Ace-Garageguy

Hey kids...great news for people who hate that pesky OLD information that's just past-it and of no value whatsoever. PeeBucket just informed me that my grandfathered-in price plan has expired. Since I just flat refuse to pay extortion, and because I also refuse to take the time to re-post all my old photos, pretty much ALL my threads up to now will shortly become useless. For this reason, I'm going to request the mods remove them completely.

Because of this thread, I stopped in at my local HT and had a lengthy conversation with several of their very knowledgeable longtime employees. This one has no plans to be cutting back on models...but they don't have as many multiples of the same kit on the shelves as they once did. Restocking in some areas seems to be a little lax...styrene shapes and sheet for instance, but the balsa and basswood and paint sections have all been refilled since I was there last...and the three people I know there are just the kind of smart, enthusiastic guys you would have encountered in a well-managed hobby shop back in the '50s or '60s.

If the new owners actually have functioning brains, they'll look mighty carefully at the size of the US market to date...actual sales, numbers we don't seem to be privy to. THEN, they'll make a logic-driven decision as to where to put the maximum effort and dollars.

You know, we really don't know if this is a "tremendous loss for the hobby" or not at this point. Fresh blood MAY make the Revell offerings better and more prolific, and kit costs don't necessarily have to go up. And lets not forget...thanks to rampant mismanagement in other sectors over the years in recent momory, MILLIONS of other hard working Americans lost their retirement funds.

When there are several proven fillers that actually work exceptionally well, why would anybody want to experiment with some weird concoction like floor polish and talcum powder? What am I missing?

Exactly MY feeling 15 pages back.

Probably because their web presence is paid for until the end of the month, and there's nobody around to update the site.

Here's a thought. The new German ownership may feel that maintaining a separate US Revell division is a waste of money and duplication of effort, especially in light of the US arm's apparent inability to maintain control of the tooling for two of its best selling kits...the model A roadster and coupe. RoG has apparently been operating at a profit, and with access to Eastern-European tool and die makers, who are, frankly, better than the Chinese (and geographically almost in the neighborhood), the feeling just might be that RoG can handle everything. No reason to carry a US arm that seems to also have trouble with measuring and dividing accurately. Most of Revell US's recent offerings have had problems that could have easily been eliminated prior to production if somebody had cared enough to make the effort, rather than relying on apologists citing the usual litany of "reasons" regarding time zones, language difficulties, "real modelers can fix it", etc. An investment group that's serious and professional in its approach to generating financial returns has no need for chronic excuse-makers on the payroll. If RoG can cut production costs by cutting deadweight overhead, and maintain or RAISE quality by sourcing tooling and production within Europe (which is what I'd do), there's no reason to worry that Revell products here will go away. Everything you get from Revell USA has been mostly designed and made in China for a long time. It comes here in containers. Containers full of model kits can just as easily be shipped from Europe as they can be from China. PS. American investors, for the most part, have no interest in manufacturing much of ANYTHING (except of course for the very notable exception of Mr. Musk, who is actually from South Africa, and who came HERE because of the incredible opportunity this country STILL offers to smart people who WORK HARD). Most of the important US general-aviation companies are now foreign-owned, for example, because NO AMERICAN INVESTORS WANTED ANYTHING TO DO WITH AMERICA'S AVIATION HISTORY. In a business climate like this, is anyone really surprised no US investor stepped up? Blame the WalMart culture, not the Germans who coughed up the cash to save the existing tooling from the scrappers cutting torch.

I could definitely use the orange one. Send me a PM with your needs.

Cool. Big scale for the star cruiser. I had no idea. Does she come with Anne Francis and Robbie too?

Thanks for the reminder. Current plans call for a cross-country road-trip sometime in this coming fall. I'll be SURE to time my passage through to coincide with open hours. Do you figure it's worth more than half a day? A full day? Pretty cool score on NCC 1701 A too.

What it ACTUALLY is, is a bunch of lawyers have been watching the model car boards, and have started a pool betting on how many more pages of pointless speculation they can wring out of us if they delay settlement a few more days.

Yup, the ORANGE one is something like the Keith Black Hemi, based on the Chrysler 426 Hemi engine design.

I've spent WAY too much of my life going behind people, fixing their "accidents" or re-doing work THEY WERE PAID TO DO RIGHT AND DIDN'T. I'm done. No more. The REST of my life will be spent on building MY OWN VISIONS, not correcting work someone else was too damm inept or too damm lazy to do right. Challenge? I can tell you a little about rising to challenges and overcoming them. But this piece of crapp just isn't worth my time. Of course, watching the news, I get the impression that unfolding events may make this entire hobby seem pretty irrelevant in not too long. It's not just the model car industry that has incompetents in positions of authority. It's the entire planet.

