Mark

Too, 1964 was back before any emissions regulations other than a PCV. A performance-oriented Mercury dealer could have obtained the parts and installed them prior to (or just after) delivery, same as a Ford dealer could have done with a Falcon.

If it's Boeing, I ain't going...

Items like that, not available to the general public, should be good in the future. Another similar item, done prior to the 1960 AMC piece, was a larger scale Hudson body. Those are grails among the Hudson crowd, and always have been.

Jo-Han made one along those lines for AMC. It was the structure of a 1960 Rambler, which was a unit body car when few cars manufactured here were at the time. But for '60 there were more: Chrysler reworked all of their platforms except the Imperial, and GM and Ford's new compacts were unit body. But Nash was first before becoming part of AMC.

The other day, I finished cutting up some quality cast iron. Parts from a roughly 80 year old gravity feed furnace that finally gave up the ghost in December. No parts or upgrades available, so it had to go. The heating company doesn't remove the old stuff, so I was on my own. After a few different approaches (Sawzall, then drilling holes close together and wailing on it with a sledgehammer-messing my shoulder up for a while in the process) I finally hit on the solution. 4-1/2" name brand angle grinder (no Harbor Freight stuff, thank you), diamond edge cutting blade...done. I had to cut the bigger pieces up as they were too big, odd-shaped, and unbalanced (extremely heavy on one side) to maneuver up the basement stairs. Once outside, some pieces were cut up some more, to ease lifting them into a pickup bed for hauling to scrap. I really hated cutting some of those up, they were neat looking castings. But well-done, they lasted that long and probably could have done another hundred years had other parts been available. I wonder how long it would take for that diamond blade to zip through that axle.

That twisted axle would be neat for a T-bucket, where it would be right out in the open.

Someone had the brainstorm to cast axles in the Eighties. Every couple of years, you could read in a magazine, or online, articles about the failure of a cast axle. "Fixing" something that wasn't broken. You rarely heard of a forged axle failure, even on ones that were dropped and sometimes welded at the ends. If anything, the more traditional rods that are popular now seem to be going closer to the original Ford chassis design. I remember seeing articles on fat fender Fords going to four-bar front radius rods. Then someone realized the four-bar limited turning radius (especially with wider front tires) and then most builders went back to the original style wishbone, splitting it only enough to clear the longer modern transmission being used.

Ford was often shortsighted in the matter of eventual V8 installations/options. After the Falcon deal, they did the same thing again with the Maverick, the Mustang II, and the late Eighties Thunderbird. Talk about banging your head against the wall.

The pre-1963 six cylinder Falcons and Comets won't take a 289/302 V8 as a bolt-in deal. Ford re-engineered the Falcon to take the V8: different suspension bits, heavier gauge metal for front "frame rails", torque boxes, etc. One of my brothers put a 302 into a '62 sedan delivery in the Seventies. The transmission tunnel even needed a bit of "persuasion" with a small sledgehammer to fit a C4 transmission and bell housing. He split the difference and spaced the transmission crossmember down a bit, as he had a really solid Arizona car and didn't want to hack on it. I don't know if it's true, but I have heard rumors of V8 converted early Falcons having issues with front frame rails and shock towers spreading further apart under the strain of the conversion. A Mustang II front suspension or tube axle might be the way to go with those cars now.

Moebius probably had some of the same designers that Ertl had. At some point RC2 (not Round 2) cut back and let everyone go, after that they were probably freelancing. Lindberg's '61 Impala chassis and engine look an awful lot like AMT's '62 Chevy kit pieces as well.

If you put the Moebius Comet and AMT Fairlane parts side by side, they'll look awfully similar. Same goes for Moebius versus AMT Ford pickup chassis, and Moebius '61 versus AMT '62 Pontiacs.

If the item you want is a typical eBay auction (as opposed to a fixed price "Buy it Now"), remember, you only need to be high bidder for one second. The last one. Don't get into a whizzing match with anyone three days before the thing ends, just watch, wait, and pounce at the end.

