oldcarfan

I tried that, but we otherwise use the printer so little anymore it's usually not worth it. Do the decals you make come out pretty opaque? I've had some trouble with the laser printer making some colors a little transparent.

They are mostly homemade. I used some Gundam decals for a few things but most of it was done using Word with screen captures for some of the images such as the Area 51 and the OCP symbol. The lettering is mostly Word fonts that looked good. I put it all on a document and had a local copy shop print them on decal paper.

I'm kind of tempted to place an order from Hobby Search/1999.co.jp or SpotModel and keep it under $100 just to see what happens. Maybe that's tempting fate.

This my build of the Tamiya Toyota Hiace kit from 1983. Backstory, I bought the kit from the original owner at a hobby show in 2019. I promised the guy I would build it and not just let it sit on the shelf. I ended up getting to it just as COVID was starting. I got sick and put it away. Ended up having COVID three times, so that was great. The van has been on the shelf since then taunting me and I finally got it done. I finally pulled it down last weekend and started it as a shop truck. It was going to be Tamiya Blue but the first coat ate through the primer and left the finish pitted. Rather than put it away again I stripped it and started over. This time I finished it in grey and BareMetaled the sides. I planned to drop it a lot more but can't go any lower without major surgery. The wheels and tires are leftovers from the Datsun Box truck I finished last week. I used the lowrider wheels on the Aoshima tires. They look too small but I don't really want to change them. Maybe later. The decals are mostly self-printed. I was going for a used old truck that had been given a new life. Eventually I'll do some weathering on it. The interior is sticker bombed and the driver left his backpacks in there. The rear is was paneled with a stolen borrowed billboard. So that's that for this build. Now I need to see if I can find one of those Heller Citroen vans.

I finished a long stalled project today. I started it during COVID and then got sick and put it away. It's the Toyota Hiace Van from 1983. It was an original issue that I got at a hobby show in 2019. The guy bought it new and saw the body had to be assembled and lost interest. He gave it to me for $15 so I can't complain. It's been on the shelf taunting me for a while so I pulled it down. I'll post some more pictures in the truck build section.

I can delete if necessary, let me know.

Please don't take this as political as I'm genuinely wondering. As of yesterday I saw a notice that many EU and Asian countries will no longer take packages bound for the US until the issues are worked out. However, and this is what I'm wondering, I also saw that mail and packages valued at less than $100 would still be accepted. Over the last year I've been ordering a lot of things from SpotModel and various Japanese shops. It sounds like that means that we can keep orders under $100 and still get stuff. My last order came in from Japan about a month ago with no problems. If this is too off topic, please delete. I'm not trying to start any arguments.

My dad's job in the Navy was to work on aircraft. I don't remember what the rating was called then. Later he was a civilian Army helicopter mechanic until retiring. He was always bringing home sheets of aluminum. This was back before they starting recycling and he could have all the 2x2 or smaller pieces he wanted. He had some impressive metal working skills. I remember him taking a sheet of aluminum, his hammers and big bean bag full of lead shot or something and turning out a small fairing for his motor cycle one afternoon just because he didn't want to pay for a store bought fiberglass one.

For me, I hate to open a truly rare shrink wrapped kit. I have come into a few in my day and usually saved them and found either an opened kit to build or a built up to restore. Then I could display the finished kit in front of the still in box kit.

I haven't built a Salvino's kit but they use old Monogram tooling don't they? I used to build what were called garage resin kits, mostly ships and sci-fi. They had lots of flash needing plenty of clean up work. They generally had few locating pins and you had to use some improvisation get a good result. When I build an MPC kit I often think of it in similar terms.

In my opinion, there is no way to say which company's kits are best as a whole. You can really only say good or bad on a kit by kit or decade by decade basis. All three have been around for a long time and all three have had some good kits and some real stinkers in that time. AMT put out good kits in the 60s but by the 70s they were kind of 'Meh.' MPC's kits were good for their time but now they can be a tough build by today's standards. According to my dad, Revell had a reputation for being good but fiddly to put together. By the early 90s MPC was kind of out and AMT and Revell were starting to enter a renaissance.

I guess this counts as a tip! When I go to a hobby shop I check out the 1/35th stuff for military upgrade sets like this. Tamiya makes several different sets for different countries and time periods and they are pretty cheap. I like to put extra details in my cars or trucks and these little kits give you some good options. The gas cans work well as smaller water cans in the back of your Jeep or SUV, and the ammo cans look good stacked in the back of a truck. My favorite though are the backpacks. Since civilian backpacks come in all sizes, a full-size 1/35 one works just as well tossed into the seat of a 1/24th car or truck. Just paint it a bright color and you're ready to go. I even used a pair of the binoculars as the small ones people use to watch baseball games. Anyway, it's worth a try to add a little extra detail.

I'd go ahead and get the figures. People come in all sizes and it probably won't be very noticeable.

When you order your Supra parts overnighted from Japan, they don't deliver themselves so here's my idea of what they get delivered in. Not long ago I saw a picture of an old Ford Courier based U Haul truck and it gave me an idea. I started working on one and since I had three Datsun kits and only one Courier so I switched and here it is. The cab and chassis are standard kit issue with a lowered suspension. I wanted to go lower, but that would have interfered with the steering front wheels. The box is mostly plastic sheet and Evergreen 1/4 round. All the lights are Hobby Lobby gems of various sizes some colored with a Sharpie. The wheels are Aoshima, narrowed to fit Pegasus low rider tires.The decals are homemade and printed on a laser copier. Extra details are mostly parts box bits. You can't see it very well but the dash is from a Porsche 911 GT2 and the seat is upholstered sticker bomb style. Anyway, hope you like it.

