'70 Grande

FYI: Joseph is fully-recovered from his accident and Fireball is back-up and running. Ordered a 4-tire set of BF Goodrich All-Terrain tires and they arrived in one week... fabulous products!

Thanks for sharing this article. I had no idea that so many kits appeared in this series! Great look back; might inspire me to pull one of my kits from the series and bring it to active-status on my work bench!

FYI: Went to my local Hobby Lobby to browse the kits and when I got to the checkout was informed that as of 03-01-22, the 40%-Off Coupon has been discontinued and will no longer be available.

Here's how the chassis in my kit looks from the front.

Anyone have an issue with a warped chassis in this latest release? The warp on mine seems to start just in-front of the rear fender mount location and moves forward so the mis-alignment is quite big at the very front of the chassis. I doubt I could get a replacement from Round2 tho. Haven't tried correcting it with the hot water method yet as I'm kinda afraid it would be pretty easy to break. Thoughts anyone?

Wasn't aware that Round2 was bringing this Mustang kit outta the archives! I have an old built-up that is awaiting restoration but if this kit returns as originally produced I'll probably have to get one. It's interesting to see how the 3-spoke steering wheel is on the chrome parts tree; I can see a single wheel ring in the unplated parts that must go together making the finished steering wheel, unusual kit technology that isn't seen in very many kits.

Great looking build! Your paint, decal and details work is awesome! Ever since these Pontiac Lemans kits were issued, I have wondered if they are somewhat inaccurate when it comes to the overall size of the body... I thought the 1:1 Nascar Lemans of this era were an overall-smaller/mid-sized car with a shorter wheelbase and not as large as these kit bodies are, (as they were made to fit the pre-existing Monogram chassis). Anyone else have any thoughts regarding the overall size of these Leman's Nascar kit's?

Wow! Phenomenal build! Captures the 1:1 in every way! I admire your other sedan delivery builds as well; they all look stunning!

Having spent a good portion of my career in contact with retail product packaging artists, suppliers and printers, (and designing some packaging myself), I might suggest that in many cases product packages that seem like a "miss" become that way due mostly to time-constraints. Much time is invested in product development and production and as that comes to a finish, it's "Wait... what about the packaging?" This is certainly not the blame everytime, but many times it is... just sayin'.

Really like this build! It's funny how a first impression of a great build like this can sometimes bring an emotion or feeling to you right from the start. For this build, my imagination immediately jumped to being in the driver's seat and twisting this beast thru a whole series of curves at high speed... I can practically feel the stiffness of that suspension and the pull of that motor... fabulous!

Please do let me know... thanks!

In that case 1972coronet, do you have a use for that un-used dual-snorkel air cleaner from your hardtop kit, 'cuz if you don't, I'd be happy to trade you something for it!

A great looking build! I agree; this kit has some "issues" when it comes to getting it all together. How much work was it to open-up the vents in the cowl... that looks fantastic!

I'll be watching this one! My holy-grail kit that I've been searching for at a reasonable price for the last decade or more! If you got this built-up at $20 to $30, it must have been some time ago! Quite certain this kit will never be reissued. I like where you're going with this build!

Stunning build! Your fabrication, paint and decal work is outstanding! Please, post more of your builds here; we wanna see more of your exceptional work!

Snake, yes, I deliberately modified them because I always thought the factory stock rear fender's lower edges hung too low and look "dumpy". I appreciate the votes on my 3 build styles thus far; hoping to get some more input from other forum members.

Need thoughts and opinions. This '65 Chevy-II project started in my mind as a Gasser-build. Realizing that the intended 427 big-block motor wasn't going to fit, I changed directions and started working towards a small-block powered street machine build. Now, I'm leaning back towards the Gasser. Seen below are 3 pics. Pic #1: Street-machine rake on stock-height suspension parts with steelies all-around for the street, thin/stock Firestones upfront with tall, treaded Firestone's on the rear. Pic #2: Raised front suspension on leaf springs with thin/stock Firestones and tall slicks at the rear, all on steelies. No inner engine bay sidewalls. Pic #3: Same as #2 except going with tasty little 5-spoke mags upfront. Looking for your thoughts or opinions on what direction you think I should go on this project... thanks.

Fortunately it was not too complicated to get the firewall moved rearward and more accurately positioned as seen in the first pic below. One end result of that adjustment is now the engine bay sidewalls will need to be lengthened to reach all the way back to be connected again to the repositioned firewall, (gap seen in 2nd pic). Fortunately I have an extra set of sidewalls from the '66 Nova Pro-street kit that I can use to make this alteration.

Trimming back of transmission hump seen in the first pic and firewall gap for moving firewall back seen in second pic.

A WIP update: As seen in one of my previously posted engine bay pics, the '66 Nova's engine bay sidewalls and firewall were going to need some adjustments to fit this '65 Chevy-II body better. The major issue is getting the firewall moved towards the rear by about 3"-to-4"-scale-inches. Fortunately, I think I came up with a good solution. As seen in the following pics, I was able to cutback the outer-floorboard edges as shown in the first pic below, (cutback started at the bottom of the pic/uncut seen at the top of the pic). Second pic with cutout piece moved back and reinstalled.

Finished installing the factory-stock-positioned rear wheel openings to my '65 body; joints yet to be cleaned-up. I know some trim details are missing from behind those rear wheel openings, but I want to work on other aspects of pulling this build together before getting into the body details.

Stunning build! Paint color choices are excellent! I'm curious what the chrome pieces at the top/rear corners of the hood represent; were they small running lights of some kind?

The challenges are growing... the engine compartment of the '65 Chevy-II is shorter in length from the radiator wall back to the firewall than the '66 Nova. I really like how the '66 Nova's engine compartment walls look inside the '65 Chevy-II body, but now there's a bit more adjustment work to be done here. I expected this, but was hoping for a overall simpler-chassis-swap. Also, I have learned that the "Street-Freak" kit's 427 engine is going to be too big/long to fit... time to dig a high-performance 327 Corvette engine outta my parts box and do an engine-swap... the morphing continues. Also, because the drag slicks that I originally intended on using on my Gasser build are going to be a tight-fit in the rear chassis, I'm probably going to a more, high-performance street car project and scrapping the Gasser theme for this build. Any thoughts, suggestions, questions or criticisms welcomed.

I thoroughly researched where the factory-stock rear wheel openings needed to be located on my converted '65 body. For the chassis-swap, I wanted the factory-stock chassis from the AMT 1/25 1966 Chevy Nova kit as both 1:1 car's are the same 110"-inch wheelbase. Here's where the work begins, and the "morphing" begins as well! Turns out, probably due to these kit's being originally-molded decades apart, the kit wheelbase's did not match-up. The '66 Nova factory-stock chassis was probably a scale 1-1/2-to-2"-inches longer that the wheelbase for the '65 kit. At the top of Pic #2 below, it shows the amount I cut-out of the '66 chassis to gets things lined-up properly.

My initial plan was using the "Street-Freak" kit's 427 engine, but not with injector stacks; instead using a high-rise, dual-carb set-up coming outta that hole in the hood.