It seems to have gone extinct. That tape, and most of the dry transfer (rub-on) letters and numbers, were used mainly by architects and draftsmen, all of which have moved on to other means of doing their work.

If you are building anything resembling a stock wagon, go for one of the resin bodies instead of the kit piece. The kit body is way off proportionally.

If you have one of the AMT pro street '70 Coronet kits, take a look at that. The dual overhead cam Hemi engine setup includes a single four-barrel carb intake that might look right on a regular 426 Hemi engine.

Not sure that hood was available on anything but the FX package cars. Hopefully the scoops are add-ons, or the scoopless hood is in there too.

There weren't a lot of single four-barrel 426 Hemi intakes. Most 1:1 units resemble the Jo-Han piece which was in any of their Hemi engine cars that included a NASCAR version ('64 Plymouth, '69 Roadrunner, '70 Superbird to name three). MPC put one in some of their annual kits, but theirs is lame compared to the Jo-Han piece. There might be a kit or two with one that looks like the "tub" style used on other NASCAR engines of the period, but for a street or drag version the Jo-Han unit is what you want. Though stock 426 Hemis all used dual four-barrel carb setups (Chrysler wanted a higher CFM rating for Stock and Super Stock classes), there were single carb setups that were raced. Arlen Vanke did some development on single four-barrel setups as he ran them in AHRA GT classes in the late Seventies. Chrysler tried a single carb to try to get the Street Hemi past smog standards for '72, but couldn't quite get there.

Too, with any of the two-part stuff, bagging the putty once opened is a great idea. Even better is to bag the putty and catalyst separately and don't store them right next to each other. I don't have experience with the U-POL product pictured, but other products of theirs are quite good. I'm seeing their stuff in auto parts stores (O'Reilly recently moved into my area after Pep Boys exited the parts business to concentrate on the repair shops). Excepting the U-POL which I don't know about, the other putties use the same catalyst as other two-part fillers. Those tubes separate, dry out, and crack open over time. You can get those catalyst tubes separately at Home Depot, Lowe's, what have you. Don't toss the big tube when the little one goes bad.

The old, red, single-stage glazing putty, and old lacquer primers ALWAYS shrank. The putty is, at its essence, extremely unthinned lacquer primer. It was either Von Dutch, or probably Dean Jeffries, who started doing their stylized pinstriping in areas where the car had been "nosed" and "decked" (scripts and emblems removed from hood and deck lid). The pinstriping was done in part to help hide grinder marks in those areas, that flared up later after the primer and putty shrank under the lacquer paint applied over the work.

Yes, the current convertible kit's body is relatively new tooling compared with the coupe. Convertible-related parts (like stock and custom tops) do not interchange exactly between "old" and "new" convertibles. Both now use the coupe interior, chassis, and other parts whereas the annual coupe and convertible kits each used their own tooling. (What remains of the original '63-'67 convertible is now part of the custom '68 kit that was reissued a couple of years ago.)

You don't want to sand that sealer primer. Doing so "opens it up", the top coat will likely raise sanding scratches in that area. Anything I use lacquer paint on gets a quick blast of sealer primer. The sprays seem to have less "solids" and more "carrier" (reducer) lately, making the paint thinner and needing more of it to cover. The sealer helps reduce the possibility of scratches or imperfections showing through the primer.

Asking ain't getting. Those listings have probably rolled over numerous times, possibly over multiple years.

If you watched a lot of Supernatural, one thing you might remember is the creaking of the Impala's door hinges. That car got destroyed and resurrected several times over the course of the series, yet nobody ever thought to tackle those noisy hinges.

There was also an ARDUN conversion for the 60. It doesn't look like the better known "big engine" setup though.

Through 1940 here. The 1941 Fords were a bit bigger and heavier, the 60 was passable in areas without a lot of hills but was borderline at best. It wouldn't have worked at all in a '41. During '41 Ford introduced a straight six, and also made an inline four that was created for pickups, but some claim a handful of them made it into cars. The inline engines had more torque than the miniature V8, so they were workable whereas the 60 really wasn't up to the job.