Motor details

[sydeem]

There are some exceptional pictures in the motor gallery of 1/8 details like carburetor linkages and plumbing that are unreal. I have failed in trying find a way to duplicate the detail. Seems like most of the pictures relate to people not listed as members except Willys41.

Maybe Willys41 or other members could shed some light on how some of this detail is made. Do we need expensive milling machines?

Does Dan have some of this detail available as after market or might it be in the planing?

Did some come from well detailed kits?

[hot ford coupe]

I'll try to shed as much light as I can. The detail on the engine is a lot easier than you think. It's just like building a house. If you look at the whole thing in one shot, as one whole entity, you'll go crazy trying to figure out what to do and where to start. If you take each sub assembly one bit at a time, you can see what you need a lot clearer. I'll start by posting a picture of an engine I built. It's not complete but far enough along to use as a good example



Take a look at the carb linkage for example. The first thing I did was to go online and find a good picture of a Stromberg. Next, I visually took the linkage apart in my mind's eye and tried to break the whole entity down into it's individual shapes. There are basically 3 shapes to consider, i.e. round, rectangle and square, (similar) and triangular. Next, you need to see combinations of the shapes i.e. rods, cylinders, etc. Then with either styrene or metal, wire or sheet, you duplicate everything you see. Also for the kind of detail that is done, magnification is a must. It helps immeasurably. Since the space available on the site is a bit limited, go ahead and e-mail me with all the questions you have and with as much detail as I can, I'll give you all the help you need. Don't hesitate to let me know. I'll get you over the hump.

[Willys41]

Sydeem...........I agree with HFC it is not as hard as it looks. geat as muck reference as you can find. I don't want to go over what HFC said but if you have a question or need help just ask me and I will do all I can to help. l:

[sydeem]

I don't want to clutter up the forum either HFC but maybe your and Willys41 answers will be the beginning of tutorials on carburetor or small parts details. I did find your Stromberg pictures and tried to emulate the detail BUT! I couldn’t find a good material so wound up just bending a wire for linkage and cutting out a reduced picture for the flat linkage. HFC how about what you used for the linkage sleeve attachments and material you used for the flat and Willys41 on the other side of your motor with the gold carburetor you have some fantastic detail coupling the fuel line attachments.

Most of us are probably restricted to xacto knives, scissors, files, etc. so if you go beyond that we might not be scratch builder material.

I have attached pics of my carburetor study and detail then your detail to show the difference. No attachment to cross linkage and flat material is just photo paper.

[Willys41]

Sydeem...... fuel line was made from aluminum tube and the fittings are 1/8 fitting I bought on Ebay but could be made from tubing filed and shaped as needed.

[sydeem]

I hate being dense but do you mean 1/8 dia standard hardware available as hardware or do you mean 1/8 scale from somebody doing aftermarket bits and pieces. That motor is so real it looks like your were faking it by showing the real 1x1 thing.

[Don Garrett]

Way to go guys (HFC & Willys). Many thanks for your input.
Sydeem you are not cluttering up the forum....ya got a question, ask! The only lame question is the one that is not asked. This site is broke down with folks that are more than willing to help and share info. Thanks to Dan it's our forum. So please...feel free to ask, you are among friends.
I keep hearing terms like pro-builder, novice, newbie.....lose that nonsense, please. I'm coming up on 60 and the only thing I'm really good at is getting older. We have a few shall we say "shop worn" members, that realize the future of large scale modeling depends on you guys that have what it takes to tackle a biggie. We have made most of the mistakes that can be made and picked up a few soulutions on the way...it's up to you guys to learn from our boo boos. If you come up with a better way to do something, us old farts get all warm and fuzzy and learn from you. Nuff said?l:

[fuzzy]

Here is my 2 cents worth. For thin small pieces like bellcranks , carb linkages etc you can use alum soda cans for material or alum flashing used for roofing (it comes as a roll about 8 in wide) from a home store (Home Depot, Lowe's or most hardware stores) or from a hobby shop K&S makes alum and brass sheet,strip ,tube and angle. Most of these can be cut with a good pair of scissors. The fuel fittings shown are " scale" 1/8 fittings (not full size) that can be purchased from a number of aftermarket vendors. I have used small size alum tubing that you can polish and then cut to the length needed for each fitting. Use pliers to squeeze flats onto the outer faces.You can slide the tubing onto a piece of rod or a drill bit to keep it from squashing too much first. As you squeeze flats you need to rotate the tube to get the 6 equally spaced flats or as close as needed.Remember when you use the pliers it will squeeze 2 flats on each time you squeeze . It takes a little trial and error but is easier than reading this. After they are formed you can use Tamiya clear red and clear blue to color the fittings. A good source of chromed round rod is common shiny paper clips. I hope I haven't confused you to much.

[hot ford coupe]

For the materials for the linkages, I used a real thin piece of aluminum I found and shaped it for the little funny shaped flat parts and a piece of wire for the rod shapes. This is a weird question but what is a linkage sleeve attachment? All I did was break down the shapes and tried to duplicate how they went together. I honestly had no idea what the parts were called.

[Don Garrett]

Jeff......how high is up? There's mechanical likage, cable, hydraulic, electronic servos, slave cylinders and a partridge in a pear tree . Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a junk yard looking at and trying to figure out how and why things do what they do.......just bend the end of a solid rod and put it in a hole drilled in a bellcrank, if that isn't hi-tech enough, thread the end of the rod and put on a clevis, pin and cotter pin. Now you can start adding coil springs to the shaft that controls the butterflies in the carb body to return them to the closed position....and then.....it never ends. You can take this detail thing as far as your time and patience will allow. It's much easier to build a 1/8th scale body than it is to build a fully detailed carb.:D