Stuntman Mike

@Ken: I´m on it. But it´s a real pain to get everything straight as an arrow for that shiny black paintjob...

Looking good Jonathan. Please don´t forget to remove the chrome trim from the wheel arches I´ve started the same project some time ago. It´s been sitting in the box like this for almost two years. This CBP makes me want to get back to it. Have a Tokyo Drift Monte Carlo in the same stage aswell.

Great built of my favorite movie car. I love Death Proof!!! When I built my model (http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=73739&hl=) I was constantly asked about the rubber duck hood ornament, too. I got mine from a fellow modeler. AITM has a resin model of the Mack truck and as far as I know they wanted to offer the hood ornament seperately. Try it here: http://www.aitruckmodels.com/pages/contact.html The tractor seat is a rather simple one-hour scratchbuild-mission. The sheet styrene can be "massaged" into shape and the recessed details can be die-punched with a piece of metal. The five round...things...in the middle were done carefully with a small drill.

Very nice work Alyn As far as strength of styrene leaf springs goes...it´s more than just strong enough. This AMT International Scout fell off the desk during final assembly. No leaf springs damaged, no shackles damaged and no bolts damaged. But the axle broke into three pieces. It takes some serious force to destroy the bolts. They are made from stretched sprue and you don´t have to worry about them. You can easily bend or break a stretched sprue. But try to shear it off. Not too easy. And I never worry about handling this model. It is definately less fragile than an OOB build. Guaranteed.

Manufacturers want as few parts as possible in a kit. Me and all the other "serious" scale modelers on this forum and other forums around the world are just 5% of the customers. Nobody gives a fart on what "we" want. Models have to be manageable for beginners (the other 95%...), not for us. That´s what they told us at the ROG headquarter. They appreciate our enthusiasm, but focus on beginners when designing a new kit. It will stay up to us to upgrade a kit to a point that pleases us. And I´m having loads of fun while making kit parts look better than OOB. There´s nothing easier than making a new set of leaf springs for a model... It just takes ten minutes to make the blobs disappear: Let´s just be happy that we´re able to upgrade and seperate our models from others. I like to have details that noone else has. Really...

May I ask what you did to make the model look dirty. I really like that used patina look.

Nice job on the trunk. While looking at the hinges, I gotta throw in an idea. I´m currently working on a ´69 A12 Roadrunner and have modified the hood to represent the fiberglass hood of the 1:1. Didn´t like the resin hoods that are available. However...the fiberglass hoods on the original have a structure underneath that I scratchbuilt with strips of balsa wood. Was a first timer for me to use balsa on a scale model and this experiment has put balsa into my list of great stuff. The biggest bonuses: Working with balsa and thin CA will never in a lifetime warp a hood or a trunk lid or whatever. Glueing sheet styrene or adding putty always causes warps due to the shrinking process. This will not happen with balsa and CA. It is a lot easier to bring it to shape and when you are done, you can glue the balsa into place and cover the surface with CA to seal it up and harden it. I will probably cost you less than an hour of work to scratchbuild the underside structure of the trunk lid. And this will hide the wire from the hinge also. I´ll take a pic of my Roadrunner hood if you are interested to take a look at the outcome.

I have accepted the issues with inaccuracies and found a good way to deal with it. Old bodies with new chassis and engine bays. Tons of fun while being challenged to make everything fit perfect. Got some projects going on. Here´s a ´72 Chevelle that I am converting into a ´71 model. Worn out AMT kit with shortened chassis from AMT´s 70 Monte Carlo: Frame in the bumper and just enough clearance under the hood: Shortened chassis and frame. The cut is hidden under the support bar of the transmission: More details under the hood and some inner fenders from Revell´s ´69 Nova: Current state in Tamiya Italian Red and dressed with Keith Marks decals: It took some head-scratching to figure out how to make it all fit together. But now everything fits better than you would expect. It will still take some time to get her done. Need to rebuild the grille and have tons of work under the hood. I decided to build a small collection of iconic muscle cars. Started with the Chevelle and is already followed by a ´69 Roadrunner body by Jo-Han on a ´68 Charger chassis from Revell. A12 spoiler alert: Does anyone know if I can use the automatic transmission from AMT´s ´71 Charger for this build? Hope you enjoyed some pics. I recommend to try it out. Take a cool old body and use modern stuff to turn it into something special. It´s a lot more fun and a lot more rewarding for me to build a model like this. Also keeps the cost down. Money for six kits in a year makes this a very affordable hobby to me. A hobby without inaccuracies...

