Ace-Garageguy

You have to admit though that, seein' as how R2 has a significant library of old kits, and that tooling a whole new kit is a significant cash outlay, it makes more sense for their particular business case to fill the company coffers in the short term by restoring smallish bits of existing classic kits. It wouldn't really make sense to try to go head to head with Revell and Moebuis, who pretty much need to rely on fresh blood (though I'd buy just about any re-release of Revell's vintage stuff...PARTICULARLY THE PARTS-PACKS) when they can probably keep the profit machine ticking over nicely doing what they're doing. It would be really REALLY great to see some all new AMT-labeled kits that had the feel of the old classics though. Revell kits always feel like Revell kits, Moebius kits the same. If you know what I mean.

She's going to take some work, and you may have to make her into a custom or drag car to get her looking decent, but I LOVE seeing people bring back glued-to-death messes. I've done a few of my own.

I like Tom's list. I could really go for a '57 Ranchero. Id love a stock-buildable first-generation Chevy II / Nova and a first-gen Bronco as well. I'd stand in line (I NEVER stand in lines) to get an accurate '34.

Just to try to give you some hope...and I've mentioned this before...several times I've let myself get out of shape when my professional life allowed me to become pretty sedentary and I stopped exercising regularly, hard, entirely. My hip and lower back pain got so bad it was getting difficult to walk, and I thought I was well on the way to being an "old man". With the aid of ibuprofen, I forced myself to start hiking again, up a nearby 700 ft. "mountain". Physical therapy, pure and simple. At first, when I'd get done, I was practically crippled. After a few weeks, I was able to start cutting back on the pain meds, and after a few months I was just about OK. I know everyone's different, but exercising your body regularly is the single best thing you can do to keep pain-free and feeling younger than your years. PS: I don't recommend running unless you're trying to get away from something that's trying to eat you. Brisk walking does every bit as much good for cardio health and keeping everything lubed and moving freely, and avoids the constant pounding on joints and spinal discs you can get from running. 20 minutes of elevated heart rate every day is all you really need for cardio and legs, plus a good stretching regime and some light weight-bearing work. Though it may sound like a pain in the butt, you'll get addicted to it after a while, because it releases endorphins and literally makes you happier. You have the advantage of being self-employed so you can schedule your exercising to suit YOU, too. You will almost certainly notice an improvement in your vision as well. Honest.

Damm. I thought you were going to say "if you rub it a few times on a real banana" this big ol' yellow genie comes out and grants all your wishes. .

Hmmmm....I think what threw us off is that the MPC kit was molded in red as well...I have one here and I'm looking at it now. Many things on the red MPC kit don't match your red model. For one, the MPC body doesn't come apart as your red one does; the nose on the MPC car is not separate, and the underbody looks nothing like that. Your WHITE car has the MPC / AMT underbody, but that one didn't come with opening doors...though the hinges for the rear body section cutouts in the roof are the same as the MPC kit, so apparently somebody opened the doors. You're correct about the red one being the IMC / Testors kit. Everything matches.

Thanks guys. Now I'm semi-stuck on how to resolve the side vent I filled on the original front fenders, and how to integrate the body sides with the rear fenders. Mockups, drawings, nothing's quite working yet.

X2 !!

Yes, understanding how things work definitely helps to build better, more accurate models. I agree, gassers are cool. Some of my favorites of any competition cars.

I found a nearby gyro joint today, kinda on the way to and from my old hiking grounds. Nothing like a food reward to get me exercising hard again. Woof.

Amen.

Very clean. Mods look good, fine looking zoomies.

I predict there will be some brand new kits launched, along with some reissues I never thought we'd see again. I predict that some of them will have almost no appeal to me. I predict that some will have a lot of appeal to me. I predict I'll probably buy at least one of each of them.

Yes, the STATIC stance would be level, close to it, or on later gassers, nose down slightly. Every car launches differently. I've seen poorly set-up cars with slicks protruding from the fenders like that cut nice grooves in the tread centers. Watch the tails drop on these cars as they launch. Some more than others.

What causes spring wrap-up isn't "weight shift", but rather the torque reaction of the axle trying to rotate around its own centerline. It makes a very important difference as to what order you perceive the actions to occur in. The torque reaction tends to raise ONLY THE FRONT OF THE AXLE. Axle torque under acceleration / spring wrap or wind-up (Image from Competition Engineering) For a full explanation of how various locating arrangements for live rear ends work under drag cars, go here: http://competitionengineering.com/content/understanding-basics-chassis-suspension-traction-equipment

Beautiful, and I mean BEAUTIFUL Canadian cherries on sale at the store today. $1.99 / lb. Couldn't resist. Cherry anything is fine with me. And...they taste and have the mouth-feel of reconstituted cardboard and soy protein. About as satisfying as dating this girl. (She's plastic)

And it looks as good as a lot of the other BMF jobs I've seen, too.

I know guys who do fiberglass work at home and use PAM cooking spray or talcum powder instead of commercially available mold-release that works a lot better than the BS and doesn't really cost much. Of course, the REAL stuff doesn't give your parts that nice buttery flavor, or keep them from getting prickly-heat rash.

The GT40 threads and particularly the remembry that ol' GT40 chassis #1075 won LeMans TWICE, back to back in '68 and '69 reminded me of another less well known multiple winner with a fascinating history. Talk about a hired gun... http://blackflag.jalopnik.com/the-strange-orphan-story-of-the-most-successful-le-mans-1677120408 From the linked article: "The car above is Mazda's last prototype to race at Le Mans. Only it wasn't just a Mazda. It was a Jaguar. Only it wasn't a Jaguar, it was a TWR. Only it wasn't a TWR, it was a Porsche. This is the strange story of the orphan prototype that won Le Mans twice in a row and nobody seems to remember it existed."

...which has the potential to be quite a nice model, but it needs a fair amount of correcting. It was also the basis for the completely positively 100% incorrect guts under the Hardcastle & Mccormick Coyote kit, issued under both MPC and AMT labels.

I just remembered one around here...there's a little bar in Woodstock called, I think, the Truckstop Cafe. They serve no food, but out back in the parking lot, there are various specialty food trucks that come park and sell. One of the best sells fresh seafood (flown in) cooked to order. Last time I was there they had Maine lobster burgers...big chunks of lobster meat swimming in butter, on a crusty bun. Ace-number-one-hand-made tarter sauce on the side...though WHY you'd put tarter sauce on lobster is beyond me.

Think carefully about the physics involved, the forces, their vectors, etc., and look at the drawing I posted a while back. When the rear of a car drops under heavy acceleration, it's because the body weight is pushing down harder on the springs and compressing them, pushing the axle down harder as well, and in turn pushing the tires into harder contact with the pavement. The rear doesn't drop because the axle is "rising" off the pavement, as your statement implies. If the rear suspension were designed to force the rear of the body-chassis to rise independently of the front...which can be done... it would have the effect of transferring weight forward, which is obviously not what you want. The long ladder bars of the '60s era gassers took the tendency of the front of the rear axle to rotate up during heavy acceleration, and applied that force as far forward as possible in order to raise the front of the car and transfer weight to the rear. (again, see drawing posted earlier) Vehicle dynamics were pretty thoroughly understood by the 1960s, and really, suspension design has been subject to only relatively minor refinement since then, though tire technology has changed dramatically. This holds true in production cars, drag cars and road-racing cars including F1.

Well, there IS a link to that thread in this one, so it's easily accessible to anyone who wants to go there. It's also easy to find with a search of the site. And Harry can always elect to consolidate the two.