Rat Roaster

Truly ahead of it's time in the engineering department. And faultless in the appearance. General Motors was on top of the world at the time. Very nice execution!

Exceptionally realistic. You been very observant.

Can't go wrong with bullet holes~!

LOVE the heater core nipples sticking out of the firewall. Very creative!

You ignored the unsolicited advice. YAY

Thank You. They looked like Mustang but i could not think of one with what appeared to be opening doors. Yo, trash man: got something for you

For precision block sanding you want something with a ground finish or close to it. Various solid tungsten carbide shapes. Triangles are really good for gripping the sandpaper and they come in various sizes and various corner radii. But i'll use steel dowels, high-speed tool bits with sharp corners, a 6" stainless rule and even sandpaper wrapped over the edge of a single-edge razor blade. The beauty of the carbide is that it does not rust. Good because nearly all my block sanding is done wet.

They look like they could be semi-important and am gonna ask before i drop them into the trash hamper

I have one of these, nearly as bad. Didn't have the skirts but was brush painted with auto lacquer that bonded to the plastic. I cut it up with the hot knife in order to kill any lingering fantasies about making something out of it '59 Pontiacs and '60 Oldsmobiles are practically impossible to make right after they've had skirts welded to them. '58 Pontiacs can be saved but they take up a lot of hours to fix the craters. BTW i fix broken W/S frames like that all the time by grooving the underside of the frame on both sides of the break then supergluing in a section of sewing straight pin.

Most Excellent Work, Doc.

Thread works by melting the plastic. It works on styrene but can be hard to steer. It does no good to use lubricant because that prevents the styrene from getting hot enough to melt. Heavy-Duty thread holds up a little better but be prepared to deal with a LOT of broken threads. Never tried it on resin for obvious reasons. Obvious reasons? Ya, we don't mess with rosin down here on the farm.

Jeweler's Saw. I picked one up then bought a mess of different tooth-count blades from India off eBay, cheap of course.

I drive a 1991 Scottdale, 1/2 ton, reg cab, V6 & 5-speed, factory gauges. So i appreciate the obvious extra effort you made. Had the engine out of mine a few years ago. Oil pan pinholed. So i gave it the works. New Dorman Oil Pan, the used rocker covers came off a marine V6 from Las Vegas. So: new tin, new bearings, new timing set and a set of eBay, correct for 1991, reman heads out of Idaho for $128, shipped (what a steal). New Dorman exhaust manifolds. Lifters disassembled & cleaned individually, pistons & rings cleaned of carbon. It still has only 125K on the engine/truck. .003-.004" wear in the cylinders. I looked at the Walker Exhaust Catalog. There were 2 sets of pipes available for the 1991 Chevy 350 V8. Single tailpipe or optional dual tailpipe with a 3" system before the muffler. Then i noticed that the V6 and V8 used the same crossover pipe. LOL So, this V6 breathes through a stock 350 3" exhaust system with a BIG muffler and dual 2" tailpipes. Did i mention that the cat was eliminated with a custom-bent 3" pipe? A V6 that rumbles softly like a V8 through twice pipes Nice job on your model!

I looked at the contents. The only detail that is glaringly wrong is the pedals piece. You could heel and toe all 3 pedals with the ball of your foot. Just as bad as the right side master cylinder in the MK 1961 Catalina stock car. That said, i bought more after seeing the first one.

A snapper kit made while the body section of the mold was configured to run Dealer Promos. Obviously meant to be played with like an oversized Hot Wheels car. They did the 1970 GTO in this fashion. Not sure if there are any others.

This would be a 1963, without the small standup hood ornament that showed up for 1964.

Mini-Update here: Painted the frame and some chassis parts. Was still filling ejector pin divots on the front brakes and those appear ready for paint now. Am pretty sure the kitchen oven is gonna be cornered into hardening the paint on this stuff. Try to keep it a secret. Engine block needed about .020" of fill on the front of one half and a little on the rear end of the other half of the cylinder head. I mixed up some JB and put a thin bead on each mating surface of the bellhousing and transmission halves before sticking them together and running the screws in. Then the screws covered with more JB and shaved down flat with a sharp Made In USA Schrade jackknife that was a $1 yard sale find. That little knife has done a lot of dirty work over the years, even shaving down burrs on zinc die cast model cars. Anyone who has ever played with this kit remembers what a flashfest that steering wheel was. There's gotta be close to 2 hours into cleaning this one up. But it has to be pretty, doesn't it? Now on to the pics...... That's it for today's Mini-Update! Carry on!

Depends. People seem to have forgotten that: before the rise of 8MM plug wires and High Energy Ignitions for 1975 the standard plug wire diameter over the insulation was 7MM. To duplicate that in 1/25 scale the closest thing is 34AWG wrapping wire. And 34AWG insulated wire is not cheap.

Maybe we can have a discussion sometime about what certain relatives think about us playing with little toy cars, trucks, planes, etc

The sloping sides (draft) are necessary for the piece to be easily ejected from the mold. Doesn't take long to correct them on a nice, sharp file. I got my supply at a yard sale: half-full sandwich bag of them for a buck.

WD-40 dissolves permanent marker if it is fairly recent but i dunno if it does bad things to styrene

Reply by pj-toys (May-17-18 13:31): my heart condition n life is MUCH MORE important then shipping your parts so gfy Reply by pj-toys (May-17-18 13:35): n hospital since jan severe heart medical problems yor$19 part is not important "My hardy-har heart!" But he was able to respond to his feedbacks and claw for the 'victim' position from the hospital bed. Hmmmmmmmmmmm, okay. A manipulator to the bitter end. Looks to me like eBay unregistered him for too many failures to ship. He'll be missed. But not by me.

Thank You for mentioning that. I'd started painting some things with self-etching primer and wasn't sure if that was the right thing to try on zinc die cast.

You might be the first poster of this kit to figure out that the raised detail on the right front inner fender are lame heater hoses. You did the right thing by making them go away.