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Ace-Garageguy

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Everything posted by Ace-Garageguy

  1. Welcome to the forum. Sounds like some of our experience and interests overlap. I've designed a fair bit of tooling for composite car and aircraft parts over the years, and a lot of jigs and fixtures for various machining and fabricating operations, and I have a pretty well-equipped (old school) machine shop. I have some contacts in the injection-molding industry (not models, but it all works the same way) and have proposed doing an article for the magazine explaining and illustrating the entire process, but so far, no further response from management. There's a lot of interest here in muscle-cars, but some of us old geezers still build hot-rods. Here are a few of mine:
  2. You missed all the drama apparently. The tooling was "lost" or "damaged" or "seized by the Chinese" or some combination of all three...or something different entirely. Revell's not telling the real story. The kit went out of production, along with the '30 coupe that shares some of the same tooling. Revell's elves are diligently working to do whatever is required to return both kits to the shelves. Have patience, grasshopper.
  3. That's rough. Somewhere along the line, I guess you got busted up pretty bad, and for that I'm sincerely sorry. People get hurt. Bad. People get sick. Harry was only in his 50s. Yeah, I get it. My message was only intended for the folks who voluntarily let themselves go...when they have choices every moment...and then complain about the results.
  4. I figure that if you work the increasing tendency towards "forgetting" timing just right, eventually you'll only need one kit. Something entirely new every day...
  5. This one looks pretty bad azz...
  6. So...how many disassembled Texan IIs can you pack in a C-17?
  7. Yeah, and part of it IS inevitable, but I'm all for putting off decrepitude for as long as possible.
  8. Man...it's a long way from a Texan II to a C-17. Cute little bugger...always kinda made me think of a P-51's little brother.
  9. Probably not in this case. It's nothing more than glorified Elmer's school glue...chemically the same (PVA or polyvinyl acetate) and has relatively poor adhesion to plastic. To make a decent looking repair (if that's the goal, rather than a snotty mess that looks like a 5-year-old did it), I'd tend to go with something like epoxy that develops good adhesion, and can be shaped, sanded and polished post-cure.
  10. You aroused my curiosity, so I just pulled both kits off the shelf and had an actual in-the-flesh look. While not a drop-in by any means, the Foose Caddy frame, floor and interior can certainly be made to go under the '50 Olds with a little effort. Actually, the Foose frame can easily pass for a large-car fabricated frame made by somebody like Art Morrison. It's designed so that minor wheelbase adjustments aren't anything to get too upset about, and the floor only requires minimal narrowing (trim the edges) to slip up inside the Olds body. Again, the interior doesn't go in like it's made for the Olds, but it certainly CAN be made to work without too much grief.
  11. Here's some background on the full-scale replicas, if you're interested... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McBurnie_Coachcraft
  12. That particular kit is a rebox of a model of a replica (Thunder Ranch, I think) like the one used in Miami Vice. It's powered by a smallblock Chebby, and is most likely on a Corvette chassis.
  13. WE WILL HAVE NO DIGRESSION, NO MATTER IF THE DIGRESSION IS VERY CLOSELY RELATED TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC. NOTHING BUT SPECIFIC ANSWERS TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION WILL BE TOLERATED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ()
  14. Good looking model, great color for it. These are great cars to drive, but the engines are a PITA to work on, and very expensive to make big power with. Which is why the hot setup these days (for people who don't mind "butchering" a car from the Porsche gods) is a Chevy LS swap. There's an adapter available to bolt 350-400HP worth of Chevy engine to the Porsche bellhousing. Use a GM computer and a stand-alone harness, custom headers, and you're running. The car is actually lighter with the LS engine, too. The stock Porsche transaxle (the 944 Turbo uses a pretty stout unit derived from an Audi design...very popular with mid-engine kit-car builders too) seems to be able to handle the torque. AND...there's no shortage of broken-engine 944 Turbos around, cheap.
  15. Steve...I gotta admit that makes perfect economic sense, and the lenses look like they could well be the same. But the part number for the Comet doesn't appear to be "sided", and a quick search only brings up the Comet fitment. C1KF-13450C There could well be an Edsel fitment that isn't commonly known and doesn't come up initially.
