maxwell48098

The current May/June issue of Vintage Truck Magazine has a great article on a beautiful 1972 F250 360 CID 4X4 Highboy "Dentside" pickup. Like all Vintage Truck articles, the author goes into the background history of the truck line being featured before going into the specifics of the featured truck. The Featured truck is now owned by the son of the original owner who died in a vehicle accident in 1984. His son was 3 at the time and 2015 did a serious restoration of his dad's truck. Lots of great pics as well. I have had a Vintage Truck subscription since way back when the magazine was originally titled This Old Truck in 1993. It is my goto source for info on various light duty builds I do. You may want to pick up an issue if you see one somewhere, or you can subscribe at vintagetruck.com. A.J.

There's an extra one in case you lose one. I thought that it was a great idea, and if you don't lose any, you have a whole extra set after 5 builds! A.J.

I did a couple over the years. If I remember correctly, I vertically cut off the rear of the body as far back as possible. (These rear doors ended up being used as the side doors on the '72 and '78. Then I took a second body and cutoff about .75 inches at the rear (roughly 18 scale inches_ then aglued this to the first body and blended the lower rear area behind the rear wheel openings. It's not as hard as it seems. Hope that helps. A.J.

All American Models did a complete conversion kits back in the day. A.J.

Sure would be nice to see Round 2 re-release the 1957 after seeing all of the 1955's released over and over again. A.J.

Nice work on the chassis. FYI - The transmission should a cast iron color instead of the engine color. Great job overall. A.J.

The tread width of the MPC/Ertl/AMT DM800 and DM600 is too wide for them to be correct for 1/25 scale. So these chassis will work fine with 1/24 scale casting. I have a feeling that Jim Etter the original proprietor of AIM purposely made his castings a little wider so that the MPC chassis would work. If you've ever built the DM800 or DM600, the tires actually extend past the edges of the fenders, but this casting fits them perfectly. A.J.

Here are some images of an original American Industrial Models Mack B-81 dropped on the MPC not AMT DM 800 chassis. Really simple. A.J.

I use thee different types of liquid glue. What I have to done prevent knocking over the tall glue bottles of Plastruct Plastiweld, Plast-i-weld by Flex File, and MEK Substitute is to rubber band the three tall glass bottles together to form a triangle shape. Haven't had a problem with knocking this over for decades back to the old Tenerex days. A.J.

Has anyone else noticed that the date on the M&M is 2009? A.J.

Boy, I can remember getting a McDonald's Hamburger for 15 cents, fries set you back another 10 cents, and a large (today's medium) Coke cost another 25 cents. And we think truck have gotten expensive. A.J.

Gregg, I'm retired from Chrysler and the high performance versions of the Charger use HP Hemi engines which have their blocks painted orange while cylinder hears remain bare aluminum.

The Exhaust Manifolds on all of my MOPARs were a dark, rusty brown. That is true once the engine paint burned off. Just running them on "the rolls" dynos in the assembly plant, the top 2-3 inches of paint would be burnt off. Once it got to the dealership and prepped for delivery, in about 20 minutes the last of the paint was gone. Park the vehicle in humid air overnight, ato life. nd that rusty patina came. Every engine that I saw leave Mound Road Engine, or Trenton Engine in the suburbs of Detroit had the manifolds installed before paint. A.J.

Here's one source of high quality custom decals. https://stsdecals.com/

Johan tooling is long gone. It's a subject that has been discussed over and over for years here.