Ace-Garageguy

I agree entirely with Casey. So far, for this body style, nothing beats Billy Gibbons' Coddington-built Cadzilla .

Here's some interesting background on P-bucket, which MAY explain WHY they've been having so many problems recently... http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/photobucket-hacker-sent-to-prison/d/d-id/1327379

This is from Photobucket's Facebook page...at abuot 5:00 PM, EDT: ⚠ Update: During the planned maintenance last night, we encountered an unforeseen issue. Our team is continuing to work on resolving that issue, and we will provide another update as soon as possible. Rest assured that your information and content is safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

The typical problem with P-bucket is that users can't log-on or upload photos during site "maintenance" or "upgrades". It's frustrating, but the older photos have always continued to display properly on the forums they were linked to...at least in my experience. This is something entirely different. I've NEVER seen ALL the photos disappear from ALL the threads on this and every other forum before.

The typical problem with P-bucket is that users can't log-on or upload photos during site "maintenance" or "upgrades". It's frustrating, but the older photos have always continued to display properly on the forums they were linked to. This is something entirely different. I've NEVER seen ALL the photos disappear from ALL the threads on this and every other forum before.

This really isn't funny. Now even some of the code lines that are used to place-hold the photos and identify them so they appear correctly in threads have disappeared. Last week there were massive "distributed denial of service" cyber attacks that resulted in sites like twitter and other biggies being not-accessible. We may be seeing something like this. It's NOT LIKE PHOTOBUCKET to interrupt the display-capability of the entire photo library, even when there are other issues.

Photobucket is just about entirely offline.

I don't know about you guys, but on MY computer, apparently many photos stored on P-bucket are NOT showing up anywhere on the forum. I first noticed the problem looking at some other folk's WIP threads, and then checked my own. Photos gone as of about 9:28 AM. Yup. Looks like the WHOLE site is down this time, photo storage access, and everything else...although the little maintenance kitty does come up. Awwwww....how cute. I also checked my photos on google, and only the low-res versions come up. PS. And to all y'all who think this hot hip happenin' "cloud" carp is a good idea...well, when you give up control of your data to a third party, if it goes away...what do you do?

Sometimes it can, though "slammed", past tense, usually means "extremely low on its suspension". Then there are the drag-racing "door-slammers". It can get confusing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Far as the model goes, I REALLY like the clean look. It's nice to see one for a change without a lot of stuff tacked on and sticking out. These cars have good lines, and a clean build style shows the shape nicely.

If it's clear lacquer, and just a little humidity-blush, it will polish out with a VERY mild polish, possibly even toothpaste.

The heat has never been a concern. If you don't over-catalyze, the stuff doesn't ever get more than a few degrees over room temp. On a hot day, with the amount of material you'd use on a REAL car, you CAN get some excess heat, and the stuff will sometimes kick before you've been able to get it all on the car. But for MODEL work, you'll be using very small amounts, and again, if you get the right amount of catalyst, you'll have several minutes to work it, and no significant heat from exotherm. For the second part of your question, yes, I have used MEK and styrene shavings to make a slurry for filling things like panel edges where any kind of putty just won't stick well enough. BUT...since I started using Loctite "toughened" gel for edge filling, I haven't needed to go to all the bother of making up MEK / styrene goop.

Here you go. https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/sketchup-stl and http://airwolf3d.com/wiki/how-to-convert-and-export-google-sketchup-skp-files-to-stl-for-3d-printing/ and http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/sketchup_3d_printing_export_to_stl_tutorial

Looking really good. Great to see one that's been around for a while getting finished up. You give me hope and inspiration to get back to a few of my own lifetime projects.

Curious as to what method you're using to cut the taillight too. A replacement part cast from clear resin will also be very delicate...unless it's WAY too thick. Here's the real car, but as the others have said, we need to see a photo of the kit part to fully understand the problem you have.

Delete. I'm an idiot.

Excellent point, Peter, and important to remember when choosing a material. The ratio of filler to catalyst IS important to maintain within a relatively narrow window, and most problems arising from using catalyzed filler are due to improper mixing. One-part putties still have their place for filling very minor surface imperfections, but they're entirely obsolete for heavy fill work.

Yeah, the tail kinda works. The nose...nah. i was thinking it might look better if we could see the nose and the rest of the car at the same time. Well, a little better, but it's lost the grace and integration of the original. All the shapes in front are fighting each other, and nothing flows.

