1966 Ford Fairlane GTA

Back on the GTA. I cut tiny pieces of 1/32" thin wall tubing and installed them in the new distributor. It looks a bit ragged since the heights of each is not uniform. I was not particularly careful when drilling the holes regarding their depth and really didn't cut all those pieces of tubing the same lenght either. But when painted, you can see any of this variation.

I also added tubing in the tip of the ignition coil. I had to remove the tapered portion of the plastic part to give me a good surface to drill. I then added the taper back using medium CA with accelerator filling the profile back. I also drilled out the tiny sparkplug tips and added tubes there to receive the spark plug wires.

I added the exhaust manifolds, the carb and did touch up painting. I painted the ignition stuff gloss black. For the carb, I first painted it flat aluminum and then overcoated with Tamiya clear yellow.

I needed to machine a vacuum advance diaphram and did it on the lathe, I now realize that I forgot to add the pipe input to its face and will add that with a small NBW casting.

Here's the engine just about ready to receive wiring and plumbing.

I'll be working on the railroad tomorrow, and then will have paint drying and be back on the GTA. 

well looks like you "got 'er done."  will be watchin' with interest. 

Nice work.

After looking at the web for pre-made distributors I found that none of them solved my problem, but I did see a Detail Associates distributor kit that had separate top plates with 6 or 8 cylinder arrangements which made me realize that I too can make a separate top plate and if so, can lay it out better than trying to drill into the machined distributor itself. 

So... I laid out a plan on Adobe Illustrator an 8-cylinder arrangement on a 3/16 circle which is the smallest size of gasket punch to make a nice round disc. 

I made six copies considering how many I'd screw up. I spray glued the paper and glued it to some 0.020" sytrene and then used a sharp end of a divider to *** punch the cross points on the drawing. My first attempt had the marks on the a layout circle that was a bit too close to the outside edge so I then punched inwards to the tips of the layout lines and this proved okay.

I drilled them with a 0.021" drill and then followed up with a 0.026" drill which is close to the size of the micro-tubing that's going in the holes to provide a raisded tubular surface for the wires. In looking a pictures of this engine, the spark plug wires come off at 90°.

You can see the three that I drilled produced one really good array which is the one that I ended up using.

Actually the first one that I attempted was on a piece of thin ABS. After gluing the disc to the Plastruct tubing and attempting to turn it on the lathe, the glue didn't hold and the disc disappeared into the quantum rift. 

I then decided to use the styrene. The Plastruct tubing isn't styrene. It's butyrate and therefore, doesn't respond totally well to the ABS or styrene. It seems to bond, but then it doesn't. So this time I CA'd the disc to the butyrate. I then made the distributor. It wasn't easy since I had a collett that could hold the larger diameter (1/4") tubing, but when I turned it around to turn the small shaft that would mate to the engine, I had to improvise by using part of pin vise held in the lathe's three-jaw chuck. This worked marginally, but good enough to get close. After I machined it as far as I could go, I measured the shaft, found a drill that gave me a hole that size and drilled out the mounting hole in the intake manifold to fit the distributor. The results were good. I'm now going to machine a tiny natural aluminum vacuum advance diaphram to simulate this part with real metal so it will look spiffy. All in all this little distributor project has taken a lot of time and I'm not done yet.

I then turned back to railroad work since the brass I needed to complete a 10ft long model chain link fence to surround part of the refinery project I'm building. I'll be working on the GTA interspersed with building the refinery.

My opinion was based on the fit of the parts vis a vis the size of the pins versus the size of the holes, the lack of positive location of the fender inner walls, etc. My right hand one is crooked since there was no position keying and I must have moved it before it dried. When you compare this kit to a Tamiya or Meng kit, the comparison is easy to make.

Not sure why you think that kit is crude. It's a fairly well done kit, tooled in 1991 or 92.

Re: sanding chrome plating off the back of the headlights:  An easy way to remove chrome plating from plastic parts is to soak them in Windex for a few hours.  It will completely dissolve the chrome, like magic!

I just joined ImageShack and it IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER, FASTER AND MORE STABLE, and yes, it cost me $19.00. I believe it's worth it.

Today was one of those days where you take 1 step forward and three back. I want to add ignition wiring and attempted to drill out the kit's styrene distributor cap. Not only did it not go as intended, I broke two tiny carbide drills in the process. 

So I attempted to machine one out of brass. I have very small brass capillary tubing that will serve as bushings for the wiring and I though (wrongly) that I could solder these bushing into the brass. 

The machining went fine, but the layingo out and drilling the 0.032" holes for the bushings was a complete fiasco. Not only was my spacing all over the place, but I broke some more carbide drills and left a chunk in one of the holes.

So I went to plan C which was to machine it out of aluminum.

Again, machining was not a problem and yet again, putting the holes into the cap was a nightmare. Besides the spacing problem reappearing, I also broke more carbide drills. While inexpensive, these things aren't free.

Here are the three rejects. Picture was hard to get into focus.

Now I'm on Plan D which is creating another one out of Plastruct plastic pipes being machined to shape. Drilling will be much easier. If this doesn't work, I'm going to my LHS and buying an after-market distributor and wiring. I've alreay spent more than that on all those carbide drills.

ImageShack seems to work much better moving pictures.

After seeing what you have been doing on your other projects, this one is going to be fun to watch.

Be aware of using Google, I tried that approach and after time, people either can no longer see the photos, or they disappear.

I bought a yearly subscription for $20 on Imageshack and absolutely love it.  It has easy to use drap and drop management of the albums, its not taylored to mass sharing of albums like other sites, and its easy copy the photo file location to imbed into FSM posts.  So many other sites seem to make it a 10 step process.

Checked out MCW and yes, they do have Springtime Yellow. I'm not sure I want to invest many more $$$ in this 'diversion' project. But, I've saved the page if I have a change of heart.

I'm having trouble with Photobucket. In fact, I hate it. The popup ads are ridiculous and it's now not letting me share photos with paying $330 a year. Sorry! That ain't going to happen. It's also horribly slow and I have 116 MB/S download speed.

Is there any other way to get pictures into this site without that hassle?

Problem Solved!! Switched to Google Photos. Went to the help section of this forum and found the answer.

Well... I thought the problem was solved. When trying to upload so more pics to Google Photos, it just seems to hang up when "processing photo". By hang up I mean no action over a periof of hours.

 I love it when a W.I.P. include's a "Background story"  The sentimental connection always bring's out our best work. ( and also our own worst critisizem's ) 

I built this kit many year's ago and seem to recall I had a "Bear" of a time getting the headlight assembly to line up with the fender's ( and they are a bit too thick ) I reccomend at least sanding the chrome  Compleatly off the back of the headlight's.  But please test fit first....For all I know  I may be remembering a bad fitting gear on a Roundhouse Shay.....