Ace-Garageguy

I think somebody needs a hug.

Wow Ed. Just wow.

No problem here. I like your twin-engined car.

GEORGE KLASS REMEMBERS... CLICK HERE: http://georgeklass.net/index.html NOTE: In the Gasser section, please note the static stance of the cars

ALTERED COUPE/SEDANS, COMPETITION COUPE/SEDANS, ROADSTERS & MODIFIED ROADSTERS CLICK HERE: http://georgeklass.net/altereds.html

1) It's not an altered. It's a "competition coupe". Though related and sometimes even overlapped, they're different classes. The comp coupe in this time frame was often a hollowed out small car body on a rail dragster chassis. Altereds tended to be shorter wheelbase cars. 2) The model on the "double dragster" chassis belongs to Greg Myers. This is the problem with putting one's models in somebody else's thread. If the thread isn't actually read, the assumption, as here, is that all the models are by the OP. This would be a typical Fiat altered of the period which is represented by the Fiat in the "double dragster" kit.

Greg's patented disappearing photos.

For some odd reason, I'm wanting Oreos.

Looks good. Has the general lines of the convertible top, which GM used to advantage a little later. The two-tone treatment is evocative of a slightly earlier era, might possibly benefit from a chrome something-or-other to help delineate the color difference between the door and top of the quarter panel. Very nice.

These three are in rotation to complete. The '32 is very very close. I lost the PE grille along the way and decided to change the hood sides. The dragster is next. It needs the steering cross-shaft, and a brake cylinder mount plate. Then I can paint the frame and body. The Bonneville '29 is still needing some parts fabbed for the mag drive and a few other fiddly things.

I got a deal a while back on the curbside version of the Gunze 250 GTO. Though this particular model may have some slight accuracy shortcomings, I really like its rendition of the Ferrari lines. This is one of those cars I'd build in full-scale if I had Bill Gates' money, just to be cheeky (without permanently altering the irreplaceable original, and engineering it to be easily returned to stock). Since the kit here has no engine, it's a natural for a transplant. A smallblock Chebby fits in just about everything, and it's entirely possible one of these could have been engine-swapped way back when, after it's expensive and temperamental engine developed large vent holes in the block. Before these things got to be stupid money, people actually did things like that. I put a small Mopar Hemi in a Lusso for a customer round about '72 or so. First order of business is to look at what parts of the Ferrari "engine" are present, and what needs to be removed. The engine of choice for me is going to be the two-four barrel crossram version (optional over-the-counter for the early Z-28 engine) found in the Monogram 1/24 '57 Chebby. This one is slated to become a big-block, straight axle gasser, so it generously donated its prime mover. With stock internals, tuned right, the engine should make well over 400HP, and its somewhat high-revving and peaky nature suits the Ferrari well...not to mention that's 100 bulletproof HP more than the engine that's native to the car. Getting a first impression of where things will go. A Ford 9" is on the list of mods too. Always nice to be able to dump the clutch and smoke the tires...more than once before replacing it.

The engine and blower nestle down in the chassis like they're made for it. This is the old (recently re-released) AMT parts-pack engine. Soon as I modify the firewall to clear it, I'll make up permanent mounts. I beveled out the upper side of the hood-hinge slots... ...and filled them with a mix of epoxy and cotton flock. After cleanup. While that was working, I also laminated a couple of layers of glass cloth over the previously prepared tape tonneau. The tape and the body adjacent to it were coated with with polyvinyl-alcohol mold release, first. I try to think in advance so I can do several pieces of glass work at the same time, as about the smallest amount of epoxy you can mix accurately is 10 grams. (I hate to waste the stuff...what I use is 1:1 aircraft grade, it's expensive, and it has to be mixed on a gram scale). Cured and popped off the tape mold, it looks like this. Because it's translucent, you can easily see how it picks up the detail from the cockpit trim rail perfectly...which will be important later.

While I was working on researching a short wheelbase blown dragster typical of the late '50s, (it's over on the dragster section) I came across this photo of a '60s Comp Coupe with a Fiat Topolino body shell and fell immediately in love. This was really my favorite class of drag cars back in the dim recesses of history, and I'd wanted to build one for a long time. Building the earlier little digger had me in the groove of doing tube frames and steerable axles, so it seemed a good time to take another diversionary tack, but kinda on the same ultimate path. I had a ratty old Topo body on the bench that I'd pirated the bellypan from (for another ongoing lakes-car build), and it needed a better purpose for its existence. After the chop... It was getting a little fragile and floppy, so it got some temporary reinforcement to hold it all together during rough handling while stripping. After the strip. The windshield pillars got leaned back to match the inspiration shot. There wasn't much meat left after the chop, obviously, so I reinforced the insides of the pillars with epoxy and fiberglass. Beginning to fit it to the chassis, which will be a pretty much box-stock build of the Tony Nancy Plymouth-powered car...but refitted with an early blown Chrysler Hemi.

