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1966 Ford Fairlane GTA

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  • #46
    GTA: One More Thing… Hood Hinges (Part A)

    I'm just about done screwing around with this model. It's reaching the law of diminishing returns. That being said, I wanted to try one more thing... I had drawn some near scale hood hinges directly over photos of 66 Fairlane hood hinges, and made patterns of them to eventually fabricating them.

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    At first I was going to make them entirely out of styrene, but quickly added photo-etch fret brass for some of the bars. The end product while technically correct, are not operable due to the flexiblility of the styrene parts that I did use.

    I had made multiple copies of the image so I could cut different parts out from the same drawing, since the act of cutting one part destroys the drawing of the part to which its connected. I put some pressure sensitive adhesive on the paper and stuck it too thin styrene sheeting.

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    I used plastic pins made of 0.025" round Evergreen styrene rod. That was another reason why it really can't operate. The pins are simply not strong enough or mounted strongly enough to be workable.

    The smaller links are brass. I CA'd the pins into the non-movable part and used a heated small screwdriver to rivet the other end after it was assembled. I came up with a very easy way to heat the screwdriver tip... just grab it with the resistance soldering unit for a few seconds. I found it easier to drill the PE brass while it was still captivated in the fret and then cut it to length. I meausred the hole spacing with a precision dividers. Holes are 0.026" so the plastic pins are a slip fit.

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    All the plastic parts were cut out with an Xacto.

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    It all went together nicely, and I used thick CA to join the hinge to the sides of the engine compartment. I put them in the up position and then CA'd them so they didn't budge.

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    • #47
      GTA: One More Thing… Hood Hinges (Part B)

      The hood was CA'd to the hinges. It's now sitting at a realistic angle with the back edge elevated above the body as it should be with a parallelogram hinge. If I were to do it again and wanted them fully operable I would make them completely out of brass with the pins soldered to the non-moving parts. I would also make the upper bar that mounts to the hood out of angle stock. That will have to wait for the next car I make. And I didn't even think about putting that humongous spring in the assembly. I would also do something to fake that as well. However, it looks pretty convincing.

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      I had to estimate the actual size that this thing really is since I only had a photo of the front and back from an eBay listing from which to figure its sizes. I made three different size drawings with this being the smallest. It's still a little big since in the full-down position, the hinge extended to high and the hood wouldn't have fully closed, which is the other reason it wasn't going to be operable. Would I do this again? Probably. Hood hinges are very visible vs. the door hinges which are difficult to visualize on a real car.

      I polished it up and am displaying it without the whitewalls or radio antenna. I think I'm done with the Ford and got back to work on the Nighthawks Cafe late in the afternoon. I may paint the hinges semi-gloss black though. Now they're just primered.

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      • #48
        WOW,

        I think I said this earlier in the thread, I don't like car models, I have no interest in doing car models BUT This is awesome.

        Especially with the history that goes along with it.

        I showed the thread to the wife and she thought it was "really sweet"

        So if I ever do a car, I'll follow your lead and build our first car on our 50th anniversary (2041). But I doubt they ever made a model of a 1991 Corolla or of the 1985 Cellica that I was driving when we met.

        You could roll some wire around a drill bit to make fake springs if you want to add them.

        Great model, Great story, Job well done!!!

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        • #49
          Thanks Gun! I too, am not too enamored with car models. I kept screwing up the finish with all the handling. When I see cars with flawless finishes I really don't know how those guys do it. Flat finishes are much more forgiving. This was an Ertl kit and did have some nice features. The headlights were terrific with separately applied clear lenses that I used the UV curing stuff to hold them since it's totally transparent and cured when the light shone through the lens.

          I'll be really old in 2041 (96 to be exact) so I guess I won't be able to see you build that. But, I've got to tell you, this really wasn't inspired by the anniversary. I was just thinking about the car and did some research to see if a model was available. As it was, my local hobby shop was able to find it. I would bet that Tamiya made some Corolla models so why wait until you're that old. Just do it.

          What really was ironic, was that we owned that car for just about two years. My young wife didn't like it lack of gas mileage or the extra horsepower. I wasn't bashful about letting it do what it was meant to do. So we decided to trade it in in 1968. We were just 23. We were sitting in a Plymouth Satellite at Reedman Automotive (a huge dealer that's still there) and were seriously thinking about buying that car when another sales person put a sold sign in the window. We panicked! And then bought our second worse car ever, that Rambler Ambassador. You should never, ever buy a major purchase under duress. We should have left and come back another day, but we were young and impressionable.

          We traded the Ambassador in 1972. It barely got inside the dealer's property, having stalled out on the curb cut into the lot. It did that a lot depending on the humidity. We bought an Olds Cutlass S and basically bought GM for the rest of our marriage except for my Acura TL-Stype. Oh and one horrendous AMC Pacer which was THE WORST car we ever owned. The Pacer was not purchased under duress and I actually thought the car made a lot of sense. Too bad that it was manufactured terribly and was a car that shouldn't have been.

          It was originally designed to accept the then-in-developement GM twin rotor Wankel engine. It had a very short engine compartment just to accept that engine. And then GM killed the program. AMC should have scraped the Pacer at that point, but were too far along in development. They ended up literally shoehorned there shitty straight six into a space that was only a four-cylinder engine depth. To solve the problem (badly) they made a box in the firewall and the back two cylinders were in that box. You could not get to those spark plugs without dropping the engine. This was just the tip of the iceberg. My parents used to say "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." It was the first car with electronic ignition, but the connector from the control unit to the distributor had two dissimilar metals and galvanic corrosion ensued. The corrosion would break the circuit under certain vibration which corresponded to that you get when crossing railroad tracks at a crossing.

          It had the first power-rack-and-pinion steering. The end seals failed (both) which emptied all the power steering fluid into the rubber boots on the ends. T

          The paint was so bad that red pigment would come off in a rag AFTER IT RAINED.

          The emergency brake cable was routed over the exhaust pipe which promptly burnt through and failed.

          Needless to say, we got rid of that piece of crap in three years and bought a wonderful 1978 Olds 88 Royale which was a wonderful car.

          Sorry to bore the heck out of you, but this is fun to write about.

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