A friend of mine rides a Harley (something of a bitsa, parts from 1945 through to 21st century custom shop brakes), and decided he'd like to build model of it loosely based around a 1/24th scale kit - he rebuilt the plastic wheels with wire spokes, cut off the moulded-on nuts and fitted tiny plated-brass nuts, really went to a lot of trouble to make it look like the original.
He's a pro photographer, so he set up a really nice little diorama - aquarium gravel roadbed, scale bushes made from painted foam and wire, rotten picket fence from found wood, then shot some pics on 2-1/4" colour film and sent them into a model magazine.
They sen't 'em back, saying they didn't feature real motorcyles.
So... he took some more pics of it on a nice wooden plinth, sent them in.
Same result, so ended up having to send a pic of him sat on the bike, holding the model, before they believed him!
It got a front cover feature
The Model WLA in US Army WW2 specification that he modelled looks even better, as it's dusty and dirty with oil leaks!
What worries me is that he's just got an "old metal lathe" - what's he going to do with that, make 'em run?
Dave H. (the other one)