After the Batmobile comes the Badmobile...

Revell is Not focussing on us rivet-counting "professional" scale modelers as we are just 5% of the consumers. It's a business focussed in making money and staying in business. That's what they told us when we visited the Revell headquarter in Germany last year. I'm fine with this situation and I enjoy to have room for improvements when it comes to building something specific. My showcase ends up with including some uniquemodels.

If you want to go as accurate as possible with the COBRA Merc, you need to go for the AMT kit and chop the roof by yourself. The Revell kit´s roof is too low. The scoop on the hood can be done with sheet as it is shaped pretty simple.

The lowrider parts in the kit are not "posed". There are different springs and seperate control arms to build it in any position you want. The F&F kit is a joke, but the Monte Carlo itself is a very nice kit. And it makes no difference which of the MC kits you choose to build a model of the movie car. It´s a boatload of work: remove all body trim remove inner fenders from engine bay install racing fuel cell and protection bar install roll cage complete scratchbuilt interior modify kit engine to look like Bill Mitchell´s "Hardcore 632" the roof and rocker panels are not primered, it´s bare metal as you caan see in the pic that was posted by Jordan White. Kinda hard to see from that angle. replace the grille with some PE inserts scratchbuild exhaust install correct 8-hole nascar rims and slicks never give up, it´s an AMT kit and you should have known what that means. I´m halfway through with my build of the movie car. Removing the massive trim on the body was a real task. Endless hours of sanding were needed to get a plain and smooth body. I didn´t touch it in over a year. Should get back to it and finish this monster.

I´ve seperated the badge from the decal. Just BMF the whole side marker thing, some clear orange and the tiny decal. Very easy and effective: These are the two builds that i did so far from Revell´s Nova kits: The kits are very nice to work with. For those who are into superdetailing: the ModelCarGarage PE grille for the ´72 Nova from AMT fits the Revell kit aswell.

JoHan's '69 Plymouth Roadrunner Oval Track Racer has such lights included in the kit. If you can't find someone in your area who has the parts for you, shoot me a PM. I don't need these parts and could send them to you.

I´d suggest to make the parts by yourself rather than messing around with pricy parts on "fleaBay". I was looking for the transkit by myself for a while and I´ve searched for as much information as I could find. After seeing a few builds with a transkit, I didn´t want it anymore. I didn´t like the fit and the quality of the resin parts that I have seen. I ended up making the parts from sheet styrene and it looks way better/sharper/crisper than any Mad Max resin stuff that is available out there. It wasn´t even difficult. I realized there is an odd thing going on for some time now. People start to forget about their scratchbuilding skill because there is too much aftermarket stuff available. It took me two evenings to make the parts for my model. In the end this "feels" much better than buying expensive resin stuff, which probalby needs the same amount of time to make the parts fit and look good on your model. No pun intended, just a heads-up suggestion about getting back to the roots and creating something to be proud of. Best regards, Kevin

I was never a fan of the corvettes, but I have to admit that this one looks so good that I want one for my own collection. I love the way you have done the rear quarter panel design. It perfectly follows the lines of the body. Without the blue field on the door's front half, I'd call this a perfect car-matching paintjob. I also like the stance of the car. Looks totally convincing. What kit did you use for your build?

Yeah, Quattro. Probably the most iconic German car, especially the S1 rally versions. I like the golden version, never seen one built in that color. Here´s some turbo-charged 5 cylinder wellness noise for your ears. Crank up the volume and appreciate the shivers and that other thing that feels like cold water running down your back...: Some kind of yes. There is someone who didn´t care for the Audi fenders and added some scratchbuilding instead. The finished body went to Scaleproduction in Germany and is now available as a resin transkit (for a limited time!!). Judge about quality for yourself: http://www.scaleproduction.de/product_info.php?info=p1861_v-w-golf-2-rallye.html&XTCsid=f31458b813892c092ca81d215b8ac964

Agreed. I cut away the pins and drill holes on my distributors, then the wires are glued with CA to the distributor. The holes in the cylinder heads extend into the hollow engine block. This allows you to forget about the nightmare-part of cutting each wire to a correct lenght. Excess wire just disappears inside the engine and you´ll have an easy job on a pleasing alignment of the wires. There is no more glue needed, the wires will stay in place forever. You can also cut the ends of the wires at an angle with a skalpell. It´ll make it easier to quickly insert the wires into the distributor holes before the CA starts to set. Just dip the tip of the wire into a small drop of CA. That´s enough glue to keep the wires in place. You don´t want to mess up your work with too much glue.

