Ace-Garageguy

This is one of those ancient threads I find immensely valuable. Turns out the 1:1 I'm building is actually a '66, not a '67 (she has no front fenders or any bumpers, rear fender caps or lights, and no hood or decklid at the moment) and for the parts of the build I'm doing, the year makes no difference whatsoever). Anyway, the mission is to build a model of the car for the client, who has been one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work for. This old thread gave me everything I needed to know 'bout the Lindberg '66.

If you're welding a solid shaft, you'll get far better results if you can bevel the ends, and jig the parts up in a lathe or something similar, so you can rotate the shaft slowly as you lay your bead. With a "small" welder, several passes may be necessary, but a Miller is a good machine, and it should be doable. Flux-core wire is also a waste of time (if you're using it).

No...all it takes is dedication, assuming you have mechanical aptitude and good eye-hand coordination to start with. And all are NOT created equal in these areas. Never forget that all the "professionals" began as ignorant "fumble fingered goons". Not one of them sprung fully formed from the mind of Henry Ford or Karl Benz. This AMBR contender was built by a shop I worked with (I had NOTHING to do with this particular build) for around $300K. But there is also NOTHING on this car that could not have been achieved by a dedicated AMATEUR working in his garage. It's all a matter of effort expended to develop and apply the necessary skills.

Pretty cool.

Thanks for the reminder. That's one I'd seen in the past, but had forgotten about.

Exactly. What kind of welder are you using? What thickness material?

I'm also terrible about getting close, but almost never finishing. For me, it's mostly because the biggest part of the fun comes from establishing the "look" and stance, seeing in my imagination how things will work out, verifying with mockups, getting all the major fitments done, etc. After that, the rest of the build tends to become "work", and as I HAVE to chain myself to projects in the real world, I tend to allow myself to walk away from models. My advice: DON'T throw your models away it you're dissatisfied with some aspect. EVERYTHING can be corrected, paint can be stripped and redone as many times as it takes to get it right, etc. And if you can harness and control the "perfectionist" mentality, you stand to be in a position to build outstanding models. You can learn SKILLS, but CARING about the quality of the work you do comes from your soul. Don't knock it.

I wasn't immune from dumb stuff to do to a car. When I was 18, I put 7X15 chrome-reverse Chevy rims on my hot-rod Bug, with wide, flat treaded bias plies. They looked cool, but until I learned to tie down the swing-axle rear suspension, the little car would try to trip itself during really hard cornering. The huge increase in unsprung weight made it ride like a buckboard too...not at all the kind of handling I was after (actually, they worked pretty well for slaloms in a dead-smooth parking lot, but on real roads with bumps and dips, they made the car skitter and thump). But those of us who stay with performance mods learn from our mistakes...hopefully.

Thank you. Posting negative results arrived at by actual experimentation is VERY valuable.

Everything about this build is top quality, including the surface plate and fixtures. About as close as you can get to building a real car, in scale. Fine, fine work. Always inspiring to see this level of talent, skill, and craftsmanship.

Pretty cool.

The car world has always been full to overflowing with dwerbs, tweeps, and various other subspecies of moronic wannabe posers who have no clue. The fartcan-muffler crowd is just one of the latest incarnations of the phenomenon. Not really any different from the generation of idiots who thought jacked up rear ends on long spring shackles was a thing. "Look at me!!! I'm an ignorant Richard and I don't know nuthin' 'bout Richard...but I do what everybody else does in my pathetic attempt to be cool." There's never been a shortage of sheep-like followers of any stupid trend. There never will be.

Now that I've realized that information older than two years is useless, it's easy to understand why so many people actually think the Earth is flat, and have no idea of things like who the parties were involved in WWI, WWII, or Vietnam, what's in the US Declaration and Constitution, or why it matters. Not too hard to understand why they can't even design a dammed pedestrian bridge anymore, either. I guess I'm pretty stupid having all those OLD engineering, design, and historical reference books around, not to mention car and model magazines that date back to the 1940s. I mean, WHO COULD POSSIBLY WANT ANY OF THAT OLD CRAPP? I should obviously pile up all that clutter and burn it on the front lawn. Nah.

That looks pretty good. Nice starting point for something fast.

The GP cars were probably not seen much on the streets...though at least one was fitted with fenders (cycle-style) and campaigned as a sports car. On the other hand, the Record Cabriolet was almost certainly imported into England by wealthy buyers, as it was primarily intended to be an export model when introduced in 1946. Tony Lago himself had lived in England for a considerable time, and had friends and connections within the automobile industry, so selling his firm's cars there would be a natural.

Fine job on the old Smer kit and the very nice diorama backdrop.

Pretty sweet.

Very nice work on a great old kit.

Probably an excellent choice. I haven't used that specific product, but I've had excellent results from a wide array of Loctite products over many years.

Yup, epoxy. I'd also roughen the area on the rod the glue will contact.

Damm. Just when I was getting back into model railroading, too.

