Fat Brian

I don't think military, aviation, and naval modeling are going away. The only way to have access to these subjects is in scale unless you live near the Army Ordinance Museum an the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, or one of the few maritime museums. According to conversations with shop owners in my area car modelers are far outweighed by the other three.

I was redoing a previous build and needed to remove the carbs from the intake I had used before. No matter how hard I tried I could not break the carb off so I decided to cut it off with my knife. Holding the manifold in my left hand I pressed harder and harder until, POP! The carb went flying across the room but I didn't care because I had almost cut my thumb in two. The knife went in about the middle of the tip of my thumb and sliced horizontally through to just behind the end of the nail. I couldn't have cut it cleaner with a scalpel. And blood, oh my God the blood, it bled for hours. I probably should have gotten stitches but didn't, I thought it was never going to heal.

Do you still have that piece of Aerodyne roof you cut off?

The wheels and tires are easily the weakest part of this kit, everyhting else is pretty nice. If I do another one I will replace the wheels and tires for sure.

The guys on the HAMB don't play, you have to wear your big boy britches if you want to post there.

I got the wheels mocked up and put the single stack on.

That is nice, I need one of those.

The chain system will need to be enclosed to stay lubricated, you may be able to rob some parts out of some chain drive transfer cases. A belt system would be easier and require less fabrication.

Weirder things have been done. Your best bet would be to mount the engines side by side and each engine has a bellhousing with a torque converter on it. Then you would have to fabricate a chain or belt drive to tie the two engines to a single transmission, going manual would simplify things immensely. You could even mount the transmission in the rear if you wanted to to offset the weight of two engines up front. Multi engine pulling tractors have used a system like this forever, the benefit being that the torque converters allow the engines to not be perfectly in sync but still pull the vehicle together. You could even drive the vehicle on one engine in an emergency if one died on you.

That is really cool!

I want to say something about video games since they are being brought up a lot. I love video games, I play all kinds and can do so from morning til night for weeks on end. But eventually they wear thin and I'm back on models or building 3d models on the computer. The thing is, you can enjoy video games without them being your whole life or being a brain dead ADD addled basket case. Video games are one of my many interests and I kind of rotate between them every so often.

If you have some byods left you could spray some on a scrap piece and the shoot it with the various clears and see what happens. I have put Testors one coat clear laquer over regular Testors enamels without incident but i wouldn't advise anyone to do it without testing it first.

I agree that 3d printing will be a revolution for the aftermarket modeling industry. There was a documentary that aired recently about comedian Jeff Dunham and part of it was about him designing a new character. He had the head of the dummy printed in a 3d printer on a college campus and they showed some of the other things that came out of it. One of the things was a set of interlocked gears inside of a cage, the gears rotated and the perfectly smooth without any prep work. No more messy resin casting with molds that wear out all the time, just build your part in a 3d modeling program and send it to the printer. This will be a huge boon for the hobby aftermarket, small runs of anything you can imagine, if the units can be made into reliable home machines think about getting sites like this and trading 3d models of engines or wheels or entire cars even. The aftermarket my not even sell parts anymore but digital copies of parts to print out yourself. Imagine not having to wait weeks or months for a mold to be ready and parts to get cast and mailed to you, you go online in the morning and purchase the item you need and send it to your printer and be working on it by dinner time.

It looks like you will have to shorten the door panels to work with you channel job and make some filler panels to meet the back of the interior. Shorten them from the bottom, otherwise you will lose the mounting area for the dash board. Now, depending on how ratty your rod is you could always ditch the fancy door panels all together and just add some door handles to the inside of the body shell and widen the rear panel and floor to fit snug enough in to the body to not need any more of an interior.

It's just the two of us and really the the CTS isn't much smaller inside than her STS and the newer cars are far more reliable. I want to get rid of the Northstar before it decides to blow a head gasket.

I think the XLR is based on the Vette chassis, it looks like a square version of a Vette. The CTS big v6 was so good they decided to make it the base motor for the new Camaro, it makes 304 HP from about three and a half liters. I'm trying to get her to trade it for a CTS, I really want the rear wheel drive.

My wifes car is a 2000 STS, it's 300 horsepower from the factory. It will burn the front tires of it if you turn the traction control off. It will also cruise at 80 miles an hour all day and do so while getting 25 mpg and swaddling your butt in fine leather.

I never said it was bad, that Charger is awesome. I've got three different versions of Chargers that syle in the works right now but I don't have a personal connection to them, they are more like a daydream than a memory. I have a personal connection to my car, I would love to build my car just the way I want it and get to enjoy what it could look like some day.

The cars of the fifties, sixties, and seventies are classics and will always be available as long as models are being made, I hope that for their own sake that the US kit makers retool some of their aging models though. Like AMT did with their 57 Chevy it would be great to get new tools of classics like a 63 split window Vette, a 68/69 Chevelle, a 71-73 Mustang, and many more. On the other hand, as modelers of my generation become more of a force in the market I hope they do make some newer subject matter. Case in point, while I love classic cars I'm just not at a point in my life to own and restore an aging muscle car so when I wanted something to work on and be my daily driver and performance project I bought something newer. I would love to be able to get a model of my 95 SC300, the closest I was able to come is a curbside 92 with a slightly different front end from Fujimi(?) and rob the engine from Tamiyas MKIV Supra. Just as the older generation likes to relive their first car or some other auto related milestone we would like the same thing without have to resort to diecast or kitbashing.

What 3d program is that? You should put those in Rigs of Rods.

Check this out, it's a 12v71 powered Pete with a chopped top and bobbed in the rear with super single sized slicks. By the way, doesn't that version of the Pete kit have a Cummins motor in it? Check out the second video for the Welderup 28 Dodge rat rod with a 5.9 Cummins.

Use a brand new blade to trim the foil and very light pressure. Look at reference pics to make sure which areas of the car are chrome.

What I got is dry enough to touch in 15-20 minutes but it dries with the whole surface about the texture of a fingerprint.

As a younger modeler (31) I think there will still be modelers but that the hobby is moving more online. The days of the LHS are most likely numbered in all but the most densely populated areas. The ever increasing cost of models has driven a lot of people to look online for affordable kits. Also, as Jonathan mentioned, it would be nice to see some kits from the late seventies and early eighties done right, I would love a 73 Chevelle, a 77 Cutlass, a 78 Monte Carlo, a 76 Corvette, and tons more. I hope that in twenty or thirty years the US manufacturers aren't still issuing kits that are considered ancient by todays standards. It's fine for nostalgia, but that doesn't need to be the whole lineup.

There are a few sets of decals on there for this kit I want. I'm going to do this kit again as a dressed up custom and will use some of his decals for sure. I got some Krylon chrome and aluminium paint but both wrinkle so bad I'm not sure I want to use them on anything until I can stop the wrinkles.