Ace-Garageguy

And this is pretty cool. Wait til the end...

Pretty sure the '81-'82 Datsun Maxima was the first one sold in the States. Only said "turn off the lights". Chrysler's EVA 11 / 24 hit the market in '83, using tech similar to the kid's toy Speak & Spell.

Using high-resolution 3D prints as masters for resin-cast production parts is a natural, and has already been discussed at some length. The masters made this way can offer exceptional realism and scale fidelity, particularly when they are taken from high-res laser scans of real objects. Note the high degree of detail in these 1/35 figures, currently available as 3D prints. They were developed directly from laser scans, and depending on the complexity (and specific casting considerations like draft-angle and mold parting-line locations) parts with this much detail could easily be used as masters for silicone molds, and resin-cast parts...bringing the cost of the finished parts down considerably from what the 3D printed versions currently sell for. The (currently) relatively long time it takes to actually PRINT a one-line-at-a-time 3D part is nicely offset if the first print is used to make a set of molds, and multiple parts are made simultaneously in the traditional resin-cast way. The only thing holding this back from becoming mainstream is the number of people who have the skills AND the interest to develop masters and make silicone molds for resin-cast model car parts. Resin casting is really relatively easy. CAD (for designing parts without access to laser scanning technology) can be mastered by first starting with the FREE Google SketchUp program, and developing from there. http://www.sketchup.com/ Anybody with a pretty good brain and the DESIRE can do this.

Though I can't place his work, his name sounds familiar. Sorry to hear it. Pancreatic cancer is a tough one. I've lost several people close to me to it.

.001" is .001" whether you're working in styrene or brass or aluminum or steel. Many of my own styrene parts need to be on the order of + or - .001" accuracy. .005" is more common, and I can achieve .010" with files and sandpaper. A tool that cannot achieve at least that kind of accuracy is useless, in my view. The rigidity of the tool, and the runout of the bearings in the spindle are what determine this accuracy. A flexible plastic lathe or mill with loose fits between the sliding parts (with no means for adjustment) and sloppy second-rate bearings cannot possibly deliver accuracy, even in soft material. The cheap little plastic machine tools may have a place turning out quick-and-dirty parts that don't have to fit particularly well. Sometimes a carp tool IS better than nothing, but trying to do accurate work with one is usually an exercise in dealing with frustration.

Read the positive comments on models, then click on "see item". People ARE actually buying this carp. Unbelievable...and they're paying more money in some cases than you can buy a clean kit for. REALLY unbelievable. No...wait...never underestimate stupid.

Clean, just-right gloss, love the color, and the door panel-lines look perfect too.

This one includes free spiderwebs.

Yes, fine looking work. Very impressive.

Hoping the rest of your recovery is quick and pain-free.

Probably a lot of the Mopar guys know this car, but I just came across this article while looking for something else. It's a 10-second '67 Belvedere GTX running the street-race scene in Detroit back in '71...apparently with a lot of factory backing. Pretty cool car to model. http://www.hotrod.com/articles/1967-plymouth-belvedere-gtx/

I started on an Allison 1710-powered, radically chopped bugbus for Bonneville, but I can't find any photos of the early stages. Oh well.

Sure, for $1500 per pair vs free for the humpers. The old Corvette FI heads will make plenty of power for what this thing is supposed to be, and probably more power than it can really benefit from anyway. Handling and braking won't be very good with big slicks in the rear and 14" bias-ply tires up front, so even at 350 HP, it's overkill. It's also enough to snap axles in a real vintage QC rear end that's still using old Ford flathead V8 shafts...and nicely explode the '39 Ford top-shift gearbox represented in the model (which currently has the wrong tailshaft housing). And like I said, that much power in an 1800 pound car (my target weight for the real one) should get the job done. I figure a real solid high 11-second car (if the trans and rear end stay together). This is also supposed to be (and the real one will be) a low-buck hot-rod like the good old days, where the object wasn't about how much money you could throw at a rig, but how much you could get out of as little as possible. Will there be quicker cars on the street? Sure...but not a lot, and certainly not many built mostly out of "obsolete junk". I've got plenty of decent 350 blocks, and a 307 crank will give me a large-journal 327, a fast-revving little engine with plenty of torque for a very light car. And cheap...relatively. That leaves me more cash to put into forged pistons, non-snapping axles and a nice 5-speed overdrive gearbox (junkyard), too (I may or may not build a late-model trans for this model, probably not).