Ray, the Bondo 2-part stuff is fully kicked and ready to sand...even in very thick fills (like 1/4 inch) in 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how "hot" you mix it. There is a little learning curve to get the mix ratios right every time, but once you have that dialed in, you can do a LOT of heavy sculpting very quickly. Mixing IS somewhat critical, because too little catalyst and it will NEVER harden, and too much and it won't harden right. You can, in fact, sculpt the stuff if you hit it with sharp tools just as it begins to gel. Again, there's a learning curve. Hit it too soon, and it will ball up and the bond between the Bondo and the plastic will fail. Wait a few minutes too long and it will be too hard to "sculpt", but that's not a problem, as it will still sand to shape very easily. I can't compare it to Tamiya putty, as I've only been using Squadron Green (another one-part lacquer putty) for tiny surface imperfections. There's just no way I could do the kind of heavy custom work as shown above with a one-part putty.

Well...I've built an awful lot of custom stuff, and I'll have to elaborate. Thinner filler is always better in principle, but it takes a lot more time to do the fab work very close to final-contour in styrene. If you look at the 1/12 scale Z-car model i posted above, you'll see the main lines were established with styrene, and the contours were filled in with a pretty fair amount of "bondo". There's nowhere near enough "flexing" to pop the filler off, and the styrene was roughed up with 180 to help with adhesion anyway. Another problem with very thick fender flares that are primarily bondo is that they'll be too thick to allow the tires to go up in the wheel wells to look right. You can grind the filler off the backside of a fender to remedy this, but you'll have to do some reinforcing as shown on the model below. This is a 1/25 scale model I'm almost finished with. The shapes were again established with styrene, and contoured with "bondo". Actually, on this particular model, I ran into some minor problems because I let the filler get TOO thin on certain areas...and that's where "flexing" played merry hell with the stability of the substrate while sanding the primer. I had to reinforce the underside of the custom work with fiberglass to stabilize it in order to be able to block-sand it straight enough for paint. (It wasn't a long-term problem on this model, as the finished body is a plug for a set of molds, and it only has to function as a master, so the underside thickness isn't an issue.)

The nose is horrible. Geez.

Much as I love customs, I pretty much agree with this point of view now. Thing is, it's relatively easy to pull a set of molds off of a classic and start with a full fiberglass shell to hack up...instead of hacking a survivor. Most cars like the OP aren't going to be built on stock running gear or frames anyway...Art Morrison chassis with something like Corvette C5 suspension, LS or Coyote power, etc...so it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to irrevocably alter a rare car. On the other hand, if you pull a rotting hulk out of a junkyard, something that's just too far gone to make a straight restoration feasible, well, no reason not to go for it. Better to have something old wildly customized than melted down to make more Camrys.

Kinda thought maybe I'd build the GeeBee looking like it was just getting ready for paint. Shot a spare cowl with Testors buffing metalizer and like the outcome. The upper fuselage panel was shot with the same stuff and is going to need a rework as soon as it's fully hard though. Many of the glue lines on the parts don't line up well, so a "simple" build is becoming much more time-consuming as bodywork needs to be done to correct the seams.

Seriously cool, looks terrific. !

I do a lot of heavy re-styling, both on models and in full scale. What I'd recommend for models is just about any 2-part POLYESTER automotive glazing putty (made for real cars). It's basically a finer-grained "bondo", and is available at auto-body supply stores and many general car-parts places. The best quality I've found so far is USC "Icing", but it comes in a tube that is too big for modeling...unless you do a LOT of custom work, and it's only available at bodyshop supply places. A very good second choice that is available in modeler-friendly packaging is the Bondo brand 2-part "PROFESSIONAL" glazing putty. It's stocked at stores like Advance, Carquest, Napa, etc. This custom body kit for a Datsun 240 Z is being built using these products. Be absolutely certain you buy the "PROFESSIONAL" labeled product if you go with the Bondo brand. It has its own catalyst packaged with the tube. You do NOT want to use ordinary lacquer putties (like Squadron or Testors or the Bondo ONE-PART) for heavy fill work because they will take forever to dry, and tend to shrink and crack if piled on thick. This is the good stuff in the Bondo brand...

All right...I was wrong to put up anything seeming unkindly critical of a kid. i should have tried a little harder to find out something about the poster. He seems like a nice kid, you all are probably right that he was just thrilled to have made something, and once again, I WAS WRONG. This is NOT an admission that my intent was to dump on the guy, because it WAS NOT. I saw no subsequent posts and assumed it wasn't an active modeler and was probably a joke. But believe what you want to. I really don't dive a damm. A lot of people believe the Earth is flat, too, and no logical argument from me will ever change what they want to think. Still, I was wrong to put it up the way I did, seeming to invite criticism.