Ace-Garageguy

Here's the first new deck out of the mold, which is cleaned up and trimmed on the left. Hole in the car, original deck removed nice and clean for Snake, and the mold and new deck. This is the poor-fit buggery I'd intended to avoid by just hacking out the old deck on the lines, in which case my NEW deck would have fit the opening perfectly...but I'm such a nice guy () I saved the old panel for Mr. Snake by cutting it out with the backside of an X-acto, and enlarging the opening somewhat in the process. No problem though. A strip of .030" styrene applied all around and carefully shaped will fix it, and allow me to correct the slight asymmetry of the kit opening-line in the process.

New baby. Jag XJ8 with 65K on the clock, bought for about $1500 with a blown engine (minor coolant leak, owner kept on driving until it seized). Bought a low-mile total (airbags deployed on a light hit) with a good engine for less than a grand. Add a little sweat equity. This was a 60 thousand dollar car new, and other than minor cracking of the lacquer on the interior wood, she presents perfectly. Sorry for the blurry photo. It was cold and dark that day and I was shivering She joins my '86 XJ6, bought from the original owner in 1995, slated for an engine swap and paint first of next year (already swapped in a 700R4 gearbox...HUGE improvement).

Thought I recognized this old girl, and a little research turned her up...just as I thought. Couldn't be anything else really.

A fairly typical day at my two places of employment...

In all honesty, I guess I have to admit I've thought the same thing on occasion. Every now and then, a part will disappear from the bench and I'll spend several minutes looking for it...under tools, other parts, everywhere I can think of. I get up, go get a cup of coffee, come back, and the part is lying right there in plain sight. Same thing happens with my keys sometimes too. It MUST be a slight drift between lines of alternate probability, because I couldn't possibly be THAT doofy...could I?

Very clean, good looking paint. Your model reminds me why I like this kit so much. Nice work.

Just for you, I took care and removed the deck clean, 100% intact, with no horrible edges. PM me the address of the SnakePit and it will be on its way in a day or 3. Polyvinyl alcohol, airbrushed. 3 coats minimum, shot wet enough to flow out slick. Specifically, the green-tinted PartAll Film #10 from Rexco.

Though I agree with the fender flares, it's hard for me to make the call on tailgate-versus rear doors. These things could be built either way. Zoom Zoom may very well be correct in the "tailgate" call, as the black handle does appear that it may be centered on the rear, as it would be on a drop-down tailgate, rather than offset to the right, as it would be on a door-equipped vehicle. Tailgate Rear doors. One thing to note: The vehicle in the original blurry photo appears to have a heavy class-three hitch under the rear bumper as well (like the "doors" photo immediately above).

11 pages, no hard info on what happened or when the kits will be back. Fascinating.

I probably have dozens of them around that may get ground into other shapes for scribing lines, or odd cutting angles, narrow chisels, etc. Probably the best way to dispose of them is to put them in a steel can (old bean can, etc....just make sire it's steel) and when it's about 1/4 full, crush it and take it to the recycler.

Your image is so blurry it's hard to be 100% definite, but if I were a forensic image analyst for the police, I'd say the probability is about 99%.

Remarkably, I have found over many years that lost parts, broken parts, glue smears, paint problems and whatever else might be blamed on "gremlins" are invariably the result of my own ineptitude, poor organization, carelessness or getting in a needless hurry. Saying "the part broke" or "glue got on the windshield" to me is the equivalent of saying "the car wrecked". In my OWN case, it's ALWAYS "I broke a part" or "I got glue on the windshield". For ME, accepting responsibility for things that go wrong takes some of the frustration and mystery out of life, and makes it somewhat possible to avoid similar things happening in the future. Any of you may choose to view life differently, and that's OK.

Thanks for the interest and comments. Much appreciated. Mr. Snake, one of the reasons I elected to do a 'glass deck on this is so I wouldn't have to be careful about saving the original. I can make you an f'glass replacement however...now that I have the mold. Interesting to note: the shape of this decklid is entirely different from the shape of the Revell '62 Corvette deck, like they're from two completely different cars. Once again, I just didn't realize measuring and dividing by 25 was so very very hard.

I'd say it's about a '99 Suburban.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO CONTRIBUTE TO HARRY'S CANCER FUND. THE ADDRESS IS : https://www.gofundme.com/2pndgj5w IT'S EASY AND QUICK, HE STILL REALLY NEEDS OUR HELP, AND EVEN A LITTLE BIT WILL REMIND HIM WE CARE ABOUT HIM AND HELP TO KEEP HIS SPIRITS UP. Years back, I developed a way to make near-scale-thickness fiberglass body panels. Since I want to open the deck on this thing to show the battery and rear frame detail, I elected to make a mold of the rear section of the car, and make a replacement deck from that...while other phases of the build are ongoing. The material I use to give my parts sufficient strength is a specialized aircraft epoxy that has to be mixed on a gram-scale, and some extremely fine glass cloth. Mold in place on the tail... ...and popped off...

