GeePig

Not the answer, but I was saw a van that had one of its side panels repaired using a household central heating radiator. It looked a bit like this.

Do you mean like Vehicle Number: 11 - http://www.hot-rod.com.au/hambster/cars2.htm I cannot remember when I last saw a Humber truck. Decades ago, I suppose.

Uh, OK, I don't know much about those models. But I have seen variants of other motorcycles with small or large nipples, the former not needing a slot. If there is a clip to hold the nipple in place it could affect the choice of cable. I just thought it was worth checking that first. Trevor

Andy, before getting a hacksaw out, I would check the clutch operating lever to see what size of cable nipple it needs. If it only needs a small nipple, there will be no need to cut anything. Trevor

Steve, I agree with Mal - no heat, just the half bushes, press, and a second pair of hands to help. Trevor

Lovely bit of history there I don't know a lot about buses, so is this the B-Type that you mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGOC_B-type Trevor

It does, John, and it was an effect that I did consider following up. I didn't get on well with models, so hard to know what to do with them when you have more than enough to display - people think you are odd when you choose to shoot them with an air rifle. Suggesting that it is a re-enactment is so unconvincing... As an aside, I thought I should add a bit of background on this vehicle and its location. Star is short for Starachowice ('Old Chowice'), the town in Poland where they were made, the company being FSC "Star" (including speech marks), literally 'Factory Vehicle Commercial "STAR", to use Polish word order. The truck is a Star 660, which were made from the early 60s to early 80s. I am not sure if this one was still on active service when I snapped it in the late 90s or privately owned as most seemed to have been painted plain dark green by that stage. Note that the cab roof is removable, and yes the cab does indeed have canvas sides, such a lovely choice for the climate, and I don't remember seeing much in the way of rollover protection. In the background is a typical Communist era factory / warehouse type building, in standard yellowy-cream, built to crumble disgracefully, of cheap materials so that the money saved could be invested where it could have the greatest effect, in the party member's pockets. This archtectural style is as ubiquitous in Poland as the bay-fronted mock Tudor style is in the great inter-war surburban estates of Britain. Here in Lublin, where I think I took this shot, there were three very large military bases until about a decade ago, while National Servoce still existed. One, dating back at least to the days of the Austrian occupation of this part of Poland, has gone; another, opposite the Majdanek Concentration Camp and possibly German in origin, has probably all shut down now, while for the third, also at least Austrian in date, only fragments remain. Interesting, for me, is that if I look out of my window at work, across the road are the former buildings of a Polish armoured regiment, the worksops of which are today painted in a rather fetching shade of green.

I believe that we should face the facts head on. The sad truth is that to a lot of the population, we are boorish in our factual knowledge on the subject of, dare I say it, engineering, that low-class pursuit of those lacking in cultural capital. And 'everyone' knows that war films are something that only boys 17 or younger can enjoy. I mean, we hit bits of metal, for some unknown reason, probably only to disturb the neighbours, with other bits of metal in dark, dank, oily, smelly and positively filthy garages at all hours of the night, only to emerge to eat, watch war films, drink beer, make disgusting noises with other low men and drive our dirty, over-large vehicles up and down the road, preventing decent people from getting good prices for their property. So, every war film is the worst. Why don't we just go and get a proper life, washing the car and mowing the lawn on a Sunday. Because we are not dead yet.

Well, I have completed the next, and relatively quick stage of hacking the main part of the image and adjusting the colours. Basically, I use a smudge tool set to 100% to smear all the colours to destroy the original - this allows me to get rid of any details I do not want and to start making blurred details that I do want to look clearer. As you can see, it is brighter, but messy. This took me about 40 minutes to do, and already the effects of the jpeg compression on the small original fil have disappeared and it has lost the faded look that my old scanner used to give to all my photos. One of the things that interests me is the removal of things like wheelnuts, because what I am trying to create is an impression of the lorry, not a replica. Other stuff which will disappear include the two cars in the background, and what will remain is my impression of what the lorry meant to me. This is not far different to the restoration process for a real vehicle - we happily remove fittings, rust, paint and whatever else appears on a vehicle later on in its life to show how we want it to be seen. We may even paint it in a colour and with regimental insignia that it never had in life, because at the end of the day we often want the vehicle we see in our mind rather than the real life of the vehicle we possess. For older and rarer vehicles we may even have to manufacture our own parts to complete the vehicle, meaning the result is even less 'real'. In fact, the more ruined the vehicle is, the more we have to do to it, and the less we can be concerned about the originality. The same is true here, the poorer the photo, the less I concerned I can be with maintaining the details. It's a kind of freedom.

