anvil and a hammer and an open forge are just as useful today as they were 100 years ago, IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THEM (which I do). My knowledge base includes BOTH ends of the spectrum, and RESPECT for both ends (unlike that of folks who can't change their own flat tire), but I WON'T say something makes good sense or is well designed when it just flat doesn't or isn't. I've seen PLENTY results of incompetent idiots with their hands in the pies on OLD stuff (and I've been responsible for a few). And in my years, I've learned that ONE thing above all I was taught in engineering school is of immense importance (and for the most part, now forgotten). Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Your response is interesting. I personally refer to people with learning deficiencies or delayed cognitive development as just that...not "retarded"...out of RESPECT to those souls so afflicted. I know many Down-syndrome young people who are productive, self-sufficient, pleasant and friendly. By YOUR definition, they're "retarded", but I would never use the word to refer to any of them, even in the third person. I use the term ONLY to refer to supposedly well-educated folks of normal intelligence who really have no excuse for performing sloppy, slipshod work. If you want to be offended, try to direct it towards someone whose intent was to be offensive.

Rose colored glasses indeed. You're not inside the industry, you don't see the staggering stupidity and incompetence in the engineering and design, horrible serviceability, onboard-diagnostics that don't, EARLY failures in many overly complex systems and parts (like 8+ speed gearboxes), etc. etc. And it's getting getting worse every year. But believe what you want. The current generation of vehicles won't be running long enough to get as old as the vintage pieces in the photos above. The electronic hardware and software simply will NOT be supported. The insanely complex transmissions in many vehicles now can't even be rebuilt. It's already happening, but most people only see what they WANT to see, not the objective truth. Vehicles are becoming more appliance-like and disposable, and what MY generation (and the smarter one just before it) railed against as an abuse of consumer trust and labeled "planned obsolescence" has now been successfully converted into a positive and brainwashed into the consuming populace: it's GOOD to have everything replaced every couple years. New is better. Buy. Buy. Buy. Speaking of truth, I've been told by management here that telling it is "abusive" and "doom and gloom". Apparently, dissenting opinions will no longer be tolerated. The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome is alive and well, and it dovetails very nicely with the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And to continue the thought, the androgynous millennials that their marketing would seem to indicate is the preferred customer-base probably never heard of a Blazer before now, and they most likely would have no use for real 4WD that could take them out of the neighborhood of the gluten-free artisan-milled rice bread and free-range organic kale and soy-everything-else they seem to subsist on. All the computer-controlled-4WD mommy vans here end up upside down in ditches every time it snows 1/4" anyway, so what's the point, really?

eBay's continuing glitches and general retardation. Friday I asked a seller for an invoice for a multiple purchase. I've done business with the company before, and they're good at timely responses. This time, nothing. So today, I see that eBay had simply DROPPED the two items from my purchase list. I go to try to get the request, and I'm informed that I can't access it because it's more than 30 days old. REALLY? So, after more time spent DOING OTHER PEOPLE'S JOBS, I find a way to re-submit the request. Because I'm careful and usually cover my butt in a world increasingly run by morons, I have copies of BOTH the requests in my email. We'll see...but the more they tinker with making it "better", the more it becomes a piece of trash. And please spare me the EVIL-bay responses. It's not evil. Just stupid. And in other news, I see Amazon is opening...wait for it...brick-and-mortar stores to push their devices.

Yeah, but that would be real performance. GM's own blurb uses the phrase "performance-inspired" to describe the thing. When a company is paying a do-nothing exec $28 million a year, and is going to possibly have to cough up as much as $10 BILLION to settle that little ignition switch fiasco, well, those just might be indications that their judgement is a little clouded.

I LOVE that old girl. Seriously. Always had a thing for real working trucks.

When you're incapable of building something that actually has some functional appeal, or you just don't get WHY anyone would want a vehicle that was competent off-road or ON-road, you build some moron stuff like this. All this junk does is scream "lookit me!!!! lookit me!!!!"...and there is never a shortage of other morons who will, with envy and lust in their hearts. Ooohs and aahs and attaboys. Idiots.