Seen at Walmart, today, two Chevy Outlanders and an MV-1 in civilian colors. I haven't seen a dust buster GM van in quite a while and suddenly there were two of them looking brand new. The MV-1 was unusual. I haven't seen one in regular passenger van use before.

I've been stocking up on the Initial D kits as well just in case of tariffs.

I had a Volvo for a while that had the 85 mph speedo. The car was good for about 144, which is what the guy that passed me got pulled over for. It really ticked off my friend whose Mustang GT topped out at 124.

Yes, it's an RX350. We considered several different brands, but we'd such luck with our previous RX that we went to the Lexus dealer to look around. They had two lease return cars on the website with very low mileage and a good price. We went to look at the red one, but it was already on a test drive and this one actually had fewer miles and everything just sort of fell into place with the deal. I wasn't sure at the time, but now I kind of like the anonymous quality of the silver. It blends in well. Edit: We had a Mazda 5 van for several years and it was a surprisingly sporty car. For us the Hyundai and Mazda dealers are too far away

Sometimes it's not about the money but about availability. In my case I knew I had some good knives and couldn't find them. I knew they would show up sooner or later. Had they not been out of stock at the time I might have bought a couple more XActos or Excels, however they were out and the HL cheapies were available. Living in small towns can limit your shopping choices unless you're willing to wait for an online order.

I have that same Mazda kit and have been thinking of trying to use some Gundam fine line markers to do it like the illustration.

Not sure if I shared our daily driver before. We have an older version of this same vehicle but it has 250,000 miles on it and we wanted something with fewer miles. We bought this one last year about this time and immediately left on a 4500 mile trip to Florida. Last week we returned from a trip the other direction. We drove to Salt Lake City via Colorado and the car ate up the road. Here it is at Pike's Peak. We also have a pickup truck but it doesn't get much use anymore since we finished our house.

This is actually brick printed on regular paper. It has a really 3D look to it thought. I got it off eBay for something else and it never got used. When I put the steel up, this seemed like the perfect place for it. If I had it to do over, I'd probably get a couple of the printed steel novelty signs so I wouldn't need to piece the steel. You could probably even use one for the floor so that props could be stood up as well. If anyone wants to try this, be sure and do a test first to make sure whatever you plan to use for covering isn't so thick the magnets can't stick to the walls.

I managed to finish the Mercedes Benz Sprinter van yesterday. Posted it here.

So this is something I bought a while ago. It came from a Ukrainian toy company https://www.amazon.com/Tigres-Mercedes-Benz-Sprinter-Ambulance-Stand/dp/B0CCW1YD48 and it's a pretty darn accurate 1/24th scale. It's molded in ABS and is basically a plastic diecast toy if that makes sense. They are cheap at around $20 and available on Amazon and many sites. If you are wanting to build a delivery or camper van that's not a 70s Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, this might be your start. I started this project in late June. Last week I went with my wife to Salt Lake City for a work trip and we passed through Colorado and over the Rocky Mountains. We saw a ton of these type vans converted to high dollar campers which inspired me to finish up this project. Speaking of vans, we passed one of those giant auction lots up in North Texas and there were a ton of retired Sprinters and Transits in Amazon and other liveries. I glanced at their web page and they sell for anywhere from a few thousand dollars to the mid-twenties with around 100,000 miles on them and regular maintenance so a lot of people buy them as a base for a home built camper. Anyway, I wanted the van to look like something a local shop or racing team might build for their shop truck. I wanted the van to stand out on the shelf so it's painted in Krylon Citrus Green which is really a bright yellow. The yellow is a bit transparent so it needs a white primer. A note here if you build one of these, the front and rear doors are a close fit and will scratch your paint. The suspension is raised an 1/8 of an inch to clear the Pegasus Spyder 22 inch wheels fitted with offroad tires off a Maisto diecast truck. The interior is an blank space so you could go wild with the detailing if you wanted. Mine is pretty much standard except for some details in the cab. The interior has weirdly proportioned molded in seats so I cut them out and replaced them with parts box van seats. Eventually I'll finish the rear with toolboxes and racks. The front of the van features a push bar with a winch because you know how hard it is to get those old parts cars out of a muddy field. The driving lights are from an unknown source with thumbtack covers. On the roof is a rack from Hooligan Scale Models on Etsy, with lights from an old Monogram F-350 and a tarped cargo. The box behind it is courtesy of a pair of Apple Airpods and the ladder is a Plastruct piece carefully bent. The rear windows were cut from a packaged salad container and sprayed with my last can of Testor's transparent black. I think they came out pretty nice. The decals are a combination of Gundam numbers and some stuff I made on Word and had printed at a copy store. The font is Porsche style lettering from FontMeme. https://fontmeme.com/porsche-font/ They have fonts for most brands and are easy to work with. I'm not much at doing tutorials, but here is the build post I started. I probably forgot some stuff, but hope this was interesting.

I have the Revell 635 kit cheap at a flea market a few years ago. Don't know how it compares to the Fujimi kit.