Ace-Garageguy

Last World Series I listened to was in '64, between the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees, and it was the end of an era. I think Yogi Bera was still the Yankees manager, Mickey Mantle hit his 16th World Series homer, there was a 3-3 tie going into game 7, and the radio announcers were Phil Rizzuto, Kurt Gowdy, Joe Garrigiola and Harry Carey. A real classic episode in the history of baseball. I lived on the Jersey shore, about 60 miles south of NYC, and was a Yankees fan. They lost, and I pretty much lost interest in baseball that day. I lived in Atlanta when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's lifetime home-run record in '74, and that was pretty cool, but I've only been to one or 2 Braves games since 1969.

You never heard the old phrase "life begins at 40"?

Interesting (though unintended) experiment in sociology / psychology. The question was "This is a joke, right?" because I honestly couldn't believe somebody...anybody...would post it as a serious " build process! " video (the POSTER'S exclamation point, not mine). I still can't. There are all kinds of tells that make me think it's supposed to be funny...kinda like the one where a modeler ends up with cuts from the modeling tools, bandages and blood all over everything. Anybody see that one? This one seems, to me, to be in the same vein (pun intended) but much more subtle. Like I mentioned above, the big ! in the title is one hint. Then the modeling area starts off clean and gradually gets paint and glue and fingerprints everywhere, including all over the builder's hands. The awfulness of the work is exaggerated to the point it becomes a parody of "glue bomb", emphasizing photos of pristine, clean parts and moments later, the same parts presented as wobbly brush-painted glue-slathered 'finished' bits. There are several shots of loose X-acto blades and then one shot towards the end showing a bandaged finger, many shots intentionally taken from angles where the lighting was used to highlight the extremely poor-quality of the workmanship. Etc. For all the above reasons, and more, I STILL think it's a joke. But interestingly, almost no one commented on whether it's a joke or not. The initial comments (several quite neutral) weren't particularly negative, cruel or critical of the model-maker, and most were humorous...not harshly critical at all...but some took them to be mean-spirited old men bashing a skill-free kid and got up on their righteous indignation. Some interpreted the video to be the work of someone young and having "fun" and therefor protected from any sort of objective recognition of reality, and piled on that side too. One changed his initial response to go along with the more PC opinion, and there were comments made without even seeing the video first. There are fascinating insights into human nature here. I'll leave them up to you all to decipher. PS. I STILL think it's supposed to be a joke.

Pretty much the way I operate, and good advice for everyone. I only post this stuff fir the few out there who may not be quite so savvy. I just encountered (this morning) an otherwise reasonably intelligent "professional" woman who HAD NO IDEA THAT CALLER ID COULD BE FAKED.

Good answer, Chuck.

Probably making a slurry of styrene dissolved in liquid plastic glue would be your best bet on something like this. OR...you could also use liquid plastic glue to attach small pieces of strip stock to the damaged areas, and when it's THOROUGHLY dry, gently file to shape. I KNOW that will work. I have an aircraft epoxy that would most certainly fix it, but at close to $200 / per gallon, you probably don't want to go there.

I always kinda liked 'em. I REALLY like this...

Ummm...now who's in the default-mode that younger guys always seem to switch to whenever they encounter somebody who's a little past their sell-by date, huh? The point was...whoever made the video did a hell of a lot better job of it than whoever made the model. Maybe they should stick to mouse-clicking. They seem able to handle the tools and techniques involved adequately.

I like your attitude. Works for me.

How could ANYBODY, of ANY AGE, with any kind of rational feedback loop operating between their eyes and brains think this sloppy mess was worth making a video of and posting on the web? There was a time in my own youth when I couldn't do any better than this, but I could LOOK at my own work and realize it was carp. I sure as hell wouldn't have shown it to anyone and expected praise, much less expected people to "subscribe" to see more of the same. That's why I asked if this was a joke. Or maybe this is another of the results of "everyone is a winner", "give praise for nothing" mentality we seem to be enamored of at the moment. Nah. I STILL think it must be a joke. Nobody capable of making a video having the decent production values this one exhibits could POSSIBLY think this glue-smeared, brush-paint-slathered "work" is worthy of immortalizing.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. WE'LL RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING SHORTLY.

The brown residue is most likely a combination of the clear undercoat that's under a lot of kit chrome, and residual soapy scum from the oven cleaner. I use the real smelly EasyOff stuff, let the parts soak in a sealed plastic bag for a couple hours...which always seems to loosen EVERYTHING...and then rinse and SCRUB with HOT water, Comet, and a toothbrush. Results? These are 1/8 scale parts that had thick chrome and undercoat... WARNING WARNING DANGER DANGER: WEAR EYE AND HAND PROTECTION. OVEN CLEANER WILL BURN HANDS AND EYES.

Most days i feel about 45 (but in reality, that was quite a while back). Some days I feel 25, and some 85. First thing in the morning, it's more like 110. When I look in the mirror, I still have a hard time believing that old geezer looking back is really me.

Any chance of getting a 1/8 scale Faith Domergue in there?

Now that's a phrase you just don't encounter very often.

