Ace-Garageguy

I have too many to count, and some of the more interesting ones are already represented on the board here as WIPs. I'm sure nobody really wants to see a list of my never-never builds.

That's 192 inches bare frame length in 1:1. Kinda huge for anything billed as a sports car or hot rod. It's about the same overall length as a 2001 Ford Explorer or a Lexus LS 430. If you have any body overhang front and rear, it's going to get really huge. Consider that a '32 Ford has a 106" wheelbase, with an overall length of only 165.5". A '55 Corvette has a 102" wheelbase, and only a 167" overall length. It's your design, and you can do anything you want, but some awareness of real-world car dimensions is good to have when you set out to make something new.

Pinning, as suggested, is without a doubt the way to go. The best way to get them even IS to make a little template, as you mention. It can be a simple piece of cardstock...doesn't have to be fancy...just something that aligns with the back edge of the door and another line on the door, like the chrome, etc. Just flip it over to do the opposite side. It's always better to decide on doing this and drill your holes before painting, too. If you pin them, I strongly recommend white PVA glue, as it is water soluble and can't possibly mar the paint or chrome. You hardly need any sticking power to hold a pinned part in place, and PVA will easily do the job.

Thanks for the reminder. Absolutely one of the greatest internal combustion engine designs in the history of the universe.

I've found that the vast majority of kits out there (with the notable exception of Palmer and Premier...though some people lump Pyro in there to make a devilish 3P-kit triumvirate, I kinda like old Pyro kits) will build up into something presentable with enough talent, skill and patience. Some are most definitely better than others, and some are pretty bad at representing correct proportions or fitting together...but if you enjoy jabbing yourself in the eye with a sharp stick, you can have a blast with just about any of them.

Far as hinges go, stop and consider the collision repair industry. When a car gets punched in the door, or heavily sideswiped, the hinges are often toast. When they're welded to the structure, they're much more difficult (and costly) to replace correctly. So, several things happen. The insurance company bean counters look at the rising costs to repair, and everyone pays more for insurance. Welding has to be done on the car that might otherwise be unnecessary. If the technician forgets to properly isolate all the onboard electronics prior to welding, a voltage spike may damage a component that fails prematurely down the road, leaving your wife sitting in front of a speeding semi in a car that won't go. Or the tech might not get the new hinge aligned absolutely correctly, because the hinge has to go on in one place exactly...because there's NO built in adjustment. So, your door never closes right again, or leaks water, or wind. You dislike your was-brand-new-car, and trade or sell it at a loss, much sooner and taking a harder financial hit than you would have if you'd kept it because its hinges simply bolted back on. See? Everything is connected, and saving a few pennies per vehicle during manufacture can have ripple-effect costs that are almost incomprehensible to the average mind. Yeah, today's cars are damm fine appliances. But with a little KISS theory applied, they could be a whole lot better.

You perhaps draw erroneous conclusions about my experience and having earned the right to criticize outright stupid designs. Some engineers and mechanical designers are absolutely brilliant. Most are just doing it for a paycheck, and really don't care to excel, or make waves, or speak up for how something SHOULD be done. It's the same in every profession. It's part of the whole human condition. For most of my professional life, I've functioned as a mechanical design engineer... not one who sits in meetings deciding who to delegate a task to, but the guy who identifies a problem, designs a solution, and then gets out in the shop and makes the parts to correct said problem, installs them, and tests them. I'm well aware that marketing and cost accounting drive much of automotive and other product design, and if the engineers are so dammed good, they need to stand up and fight for their points as to how things OUGHT to be built...instead of being bullied down by marketers and bean counters. I still have to do it every single day, building custom and modifying high-end vehicles for clients who'd rather save a buck or two. But you know what the real difference is? If I sign off on something that I know is a POS, I have to fix it out of my own pocket if it fails. The buck stops with me, and that kind of changes your perspective. I solve or correct engineering design problem after problem after problem after problem after problem, and I've been doing it on production cars, racing vehicles and aircraft for closing on 50 years. I've developed repair procedures for composite aircraft structures that the factories said couldn't be done, performed the work myself to verify the validity of the procedures, and achieved full FAA approval for the projects I was directly involved with as a primary engineer (AND the guy who actually performed the work). When I see something done with insufficient thought, or that's unnecessarily difficult to repair, or prone to failure because specs weren't followed or too much costs were shaved, I'll call it as I see it. People within the system typically fail to see (or refuse to see) that the emperor has no clothes, but I could fill a book as thick as Atlas Shrugged with instances of professional engineering mediocrity and overcomplication. Whether it's cost-accounting to blame, or just incompetence, it's real, and it's everywhere. And it seems more and more to be the result, as I've said many times, of the people designing the stuff never having held a real, greasy tool, or had to change a part that COULD have been simple to get to, but is instead hidden under multiple layers of dumb decisions.