Really glad you guys are enjoying it. The engine in this build is supposed to represent a 327 Chevy. As such, the block I'm starting with lacks the side mount bosses, but I'll be adding them before going much farther. They need to go in to determine the final engine placement, driveshaft length, and carb-base angle. The side of the block is supposed to look like this. The heads I'm using are supposed to represent the famous old-school "double-hump" units, one version of which appeared on the 365 horse 327 fuelie engine. I just happen to have a set of real "462" heads on the bench in the big-car shop, picked up last year for a fantastic price (free). They will easily make 350HP with the right cam, headers and induction...plenty to be scary-fast in a sub-2000 pound car. This is such a big model, I'll be going to the trouble of replicating the "double hump" casting marks that identify these things.

THANK YOU Mr. Guthmiller! I've been in awe of your foil work since I first saw one of your models. Now I finally have some hope of turning out something I can think of as at least decent.

If MY mailman would just throw out all the junk mail, I'd nominate him for Postmaster General. But I guess the PO(S) needs the revenue from all the carp I toss without ever reading. Just another broken system nobody is ever going to bother to try to fix.

I don't have a good rattlecan primer technique that will work on the softer plastics...yet. Steve Guthmiller suggests shooting first coats of Tamiya primer as a barrier, and then using the more cost-effective Duplicolor primers over that. I've bought both Tamiya "Fine" and "Surface" primers and will be experimenting in the near future. Steve's results are consistently first-rate, show quality. I'm also beginning to believe the most reliable long-term fix is simply to go to Art Anderson's decanting and airbrushing techniques.

I should really only get 1/2 credit. I first submitted that it was a Morris Oxford S III (which it is basically, only built in India).

I'd forget trying to run an engine-driven fan on a blown engine, simply because to space it far enough forward to clear the blower drive would require a fairly long shaft. The kind of shock loads this setup would encounter during clutch-dumping acceleration and bang-shifts would tend to launch a fan through the radiator. Electric fans WERE available in the early '60s, by the way. Even production cars sported them...like the Jag E-type. '62 was the year that a lot of the "full street equipment" requirements were dropped, and fiberglass body parts came in around '64. Don't forget the height of the crankshaft centerline was 24" from the pavement, max. The sky-high noses a lot of "gassers" end up with ("nostalgia" 1:1 cars AND models) is just WRONG. Far as the blown 409 goes, no reason not to. Class was still determined by a weight-to-displacement ratio, so you could pretty well make just about any combination competitive...even the ones that the "experts" said wouldn't work. I also have to agree with iBorg about the frames. In '66 or '67, unibody cars began showing up as gassers. George Montgomery's "Malco Gasser" Mustang is a case in point. It's built on heavily modified Willys rails, and I believe that was the turning point where the gasser rules first stated that a "production-car type" frame had to be used, but could be fabbed from rectangular tubing.

You've already explained that YOU have been decanting and airbrushing, while I have been able to shoot it straight from the can all these years. Nothing funny about it. The plastic composition has changed. Either that, or the solvents in the rattlecan primers are hotter. The blue Chevelle body is older Revell. In 2012, I shot it with Duplicolor primers over extensive bodywork (which usually exacerbates crazing if it's going to happen). NO PROBLEM. Shot WET and SLICK to avoid orange-peel. In 2014, I shot the hood of this Revell '50 Olds with all Duplicolor products. I encountered SLIGHT primer crazing only in the center of the hood where I had removed the peak. It was relatively easy to correct, with NO crazing anywhere else on the hood. Again, shot WET and slick to avoid orange-peel...straight from the can. Within the last 60 days, I shot a new Revell '30 coupe body using the exact same techniques and Duplicolor product. It crazed so badly it can only be used for a 'rusty' project. Obvious conclusion: less solvent-resistant plastic.

