Ace-Garageguy

A large part of your answer hinges on what class you're building for, and what time period in history. Thinking has changed over the years, and different classes often run different rear end setups, especially depending on WHEN your model represents. Here are some examples of what's in use today. http://www.cachassisworks.com/c-401-4-link-suspension-drag-race.aspx

Seriously thinking about adding one of these to the stable. The '92 Silverado will probably be going to a new home as soon as I finish her engine (I really don't need 2 trucks, and I love the '89 GMC with the manual gearbox...so she'll be staying, and getting a limited slip diff), and I DO need a long-distance cruiser I can sleep in if necessary. I found an 85,000 mile one-owner that's like new, and reasonably priced. Only real downside is that the electronics are getting pretty long in the tooth, and will probably become unreliable in not too long. But in two more years, she'll be old enough to retrofit with old-school stuff that will work forever anyway.

Closest thing to a real hobby shop to me is a HobbyTown, but it's honestly a pretty good store. They're usually very well stocked with scratchbuilding materials, tools, paint from a variety of manufacturers, etc.There are two guys in their 30s who know kits, tools and materials well (and are model builders themselves) and an older guy (my age) who knows trains...though the train stock is normally pretty thin. The RC guys are in their mid and late 20s, and also seem to be enthusiastic, if not overly knowledgeable. I don't mind paying full retail pop for current production or recent kits there, as hopefully it will help keep them around as an easy source for styrene, paint, balsa and basswood, etc. It's a real PITA to have to buy that stuff online. I haven't been in a real old-school hobby shop since I was about 12 or 13. In my mid-teens, there was one that was primarily a slot-car track, but really light on static models and trains...and that was around the time I began to drift away from model-related hobbies. We have Michael's and Hobby Lobby in the same general area, for what that's worth, but I understand there's an honest-to-dog hobby shop up in Blue Ridge now. I'll be up there for the leaf-turning train rides in a few weeks, so will stop in.

Time to break out the parkas.

Well lookidat. The '29 roadster has a blown sumpin in it. Wonder if it's the Chebby from the '30 coupe...

Very beautiful. I watched all 3 videos. It looks like a museum model, or something for an engineering office display.

There's always this...

A lot depends on the individual packaging and handling of a specific kit. I bought mine off the shelf at a hobby retailer (where it would have arrived at the store in a case) and it's perfect (as have been some others mentioned above). I would suspect that individual kits delivered by mail might fare poorly, as the handling is notoriously rough, and packing for shipping of only one can be less-than-optimum

Thanks for the Road Agent reminder. Kewl. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got a couple more I've been after for a while. This little Pinto promo is the non-hatchback. Combined with some later chassis bits and engine, it will be a replica of my old street-racer / slalom car 2-liter...another stripped and lightened shell, with 40mm Weber siddrafts, headers, cam, light flywheel. She surprised a lot of BMW, Datsun and Porsche drivers. And a not-too-bad built Toyota 2000GT convertible. Complete, and no glue where it would be hard to fix. Fell in love with them way back when. Beautiful sounding little engine.

The storm was a total non-event at my house. 15-20 MPH winds, some 35 gusts. Lotsa prolonged light-to-moderate rain, a few creeks kinda high. And one of the universally reviled ISPs had some outages. That's about it, far as I know. There must have been some locally more severe weather pockets, as there were some downed trees and power outages in the metro and suburban areas, but here....a big nothing. Of course, if you listen to the media, it's a disaster area as far as the eye can see. But maybe I should get those dead trees taken down, or at least topped off, before the blizzard season hits.

The shape of the bus grille shell has a lot in common with the old Johan 500K Merc... And though the grille on your bus appears to be '36, the fenders look earlier to me...more like '31...so maybe your diecast is a good source. Look carefully at the bus...you'll see the grille leans back slightly and the line between the cowl and the hood echoes the lean. That's different from your diecast. You can certainly find some tall 6-spoke centers to make up the bus wheels on a diecast custom too, most likely.

Another missing element for the semi-grail future build shelf. When I was much younger, I owned or worked on jus' 'bout every flavor of Corvair there was, except a Greenbrier pickup. Wish I'd kept the '64 Spyder convertible, and the ex-D-production '66 140 coupe. The turbo seized in the Spyder (very common), and she got pretty slow...but she went to a Corvair-only collection and had a nice home. The 140 coupe had been gutted for racing, and was a lot like driving around in a very loud steel trash can. She'd also been crashed, straightened, and patched back together so many times, the tub was just too far gone to restore. When fatigue cracks showed up in the front suspension mount points, the engine and gearbox came out, and the rest is probably Nissan Jukes by now. Oh well. I've thought it might be fun to build a couple of old Corvairs in 1/25 the way I would have liked to back then in the short-money days. This one is an almost virgin-and-complete '62 Styline kit. I didn't even know the old Corvair had ever even been OFFERED as a Styline. A previous owner had already opened the engine lid, and did a pretty decent job. Won't take much work to make it right. So it wouldn't be too lonely as the only Corvair here, I also picked up a cheap '69 repop to keep it company.

