Ace-Garageguy

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.

Great looking model. I'd be happy to have that on my own shelf. Very nice. But...as El Caballo mentioned, the exhaust port spacing on your headers is Y-block Ford. The later smallblocks, that use the valve covers you have, have evenly spaced exhaust ports. Still, a very attractive, clean and well-executed build.

Or maybe use it a a body for something a little more serious...

Sheer genius. Perfect solution. There were some real cars built along those lines.

Enjoying this already. Lotsa work to get to where you want to go, but we have faith in you.

Wishing you luck with the biopsy.

Pretty cool.

Here are some shots of the contents of your box. It doesn't look too terrible...for Palmer.

I don't really see much benefit to using "2K" products on most model work, particularly in the smaller scales. "2K" does work well for burying decals sometimes though, where a single component lacquer might cause problems. "2K" is a urethane with a hardener. The hardener is quite toxic, so be sure to use a VERY good respirator if you shoot the stuff. 2K is generally a higher-build product than the typical lacquer clears I favor. 2K will usually give you a clear that's thick enough to sand and polish aggressively with not much chance of burn-through in two coats (that's all I usually have to shoot on REAL cars). Lacquer single-component clears may take 5 or more coats to give you the same film thickness. As Roncla mentioned, 2K products can be very tough to sand and polish after they're completely cured, but they're also very tough and stable. All this means is that they will be a little more chip-resistant, and they tend to hold a gloss longer, with no need to polish again after a year or two. 2K, because it DOES tend to go on thicker, can give a model a "dipped in syrup" look if you aren't careful with film thickness. Single-component lacquer can produce a beautiful finish that needs very little sanding and polishing, once you develop your skill. The panel below is plain old lacquer clear, not polished or buffed.

In a buncha other stuff a while back, I got a bizarroworld no-name battery-powered E-type in about 1/25 that's every bit as horrible as anything Palmer ever made (oddly proportioned multi-piece body, tiny wheels, ill fitting everything)...BUT...it's just close enough to slightly massage into a "one piece fiberglass body" for an M/SP drag car. It was either that or put a cherry bomb in it, but the little car looked so sad, I just didn't have the heart to kill it.

What Rob said, but file the edges of the missing area straight before you make your insert patch. That way, you don't have to match the curves and depth exactly, as you would otherwise. Simply match the angle, leaving some material sticking down at the bottom for a 'handle'. Plenty of liquid cement, do just as Rob says...really push it in there when it's wet. Let it dry at least overnight, file off the extra from the bottom, and shape.

Cool. Looks good. I have a lot of respect for a man who paints his own car. That's the way I got in the resto / race-car / hot-rod business. Every time I paid somebody else what I was quoted for a "good" job, it was crapp. I figured I could do a better job, for the same money, using top-line materials. The rest, as they say, is history.

The link tubes themselves are usually about 1" or so. Lower HP cars may use 7/8", higher HP cars may use larger. If you're working in 1/25 scale, 1" is about 1mm or about .040" styrene rod. The brackets would look about right made from .010" styrene sheet, though a lot of modelers use thicker stock for strength.

I'm not talking about small, easily-rectified things like window handles. AMT's BODIES LOOKED LIKE THE CARS THEY REPRESENTED...most of the time. They got the LINES AND PROPORTIONS RIGHT. Revell has had a few problems in that area lately. Read the critiques of the Revell '57 Ford LINES AND PROPORTIONS versus the old AMT kit, to see what I mean. There are similar issues on the recent 442 Olds and Torinos too. On the other hand, AMT's '32 Fords ALL have an incorrect sectioned look, too short (height) at the cowl. BUT the AMT kits that were derived FROM PROMOS, where they had access to factory drawings, were very good generally...as were Johan kits derived from promos. I addressed the Corvette chrome bezel / body-color bezel issue above, if you read my comment in full, and explained how it could have been easily rectified. SOME old kits are very accurate, dimensionally and proportionally. Some aren't so hot. I suppose it depended more on who the particular project personnel were, and whether they had sufficient talent, skill and passion to get it right...or not. Far as 4-eyed Corvettes go, I think the ancient multi-piece-body version from Revell is one of the best looking, in the line-and-proportion areas. And I was so disgusted with the itty-bitty headlights on the AMT '62 that I grafted an earlier nose on this build to deal with it.