The investigation into the bridge collapse is ongoing, and though it will doubtless be months before the appropriate government agencies release their conclusions, this March 21 article from the Miami Herald addresses several of the items in evidence. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/west-miami-dade/article206122229.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This thread may contain copyrighted material; the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available for the purposes of criticism, comment, review and news reporting which constitute the 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Not withstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, review and news reporting is not an infringement of copyright. 'Innovative' FIU bridge was a modern take on an old design. And vulnerable to failure. Below are the most relevant paragraphs from the article: The Florida International University pedestrian overpass that collapsed catastrophically during construction last week was advertised as a “cable-stayed” bridge, but it actually wasn’t: Instead, it was a modern take on an old bridge design that experts say is vulnerable to failure when a single structural piece is damaged. While it will likely be months before federal investigators lay out an official explanation, growing available evidence suggests that failure of a single diagonal support truss at one end was enough to cause the entire 174-foot concrete span to buckle under its own weight and crash onto Southwest Eighth Street near the entrance to Florida International University. What now seems certain from video captures and enlarged photos of the collapse and its aftermath: Crews for a bridge subcontractor were working on top of the unfinished bridge to tighten steel rods inside a diagonal support truss at the north end of the span — possibly to address cracking that had appeared in the concrete — when the structure abruptly gave way. The question now is, why would the concrete truss fail? Bridge engineers not involved with the project have said overtightening of rods or cables that provide tensile strength in concrete slabs and beams can cause the pieces to twist and shatter abruptly. Those angled, vertical support pieces were designed to tie the bottom pedestrian deck of the bridge to a canopy that ran along the top in what’s known as a truss design. In through-truss bridges, the top and bottom pieces — referred to as flanges — and the connecting struts, usually set up in an open cross-pattern or web, work together as a structural system to hold the bridge up. Steel-truss bridges have been commonly used in roadway construction going back decades. But they have a well-known vulnerability: If a vehicle hits one of the horizontal support trusses, the entire span can collapse. That’s what happened in the 2013 collapse of a 1955 steel-truss bridge over the Skagit River on Interstate 5 near Seattle: A truck carrying an oversized load struck supporting steel struts along one side of a bridge span, which split apart and fell into the river. That’s because there were no backup or redundant structural elements to support the span if one piece failed. That’s also why truss bridges are mostly avoided in modern road construction, said Ralph Verrastro, a Cornell-trained bridge engineer with Bridging Solutions, a Tampa firm. “A through-truss bridge can catastrophically fail,” Verrastro said. Because the FIU bridge would see no motorized traffic that could strike a truss, the decision to go with that design by itself raises no red flags. But he did note something unusual in its approach: Truss bridges usually have vertical struts running along both edges of the deck. But the FIGG design had only a single row of trusses along the center of the bridge in a zig-zag pattern. Verrastro said that single row might have made the design especially vulnerable. If one diagonal piece failed, it’s didn’t have a twin on the other side that might have provided some support in the same area. “The unique part is, it’s a single truss,” he said. “When one member failed, there was no redundancy.” He also pointed to one possibly significant difference between the FIU bridge and a traditional truss bridge: It was made of heavy concrete, not much lighter steel. ...But what the engineers may not have known, (a) faceless Canadian YouTuber suggests, is that the steel inside the struts could have been damaged. His evidence: photos showing a steel rod protruding from the top of the bridge canopy with a blue hydraulic jack — equipment used in tensioning support cables or rods inside concrete — still attached. A subcontractor crew member working on that spot fell to his death when the bridge collapsed. In the video, the Canadian runs a demonstration showing how a steel rod undergoing tensioning will suddenly snap and shoot out of the jack if stressed beyond its capacity. The video lays out further evidence: Drawings on the FIU website show how the bridge span, which was prefabricated by the side of the trail over a period of months, was to be moved into place using four powerful lift trucks. In the plans, two trucks would be placed side-by-side at either end, lined up under spots where the vertical trusses met in a joint, the Canadian noted. But video of the actual move shows one of the trucks at the north end, where the bridge appears to have failed, was moved farther towards the middle of the span, leaving the end unsupported. ...the Associated Press said in a story Tuesday that the Florida Department of Transportation ordered the northern support pylon be moved 11 feet to make room for future expansion of the trail. That required a design change that lengthened the span — and put the support pylon in the dirt well off the edge of the roadway, which could also explain why the northernmost truck could no longer follow its original planned route. ...the weight of the unsupported end could have placed enough stress on the last diagonal strut — the one being worked on when the bridge fell — to damage the rod inside it and loosen the tension on it, the Canadian AvE says in his YouTube video. It would also explain cracking that appeared on the north end of the bridge that a FIGG engineer reported to FDOT on Tuesday, although he concluded that it posed no safety concerns. Cracking in new concrete is not uncommon, and could be superficial or a sign of deeper trouble. EDIT: PLEASE NOTE, there is nothing inherently wrong with a truss bridge, when properly engineered and constructed. This one is doing just fine supporting its own weight, as well as the weight of several locomotives...and it's been doing it since 1944.

That's a tough one. Seems to have styling elements from at least 10 different cars.

Well, it's official. I just put a deposit on a full-scale '32 roadster body. I've been collecting parts for several years...frame, double-hump heads, block and crank, real OEM forged '32 dropped axle, Jag wires for the front, Finned Buick and Lincoln drums, etc...but waited to pull the trigger on a body until 1) it looked like I'd have time to build the thing in the foreseeable future, and 2) I found a smokin' deal on a fiberglass body shell I could get built more-or-less to my specs. Only other big-ticket item to save up for is a quick-change. Everything else will be used vintage, junkyard, or fabricated/machined by me (and I'm looking for an early Culver City Halibrand QC, though I OUGHT to run a repop that takes late-model gears and axles). The only real deviation from a "traditional" car (other than the glass body) will be a 5 or 6 speed gearbox (junkyard). Gots to have long legs for cruising cross-country, and fairly short 1-4 gears for tire smokin'. Time to get back on the model, as there are several things I HAVE to work out for the real one.

Yeah, I've kinda had it with Amazon. I'll only buy from them if there's just no alternative. No PayPal, and apparently Bezos actually believed that drone-delivery could be a real thing. Okayyyyyyyy.