While it's nice that people have expressed concern over the fate of folks in the path of the hurricane, we all need to remember what PEOPLE do to other PEOPLE, when rationality and compassion are suspended, and mindless fanaticism and blind hate are allowed free rein.

Hmmmmm....I just pulled down a '63 Starfire and looked. The transmission is a blobular thing that looks kinda-sorta like a "Slim Jim", but is not a correct representation of the 375 "Slim Jim" at all. The oil pan shape is wrong, and the case is wrong. Olds engines of the period had a cast-in integral partial bellhousing, to which the trans case is bolted...and this is entirely wrong on the old Johan model too. Pontiac engines of the period had a more conventional separate bellhousing, and the attachment was therefore different as well. Far as I know, you're SOL as far as accurate Roto Hydramatic 10, model 375 (big car) "Slim Jim" availability goes. PS. I have a real Slim Jim in my '63 Dynamic 88 convertible (the car I learned to drive in quite a few years ago), and it's not a gearbox you really want if you have a choice.

That's one big woody. Cool idea, great job.

'58 through '60 Mercs would likely be equipped with 383 or 430 MEL engines (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln). '59 and later also got a version of the FE engine, though there were some Y-blocks delivered in Mercuries through 1960 also. There are a fair few FE engines around in 1/25, as I'm sure you know. Nice Y-bocks in Revell's '57 and AMT's '56-'57 Fords, some others. Here's more about kit-sourcing the MEL from Tim Boyd and me... http://cs.scaleautomag.com/sca/modeling_subjects/f/30/t/100228.aspx

Or try this. http://www.slotcar-today.com/en/imprimir-noticia.php?IDN=1016

Not cheap. http://www.bluerace24.com/index.php/kit/gt/porsche-935-k3-1er-le-mans-1979-41-1-24.html?___store=english&___from_store=deutsch

1933 Hupmobile lowrider custom http://www.lowrider.com/features/0602-lrmp-original-gangster-1933-hupmobile-model-k/

Well, if we get heavy winds here, there are two big dead trees on my property that can very well smash part of my house, or at least one of my cars, flat. And you know what? It's at least partially my own fault for procrastinating, and not having them taken down earlier. Procrastination is a bitch sometimes. Deciding to live in a low-lying coastal area is also a conscious decision. Nobody DESERVES to have their stuff destroyed, but adults (theoretically) realistically assess risks and behave accordingly. If my 911 or the south end of my house is flattened, I really have nobody but ME to blame.

News and weather are now nothing more than entertainment commodities packaged to grab market share and the ad revenue that goes with it. The more "OMG" moments they can contrive to put on the air, and the more false sense of drama they can create, the higher the ratings, the more each minute of advertising air time costs the advertisers. The first weather program to actually show somebody beheaded by flying debris will be the financial winner. Oversimplified? Yeah, a little, but the amount of money earned for every minute of content is the name of the game. So you give people what they want to see: other people in potentially dangerous situations, destruction, fires, floods, riots, explosions...even if half of it's fake or pumped into unjustified-by-reality hysteria....and you'll draw viewers like flies to excrement. More viewers= more money. It's pretty simple, really.

Damm. I'm very sorry to hear that. His last visits to the board were back in November of 2016, so it seems. He had a genius with the camera, and his photos made my day regularly. A genuinely nice guy, too. I'll miss him. I thought I'd saved some of his photos he put up here on my own drive, but I haven't found them yet...and it seems the PhotoBucket folks have locked all his online images.

Yup. Batards have raised the price of gas 50 cents a gallon too. Nice.

Storm hysteria, even here in the suburbs of Atlanta, well OVER 300 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and 250 miles from the Atlantic. Went to the grocery store, my normal Saturday night excitement (). NO WATER. NO BREAD. NO MILK. WTF? If it wasn't so pathetic, it would be funny. I lived on the Atlantic coast most of my young life, lived through some pretty wild storms.. Yes, if you're on the shore or close to it, subject to storm surge and the very high winds as a storm moves from warm water to land, it's rough. You can lose everything. But if you're 300 miles inland, all you're going to see is a lot of rain and high wind, maybe some local flooding, that's about it. I have real compassion and concern for those who live in low-lying coastal areas, and who leave (and maybe come home to a vacant lot), or those who stay to ride it out, and maybe lose their lives. But HERE? Please, give me a break.

I saw that set back in November before it was released, and it's a knockout. You won't be disappointed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In other news, I've been filling in a few gaps in the stash with fodder for some long-planned projects. I snagged this little Falcon, mostly complete and unmolested (except the taillights, and I already have spares of those). This clean and complete Pinto came in about the same time. And I bought a spare 1/12 Cord to do a presentation model of a possible 1:1 project. The 1/25 mockup below is an early study I did several years back, and the rendering with additional design work is by Spex84 (Chris Drysdale).