Don't feel too bad about the door hinges. Many of them today are welded in (and have been in vehicles as far back as 1988 or '89...that I'm familiar with), and unless you have a VERY well set-up home shop, and skills, you're SOL. There are hinges out there that actually have holes for bolts made into the parts, but when the final assembly decisions were made, they decided to just weld 'em. You're right about speed of assembly being the primary design goal...but some of the just plain stupid designs almost defy belief (if you live in a rational universe). But I really don't believe the poor serviceability by the "average person" is "specifically" designed in. It's just lax engineering. The dealer and bodyshop guys hate the stuff as much as anybody does...because the service and repair procedures are so needlessly complex. There are vehicles out there now that pretty much require the body to be removed from the chassis in order to get the engine out. This is the kind of stuff that I have a hard time accepting as anything other than just plain stupid engineering (and it gets back to the fact that the engine is put in the chassis on the build line, before the body is dropped on, and nobody in design cared whether you could get it out again...). But remember, just because a man (or woman...have to be PC) has a degree in engineering, you have no guarantee he's a good engineer. (What do you call a doctor who just barely graduated with Ds in everything? A doctor.) Far as fuel pumps go, there's absolutely no reason a high-pressure pump can't be mounted outside the tank with "rubber hose". That's the way we routinely set them up on high horsepower cars. I'm currently building a roughly 750HP big block Chevelle with direct port EFI. About 60psi in the fuel loop, external pump. No problem. We have another big-block car, a '69 Camaro, in the other shop getting throttle-body injection. Again, external pump, about 45psi in the fuel loop.

Yeah, pretty funny. But you'd be surprised how much disagreement there is as to engine color, whether the wood spoke wheels came from the factory in a natural finish, etc.

The little Model T I started required so much cleanup on the wheels that I got bogged down (the mold halves were slightly misaligned, so the spokes look way too thick) but it's progressing slowly, and the white flexible finish I've tried on the tires worked very well. Finished as much research as I'm gonna do on colors, etc...but it still seems I am totally incapable of just putting a model together as-is.

Not exactly, but very similar... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Aoshima-1-24-Kakou-Tecchin-Type-1-14-Wheel-Set-For-Plastic-Models-5323-30-/232321367949?hash=item36176ebf8d:g:RPAAAOSwdjNZCRy1

Here's a set of 13" staggered Fujimi's (with slick racing tires) that could possibly get you in the ballpark too, maybe by removing the centers and substituting pressed-steel-look centers from something else, as I suggested above.

And another word on non-Testors-specified clears... Experimentation is GREAT. Many of us have found things that work BETTER than the recommended products and materials and procedures, BUT...if you're going to try something that's not recommended by the manufacturer of the product you're using, TRY YOUR EXPERIMENTS ON SPOONS OR JUNK BODIES OR SODA BOTTLES...NOT ON A MODEL YOU CARE ABOUT.

There are some Japanese 14" steel wheel sets available that could possibly be turned down to 13", and a new bead fabricated from thin sheet styrene, too.

Here's one way...several US cars from the 1960s and '70s ran 4-bolt 13" wheels. I'd suggest finding a set of stock wheels from something like a Chevette or Pinto with a 4-bolt pattern to get a reasonable looking center. Remove the rims, and transplant the centers into a suitably deep-dish 13" resin rim, something like this...(of course you'll have to remove the centers from the resin rims) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Resin-1-25-Chevy-Corvair-13-5-Slot-Ansen-Sprint-Mag-Wheels-/261163055910?hash=item3cce87fb26:g:UpgAAOSwHnFV0mrk Actually, it's not impossibly hard to widen 13" stock plastic rims if you can find something with a suitable 4-bolt center.

