Ace-Garageguy

Some o' the old mailbox scoops were pretty big, and the one on the mockup is the first thing I came up with that had the overall look I was after. You'll notice in the photo below, the main body of the scoop is the same height as the 4-pot injector body, and it's almost as long as a 4-71 with the drive and rear plates bolted on. If I cut some off the front of the one on the mockup, we're there.

Thanks for the interest, gentlemen. The main reason I set this one aside is that I couldn't decide if I liked the period version or the contemporary version better. Looking at her now, I'm leaning towards the period build...but I already have a fair bit of work in the contemporary chassis. Good news is that I have extra chassis and noses, so she'll probably get built both ways.

Nice.

Pretty cool, and certainly unique. When I first looked at one of these kits, I was kinda annoyed by the transverse sink marks in the roof panel, but after having studied some real cars like this, I've seen the identical appearing ridges showing through the built-up covering. Those wheels also remind me of the "Boxpok" and "Scullin" drivers used on some fast steam locomotives. Very appropriate. Boxpok Scullin (Hope you don't mind the train pix...I'll remove them if you do)

Wow. This is a fantastic thread. I just got a NOS sealed 2012 R2 "50th Anniversary" reissue of the kit, and I'm mighty impressed with all the restoration work, and extra goodies in the box. I recently decided I wanted a 100% stock Avanti to go with the ongoing gasser and Bonneville builds. The gasser is a resurrected gluebomb, and the salty one is based on one of the sadly de-contented earlier reissues. As both of those are heavily modified race-cars, I didn't need all the original parts that were missing anyway. This R2 reissue is one nice kit to base a fine model on, and the re-tooled very special Halibrand wheels are just beautiful. I'm a happy guy...especially as these things are cheap now.

Scumbag dirtballs with a new twist on spoofed numbers. Got a call on the machine with some BS about my computer having been compromised, bla bla bla. Same old same old. New twist is that the reverse lookup on the number is an OLD woman out in the suburbs here, and unless it's her grandson making calls from the basement, it's pretty lame for these a-orifices to use some old lady's number. I bet she gets a bunch of screaming angry calls every day.

I post a lot, but I haven't put up anything on the build threads for quite a while. This one has been going for a long time, but I've never shown all of it on this forum before. The basis is the horrible AMT early issue '34 Ford 3-window. The body shell is really the only useful part of the kit. The chassis is very bad, the front fenders and nose are wrong, wrong, wrong, and there's even stuff wrong with the main shell. This kit shares absolutely nothing with any other AMT '34, and as far as I'm concerned, everything in the box other than the basic body shell is scrap plastic. Great box art though. The body shell is really too wonky to build a decent stock 1/25 3-window, but it does have potential for a hot-rod. This will be a layback-style chop, where the roof comes straight down, and the pillars get massaged to fit it. It's similar to the chop on the Flintstone lakes-style '34 body, and because the windshield pillars get laid back a bunch, the roof doesn't need to be lengthened, as some builders choose to do. Once I roughed in the chop, some playing in the parts stash resulted in this first mockup. It's a very different style of chop compared to others I've done, and almost looks like a '36. It's sitting on the other AMT '34 chassis (5-window and sedan). Engine's from the AMT Fiat double dragster kit, with Revell blower, injectors and mystery scoop from the stash. Grille and shell are from the Revell '37 pickup. Rear wheels and tires are Monogram sprint-car. Front wheels are some generic steelies. The other side of the personality is a "big-wheel" car, with a lot of traditional influences. I really wanted to do this one with a Chebby 348/409 in the beginning, but all I had in big lumps when I started the build were Hemis. When she went back on the bench, I also decided have a look at updated suspension instead of the period buggy-springs...independent in front, and coils with long bars in back. Updated wheel-tire package too. I'll be posting the procedure for doing this chop in depth (posted years ago in tutorial form), so stay tuned.

1) Not everyone here is aware that Casey used to be a moderator. 2) Not everyone here is aware that Casey is no longer a moderator.

Casey was a moderator a few years back.

Most helpful. Thanks.

Once I get the problems straightened out with this thing (it's twisted, has some pinholes, and a significant dip in the middle of the roof panel) I MAY make molds and cast a few. It's a great way to turn the readily available Falcon Ranchero kit into something interesting. Stay tuned...

Most definitely a viable option. Another option...I recently found a wagon roof in resin for the Falcon. Not a bad part but slightly warped. And I have no idea who made (makes) it. Also got a 2-door sedan roof...

I'm with Ron. He has a good plan. In the condition she's in, she's not worth much. I recently bought a clean, semi-virgin '61 Falcon kit, in a good box, with decals and instructions, for $62.

Another one of the many reasons I think some things were better in the "old days". Those of us old farts who remember the way Sears USED to run its tool business will recall that it was often possible to go into a Sears parts depot and get a part for something 20...or more...years old. In this age of throw-it-away-when-it-wears-out, consumers have been brainwashed to bend over and take the cost of replacing a POS tool, rather than buying quality, using it for a long time, and eventually buying a part for a fraction of the price of a new whatchamacallit, and doing a simple repair. Planned obsolescence. Ain't it great?