Thing I could never figure out is why AMT felt the need to re-tool the nose, when they had the headlights about the right size earlier on. All they had to do would have been to make holes in the bezels, move 'em to a non-chrome tree, and tool 4 little lenses on the chrome or clear tree (to accommodate the body-colored bezels of the '62). They tooled clear lenses ANYWAY, so tooling two non-chrome bezels would have been a piece of cake...and leave the body alone. This shot shows the difference between the early AMT nose (on the right) and the later one (on the left). To me, it's horrible. The size of the resulting headlights is so underscale it's laughable. I HAVE compared the Revell and AMT '62s side by side, and the differences are SO apparent, one of them must be WAY off. This also strikes me as odd, because AMT, even with "old" technology (like measuring tapes and dividers and a little arithmetic on a pad with a pencil) was entirely capable of producing models that were GOOD scale representations of the subject matter. Their ancient '49, '56 and '57 Fords, and the old '49 Merc, for example. Someday, I'm going to actually MEASURE a 4-eyed Corvette, and see just exactly WHO REALLY GOT IT RIGHT. The AMT '62 still makes an acceptable race car though...especially if it's supposed to be heavily modified. Thread here...

One way is to remove everything except the frame rails, and use other suspension bits. Another obvious solution is the Revell '40 chassis. It fits the AMT body very well. The Revell chassis is a vast improvement. The Revell '37 chassis is another option (Ford used the basic chassis from '35 through '40...'41 on the pickup), though the '37 chassis is 1/24, so it takes a little massaging.

Too cool. That thing would be a rocket with the little Ford V8. They only weighed about 1700 lb. A friend of mine autocrossed one on Okinawa when he was stationed there, routinely set FTD (fast time of the day)...with the little stock 70 HP engine, tuned. The early chain-drive rear end was a real hoot, but this one would have had a conventional live rear axle. Anyway, great idea, nice execution. Big smile maker, this.

As much useless crapp as there is on the internet...social media where-I-took-a-dump-today-lookit-me-idiocy, whacko conspiracy theorists and flat-Earth nutjobs, screaming-whining SJW morons (plus a load of morons in general, posting and reposting poorly-written and misspelled lies, half-truths and unfounded-in-reality BS) and hysterical advertising hawking even more useless crapp...if you KNOW something about what you WANT to know and have some search skills, the web is the most fantastic source of knowledge in the history of Man. I know...it's pretty obvious and really goes without saying...but if you stand back and THINK about it, the amount of worthwhile stuff available is staggering. No, everything isn't there. But if something has been converted to a digital format and made accessible to the net, with a little effort, you can find it. I LOVE the internet...even though I have absolutely no use for most of it.

Plugged a couple more holes in the "I don't need it, but I WANT it" part of the stash. Finally got a Heller Talbot-Lago 4.5 liter GP car for a great price. I already had several of the SMER / Merit kits, and the Heller version is a vast improvement...though it's kinda low parts count. Still. it looks like it will make a beautiful model, pretty much out of the box (the SMER / Merit kits take a LOT of massaging to look really good). And so there's no confusion, the Heller kit is entirely different from the old SMER / Merit. It is NOT an update, repop, or related in any way. And a little Johan Rambler American came in too. Painted with brush enamel, otherwise remarkably clean. Ought to be an easy restoration. I passed on another one with a box, because the rear fender skirts had been glued on. Easier to strip paint.

Never heard anything back on this, so I did a little digging. An online reviewer (who incorrectly calls the landing gear "tricycle" when it's an obvious "taildragger"...so get your salt grains handy) lists the finished wingspan of the model as about 10.5" http://www.rightonreplicas.com/blog/?p=5273 As the REAL ORIGINAL airplane had a wingspan of about 22 feet, multiply that by 12 (for inches...264), and divide by 25 to see if the model is close to 1/25 scale. We get 10.56", which is pretty much dead on...assuming the model represents the EARLY version. The FINAL version had a span of 25 feet, which would be 12" in 1/25 scale. So...how do we know whether the model is the early or late airplane, and what the approximate scale is? Hmmmmm. The same reviewer lists the model's length as 9.5". The REAL airplane was about 23.4 feet in length. That would be about 11 1/4 inches in 1/25. So, going by the overall length of the model as posted by the reviewer, clearly the model is SMALLER than 1/25. In 1/32, the length should be about 8 3/4 inches. so clearly the model is LARGER than 1/32 scale. Still with me? So...the kit is somewhere between 1/32 scale and 1/25 scale. The fuselage comes in at about 1/29 scale. Lying morons. Kinda sorta too small to look right with the about 1/26 scale GeeBee from Lindberg (also incorrectly labeled 1/32), and too small to look right with 1/25 scale car models...unless you trick the relative sizes in your photography. Numbers must be a whole hell of a lot harder than I seem to think they OUGHT to be.

Windows updates that cause oddball problems, and touchpads that work whenever they damm well please. All things I can fix, but it always seems like I'm doing somebody else's work, for free.