NEW 49 MERC WHATS UP?

[Dave Van]

The Wally's in our region are restructuring all depts. All the stores in this region are keeping model so far. They did dump some AMT kits when AMT/RC2/LC cut off the supply. They are eliminating some depts....some don't make sense. There is one WM in the two counties in my area. 2000 sq miles one store. My wife sews and knits. WM was the only store that carried cloth and yarn. So what dept did they delete?? Cloth and yarn. WM is getting so large that they don’t know what is going on at the local level. WM is not the problem when it comes to our hobby.

[oldcars]

Richard,

Thanks, they have two less now. There was still one on the shelf when I left.

By the way, I'm a member of the Front Range Automotive Modelers here in Colorado Springs. If you are interested you are welcome to join us. Our next meeting is the 21st of August. That's a week from next Tuesday. We meet at 7:00 PM. If you're interested let me know and I'll send you directions.

Ken Thanks. I went once with a friend two or three years ago and had a really good time. I have no idea where we were at. Would love to go again. Richard.

[bobss396]

FINALLY GOT ONE! Actually 2 at a local WW at $13.97 each. Not a bad kit, just looked through it. This WW is fairly new and has done their model shelf over a couple of times already. No KK paints, just some Testors and Boyds spray cans.

Bob

[larrygre]

That 40 Ford has been the subject of much conjecture over the past several years. It appears to have been tooled up by Palmer & based on the proportions of the AMT kit, but never issued by Palmer. When Lindberg bought out Palmer that tooling was part of it & it was released in the early 90's, along with the custom Vette, Challenger & Mustang that Palmer did release, under the Lindberg banner.

Mark, you got it. Lindberg decided (after some prodding from yours truly) to retool the Palmer mold into a 3 in 1 kit including stock and vintage police car versions. While many of the new parts are quite nice, the kit itself has some serious proportion errors and looks more like an exaggeration of the AMT kit than a clone. My "Dog's Day" review of the kit in SAE back in 1995 critically panned it, and I stand by my comments made back then.

Now if you want to give your razor saw, files, and customizing techniques a real workout, you could do what I'm doing: choipping, sectioning, and re-profiling the Lindberg kit, finessing the frame, adapting IFS and IRS, throwing in a healthy V8 with multi-carbs, Foose style wheels and tires....yeah I know, it's TOO much work for that kit. Masochistic tendencies indeed.

[larrygre]

Dang it Larry!! You got me thinking about yet another project!!!

BTW, I thought you were mostly "strictly stock". You don't want to ruin your reputation do you?

Mark, that reputation got shot to hell a looooong time ago!

Seriously though, I'll have to post a few "under construction" pics of my now seriously hacked-up Lindberg 40 Ford. I hope the late, great Dave Shuklis, who inspired the idea, is somehow smiling on my creation.

[Tom Kren]

YESSS! I just grabbed two of them happy happy joy joy!!!! Gave it quick look and this is a great kit I will have to grab more Also I see that the rear tail lights are clear and not red oh well no big deal! Wonder if the resin dash from Rep and Min will fit too??? Well off to get started!

[Zoom Zoom]

YESSS! I just grabbed two of them happy happy joy joy!!!! Gave it quick look and this is a great kit I will have to grab more Also I see that the rear tail lights are clear and not red oh well no big deal! Wonder if the resin dash from Rep and Min will fit too??? Well off to get started!

Actually the taillights are chrome; the bigger ones are from a Lincoln Cosmopolitan and the smaller bullets are '59 Caddy units. Both need clear red applied. There are small clear lenses for the front turn signals, the larger ones that look the size of the taillights are the spotlight lenses. Perhaps they'll work as taillight lenses too if you don't use the spotlights.

[Tom Kren]

Actually the taillights are chrome; the bigger ones are from a Lincoln Cosmopolitan and the smaller bullets are '59 Caddy units. Both need clear red applied. There are small clear lenses for the front turn signals, the larger ones that look the size of the taillights are the spotlight lenses. Perhaps they'll work as taillight lenses too if you don't use the spotlights.

Yes bob you are right i was looking at the clear parts and thought that the bullets were on that tree.