  16. Some of you guys really need to push yourselves a little harder. Most people don't HAVE to deteriorate and become shuffling, fat, easily winded old fossils. It's a choice. Every time I sit on my butt for a while (anything longer than a few days) it's that much harder to get back in some kind of reasonable shape...and every time it hurts more to do it. But you know what? I can STILL hike 15 miles in a day, and put in a full week's work on cars...usually accomplishing at least as much as men half my age. Sure, I hurt at the end of the day, and I hurt like hell in the mornings, but it beats being an old blob living on prescription meds and whining about "I can't". And after some coffee, a couple of aspirin, and a long hot shower, I feel pretty much as good as I ever did...most days anyway. And vision? Strenuous exercise increases the blood flow to everything, and my vision is ALWAYS sharper when I've been active. Exercise also releases endorphins...naturally occurring "feel good" chemicals. Better mood, less fatigue and pain. If you're not already completely over the hill from inactivity, you can most likely improve the quality of your life (dramatically) by working up a regular sweat.
  17. Stock. A quick search of the OEM part number for the real cars appears to indicate the lens is specific to Comet.
  18. Fill 'em. Make molds. Cast new ones from tinted clear epoxy or polyurethane. You COULD try scuffing them and filling with a clear epoxy, then sanding to shape and polishing...but because the refractive index will almost certainly be different between the plastic and the epoxy, the sinks will still probably show.
  19. The mixing is fairly critical because you're mixing such small quantities. The time you have to work the stuff depends on the temperature in the room, and how much catalyst you use. Mixed right, you should get a good 5 minutes of working time. However, getting the mix-ratio right isn't as hard as people seem to want to make it. FIRST...you want to stir the material in the tube with something like a stir-stick from Starbucks. It WILL separate into liquid resin and goo, and it needs to be UNIFORM before you remove it from the tube to mix in the catalyst. SECOND...knead the tube of catalyst too. It will also separate over time. THEN...the key to correct catalyst-mixing is REPEATABILITY. EXPERIMENT and PAY ATTENTION to how much stuff you're using. For instance, if you always mix just about a thimble full, you'll need a dollop of catalyst about the size of a match-head. Again...PAY ATTENTION to how much putty you use and try to use the same amount EVERY time. Adjust your amount of catalyst until you get a nice uniform pink color, and you get about a 5-minute working window. Once the stuff STARTS to "go off", STOP trying to work it...you'll only make a mess. Give it a full 20 minutes to get fully hard, and to develop maximum adhesion to the substrate, before you start shaping it (once you know what you're doing, you can easily sculpt it when it's still "green" to save sanding time later). It's just another skill to learn. It's not hard...if you PAY ATTENTION and THINK about what you're doing. I use it exclusively, everywhere I need a heavy fill. It always works, and I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else. There ain't no magic. Here's a thread that shows a lot of work done with the stuff...
  20. I guess I'm going to explode.
  21. Sectioned and channeled...from a Tudor sedan:
  22. Hmmmmm....I must be doing something wrong. I don't seem to have any of those problems. I know these "getting old" threads are all in fun, but getting regular exercise (and I don't mean shuffling around the mall once a month), eating right, and watching your weight can all go a LONG way towards making you feel 40 when you're pushing 70.
  23. Another truthful representation of a horribly misshapen mess of a model. The box-art kept me from ever spending a nickel on this pile, too. Can you say "Palmer" kiddies?
  24. It's fairly straightforward to fill and smooth the seams with the putty of your choice. Done correctly, they will be entirely invisible, as though the body had been made in one piece originally. Get your fill work right, primer it, sand, repeat until it's perfect, and paint. Be sure to adhere the parts very well, as nothing is more frustrating than having cracks show through your fill and paint work if the seams aren't very solid, and reinforced. Several putties are available to do the finish work, but many of us use this two-part Bondo #801 stuff made for real cars, and available at most auto-parts stores in a modeler-friendly small tube. Be SURE to get the two-part. The one-part tends to shrink over time, and takes longer to dry during application.
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