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Everything posted by Ace-Garageguy
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I've spent a large part of my life doing "dangerous" things, and one of the reasons I still have all my fingers, both eyes, and the rest of my parts is that I try to foresee worst-case scenarios BEFORE they happen, and act accordingly. It's also a mindset you get prepping race-cars and working on aircraft, among other things. The concept of "oh...I didn't think of that happening" can be fatal.
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Possible Near Future T-Bird Project
Ace-Garageguy replied to talon63's topic in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
I'm with Harry...interesting concept, but that mid-90s-looking Caprice side window treatment isn't working for me either. Maybe consider pulling the top of the rear fin forward under the quarter glass, and ditching the blacked-out pillars. Though I like the swept-back windshield and roofline, the rearward displacement of the top front of the door opening might tend to make ingress / egress a little awkward. It could be good to pull the rear door cut-line back somewhat, to give a longer door opening. And if the front bumper fascia is supposed to be body-colored plastic, you'll need a natural appearing seam line between it and the sheetmetal of the fenders. The girl, on the other hand, is close to perfect as-is. -
Rectifying warped windscreens.
Ace-Garageguy replied to PatW's topic in Model Building Questions and Answers
And this is how you make one from thin stock that looks much more realistic anyway (Bill Geary aka MrObsessive adds little strips of plastic to the inside of the windshield frame for the "glass" to snap into too). Both these techniques work very well. -
62 Comet detailed frame
Ace-Garageguy replied to thatz4u's topic in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
Full-detail early Mustang should work, as the Comet and Mustang are both on the "Falcon platform"... The Mustang is on a 108" wheelbase, and the Comet is on 114". AHA. The Fairlane is another possible BETTER donor, on a 115" wheelbase. Only 1" shorter for a Comet. Much easier to shorten a Fairlane chassis 1" than to lengthen a Mustang. And though the Fairlane has a couple-inches wider track, it should be easy to fudge it on a model. -
ACME Southern Nationals Nov. 12th, 2016
Ace-Garageguy replied to Mike C's topic in Contests and Shows
Well folks, it's almost over. I snuck in wearing my old-fat-guy disguise, bought a very few things to finish up some long-time builds, and snuck back out. Hope everybody who attended enjoyed it (the quality was great, but I think the attendance was down), and to everyone who has to travel...be safe. Maybe see y'all next year. -
Pity they don't say "hey dumbazz, stop texting, put the damm phone away, and concentrate on your driving."
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If it's an old-school resistance heater with exposed heating coils or elements, they glow red-hot and CAN provide an ignition source. A resistance-heater functions essentially by creating a "dead short" through the heating element, which is why it glows red-hot. Imagine dropping an airbrush filled with lacquer thinner during cleaning. The thinner atomizes in a plume as the airbrush hits the hard floor, a tiny bit of it splashes through the vent louvers in the heater, and WHOOMP. When dealing with any flammables, it's far wiser to err on the side of caution. I wouldn't want to be the guy who told the OP "hey man, it's OK" and be responsible for the results of a one-in-a-million "accident".
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There are literally DOZENS of types and colors and diameters of "beading wire". This is .013", marked on the package as such. Appropriate for '50s secondary (spark plug) wire. I got this stuff at Hobby Lobby. They also had black. It holds its shape quite nicely, but also bends easily with fingers and holds permanently. It's just about perfect (and the light color is easily changed to any flat color with Sharpies). 12 foot roll, $3. I guess I must live on a different planet from some of you.
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Atomized flammable liquids (spraying paint), flammable vapors (thinner fumes) and an ignition source (a hotly-glowing filament in an electrical-resistance heater) are, in general, a recipe for disaster. Proceed with extreme caution. You wouldn't be asking this here if you really thought it was completely safe. That's your brain trying to warn you that it might not be a really good idea. If you HAVE to do it, make sure the heater is OFF well before you start, and that the fan is ON. Don't turn the heater back on until well after you've stopped painting, and allowed the fan to fully remove any fumes from the room. A spark from a switch or relay inside the heater is also a potential ignition source.
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Cheap Chinese lathe.
Ace-Garageguy replied to rsxse240's topic in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
"Cheap" and "Chinese" pretty much says it all. More here: -
Revell 30 Model A Ford Production Halted?
Ace-Garageguy replied to Daddyfink's topic in Car Kit News & Reviews
Yeah...but only in places where intellectual (and other) property rights are taken seriously, all the parties are bound by the same laws, and the courts operate the same way and respect each other's decisions...none of which applies to China. -
Geez Harry. I didn't know psychological torture was part of the cure. I'd run out screaming after 10 minutes...to hell with the chemo.