Boy, am I tired of hearing THAT one. If I did MY work as poorly as the nose on this thing is done...well, I'd be just another average idiot hacker "mechanic". Of course, judging from the REST of the review, it would seem I'm the first one to have a problem with the odd lines and shapes. NOTE: The idea behind getting involved with this kit was to do a relatively simple, mostly OOB build for a 1:1 client, with different wheels, valve covers, and a few other things to make it more accurately represent HIS heavily modified car. I had NO INTEREST in or INTENTION of getting involved with an entire re-tooling exercise, but I will NOT present a model of something that's warped and twisted and just flat WRONG in so many areas. So I guess the guy ISN'T going to get a model of his car after all. And I've WASTED about $30 on this piece of trash, for nothing.

Some answers: the smaller pipes down low on the cylinders are a manifold that connects the lower ends of the individual cylinder water-jackets together. There are larger connecting pipes at the tops of the cylinders, between them. The illustration below is labeled in German, so I'll translate some of the terms. warmwasserzuleitung: hot water pipe. These connect the water jackets at the TOPS of the cylinders, but the term prefaced by vergaser specifically denotes a carb-heat line running from the cylinder-water-jacket connecting hot water pipes to the top of the carburetor. This was probably another carb-anti-icing measure, and an effort to keep fuel vaporized. kuhlwasser abflussrohr: cooling water drain pipe. This is hot water OUT of the engine, going to the radiator kuhlwasserpumpe: cooling water pump. This pushes COOL water FROM the radiator into the manifold on the cylinder sides. Und so: Cool water from the radiator comes in at your yellow pipe, goes through the pump, goes out through the green pipe to the cylinder water jackets, and hot water goes back to the radiator at your red pipe. NOTE: Those are two different versions of the engine in the color photos, and a third version in the old B&W photo, but the water routing is similar in all of them. The B&W engine appears to have the same water pump configuration as the top color photo. Use your best judgement to make something up that looks reasonable.

I just bought one, have it sitting in front of me. The nose looks wrong, and comparing it to online photos, I see the front of the front fenders, including the body line, actually goes UP on the model, whereas it goes DOWN slightly on the real car. The model also renders the base of the windshield pillar klugey and wrong, where it intersects the door. The pillars are also shaped and tapered incorrectly. The front wheel arches are wrong, and the rear edge of the hood and the cowl are too low relative to the windshield opening as well. It's subtle, but at the same time so bad, it almost looks like the front fenders are short-shotted, or warped...but the hood fits what's there perfectly. Careful comparison with the box-art photo shows the same problems I'm seeing with the parts in my hands. The upside is that it looks like a lot of the problems can be corrected with heavy file work, as there seems to be sufficient meat in the affected areas to re-sculpt them somewhat. It also looks like it should be possible to add meat to the undersides of the fender tops, should it become necessary. I am however, frankly, disgusted at the prospect of, ONCE AGAIN, having to RE-DO work the kit manufacturer SHOULD HAVE GOT RIGHT.

She'd do well over 100 MPH too...pulling a train. I'm looking for one of the Henry Dreyfuss-designed NYC 4-6-4 Hudsons... And a Raymond Loewy-designed PRR S1... and T1... Loewy also styled the Baldwin "Sharknose" diesels. I already have two of those in HO, restored to running condition. He designed the PRR GG1 electrics too. Still searching for a complete, cheap, broken one. For those who don't know, Raymond Loewy is the guy who designed these...

You should post a video of that on YouTube. I'm sure it would go viral.

And also...depending on how heavily glued things are...I use a chisel-tip X-Acto and a small hammer: Sometimes a photo-etched saw works well, but it takes slow work and a lot of patience.

Great looking car. Chop and proportions are just right.

And here are two you DO NOT WANT. This AMT kit has NOTHING in the box that's usable except the body shell, and even it takes a lot of work. And this Revell version is WAY under-scale, and so small it's a joke. The tube-frame under it was designed for a model T, which is MUCH SMALLER than a '34 Ford. Revell's tooling wizards shrank a '34 body to fit (the smallblock Ford engine in the kit is under-scale too), for some odd reason. I can not imagine what they were thinking. (It's a good starting point if you want to build a '34 Fiat though.)

The Monogram 1/24 kit is far and away THE best '33- '34 3-window Ford ever done in plastic. If you're OK with 1/24, by all means, start with that one. It's problematical in 1/25, frankly. It's going to take two kits to do a reasonably accurate rendition of the car in the first photo. The old Monogram snapper is pretty good, but the hood is WAY too short (length, not height)...several scale inches in fact...and it will need more chop. The frame isn't that great either. To get a hood that's the right scale length, you're also going to need this one....but it has a nice buggy-spring frame, a pretty good flathead, and quite nice wire wheels. You'll need to transplant the firewall and inner cowl, too.

Lots of us do it. Technically not entirely legal, but not a problem for your own use. There are no recasting police, and some reputable resin parts manufacturers do it anyway. The kit manufacturers look the other way, especially when the copied parts are out-of-production, and never to be reissued. It's a gooey gray area, and there IS a serious ethical issue when you copy someone's ORIGINAL resin parts.