I just thought of it as a Pinto in drag. I'd personally much rather have a hot-rodded Pinto than a Pinto pretending to be a Mustang. This fake 911 on a VW pan is about the same thing, far as I'm concerned. I'd rather have a Bug. Of course, I'm not much of a fan of grapefruit-sized phony appliances stuck on women, either...but much of the world seems to like them just fine.

Man, that's pretty. Something like this is what I still see in my mind when I think "truck".

Beautiful clean work.

I misunderstood. Rock on. (It's "you're", by the way) Details make the difference.

Superb. I have several of the Pocher kit in various stages of rebuilding and upgrading, including a bastard flathead-powered dry lakes car, but nothing even coming close to what you're doing here. Most impressive. EDIT: However, you should probably post this in the large-scale "Big Boyz" section. Don't be surprised to find it moved.

Looks like you're not. This appears to be based on a 1/25 scale Flintstone shell, from what you've written and linked to above. This section, called "Big Boyz", is for larger scale models.

Remarkable piece of styling. Looks like it's already been wrecked several times, and the doors all caved in. How totally hip and with it. I guess it's yawn-inspiring stuff like this that they pay GM's CEO Mary Barra $28 million per year to sign off on. EDIT: I actually like some styling elements of the thing. like the hood, but somewhere along the line, what could have been a striking, clean design just went off the rails, and became the typical committee-drawn me-too me-too mashup of tired cliches.

It's good to remember that different engines and gearboxes, made with different materials using different methods during different time periods have many different surface finishes. For instance, sand-cast iron that blocks and earlier gearbox housings were made from have the characteristic slightly rough finish. Sand-cast aluminium can also be likewise rough, but many aluminum automatic gearbox housings have quite a smooth finish, like die-cast parts (carburetors and late model manual gearboxes and engine parts also). Anything fabricated from tubing will have a smooth finish, as well as pulleys and brackets. I've seen lotsa models spoiled when everything under the hood looks like cast iron. Study photos of the REAL version of what you're modeling to determine what degree of surface roughness is appropriate (assuming you want reasonable accuracy). As far as Testors "metalizers" go, you can get various surface effects...from dead smooth and looking like machined parts, to rough and pebbly looking like sand-cast...simply by varying your spray technique.

Hughes was part of the reasons the aircraft came into being, but it was designed by Lockheed people, including Kelly Johnson (U2 & SR-71). There are functional reasons cited for the sexy S-curve of the fuselage. The story is that the huge props required a lot of ground clearance, obviously, but with a straight fuselage, the nose gear leg would have been very long. The front of the fuselage was drooped somewhat to allow for a slightly shorter nose gear. In the rear, the tail of the fuselage was swept up to get the tail feathers out of the prop wash. As a result, no two bulkheads in the fuselage are the same, so much more tooling was required, and she was more expensive to build than a straight-tube fuselage like we see on most jets.

Never finished...naturally.

An old Air Force friend who flew the F-86 and F-100, among others, was flying Connies for TWA when they were being phased out in the late 1960s. The big radials were getting tired, and management wanted to stretch every last revenue dollar out of them, and put off heavy engine maintenance as long as humanly possible. He related a story where the minimum allowable oil pressure was progressively down-rated, until finally, the oil pressure gauges were just covered.

There's this thing called "scaling from known data", and it beats the bejesus out of conjecture and opinions. Since you have a very good profile shot, you can print it and use the known diameters of the wheels to establish a scale for the photo, and get fairly good measurements using that. Though the accuracy may be slightly off, the proportions will be pretty much spot on, and a little intelligent massaging of the numbers to coincide with the known dimensions on whatever body shell you decide to start with will get you very close indeed...closer than many kit manufacturers and resin casters seem to be able to manage.

Nice pair.