Ace-Garageguy

John, I REALLY like that thing, and it's easy to see why so many people tend to build the nose-up attitude the cars assume at launch. It looks aggressive and fast, but to me, without a driver in the car so it appears to be under control (not static) the nose-up is just wrong (though your little Corvette isn't as exaggerated as some I've seen). Comes from a lot of time watching gassers launch during my misspent youth, I guess. My old brain is wired to expect to see models that look like what actually was.

Thanks for the enthusiastic responses. Very much appreciated. Seriously.

EXCELLENT ! Trial-and-error, care and patience usually comes through in the end. Sounds like you about have it beat. Looking forward to seeing the final results.

Thanks. I kinda thought I'd make a lot of progress on her this weekend, but real-life is getting in the way. I'm getting anxious to see her finished after all these years.

Looks great either way, but I personally prefer the fenderless look for this one. Nice choice on the flathead with the oval-case blower too. Your frame zee also looks very good, but for future reference, you might have a look at this tutorial I put up some time ago about a much easier way to do it...which is taken directly from the real-car world. You can, of course, combine different techniques on the same frame.

I'm bumping this, as several folks recently have been doing frame Zees the hard way.

Last time I had a similar occurrence (running Firefox) I found that if I saved the photo in question to my hard drive, and posted it from there, the "That type of file is not allowed"" message wasn't triggered...for some mysterious reason. I can't guarantee it will work in your case, but it's worth a shot. There is an upper limit as to file size for avatar pix, but you should be well under that (I believe). Far as why the "upload photo" field is blank...I have no clue. Chrome is free, seems to play nice with MCM most of the time, and I've been very pleased with how it works and its customization ability. I still have Firefox installed, but since using Chrome for a while, I wouldn't go back (though there ARE some features of FF I prefer).

You mean like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bffe8WVe5Es

In general, lowering models works best if you do it the same way you'd lower a real car. NOTE: The most likely way you'd lower this thing in the real world is with shorter coil-overs. To accurately do that in scale takes a lot of fiddly surgery. The Mk III and IV cars have dropped spindles (struts) available in full-sale, so that's ONE way we'll be looking at to simulate this. Another way with a model is to raise the subframes in the vehicle, and trim off the tops of the struts IMPORTANT: The ONLY way to get the car to look like you want it to look is to MEASURE CAREFULLY, AND CUT AND FIT CAREFULLY. There's no "trick" to it. All it takes is thinking, patience and paying attention. Assemble the car BOX STOCK with no glue, and set it on its wheels to see what the ground clearance is STOCK. MEASURE IT. ACCURATELY. Then take the suspension out, carefully mock up the way you want it to sit on the Fuchs wheels, and measure the ground clearance...ACCURATELY. Find the difference. Now you KNOW EXACTLY how much you need to lower the car, and you can do it by relocating the stub-axles or shaving the subframe mounts. You can simulate dropped spindles in front by simply cutting the stub-axles the wheels mount to off, and re-gluing them UP exactly the amount you want to go DOWN. Do the same thing in the rear...OR... See if you can shave material off of the tops of the subframes and the bottom of the chassis where the subframes mount to. The object is to shave exactly the amount you want to drop the car off of the mounts and / or the mounting points. This raises the subframes in the car, obviously, and will require that you take an equal amount off the tops of the struts. It's a straightforward process, and just takes a little effort, CAREFUL SETUP AND MEASURING, and thought to get right.

Hmmmmm...it would be interesting to see the argument ensuing over what a REAL "fish car" is...

I guess what I REALLY don't get is why the article writer is trying so hard to put a me-too label on something it's really not, and why so many people want to argue incessantly about what a "muscle car" is anyway. Who cares what the frigging label is? Get out and drive something with some performance if that's what matters to you, no matter WHAT you call it. Better yet, BUILD something. It's still possible to do it cheap, too. Real life, as opposed to internet arguing over definitions.Try it. EDIT: Now I'm going in to work and spend the day making some REAL muscle-cars function better. We have a shop full of 'em...including one of those slow FireChickens. And boy, it IS a stone. PS. There are a lot of folks who will argue for hours that a Firebird is a "pony car", not a "muscle car" anyway, 'cause it was a competitor to the original "pony-car", the Mustang.