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Real heater hose is very often 3/4" or 5/8" ID. A 3/4" ID hose will have an OD of about one inch or a little more. Divide one inch by 25. You get .040", so that would be a reasonable hose diameter in 1/24 or 1/25 scale. That's also about 1mm. in case you find something that has metric dimensions on the package. Real battery cables are usually a smaller OD than heater hoses, but obviously larger than plug wires. So...what's between your .014" plug wires and your .040" hoses? It's about .027". Wire "gauge" is ALWAYS listed by the diameter of the CONDUCTOR, inside the insulation. Insulation is NOT always the same thickness from wire to wire, so you won't always get correct-looking wire if you buy it by the "gauge". Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap digital-readout caliper (about $15) and measure the stuff you find in craft or electronics stores to see if it will work and look right. And remember...all you have to do to know the right size for a scale ANYTHING is to measure the real one and divide by the scale you're working in. Open the hood on your car, measure the diameter of the heater hoses, and divide by 25 (if you're working in 1/25 scale). You'll get the RIGHT answer every time if you just go by this simple rule.
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AMT Corvette 'Sock it to Me' ?
Ace-Garageguy replied to CEKPETHO BCE's topic in Car Kit News & Reviews
Thanks. I know the cut line at the top of the cove doesn't line up well here, but it was either line up the top of the cowl, or line up the cove. Since this little car is going to represent a one-piece clone-bodied lightweight, the awful mis-match can be easily corrected with filler. M/SP is an interesting class. At the period this thing represents, the cars were basically altereds with sports-car bodies, and were allowed 25% engine setback like the altereds. It it was going to be a straight model of the production car, that would be another story entirely. Cutting these bodies at the door line, which would be the natural place to splice on a new nose (on the real car, as well) is out of the question for a stock vehicle, again, because nothing will line up right. I think Dave Darby's approach would be the most efficient and least frustrating. His body looks very good, and I really do like the proportions of the old Revell multi-piece kit. I bought several of them years ago when they were really really cheap, but I didn't see the need to use one up on this old race-car build. The AMT '59 isn't TOO bad, but it needs some nose work to look acceptable, in my opinion. Grafting on the '62 tail at the rear door cut line would be a good option possibly, as it would avoid the cove lineup problem entirely. -
That is a great looking little car.
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Pretty girl. Gonna be a heartbreaker.
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NOTHING for me, as I'm still putting aside my modeling budget to contribute to the Harry fund again, soon as there's a decent-sized pile of pennies.
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Almost a year later, and we're back. Some of the same stuff, almost exactly as on the big ol' 1/8 '32 model under the Big Boyz heading. After some more careful mocking-up, I decided to hog a little more out of the firewall to let the engine sit a bit higher in the chassis. And then the rear crossmember gets placed just the same way the big one did. After finally deciding to use a styrene Model A rear spring, it gets lightly glued to the rear axle to be used as a jig. I'll be using the trailing arms from one of the Revell '32 kits. I WAS going to do traditional split-wishbones, but after getting current again on buggy-spring rear suspension fairly recently, I found that the wayback split bones in the rear fell out of favor rather a long time ago. Seems the old bones will twist and crack with any power beyond what a mildly warmed-over flathead can produce, so the fabricated arms replaced the very traditional split wishbones in the rear almost entirely, many years ago. We'd used spacers under the kit's rear axle-positioner thingies to mock up the stance previously, and because these locate the axle precisely in the chassis at the right height as well as fore-and-aft, we'll tack the spring / axle assembly in place while we fit the previously-fabricated rear crossmember to just slip between the rails. Now, using the spring attached to the axle as our jig, we install the rear crossmember precisely where it needs to be to position the rear axle once the other jigs are removed permanently. Careful advance planning puts the forward ends of the trailing arms exactly where they need to be to catch the center crossmember we made earlier too. Looking more like a car all the time, and now we can figure out how high the trans tailshaft housing needs to be to achieve a realistic-looking angle between it and the driveshaft / rear end. This is where we'd get the rear end pinion-angle matched correctly to the centerline of the crank / trans mainshaft if this were a real car...and I can't help myself from trying to get it pretty close on my models.
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AMT Corvette 'Sock it to Me' ?
Ace-Garageguy replied to CEKPETHO BCE's topic in Car Kit News & Reviews
This is the particular problem I have with the Sock it to Me kit, the white one: The front shape of the hood is entirely wrong... And the tiny headlight bezels are ridiculous. The old AMT '59 is on the right (red) and it's not right, but it's a lot closer than the SitM '61. I had an extra upper nose from another old AMT '59, and grafted it to the front of the SitM '61. It's rough, it's not right, but it's getting there. That's the Revell kit on the left, in white, for comparison. Top shot of the hybrid AMT '59 / '61, compared again to the fairly recent Revell kit. Though the Revell kit is really significantly different, we're kinda in the ballpark. Absolute accuracy isn't necessary on this hack job, as the point is to build a radically modified M/SP car...which probably would have had a heavily modified light-weight custom body anyway. Getting a good first impression of a '61-'62 Corvette is the point, and this is close to working for me. Yes, it's still very rough, but if you squint, you'll see it. -
Sorry to hear you're still having problems, Steve. I just uploaded several pix of my 1/8 '32 roadster build, and P-bucket worked like a champ. 5 of six photos loaded in 10 seconds flat (one failed to load for whatever reason). Re-loaded the one that failed in another 3 seconds. Total of less than 30 seconds on the P-bucket site to load six pix, no freezing, no slowdown, no hay peoblema.