[Zoom Zoom]

Has anyone tried fitting the "stock" Cosmopolitan taillights from the inside of the body? Seems they might mount there w/o too much trouble, and would look better frenched.

I want to try making the "stock" fender skirts fit flush to the body as well.

[FloridaBoy]

Since you guys on this forum have been so helpful and supportive, I am offering my past to try to help in answering some questions raised in this post. I have been an active builder since '52, and REALLY Active since the AMT 3in1 Kits came out in '58.

I am retired and disabled so I am lucky enough to realize a lifetime dream, to be able to live free and build all day if I want to. I do build quite a lot. I also read everything about model cars and consider myself knowledgeable, but when reading this forum, I feel like a kit entering first grade.

But I have built a lot of kits over the years, including over 100 AMT '40 Fords. First, the engine on the AMT '49 Ford is a Cadillac. I think sometime during a re-pop AMT removed the Cadillac name from the valve covers, but in the original instructions, the Cadillac valve covers were offered in chrome, and on the instruction sheet, the engine was referred to as a Cadillac.

Next, I never saw the Palmer '40 Ford back in the old days. I always considered Palmer a manufactuer of cheap lousy kits. That was perception THEN. In '95, when the Lindberg '40 Ford came out, even though I was put off by the pink car on the box art, I breathed a large sigh of relief then because I had a massive case of insecurity that AMT for one reason or another wasn't ever going to reissue the '40 Ford coupe. Geesh was I wrong. So, I picked up a whole bunch of Lindberg '40 Ford coupes and had a real mixed reaction when I opened the box. First, I was completely put off by the pink plastic and paint provided. Second, the flathead motor was atrocious. A chrome radiator? Come on. The on close inspection of the body, saw those horrible modifications to the side grilles, the naugahyde rear window covers, the what-evers on the running boards, and I determined the only way to build the car was a full on sectioned custom, with spare parts motor, and other parts as they were needed. The other thing I noticed and I am not real detail oriented was the rear window on the driver side was too long, but not enough to make me sick.

I was pleased that Palmer stole a kit from AMT and pirated it without much abandon. The parts are interchangeable, which is OK by me. But after sectioning it, and opening up the doors and trunk, the model one night literally exploded/deteriorated in my hands while wet sanding my body work. I had to use a ton of superglue, underside structural reinforcing plastic, body putty, and 2part epoxy to restore the car and it is now ready for paint. When Lindberg came out with the "blue" redone '40, you could see where the tooling was altered to take off the ghastly stuff on the pink model. Still not up to AMT's work, but enough to keep me tided over in case I depleted my '40 Ford kit stock.

On the other hand, while I am writing this I am painting a re-do of my very first AMT '40 Ford Coupe I purchased as a kid in 1960, and the plastic was as fresh as any new AMT I have on my work table.

Down here in SoFla where there are rich people all over the place, there are several Wallys, within 10 miles of where I live. Also there are 2 Michaels Arts and Crafts, as well. plus Kmarts and other chain arts and crafts stores carrying models. Plus LHS's. As of this writing on August 16, the Wallys are carrying the Merc, the Revell "41 Chev pickup, and the Dodge L700/trailer/'40 Ford (for 25 bucks). The '40 Ford in this multi-kit is the Palmer/Lindberg version with the some of the poorly attempted body corrections.

I hope I provided some insight of past models from my perspective. Back to painting my '40 Ford custom coupe and as soon as I learn to reduce my photographs to fit the file requirements here, I will post pictures of everything I have done, and everything going on. Any help either on forum or by email would be greatly appreciated. The error message I get when I try to attach a photo from my camera is that the file is too large.

Thanks in advance,

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

[MarkL]

Found the Merc at my local Wally World last night. They were still boxed in the shipping carton, I had an employee open the box to see whats inside....low and behold, the Mercs! Grabbed two of the four in the case, still hoping to run across the Dodge truck, but no luck yet.

[larrygre]

Got mine yesterday. It was definitely worth the wait.

[Matt T.]

I noticed that in my local Wal Marts the Mercs are either on the top or bottom shelves, due to the different box shape. Sometimes they're stacked with the "Uptown" kits too. Don't forget to look everywhere! HTH.

