Fat Brian

The usual answer is to mount the wheel to something you can chuck in a drill and then with said drill solidly held in place you spin the wheel and use a very fine brush to add the line. This all reqires some precision and a steady hand and probably a fair amount of practice ad well.

Does anyone make stock Sprint decals for a 72 Pontiac Ventura?

On my Eldorado the tires I used had a pretty defined ridge around them so I masked the front of the tires with bare metal foil and trimmed around the ridge. Then I shot the areas I wanted white with Mr. Super Clear flat, it's the only thing in a spray can I've found that will dry on vinyl. Once that was dry I shot them with Krylon flat white then a final coat of clear flat. I think they turned out pretty good even though this won't work for every set of tires.

I'm almost ready for paint but it looks like it will be raining here for the foreseeable future. I'm running out of things to do with the body in primer. I need to get it attached to the chassis to get the final tire fitment and finish the engine plumbing.

I like the P2P idea, there are lots of possibilities for neat old cars to build. Maybe we could make a faux class for more modern cars with similar rules to the existing classes because something like a WRX would be perfect for this race. Even with the pre 1976 rules I can think of several builds, Lancia Stratos, Renault Alpine, a Baja Beetle just to name a few.

I made my panel scribe for free with a bamboo skewer and the core of a .56 guitar string. You need about 3/4 of an inch of string with the winding removed, then I took my pin vise and drilled a hole in the blunt end of the skewer the same size as the remaining wire about a half inch deep. Insert the wire in the hole with a liberal amount of super glue and trim it to your desired length, I left mine about an eighth of an inch long. Be sure to trim the skewer to a reasonable length if you want to keep your eyes.

I have the same problem with Duplicolor, it blushes so quickly I'm not even finished with the coat before where I started is flat. Tamiya and Model Master both have a little longer working time. For those paints I dry them in a warm oven for a few hours to let the paint set up.

Using the same brand primer did help with getting a more even coat. When I got home from work today I shot another coat and this time immediately stuck it in the oven on very low heat. This coat did dry with some shine to it so blushing is one of my major issues. Is the clear coat less susceptible to blushing than the colors are? I've never used Duplicolor clear before.

I wasn't trying to say either way was right or wrong. You bring up another important point, car culture is very localized and varies wildly from place to place.

You just have a different view of cars than most people here and that's fine, your stock builds are amazing. I view a bone stock car as a starting point, it is the least imaginative way to assemble those parts designed by a committee to offend the least amount of potential customers. I want to personalize my car and am doing so, I've got aftermarket wheels for my car that I'm going to paint, I'm going to lower it a bit and replace the stock head and tail lights and eventually I'm going to replace the engine with a twin turbo version. I build most of my models the same, what would do to this car if money was no object.

It's been very humid here lately so it's very likely the paint is blushing, I'll try lightly polishing it and see if it shines up. I'll also try to find a piece of metal to practice on to better replicate the wheels.

I haven't started the real car project yet, I'm going to paint the centers of my new wheels to match the body of my car. I've just never gotten good results from Duplicolor so I wanted to master the paint before messing up my rims. I shot two wet coats of my body color over Duplicolor primer on a test body last night and the finish is much more uniform but it's still just as flat as it can be. I'm going to put clear on the wheels so flat for the color is fine. The wheel lips are machined finish with some kind of clear coat, I'm leaving them as is but want to paint the spokes which are painted. The plan is to sand the spokes with 2000 grit to knock the shine off them, mask off the lips then prime and paint the spokes and the area with the faux bolts.

I'm trying the Duplicolor primer now. I usually go without primer since rattle cans put such heavy coats on, it works with Testors and Krylon but evidently not Duplicolor.

I have tried for years to use Duplicolor paint and I just cannot get even passable results from it. When I use thin coats its flat and uneven looking and when I use wetter coats it wrinkles as it dries and ends up about the texture of your finger print. I'm at my wits end with it but I have a project I need to do on my real car so I really need to figure this out. If y'all have any tips for me I'm all ears.

The AMT and Revell 67 Chevelle pro street kits both have long tubes in them. The AMT 57 Corvette kit from the 90s with the big block in it also has some great headers. Whether they'll fit the kit you're working on I have no idea.

Yep, the brake cleaner needed for a replacement has Perchloroethylene in it. Not exactly the same stuff but it does the job.

Yeah, since the body is obviously short shot they might bend the rules a bit.

Since Tenax is gone I've been using brake cleaner decanted into an old Tenax bottle. You've got to get a certain kind with a chemical I can't remember the name of in it, I'll post a link to it once I'm back at my computer, but it works just as good as the old stuff and you get a year or twos worth of it for the price of one bottle of Tenax.

Round 2 reissued this kit pretty recently, they might still have a few to pull a body from. It wouldn't hurt to send them an email to check.

I just wanted to let you guys know I'm not out, I've just had a previous commitment that's taken a bit longer than I expected. I've been working on the Mustang in the down time with the other build and should be able to hit it full time in a week or so.

I just picked up a 98 SC300 back in June. It's my second SC, my first was a 95. Then last month I picked up a 2013 Beetle TDI convertible for my wife.

Did they fix the straight six at all? The bottom of the block being angled is very incorrect.

Mostly just rain my way, it was moving so slow it petered itself out before it got to me.

I believe Hakan is correct, the two notches in the axle are for the four link setup.

The flooding with this storm is incredible, there are reports of Wilmington getting 15" of rain and it's still raining there. Authorities are talking 1000 year flood levels in an area that gets storms like this every couple of years. These storms usually blow through in half a day but it's been sitting in almost the same spot for a day and half and at the rate it's going may be there for another day. Not heeding the warnings wasn't the best decision but what is happening is very abnormal.