Yup.

Thank you, gentlemen. Not a biggie today, just some greasy bits that have to be addressed. First batch of chrome parts stripped with my old favorite Easy-Off oven-cleaner. Then the first wire wheel set into a modified whitewall to check for fit. I need another .010" strip to tighten it up a hair. Also had to 'machine' a little off of the rim so she'd look like a real wheel and not a plastic toy. The front of the sump in the oil pan had a non-correct slope, which also lost me about a scale inch or so of ground clearance. Hacked it out... ...and replaced the section with styrene stock. Front axle with both ends drilled, brass kingpins in.

Excellent. Then there are rotary valves too: (from Wikipee) "The rotary valve combustion engine possesses several significant advantages over the conventional assemblies, including significantly higher compression ratios and rpm, meaning more power, a much more compact and light-weight cylinder head, and reduced complexity, meaning higher reliability and lower cost. As inlet and exhaust are usually combined special attention should be given to valve cooling to avoid engine knocking. Rotary valves have been used in several different engine designs. In Britain, the National Engine Company Ltd advertised its rotary valve engine for use in early aircraft, at a time when poppet valves were prone to failure by sticking or burning.[1] From the 1930s, Frank Aspin developed a design with a rotary valve that rotated on the same axis as the cylinder bore, but with limited success.[2] Kawasaki and others have also used rotary valves in two-stroke motorcycle engines, where the arrangement helps to prevent reverse flow back into the intake port during the compression stroke.[3] Austrian engine manufacturer Rotax used rotary intake valves in their now out-of-production 64 hp (48 kW) Rotax 532 two-stroke engine design and continues to use rotary intake valves in the 532's successor, the current-production 64 hp (48 kW) Rotax 582.[4][5] US company Coates International Ltd has developed a spherical rotary valve for internal combustion engines which replaces the poppet valve system. This particular design is four-stroke, with the rotary valves operated by overhead shafts in lieu of overhead camshafts (i.e. in line with a bank of cylinders). The first sale of such an engine was part of anatural gas engine-generator.[6] Rotary valves are potentially highly suitable for high-revving engines, such as those used in racing sportscars and F1 racing cars, on which traditional poppet valves with springs can fail due to valve float and spring resonance and where the desmodromic valve gear is too heavy, large in size and too complex to time and design properly. Rotary valves could allow for a more compact and lightweight cylinder head design. They rotate at half engine speed and lack the inertia forces of reciprocating valve mechanisms. This allows for higher engine speeds, offering approximately perhaps 10% more power. The 1980s MGN W12 F1 engine used rotary valves but never raced. Between 2002 and 2004 the Australian developer Bishop Innovation and Mercedes-Ilmor tested rotary valves for a F1 V10 engine.[7] Bishop Innovations' patent for the rotary valve engine was bought out by BRV Pty Ltd, owned by Tony Wallis, one of the valves original designers. BRV has constructed several functional motors using the rotary valve technology, such as a Honda CRF 450, which had greater torque at both low(17% increase) and high (9% increase) engine speeds, and also produced more brake horsepower up to around 30% more at functional engine speeds.[7] The engine was also considerably smaller and lighter, as the cylinder head assembly was not as large. A company in the UK called Roton Engine Developments made some progress in 2005 with a 2 rotor (one for inlet and one for exhaust) on a motorcycle single cylinder Husaberg. They filed patents and got an example running in 2006 but were backed by MG Rover who subsequently went bust, leaving Roton without enough funds to continue. The designs surfaced some years later in Australia with Engine Developments Australia Pty Ltd. A prototype casting was produced in 2013 on a Kawasaki Ninja 300 parallel twin unit. This unit is still in development phase at the time of writing but is significant as it has the potential to run much higher compression ratios than even other rotary valve engines due to a significant but undisclosed new cooling method of the combustion chamber and the ability to eliminate the throttle completely, making it vastly more economical at lower engine speeds, so it is claimed."

I used to, but the new-improved trash plastic everybody is using now has made that a thing of the past...unless I completely re-think my primering protocols and materials.