Have you ever wanted to get involved in something, but never had the opportunity or the inclination to make the sacrifices required in terms of cash or storage space for all those goodies and tools that seem to be needed? That's the situation I found myself in, and the computer editing of digital images seemed the ideal situation. After all, I already had my tool - my computer. I was once trained as a mechanic, and then as a development engineer, so the skills and knowledge to work on real vehicles was not a problem. Arthritis and a small flat in Poland made things mechanical more problematic, but wishing to spend time in the presence of my wife rather than an obstinate pile of metal sealed the direction I should take. Poland was an advantage, back in the days when little information was available about transport here I had a large website with hundreds of scanned in photos, each small in size due to the slowness of the net in those early days. Here is 40kB worth of 300 pixel wide Star image from my website back in 1998, something I can work with, a challenge. I don't edit images as many do, with all the tools available on Photoshop, I sue the free Gimp photo editor, and only the most basic of tools there. From a standard size digital photo it usually takes me about a week of evenings and a weekend to get the kind of result I like, but this is tiny. This will not be a guide to the best way to edit photos, nor how to produce fine realistic images, nor restoring damaged pictures of Aunty Flo. It's about a challenge. Stage one was to blow the image up to 3000 pixels wide, something big enough to play around with. The original jpg file had some compression on it, and now that can be seen clearly. The next stage will be to smudge the colours and details with a pen. But not tonight, it's getting late and I have to work in the morning.

Possibly had the Jeep as a student, and now after many years has graduated to the point of desiring comfort above coolness.

Are you sure that is French shore? The sea looks way too salty, and that sand has been sprayed the wrong colour. And the sky is not period at all.

And mine is short for gingerpig, which is what I used to call my cat.

'Malyutka' could be translated as 'sweet little thing'. Not that I am suggesting anything. Just saying. A similar word is used to describe the Fiat 126 when it was made and sold here in Poland.

Now we just need pictures

Looks like some kind of updraught carburettor on the M2. The trouble I found with updraught carbs is that the vibration one naturally finds with an engine at idle has a tendency to wick fuel out of the main fuel system of any carb - but in side draught and down draught this excess fuel will find its way unobtrusively into the engine. For the updraught, the fuel heads the other way out of the carb, either pooling somewhere, soaking the filter or even dripping on the ground. If it pools or soaks the filter then you have a sudden wallop of fuel drawn into the engine when you accelerate, and always the potential for a fire.

As good as Acertal is, I am sure there are many of us waiting to see the team tackle the white metal approach...

Possibly aircrew, certainly in the slammer for desertion :-D It sounds strange now, the pleasure in getting something like one whole penny of a model using a club voucher, but it certainly encouraged me to buy more kits.

I personally would not judge the quality of a film by its historical accuracy, there are plenty of sources of history, of realism, and plenty of people working to research and recreate the past. Just like there are people on this forum dedicating their energies to rebuilding, maintaining, showing and enjoying accurate recreations of the past. Nothing wrong with that at all, as far as I am concerned, and I enjoy observing their efforts. However, even though I have both mechanics qualifications and an automotive engineering degree, I don't use these skills to restore the past, because the future is a much more satisfying task for my hands and my thoughts. Even as an artist I do not copy the present or the past, I create new things. Therefore, to me, film can be enjoyed no matter how closely or distantly it might represent reality. What does it matter to me whether there are Germans in American half tracks, it's a film, and I only half to ask if I am enjoying the experience. So, yes, I enjoy Kelly's Heroes, it is fun. I like fun. And I like a fun film better than, say, the brutal reality of the one currently showing at the Majdanek Concentration Camp, half a mile up the road from where I work. That one is awful.

Looking at the end of the white metal thread, it looks like there are some imprints from some kind of mould. Could they have used some kind of mould core during manufacture instead?

Living in Poland I have received some ear bashing about how Poland's contributions have not (apparently) been sung highly enough, it's all what Britain and America did. I would imagine that wherever one goes, there will be someone disappointed, but it can be a shock to meet such different viewpoints.

For the Polish prices I thought 'netto' was the same as 'net price', as in before VAT. Gross price (with VAT) I believe would be 'brutto'.

If you think these boom remains are interesting, then you should see those on the Forth: http://fyca.sbmyc.com/Publications/CruisingGuide/cruisingp7.htm

Was anyone a member of the Airfix Modellers Club, back in the 1970s? I remember that there was a club page in the Valiant comic, and Dick Emery was the president. I still have my badge somewhere.

It's not often one can admit to such a thing. I went on to scratch build battleships of card solely to fill them full of pellet holes as they floated down the river - until they either sank or I was able to recover them to be restored to be a target once more. It taught me things like the essentials of buoyancy and safety through design.