Some scale arcing in a dark room would be really cool. Ahhh...here you go. http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-Ultra-Simple-High-Voltage-Generator/

Unless you're building a positive-ground car.

Lots to love on this one. Everywhere you look there's another trick modification. Very clean, very nice paint. Hope you can get Dan to run. I'd vote for him.

Thanks. I still don't recall exactly what I did to get all those copies. Obviously had an idiot moment.

So far, other than ordering a few parts and reading thru the instructions, the only thing I've done is starting to remove the heavily glued cam covers from the head. As mentioned above, I want to do the covers in polished aluminum, and finish the head itself to represent as-cast alloy, with a grainy finish. No way to do it with everything assembled, so... Happily for this project, I bought a set of .007" thick photo-etched saws a while back. It's slow going but it looks like it will work and leave me enough meat on the flanges to repair fairly easily.

So...if you want to put this body on the old Revell '30 fenders, you're going to have to fill the sides of the quarters first... Then fill the tops of the fenders in to meet the quarters... The firewall's obviously supposed to represent an aftermarket piece. It's significantly different from the old Revell stocker, but not THAT much. The stock firewall can easily be removed from the woody cowl (shown here) and transplanted. What makes the new-tool firewall look really clunky isn't so much the firewall itself...it's the huge out-of-scale lip that is apparently supposed to represent the bright metal surround of the real car. See above.

I didn't knowingly do that. Sorry. Post took forever to load. Mods...please delete the headers on the others. I've removed the content.

Ok, this is obviously the old Revell Big Deuce kit. I've accumulated a few of these over the years in various states of gluebombiness and a couple of virgins. Picked up some parts and a sealed Big T too, so here goes. The chassis I'm starting with for this one had the crossmembers glued with at least half a tube. No salvaging them clean. Here, the front crossmember has been cut out so I could get an axle under the thing to figure out what I'll need to do to get the stance I want. The smallblock Chebby and '39-ish Ford trans is from the Big T kit, but this won't be another cookie-cutter '32 with a Chebby. The body shell had had one of the doors hacked open and the opening was also un-salvageable. The cowl was cracked through as well, so I glassed everything in place on the backside. Welded-door cars need to get the stance just right so you can hop over the side without looking too much like a fool. As I've found a ratty 'glass 1:1 '32 roadster shell to go with my American Stamping rails, this build may very well come to be a real car. First profile mockup shot, with a width-of-frame channel and significant rubber rake.

That's what I'm thinking too.

This is based on the old metal-bodied 1/24 Revell Jag kit, still available as an all plastic kit. I got two incomplete and partially built metal models in a bunch of stuff years ago and almost immediately wanted to do a salt-flats car, as one of them was missing the Jag engine. Had to strip the dirty-pinecone-painted BRG from the shells first. REAL paint stripper. Brutal but effective. The metal bodies are rough, with LARGE mold parting lines. They take some effort to get nice, but it's definitely worth it. I'm used to working metal on 1:1s, so I've been enjoying the metalwork on this thing. It takes some heavy file work to get rid of that long parting line going down the entire side of the car. I removed the license bump from the decklid to clean her up a little. Then started filling the slots in the cowl for the bonnet hinges. This is fine f'glass cloth and aircraft epoxy. First primer, self-etching SEM black. Aluminum tape on the naked body shell will form the basis for a full cockpit tonneau. Hood fits nice after a little work, ready for its own primer. A Potvin front-blown smallblock Chebby will most likely supply the go. Brian Chuchua ran a similarly equipped '58 Corvette in 1960, posting a speed of 171MPH.

This, in a nutshell, is what happens to a large number of businesses that start out with good intentions. I've been guilty of making these same mistakes, so I know from first hand experience this is exactly what happens...in the aftermarket 1:1 fiberglass parts business (and others) just as surely as it does in scale. Many business startups also seem to think that if they price themselves too high, they won't get any orders. The truth is that if the quality is there from the beginning, the money will come...and come and come and come. But price yourself too low, all you get is a reputation for being cheap...not among the best...simply because you can't afford to keep doing it at a loss. People shopping price only will whine about fair pricing being too high ( pricing that's fair to the people making the stuff), but people shopping quality will always come back for more if you can deliver consistently. In my own business ventures, once I finally learned to look hard at what it actually cost to do things, and to insist on a fair return for my own time (and for anyone helping me as well), I haven't got rich, but I've been able to keep going with no hesitation about answering my phone or reading my emails. My clients are all reasonably happy and my own bills get paid on time. What a concept.