Hello I need to strip an old set of weathered AMT big rig tires. The guy who gave me the tires said that they were done with Revell´s aqua color paints. How can I remove that stuff without killing the vinyl tires? I´ve never done this before with tires. Any advice is much appeciated. Kevin

Nice build of a great kit!!! A little note: The license plate on your model is German, not Dutch. The small "D" on the blue background stands for Deutschland (Germany). Dutch vehicles have yellow license plates with a "NL" for Netherlands. "HF" in your license plate stands for the area around the city Herford. A lot of models from Revell of Germany have HF license plates as the Revell headquarter is located near Herford. I live in that area aswell and have a HF license plate on my car. It´s a 15 minute ride to get to Revell from my home. I frequently go there to buy second-rate quality kits. These are boxes with very small dents, but undamaged kits inside. Everything 50% off, great for parts cars.

My first thought when I saw that body was a BAJA style race car. Modern high-end racing suspension and a cool oldschool paintjob. Just to be different. Like this one: http://www.google.de/imgres?client=firefox-a&hs=ONi&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&biw=1333&bih=628&tbm=isch&tbnid=he4q-tVjrOTXkM:&imgrefurl=http://bringatrailer.com/2012/03/04/james-garner-baja-rig-1970-oldsmobile-442/&docid=dFHtU60Sm0iuWM&imgurl=http://bringatrailer.com/wp-content/plugins/PostviaEmail/images/1970_Oldsmobile_442_Goodyear_Grabber_James_Garner_Baja_NORRA_Race_Car_For_Sale_Front_resize.jpg&w=580&h=386&ei=mmZ6UeD0HoiYPduAgcAF&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=195&vpy=117&dur=35&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=162&ty=116&page=2&tbnh=139&tbnw=207&start=18&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:31,s:0,i:182 On such a big body you could easily istall a suspension like this: http://www.google.de/imgres?client=firefox-a&hs=ONi&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&biw=1333&bih=628&tbm=isch&tbnid=bVhvRTZhdOFBnM:&imgrefurl=http://blog.dragonfireracing.com/2010/10/28/dragonfire-racing-set-to-defend-baja-1000-title/&docid=uoJdh18xdlnPbM&imgurl=http://blog.dragonfireracing.com/wp-content/uploads/DFR_Baja_1000.jpg&w=350&h=228&ei=mmZ6UeD0HoiYPduAgcAF&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=419&vpy=289&dur=908&hovh=181&hovw=278&tx=156&ty=97&page=1&tbnh=141&tbnw=221&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:107 And for the paintjob I´d suggest something that pops. Sometimes airplanes are good for inspiration: http://www.google.de/imgres?client=firefox-a&hs=NA3&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&biw=1333&bih=628&tbm=isch&tbnid=g5maSKmnQyfyUM:&imgrefurl=http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image17574.html&docid=9VgrO_FwYBxODM&imgurl=http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/uploaded-images/2008-6/18/17574.jpg&w=1024&h=702&ei=dmh6Ub2wCsHAO_2LgBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=619&vpy=111&dur=9300&hovh=186&hovw=271&tx=123&ty=91&page=2&tbnh=135&tbnw=197&start=18&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:0,i:179

Wow, the Tempest is beautiful man. I never seen this one before. Great looking model!!

Thanks Roger My Pinto is a ´77 aswell. As it was a messy glue bomb with broken and missing parts, I needed to do some work on the Pinto´s explosive rear end. Luckily I walked away alive with no injuries...the model didn´t explode... I built the rear window and trim, the trunk lid, the backlights and the little spoiler from scratch. I never liked the runabout style rear window, so I´m just fine with that being done. I should have taken before-pictures, it looked terrible when I got it.

Agreed, the Tamiya kit is great. A detailed engine is included and the fit is great. I think there were also some self adhesive PE emblems included. I´ve built one when I was a youngster, so I´m not too sure about the emblems.

Nice builds guys. The Citations are really interesting, I think I´m gonna go after one of them.