[Peter Lombardo]

I just picked up one at a local area hobby shop and have two more on order with my "regular" hobby shop. I have three minor knocks on the kit. One, the plastic is rather thick ( just like the 41 Willys). Maybe not a problem, but opening the doors took some doing, also, the hood hinge "slots" needed to be filled and new hinges for the hood will need to be built (not a big deal) and Two, the kit has no fuzzy dice in it and Three, mine was also missing the kitchen sink. Ok, kidding about the dice and sink, this is a great kit. I did notice a lot of mold lines in the body that require sanding though. Again, not a big deal, but don't overlook them as they will show up bigtime once paint is applied. If this is the type of quality coming from Revell now, and in the future, I will be very happy. This appears to be a very well planned, designed and executed kit. I really love the fact that Revell got right into AMT's face with this kit. I always thought of the AMT 49 Merc, 57 Ford and 58 Chevy as the "classic" AMT kits. Now Revell has one done, one coming and who knows, maybe a Ford is in our future. I really can't wait to see the new '58 Chevy kit. All I can say is, get this kit...you will not be sorry. In fact, maybe we can have a (show, contest, good natured competition, build off, or challenge [call it what you want]) on the forum with this kit. ( I can't believe I said this) Lets face it, we are all building one or more of these kits, and it might be neat to post them on a "long distance" virtual "NNL Forum", say 3 or 4 months from now. There could be different categories like box stock, best paint, crazy custom, mild custom, you get the idea, just a thought, what do you guys think of this? Crazy? Stupid? Do-able?

[Matt T.]

Peter, that's totally do-able and a great idea. Just like the 1/12 Revell Choppers last fall, I suspect a lot of people will be building these new Mercs this fall.

Last year we set a February deadline for the builds (NNL West, IIRC) and the turnout was great with many builders submitting at least one build each to the MCM forum build.

I'm in for a Merc build.

[Tonioseven]

This is one that I think I must have.

[Tonioseven]

You're not a wimp, you're a real man that makes sure his family is well-taken care of and you should be proud of it

EDIT: I found 4 of the '49 kits at Wal-Mart today but I only bought one.

Edited August 18, 2007 by Tonioseven

[Ken]

Finally, I found them around here today. Of course, it was at the one wal-mart that I had yet to check. I also picked up a lindberg L-700 while I was at it. The merc already has a coat of paint on it. Artic Blue Metallic drying in the dehydrator as we speak. Don't know how I will finish it, but that will come with time.

[Ken Kitchen]

Richard,

I bet you were wondering what happened to me. I got busy and couldn't answer right away. Then I had a devil of a time finding your post again.

The latest news on FRAM is that we are probably going to be changing our meeting place. The current plan is that we'll meet once a month at Hobby Town south at Citadel Crossing and once a month downtown at Compleat Games. That is if we can get agreement from the stores. We've approached them and they are interested but it's not a done deal yet. Please send me an email to my home address at kitchen_table_resins@yahoo.com so that I can contact you directly. We'll also be posting flyers in the hobby shops when we get it arranged.

Thanks for your patience and sorry to have taken so long to get back to you.

Ken

[RMurphy]

Bob,

I bought three of them at the Walmart in Cumming, a while back. Was their yesterday and they had restocked.

[

qu

ote name='Zoom Zoom' date='Aug 8 2007, 08:31 PM' post='44412']

Okay, now take a deep breath...the kit gets "officially" released on the 15th, according to the Model Roundup. Soon everyone, even those w/o the elusive WM Mercs, will be able to get them. I quit doing WM expeditions long ago, never could find anything new/hot locally that I heard about people finding elsewhere. My local store has a ton of kits, but not the new Merc.

[Zoom Zoom]

Bob,

I bought three of them at the Walmart in Cumming, a while back. Was their yesterday and they had restocked.

I was at the Buford WM early last week and they had three Mercs and one of the Dodge L700 combo kits. The WM in Tucker doesn't have them. It's a great kit.

[ramonesblues]

I bought one of those '57 Chevy kits cuz i couldn't resist the price. The body isn't proportioned as well as I but I'd like but for the price, will make a cool gasser/ street machine. Also got two Mercs.I can't wait to carve them up!

[ramonesblues]

Geeze, I hate when my fingers stutter!