I think in a lot of cases, the model companies just don't really care. If they were making parts-packs with some of the more popular kitbashing stuff available, it would be one thing. Copying them and re-casting would be direct and unfair competition, where the re-caster had no development or high tooling costs and was taking a free-ish ride on the backs of the manufacturers. But the manufacturers don't make single parts or complete engines or wheel-sets (etc.) readily available, and they probably don't feel like getting all hot and bothered trying to FORCE people to buy an entire kit to get a single part...which I often do anyway, by the way. But when a re-caster appropriates the hard work of a single individual who has mastered (scratch-built the first original pattern) his own parts and made his own molds of same, and the re-caster copies original parts for resale, it's another thing entirely.

You're only as old as you feel. Some days I feel 18, and some days I feel 112.

I'd prefer to see spinning lawnmower blades...

Very fine looking modifications and upgrades.

First American "big-three" manufacturer with a production "hemi" engine, "unibody" construction and torsion-bar front suspension. Most of their engines were pretty well bulletproof, and the 727 TorqueFlite is one of the all-time greatest transmissions in the known universe. Their early Virgil Exner space-ship styling was interesting too, to say the least, and some of my all-time-favorite show cars are the 1950s collaborations with Ghia... And then there's the turbine cars... Kinda hard to top this for pure class too...

I know, they're only models...but bolting a 55 pound piece of useless dead metal to the front of a real car, out in front of the axle, only serves to make it understeer worse and go slower.

Part of the problem is cultural. The notion of "copyright" is really considered to be mean and old-fashioned by many (in the minority who have even HEARD of it) owing to the widespread ripping and copying of music and video files with no payment. The idea that an artist's work should be freely available to everyone has somehow invaded the minds of those who don't make anything original, and many of them just don't get it. Part of it is ignorance of the whole idea that it's wrong to copy someone else's work for resale. It may be hard to believe, but it just never occurs to some of these clowns...and these are the ones who actually believe that once you buy a part, it's yours to do whatever you want with, including copying and selling copies. Then there's plain old stupid. I actually had one fool get really angry with me, threatening to sue, after he bought a carp quality ripoff of one of my body kits, warped out of shape and made WAY too thick out of bottom-of-the-barrel resin, heavy and brittle. He actually screamed that because I had designed and made the originals, I should be responsible for making sure all the copies anywhere in the universe were made correctly...even the unauthorized copies that I made zero money on. And don't forget cheapness. A lot of people JUST DON'T CARE if they're getting an original or a copy, as long as it doesn't cost much. Those of you who produce ORIGINAL work need to seriously look into copyright law, and at the very least, include a little slip of paper in with your parts explaining that IT IS ILLEGAL TO COPY THEM WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION. If you sell direct, you also need to get your customers to tick a box stating specifically that they will NOT copy them, and they know it's illegal to do so. This constitutes a legally binding contract, and though you'd STILL have to spend money to shut violators down, forcing buyers to acknowledge their awareness of the situation at least keeps the basically honest people honest.

I have a Chevy and a GMC of similar vintages, and as you say, they're exactly the same truck. Were then, still are for the most part, except for badging, trim and a few options. Sometimes it's just amazing the erroneous conclusions people can come up with. In times past, GMC vehicles could be a little more different from their Chevy brethren. The big 'ol GMC inline 6. though it looked very much like the smaller displacement Chevy engine, was actually an entirely different piece, bigger externally as well as internally, and longer overall. GMC also sourced V8 engines from Pontiac before going all Chevy corporate. PS. Not being in sales myself, I long ago abandoned any pretext that "the customer is always right".

Over the years I've made several lines of one-off full-scale aftermarket fiberglass parts for real cars (mostly Porsches, Datsun Z-cars and fairly recently some tuners and Fieros). I did all the design work, the full-scale model work, the mold work, and the production. These things sold on average for several hundred dollars, and often, shortly after MY parts hit the market, I started seeing cheap knockoffs that were poor quality. I countered by laminating my own business card (with a secret little trick) under clear resin on the back side of my own parts...difficult for the average slop-jockey knockoff jerk to copy. This didn't stop the ripoffs, but it DID shut up the bozos who called me saying they'd bought my parts and they were carp. No laminated card, it just ain't mine. Next time, buy it from ME.

And AGAIN, just now. I tried to post the offending few lines HERE in THIS thread, and STILL got the 404 BS. No bad words, no communist subversive messages, no non-PC remarks, no secret codes...just refusing to take a simple few-line response. So...there's something in the response that's triggering the 404 message. How truly odd.