Ace-Garageguy

Nice haul.

Excellent...

Beautiful.

One of the best looking Pantera models I've seen. Very nice.

Looks great. Excellent proportions and some of the best weathering I've ever seen. One little thing...the model is so nice, the jaggedy edges on the carb stacks really jump out.

Tamiya Jag Mk II. A really beautiful kit, with an engine...which I didn't expect. We have a real one in the shop that's too far gone to do a cost-effective straight restoration, so I'll be doing a 1/24 scale proposal for something hot-roddy.

"Top Fuel" is supercharged, and could run a larger header diameter because there's a LOT more exhaust to get out when you're pumping lots more air and fuel in with a blower. To the best of my recollection, 1965 AFX cars were carbureted or fuel-injected, not blown.

Very cool. I missed this previously...and I have the Merit kit. Really like what you're doing with the tube frame and guts represented. Most excellent.

I'm still buying car books, but primarily for my 'working' collection. Recent acquisitions were a factory Triumph Stag service manual, a complete set of Dodge Neon factory books, the Bosch electronic fuel injection manual, Motor's 1965 Crashbooks, factory '63-'64 Corvette manuals, and the factory Volvo 760 GLE manual (covers the PRV engine in the DeLorean much more thoroughly than the DeLorean manual does). I'm still amazed that people will try to work on vintage cars with no research into correct specs and procedures, and want to trust the usually wrong BS posted on the internet by wannabes and people content to parrot the wrong info they got elsewhere...particularly YouTube. While there is indeed a lot of GOOD INFO on the web, you really have to know a lot about what you're doing to be able to determine what is idiocy and what is useful. Thing is, occasionally even the FACTORY books are wrong, and if you don't have the full set of updates and corrections from a particular production run, you can make expensive mistakes. Mindlessly trusting internet gibberish to be technically correct is just...stupid.

Telemarketing. More every day. I never answer the crapp, but there's always several useless messages on my voicemail I have to sort through and discard. And every time I set up my phone to reject calls from a particular number, the same f-wads call from another number, most of the time a fake spoofed number anyway. I don't understand how my landline went from being a tool for MY convenience (that I effing PAY for) to being a portal directly into my home for unwanted and intrusive sales BS. And I don't understand WHY it's still legal. Almost ALL of the calls are some kind of scam, and everyone in the known universe HATES them. Still, they continue unabated and the "do not call" list is a joke. Seriously...has ANYBODY here ever actually BOUGHT anything hawked by a telemarketer?

OK...I didn't recognize the Riley rocker covers from that angle...and painted orange. Every real Riley OHV conversion I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot) has had polished rocker covers, as they're cast aluminum.

I'm pretty certain that's the Ford Model A engine and trans from the old Revell 1931 Woody (and many derivatives) kit. The same engine was used from 1928 through 1931 and an upgraded but identical appearing engine from '32 through '34. This engine was used in Ford cars and light trucks. NOTE: Those orange air filters, or whatever they are, don't belong there. The real engine looks like this...

I bought this little guy pretty cheap as a dice-roll possible parts source for another 1/12 scale model I have in the works. Hmmmm. It's kinda an oddball mess, as far as looking like anything real is concerned. The engine (so far) doesn't appear to be an accurate rendition of anything (though I've only glanced at it, the position and angle of the distributor is different from anything I know of). The frame is a kinda goofy design looking more like a cartoon, and the "working" independent front and rear suspension is also a loose interpretation done by somebody apparently not too familiar with real cars. The wheels and tires are sorta OK, and you DO get 6 wheels (though only 4 tires...?)...kinda like Halibrand "kidney-beans". There are rear axle housing ends that could be the basis for a mostly scratch-built QC rear end, and the body, with a lot of work, could look like a one-piece fiberglass unit. The nose is too wide, by far, but could be cut down to look right. There are a few other bits and pieces that could conceivably come in handy if you're working in 1/12, and the body and nose could be the basis for a nice little altered or comp coupe...with a ton of work. Overall, if you don't want it for that, it's really too toylike as is. A real shame. It could have been a real sweetheart of a kit had the designers actually had a clue.

My thoughts exactly.

1.5 inches to 2 inches is the range you'll find hoops and cages to be built from, depending on time period and sanctioning body. Since 1 inch equals very close to 1 mm in 1/25 scale, you'll need styrene round rod stock in the 1.5 mm to 2 mm range to represent roll-cage and hoop tubing correctly. For 1965, NHRA required 1 5/8 inch minimum outside diameter tube for roll cages. This is 1.625 inches. Divide by 25 for 1/25 scale. You get .065", sixty-five thousandths of an inch. In millimeters, this is 1.65 mm. So, for a '65 car, you need 1.65 mm styrene rod for your roll cage in 1/25 scale. (1/16" is pretty close, but it's a little too small...and 5/32" is pretty close, but a little too big) HEADER NOTE: Header primary pipes on that engine would be probably 2 1/8 inches. Your 2.5 mm styrene will look like 2 1/2 inch tubing, a little too large if you have ever actually seen these things. 2 mm stock would look better, and once it's painted, it would be about scale-perfect.

I just got the dreaded 404 WE CAN'T SEEM TO FIND THE PAGE YOU'RE LOOKING FOR when I tried to upload a multi-paragraph response to a technical question. This has been happening since the big site change a while back. I guess the site as it is now is configured primarily for attaboys. Any significant amount of text seems to send it into stupid mode.

Anything in G scale (close to 1/25) is going to be hideously expensive (as above). O scale, 1/48, will be considerably cheaper and the detail can still be phenomenal. HO scale (1/87) starts to get pretty reasonable, and detail can be fantastic, especially for its size. Model railroad stuff is pretty expensive these days in general, but deals can still be found. Wood craftsman kits like these in HO are challenging, but they make beautiful, evocative models. Figure on spending a minimum of $50 to build one, as you often need to buy additional parts and materials. http://www.ebay.com/itm/HO-Labelle-wood-trolley-kits-choice-of-11-cars-decal/253163743145?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D41376%26meid%3D1ffc990d87cb4f7cb1c0fdc858d39661%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D253129500002&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851 This is a resin kit in HO, in the same price range.

And this one has the Euro-spec headlights...

You can find that body style 280 Merc in sedan, convertible and coupe in 1/18 diecast...and I think that's about as close as you're going to get. This one has the stacked-quad headlamps used in the US market.

You just inspired this idea...lubricate the threads of a small diameter bolt, heat-shrink it, and screw the bolt out. Worth a try, anyway.

The gearbox with the AMT Pontiac described as "B&M Hydro transmission" is a Hydramatic (NOT Roto), converted to the B&M "Hydro-Stick" configuration. The Revell parts-pack Chevy 283 and Caddy engines have two different versions of the Hydramatic as well...neither one is a Roto.

VERY nice, especially for such a small scale.

Yup. And a followup on the magneto thing...magnetos were in widespread use from the very beginning of the internal combustion engine. The wildly popular and iconic "Vertex" or "Scintilla" mag was introduced over here in 1935. Note the dates in this ad.

Excellent. Great tip. What exactly are those?

Another well built smile-maker. Very nice. If it could run in any real class, it would probably be the old "modified sports" (M/SP), always one of my favorites because of the wild combinations of little cars / big engines. They were sotra sports-car-bodied altereds, and great fun to watch. An "altered" class is also a possibility. Different sanctioning bodies had different rules, and some cars could cross over from class to class with minor modifications.