Fat Brian

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.

I like the wheels on the Fairlane. What are they from?

I'm about half done with this kit, so far no real adventures. The most difficult things have been related to vague instructions, especially the stabilizer bars for the rear axle. I switched to the square tanks from the Titan 90 and painted the black along with the frame to give it a more work truck look along with going with a single stack. I'm also going to strip and paint the wheels to get rid of the chrome, I'm not sure what to do with the bumper. Even lower end trucks could have a chrome bumper and I really don't want it to be black, the blue is much darker than the pics show so something to lighten the look would be nice. I want to do some silver striping on the cab but I'm not sure what I want to do yet, since I paint with cans I want to keep it kind of simple so I don't have a lot of paint ridges.

I was going to explain a little more but was in a hurry this morning. The radiator core support comes in two peices, the lower peice that is the front wall of the engine bay that the radiator mounts to and the upper brace that has the coolant tank and upper hose molded to it. Your best bet is probably to sand down the top of the lower peice and the top of the radiator and shorted the battery. What happens is that when the chassis is pushed all the way into the body the upper peice hits the hood and raises it up. The coolant tank also interferes with the distributor.

The distance between the crank centerline and the top of the block is lower in the B series engines and in the later RB or raised block engines. Raising the top of the engine also extends the bores, allowing for a longer stroke and more cubic inches while maintaining common bottom end geometry and cylinder head fitment. Ford did the same with the 302, raising its deck by half and inch to make the 351 Windsor. It's basically a cheap way to get a bigger engine, you get more cubes but without all of the R&D on a totally new engine family. On a side note, does anyone make a set of stock decals for this car?

The color is Testors purple metal flake shot from a can with two coats of Testors clear. It's one of my high percentage paints, I always get a good paint job out of that color and a few others. I will say to anyone wanting to build this kit that overall the fit is great but there is an issue with the upper radiator support.

This has been sitting in the box about 90% done for atleast five years. It was some low hanging fruit that made it easy to get something finished. The wheels are XS tuning but the rear tires are from the AMT Supra kits. You can't see it in the crappy pics but I did a carb linkage on the dual four barrels, I hate my camera.

As long as you work from hotter to milder you should be fine regardless of brand. The only exception is if you are working with something hot enough to damage the plastic, then you need to find a primer mild enough for the plastic that won't react to a hotter paint above it.

I've got a heat gun that will see extensive use in the near future. I think it will give me more control than boiling the whole part.

If its a very irregular surface like across the window trim or a very curved area I use silly putty. I picked it up from armour modelers. Once its down you can stick tin foil or plastic wrap to it to mask the rest of the area, securing with tape where neccesary.

I got a General I got off ebay in the mail this morning from the last reissue, the silver truck with orange frame. What did they do to this poor kit? I bet there isn't a straight part in the whole box, I heard that these kits were warped but good lord.

Right, I will use the Canepa for an L but I think a passable B could be made with a Revell hood.

I got a still wrapped GMC General from the last very warpy reissue and a set of resin fenders copied from the Miester Brau tractor.