The product in question is SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED AND INTENDED TO BE CLEARCOATED WITH A COMPATIBLE TESTORS PRODUCT. The VAST majority of paint-related problems with models or real finishes occur when the users fail to read or simply disregard the factory recommended procedures. I've seen it hundreds of times in the real-car world and right here on this board, and it continues unabated. Testors metallics in the "Custom Lacquer System" require a clear topcoat to achieve the gloss and permanence that's designed in. Telling the OP to not bother following the instructions is fine...IF YOU'VE USED THIS SPECIFIC MATERIAL YOURSELF AND KNOW BEYOND DOUBT WHAT WORKS...as several posters obviously do, with the Tamiya TS-13 reference (etc) above. I have USED the Testors base-clear system, and it works beautifully if you use it the way Testors recommends. Automotive lacquers ARE NOT the same as Testors base-clear model paints, and similarities drawn between the two can lead to erroneous assumptions.

Try driving one with an open mind. If you're a driver, you'll fall in love. You don't HAVE to be an A-hole to own an exotic, and they're about the driving experience...if you approach life on YOUR terms and not somebody else's.

Actually, Fiat built some pretty easy-to-service cars over the years. On the 128 and 124 series engines, some of the first in the world to use toothed "rubber" timing belts, you could change the belt in well under an hour...unlike most of the current production stuff from anybody. And I agree that German cars do show a lot of thought, but they also lead the world in the overcomplication-for-no-good-reason movement, particularly Mercedes. The German-designed "new" Mini is a nightmare to work on, and has "better ideas" like plastic hydraulic cylinders. And do a timing belt on a Porsche 944 sometime. The Boxter / Cayman engines have a built-in self-destruct design flaw...but it makes blown-engine ones cheap, and the Chevy LS swap makes a real beast of a car.

HobbyTown is the closest thing to a hobby shop close to me, and I have to say they have about the best selection of tools and supplies of any hobby-related store I've ever seen. That's why I don't mind paying sometimes higher prices for current production kits. It's hard to get many of the things I want online, and I hope they stay in business for the foreseeable future.

Universal truth.

I stand corrected. The FE engine is very unusual, as the intake manifold forms part of the valve cover sealing surface, and the "joint lines" you mention make it impossible to use non-FE manifolds on the other correctly-rendered FE engines as well. Many of the Japanese makers (and some others) provide front suspension that is very easily converted to poesable steering, though for some odd reason, most modelers don't seem to be aware of the possibility. All it takes is for the manufacturer to make the spindle separately, with locating pins top and bottom that snap into holes at the ends of the control arms. The semi-poseable kits DO leave you on your own as to what to do for linkage, however.

Glad to see you doing a build review. The one-piece heads and intake manifold (and the accessories) look toylike to me, and seriously limit the engine as swap material (and that's early 1960s style tooling...like the "Lincoln" engine in the very old AMT double T kits). I really have to wonder about why that particular decision was made. Still, the venerable old Revell "parts-pack" FE engine is a gem. I wonder if the Revell team got the measurements and scaling of the engine in this kit right, so that other FE parts will interchange with a minimum of grief. The chassis looks to have a lot of potential, easily adjusting the front ride height by drilling the spindles for new stub-axle locations, and an equally easily adjusted rear. Revell could have provided poseable steering, but again, the design of what's there makes it fairly simple to modify to get it. The 9" rear would have been nicer with a separate pumpkin. I'll be following.

Nice model of a real bizarro-world little airplane. Built to be dropped...and recovered...by a big mothership aircraft, it wasn't the best idea anybody ever had.

Look where Ferrari put them on the 365 GTB4 Daytona. The 330 GTC and others use similar mountings. Even with the correct filters (which often the cars don't have when they come in), and procedure, you're almost always going to get a mess.

That one is specifically designed to be topcoated with one of Testors clear lacquers. Because it's a metallic, you don't want to sand it prior to clearing, because there's a risk you'll make blotches in the metallic particles. If you have orange peel or trash in the plum basecoat, and you want to get it out (clear will only exaggerate any problems, not hide them), you MUST respray an even coat of metallic after you sand. I personally recommend the Testor's "Wet Look" clear lacquer for your topcoat. Done right, you can expect results like this.