maxwell48098

Went to a toy show in Warren MI today and there were a couple of vendors selling them. One guy had them for $67 and the other for $65. A.J.

Asked the owner of the local hobby shop and he said he would be selling it in the $65 to $70 range versus a retail price of $80 to $85. That was a couple of months ago now.

Great looking builds. A.J.

That is truly impressive. A.J.

Not sure how many of you folks saw this, but it looks like Navistar will be building class 4 and 5 medium duty trucks for GM beginning in 2018. It looks like they'll use use GM engines and body on a Navistar rolling chassis. With Ram and Ford controlling 85% of the market, GM decided it needed to get back into that segment. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2015/09/30/gm-navistar/73079814/

I wonder why the model companies don't sell just the updated decals from their re-released kits? For $10 or $15, you could get the newer decals to use on an older kits sitting around or on a rebuild. I like these new decals but $65 is too much to pay for them. A.J.

Fantastic build. A.J.

Fantastic first ruck build. A.J.

Awesome build. A.J.

Very very nice builds. A.J.

Awesome build. A.J.

Very nice. A.J.

Another great one. A.J.

Wow! That really looks great. A.J.

Very nicely done. A.J.

I used to have a friend that worked at Ertl in Dyersville, Iowa. He told me back in the mid-'80's that these kits had very poor retail sales, and that the majority of these S-series kits were sold to International dealers who not only sold 1:1 trucks and equipment, but also sold farm toys, scale models and die cast replicas as well. I remember picking up a a dozen for $7.50 each from the local International truck dealership in suburban Chicago when I lived there. He was glad to get rid of them after sitting in his store for a couple of years and only selling 6 of them before my purchase. I actually used the chassis under some non-International resin conversions and fire apparatus. Still wish I'd not built them all back then and had a couple of them today. A.J.

Yes, we can be happy with kits while pointing out problems. It is when pointing out problems becomes an obsession to the point of implying that the kit tooling was copied is simply ludicrous. Others saying that the kit is so bad as to be not worth purchasing or building only hurts the prospects of future offerings in this series. A little rework to the grilles is probably in order, but compare these with the AMT offerings. Before I retired, I worked for DaimlerChrysler. We would gather with our German counterparts to focus on future joint "back shop" projects that could be shared across both companies. Too many projects died because our German counterparts focused on the 5% of the project that couldn't be shared rather than moving forward with the 95% that could be. The Germans would make it sound like this small area of disagreement was 90% of the project, not 5%, and as a result top management is Germany would kill the joint projects to the overall detriment of the company. Let's focus on the great aspects of these kits while noting that a few things are less than ideal, but not show stoppers. I won't be commenting anymore on this topic as it takes away from my building time which is far more uplifting than listening to bitches, not just on this board, but on others as well by the same folks. Life is too short and model building is a fun hobby. And after building for 60 years, I still love it. A.J.

There have been a lot of comments and insinuations about the Mobius kits being retooled AMT kits. If they were really based off the same tools, then the parts layout should be on the sprues should be exactly the same between the Mobius and AMT kits. Think about it, if Mobius were to be using AMT tooling then the same parts should be on the same sprues between kits. Another point was how similar the parts were. Shouldn't the parts be nearly identical if they are representing the same subject? I've also wondered over the years about the amount of detail (and related costs) that goes into some parts that are almost completely hidden by other parts. I would also think that if Mobius was just copying or re-using AMT tooling, there would be no reason to make any changes at all, much less subtle changes to parts on the inside of the part like the air cleaner. I'm in no way defending Mobius here but insinuating that they copied or use AMT tooling is really nuts. Look very, very closely at the similar parts shown above and you'll see what I mean. Similar but not the same, then again the subjects and the components involved are similar or in some cases the same between that generation of Ford trucks. Look at a Hollander interchange manual to see how the same part gets used across decades of the same manufacturer's vehicles. Things like frames, suspensions, etc. should be nearly identical even on kits from different manufactures because the real ones are.. Again while the Mobius kits may not be perfect, they are certainly better than the alternative at a price point that keeps them within reach of most modelers. Maybe detail could have been better on some items but then the cost to do that would have surely increased the cost of the kits. Look at the Meng F350. Extremely well done, but with shortcomings as well but at a retail price of twice the Mobius kits. Let's just enjoy these kits, and who knows if they are successful we may see other versions or revised versions of these in the future. Then again, how many complaints have there been about the grille of the Revell '64/'65 Chevy pickups compared to the 1:1, much less the correct one used by AMT on their '64/'65 lwb promos or the grille sold by Modelhaus. Let's enjoy these kits and be thankful, especially for the 6 cylinder versions! So far there have been quite a few of these pickups completed and the ones I've seen look great. A.J.

Neat little build. A.J.

Nicely done. A.J.

Wow that turned out great. A.J.

Bill Bitner was an extremely accomplished modeler of various automotive subjects. I always enjoyed his work and we conversed back and forth on several projects. Just remember that life is too short not to enjoy every day. A.J.

Very nice looking stock, low buck F100. A.J.

Looks fantastic. A.J.

Well, I've opened the two '69's and two '71's that I bought. I must be really lucky as my four kits have only so very slight flaws, mainly light sink marks in the top rear corners of the bed sides. And I also dropped this cab right onto the older AMT F350 chassis, so a small flatbed or 4X4 mini-pumper using the '69 cab and '78 chassis looks like it will be on the to-do list. One simple thing that I would have liked is to have the exhaust system be mutiple pieces as I like to fully assembly the chassis and paint it as a unit. Once the rear axle is in place, getting the single piece exhaust system in there is impossible, so I cut the tailpipe off a the back side of the muffler, then glue it back together after installation. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with these kits and hope Mobius isn't discouraged to not fill out this line of Ford kits. One thing I do remember from my days as a Ford technician in the early '70's is that the 300 CID truck six had the same external dimensions as the 240. We swapped a 240 for a 300 in my buddy's '60 Ford Wagon, along with 3 Webber sidedraft carbs. That thing had torque that would burn the tires off the heavy Ford wagon.