And for anyone interested in delving deeper into the intricacies of valve train choices, design, and especially the solid vs. hydraulic lifter debate, here's a link to another great article. http://www.hotrod.com/articles/mopp-0312-solid-vs-hydraulic-lifters/

There was a point when I was confused as a young modeler of trains, planes and cars due to the conflicting usages of "prototype". As you already noted, "prototype" in cars generally means "experimental" or "one off" or "development mule" or "first generation" or "concept car", etc. "Prototype" referring to aircraft is similar, generally X-planes, etc. It took me a while to understand that these definitions had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the way the model railroad guys used the term simply to mean "real".

Excellent point. "Prototype" is and has been just about forever the term of choice in the model railroad community to mean "full scale" "1:1" and "real".

Man, I thought this thread was going to be about some cool workouts we could do while sitting on our butts at the bench. Oh well.

I just can not understand what the argument is about. Far as I can tell, there are no language police trying to force anyone to call anything either "real" or"full scale" or "1:1". We all know what the terms mean. so use whatever you're comfortable with. I tend to use them all pretty much interchangeably, somewhat dependent on context, and somewhat dependent on what flows well in the sentence or phrase. Why, oh why, should there be any need for peacekeeping? And sometimes I refer to models as "little cars" and their real 1:1 full-scale counterparts as "big cars". So far, everybody seems to have understood the difference.

The original question was "how do you say 1:1 ?" The answer is one-to-one. Goofy sounding to you or not, that's how you say it.

That's a very good question. The answer is complex, kind of yes and no, so I'll give you a simplified version. Camshaft and valvetrain design were still pretty much a black art back in the 1950s when the first generation of US-made OHV V8 engines were introduced. There were lots of combinations experimented with, and lots of compromises. With the advent of advanced computer modeling and "polynomial" cam profiles, things have changed dramatically. It's safe to say that hydraulic lifters were originally designed to eliminate the necessity for periodic fine adjustments of valve "lash", or operating clearances between valvetrain components, and in the process, also eliminating the clicking noise that usually came from these clearances. Solid lifters are usually still used in maximum-output applications, because they tend to control valve events more precisely under extreme conditions. The lighter weight possible with a solid lifter also allows higher revs without valve "float". Though float can be controlled to an extent with higher valve spring pressures, those higher pressures also create more friction and can waste horsepower. Hydraulic lifters are said to "pump up" (though there is still a considerable amount of argument about this phenomenon), and they can certainly "leak down" or "collapse", and all these have adverse effects on valve lift and timing. Solid lifters, of course, suffer no such problems. Today, there are several technologies available to provide both variable valve lift and variable valve timing...while the engine is running...to tailor the valve events to what the engine is being asked to do at any given moment. The video below explains some of what's available in production engines. From Road&Track... "Manufacturers like to use a lot of acronyms on their cars. Variable valve lift (VVL) and variable valve timing (VVT) are two of the most popular ones. These systems sound pretty similar, but what do they actually do? Luckily, there's a real engineer here to explain it to us. Variable valve lift is mainly used to enhance performance. Instead of having one cam profile for the entire rev range, a VVL engine has two: low-lift and high-lift. Under regular conditions, the engine will use the low-lift cam to operate the valves, but under higher load, a solenoid switches the engine over to the to the high-lift cam (or cams), increasing valve travel and therefore, performance. Variable valve timing, on the other hand, is used mainly for emissions control. Essentially, it allows the engine to advance or retard the valve timing using oil pressure. This allows for more control over how much air-fuel mixture is in the cylinder (less under light-load driving, more when power is needed), controlling temperature and emissions. But that's only a very basic explanation. Watch as Jason Fenske of Engineering Explainedwalks us through VVL and VVT in much more interesting detail."

Do you mean the GTO, Greg? I noticed some of the versions were scoop cars and some weren't. Is that the difference? The scooped cars are die-cast?

It may sound "goofy" to you, but in the real world, that's sometimes exactly what it is. Engineers often refer to scale development or styling models as fractional sizes. 1/10 (one tenth) and 3/4 (three quarters) are old favorites. My model here is 1/10 scale. But full-scale models (and full-scale models are regularly still built of many vehicles and products) are routinely referred to as "one to one" or "full scale" interchangeably. Maybe because I live in the world where the terms are used this way, it doesn't sound "goofy" to me. Below is the 1:1 model of the same vehicle under construction in my shop.

Here's some great info directly from Lunati... http://www.lunatipower.com/Tech/Cams/CamSpecTerms.aspx http://www.lunatipower.com/Tech/Cams/CamProfileTerms.aspx And this is what's available from Lunati JUST for the smallblock Chebby. Read through the specs and intended applications, and you can make sense of the numbers. http://www.lunatipower.com/Category.aspx?id=58

Hmmm...I'm getting the dreaded "THIS TOPIC CAN NO LONGER BE EDITED" horseradish. Anyway... Cams for supercharged engines, or different fuels like alcohol, natural gas, etc. have different design characteristics from gasoline burning normally-aspirated engines too. It is a very complex subject.