I have a couple of Lee kits I bought off the web out of sheer unadulterated ignorance (F50 and Eldo Biarritz). Decent starting points for wildly hacked-and-whacked customs, but that's about it.

And even if they could make out the words, they'd likely fail at getting the meaning of a sentence containing more than 12 or 13. There are some really scary reading stats out there...but that's another story entirely.

My guess is that it would be AMT lacquer. Un-cleared and un-polished lacquer isn't particularly glossy, and sounds like what you're describing. It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that even the AMT "metalflake" colors didn't have flakes as big as Testors bass-boat "metallic" line. I know for a fact I shot a '56 or '57 Corvette with AMT's Lemon-Lime shown below, and it looked more like candy yellow over silver than a huge "flake".

Excellent. I hope moves like that are enough to keep the library concept "relevant" to today's minds...but even reading doesn't seem to be thought to be relevant by many any more.

2 hours later, still working quick and clean. Updated the big ol' deuce thread with a lot of pix, no problemo.

Glad you're enjoying it, sir. --------------------------------------------------------------- At this point I also need to know with reasonable accuracy what the final width of the front track will be, partially to ascertain where the steering drag-link needs to go. I want to do cowl-steering, so the pitman arm will have to be positioned correctly to clear everything else too. That means I'll have to assemble the wheels to measure the offset from the drums, etc. The wire wheels I'm using (I was mistaken about the source...they're from a big Lindberg kit) won't fit the drums that come in the Big Duece kit. So, I just happened to find a set of drums from another Lindberg kit that have the same diameter and fit the wire wheels. A little modification to the front backing plates and the spindles, and the Lindbeg drums now fit the Deuce backing plates correctly. I also made up something roughly analogous to a splined hub that would drive many English wire wheels. It's not splined, but it WILL allow me to put a nut inside the knockoffs to secure the wheels to the drums. The assembled wheels will look like this. It's also necessary at this point to take a section out of the radiator core to accommodate the channel and the radiator shell chop. The water pump and fan are placed in position on the engine, along with the headers, mag and intake manifold. With the radiator in place, I now see I'll have to notch the new crossmember slightly for fan clearance, and also that I'll be able to build a much thicker radiator core to accommodate the increased heat-rejection requirements of the Chevy engine, but in a shorter overall package. The placement of the headers also allowed me to determine where the steering shaft needed to come through the cowl, and whether the drag-link could be made to clear the headers. It all fits. Last modification at this point was to section the grille itself to fit the chopped shell. I goofed and started to make the cut the same width as the radiator, but I caught it. S'okay, easy fix, as I'm only using the trim around the outside of the grille anyway. The payoff...where we are today.

P-bucket is up and running again, just fine, just now. 12:59 PM (EDT)

Thank you, sir. ------------------------------------------------- Getting things to fit (and function) within available space while maintaining a clean design and the original vision is always a large part of building a car for me. Some may find that my slavish devotion to insuring all of my models would work in reality takes much of the "fun" out of building, but I see it as just another layer of creativity, a little more of a challenge, and a way of separating...in my own mind, anyway...the difference between "toy cars" and scale models. Part of the feel I want for this car will come from running a magneto ignition system. Mags make a hotter spark than traditional old-school ignition systems, and have the added benefit of allowing the engine to run even if the charging system and battery fail completely. I've grown to appreciate system-redundancy over the years, and it's nice to have a backup plan to get home. Mags just look cool too, and say 'this is a serious, fast car" when you look under the hood. In 1/8 scale, the mags I have to choose from are these three. Apparently they're all supposed to be Vertex / Scintilla-style mags, and it's curious to me why they're all different sizes. Anyway, we're going to use the one in the center to set things up. We need to get the engine very close to its final position before committing to anything else. This view shows the earlier-modified oil-pan with about 5.25 scale-inches ground clearance. That's about OK. I usually prefer to have the engine closer to level with the tops of the frame rails, and the rear of the block roughly parallel with the firewall, but in this case, with all that rubber-rake and a closed driveline, this is about the best I can get. I usually don't incorporate anywhere this much rake in a car because it kinda tends to spoil handling...but this one is intended to be more street-driven drag-racer than canyon-carver, so...what the hell. We have the trans blocked up at the right height... And a temporary front engine mount in place to hold the position during fitup of other components. Speaking of which, the magneto that's closest to correct overall dimensions is temporarily installed on the engine, and the firewall is marked for clearance. The headers I want to use came with the Big Deuce kit, but they have exhaust-port spacing to fit the Deuce kit's Pontiac engine. A set of Chevy headers is shown for comparison. Port-spacing adjusted to match the Chevy heads, and the turns cut off at the flange ends, replaced with straight sections of tube.

Thanks for the kind comments regarding the design of this thing, Bernard. I'm getting close to the point where I usually run out of steam...right after all the mechanical and design elements are worked out and it's essentially grunt-work to finish it up. I'm hoping I'll be able to make myself stay with this one through to completion. I'm very happy with the way the look is coming together, and it's a big project (and a big model) so maybe, just maybe, I'll be inspired enough to go all the way...and hopefully to use that as a stepping stone to getting some other long-stalled models done too.