Gotta go with Bob here. When I was 49, I still felt about 30, and it just never occurred to me that I was getting old. I'm a LOT older now, and I know a lot of folks in their 40s and 50s who seem like past-it fossils to me...because of their "old" attitudes. Feeling depressed? Go for a 5-mile hike. Absolutely guaranteed to lift the blues, and help you stay in shape to enjoy the coming years rather than griping about them. Works for me. Every time.

More like a stinking pile. 4000 pounds? An 18 second quarter mile ET? Zero-to-60 in 11+ seconds? That's not "muscle". It's a bloated pig. Wannabee. Lookit me. A pile. Even the late year L75 455 HO was only good for 16 seconds in the quarter. What a joke. A hot-rod Beetle could blow its doors off. The "muscle car" era was dead. Pushing up daisies. Shuffled off its mortal coil. Extinct. Over. Gone forever...and anybody who tries to say a Honda in any guise is a "muscle car" just doesn't get it. Maybe you just had to be there.

It's a slug.

No. And this ain't James Bond either.

As Brett mentioned, the Victoria has indeed been recently reissued. Its sales numbers will probably have an effect on whether or when the rest of the AMT '32 lineup comes back again.

I read the article through a couple of times, and I think drawing comparisons between then-cars and now-cars is exactly what he's trying to do. He cites comparable 1/4 mile times. He cites not-the-greatest handling and brakes. He cites relative reliability and relatively cheap interior appointments...in the old cars as well as the Honda. And I'll accept that the descriptions of what the cars do and how they do it seems to be quite similar. But...a cantaloupe and an orange are both round, sweet, fruity, have similar coloring, and are good for you. But they're hardly the same. I read, I thought, I read again, thought some more. Your results may vary. PS. It IS an interesting perspective, and it just might get me to look a little closer at a V6 Accord...especially after reading the 2016 road test... http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2016-honda-accord-coupe-v-6-manual-test-review

Pretty damm fine.

I dunno. Honda makes and has made some great stuff, but I'm never going to think of an Accord as an "American Muscle Car", no matter how similar in performance and shortcomings it may be to the real deal, or whether it's built and largely designed in the good ol' USA. The engineering is firmly in the Japanese style, which is a very good thing for reliability usually, but park it next to an old GTO or 442 or 413 Polara and it's like they're not even from the same planet. But then again, as far as I'm concerned, there haven't been any real American Muscle Cars since the gas crisis days in the early '70s. The de-clawed and anemic pretenders that wore the name afterwards were poor echos of a glorious time in US automotive history, and I feel today's ultra-high power Hellcat and its ilk are more caricature than car. Only my own opinion, and not to be taken as the gospel.

That, sir, is one beautiful piece of work.

That tire design was also available in a really soft rubber for the AMT "Turnpike" slot-cars. http://www.spotlighthobbies.com/amtsrudaands.html

Thank you thank you. I'm really trying to finish this one before I go off on another tangent. I think you know I can be a real horse's backside when it comes to accuracy where it shows, but in this case, somebody would have to be a lot more anal than I am to get in under the decklid to measure the hole centers and diameters. Funny thing is, I almost re-did the whole panel to get it right.

Yeah, well...what can I say... Thank you sir. I STILL need to deal with triangulating that bay after the rear end and lift bars figure out where they want to go.

To me, the correct definition of "lakes pipes" is the original definition, which would have had straight-pipes coming out the side of the engine bay (like photo 3) with "lakes plugs" installed on the ends. The pipes would be uncapped for unmuffled lakes running, and capped to route the exhaust through mufflers on the street. One early style of "lakes plug". Here you see the "lakes pipes" are capped, and the exhaust is routed under the car to mufflers. Over the years, the custom car guys started putting capped side-pipes on cars, as "lakes pipes", and eventually, the whole idea of what the name was derived from was forgotten, and almost everything in the "side pipe" realm got referred to as "lakes pipes". I've even seen the pipes themselves referred to as "lakes plugs", which makes no sense whatsoever.

For the period and type of car in question, i think we'd be safe with any of these...