Russell C

Many thanks to our MCM member "rattle can man" for sending his '37 Chev grille and the surfer part of the lower decal sheet he had no need for, So, I could still use a minimum of one sheet of the top decal sheet in my initial post, if not two so that I could put three "Lemon Grove" logos on the surf truck project I have going.

Glued together the WWII-era Jeep frame today from an Italeri 24th scale Fire Jeep kit that I'd had in my parts pile since the 1990s (better late than never). Clamped on the axles temporarily to prevent the thing from turning into spiral parallelogram, now it'll sit overnight on a glass plate with a flat weight on top. The sink marks in the frame are covered over with super thin sheet plastic - they'll resemble welded-on patches to repair cracks. As for the Willys "Go Devil" engine, yesterday I chiseled off the simplistic molded-on starter / distributor / oil fill pipe (will replace 'em with better ones later) and lengthened both ends of the block, so today I finessed the edges to square up (or rectangle-up, I guess) with a now-shortened '41 Lincoln head I had leftover from a Danbury Continental diecast parts pile. Also lopped off the spark plug ends today and used a ball cutter to grind in clean divots for the plug wire holes that I'll drill in later. I figure if I can use up every last random part I've gotten over the years, put 'em all into finished projects, then I can quit model building. It'll take a while .. I've accumulated a lot of parts. ?

I always enjoy some Ferrari sacrilege.

Ah, the good ol' days of jacked up street machines. They were everywhere back in my day. Surprised the customer didn't ask for sidepipes on it.

Thanks! If you mean the condition of the 1969 box that came with the buildup, it is in amazingly good clean condition. If you mean my box art alteration in my separate thread on altered photos of projects I could do if I had more time / money, thanks, too. While waiting for the buildup to arrive in the mail, I did one more alteration to the newer version box art, to horizontally section the body at the belt line and bring the top area down to a level just above the rear fender tops. Theoretically doable on the model itself, but I'm not sure I can seamlessly pull that off since I plan to just polish the plastic instead of paint the body. It would be a bit dicey at the front hood area ...

Ditto!

I'd call that a significant improvement! Fabulous color.

So I'm reneging on the excuse I had last October when I put the potential project I photo-altered (along with a Gasser Angla coupe idea, basically just relocating the headlights into a much less frog-eyed location) into my concept illustrations thread because I didn't think I could find the time for it. Also seemed like every buildup / unassembled Thames panel on eBay was always $30 or way higher outside my poor man's budget, and the vibrant color I prefer was in the more pricey 1969-ish version. I'm lazy these days and would rather just polish the plastic than paint a body. However, this one showed up two weeks ago, and I was the only eBay bidder at $20 + shipping. Score! Arrived in the mail this afternoon, the only item missing is a door handle. The chassis / engine is close to being a glue bomb wreck (the front axle is really messed up), but the body is surprisingly free of any glue smears, which is all I need for the relocated headlights street rod project idea I have that'll be getting a different street legal chassis / drive train / engine.

PM'd a few minutes ago. I tend to always arrive into the MCM forum late at night. And in case anyone else has the decal sheet with the "Lemon Grove" / "Betty & Benny's Surf Shop" logos, I could use two sheets of that version.

Nice, colors worked out great! Headache rack addition might 'cure' the stripe problem on the back. Or a decal over the 'oops.' Story told to me by the legendary Don Emmons at one of the GSL contests was that he'd somehow caused a crack in the C-pillar of some race car he built, and there was no way to fix the crack and have the paint over the filled-in seam look good. But since it was a race car, he just put a big STP sticker over it and nobody was the wiser about the cracked area.

Got the PM - just the '37 Chev custom grille is all I need out of the AMT kit. Regarding the bottom decal sheet, just the surf-related images is fine if you want to keep the gauges, woodgrain bed, etc. I figure if anyone doesn't need the entire sheets of both Ford kit versions, the non-surfer stuff would be a bonus for me.

Ooph. Mousewheeled right past that pic in the Ford Gas Engine website on my computer, and now at first glance, the air cleaner on top could be mistaken as some far in the background farm silo building or something.

(August 5 update, just need the top decal sheet now, or two, since I'd need a 3rd "Lemon Grove" logo for the back of my project) Anybody not using the surf theme decals in the two somewhat recent Revell '37 Ford pickup versions seen in the composite pic below? I don't need the "Ford" emblems, whitewalls or license plates, just any and all of the surf theme ones plus the one wood bed planks rectangle. Also, anyone not using the horizontal thin bar custom grille in the AMT '37 Chevy coupe or cabriolet kits? <---- Received one! Got an idea for a custom surf shop rod where I could cobble together the various company logo decals into one name. Could use two sets of the "Lemon Grove" sheet since I'll need two logos on each side and one more on the back. The '37 Chev custom grille would be a nifty different look out front ... See my list of various items I have to trade, plus ask for any specific item you need that I might have which is not on the list: https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/176867-partsdiecastsdecalsetc-offered-for-trade-to-go-with-my-various-parts-wanted-posts/

From the BarnFinds website, a Hudson:

I'll admit I was worried on what direction you were headed after the choice of the 'safety orange' color (ya ain't from this side of the pond, are ya? ?) frame .... but now I see it with your stripes! Favoring the lighter of the two myself.

Coincidence here is that I first had found this current eBay old sawsall-shortened build of a gullwing. That one is a bit too much of a slice, and since I knew of "89AKurt"'s couple of contributed photos to that Mercedes outlaw thread along with his widebody mod of a Mercedes 190, I was thinking I should find that thread so that I could use the photo link leads in it to locate a "Cobra-ized" side view I could virtually shorten up a bunch. My photo alteration result is below, it looks feasible, but would represent quite a bit of body work on top of doing justice to fender flares which keep the basic appearance of the original Mercedes fender spear things. However, I need another complicated model project like I need another hole in my head ……?

The 1:1 photo reminded me that I was wondering what a factory quadlight '57 might look like. Good thing Ford stayed with the singles in this generation, probably...

Took me a while to remember where I saw one of those, it's in the first page of this guy's Fotki site of Western Star brochures: https://public.fotki.com/modeltrucks25thscale/truck_magazines/truck-and-trucking-/overdrive-truck-adv/western-star-advertising/august-1978-western.html

My old Canon inkjet printer puts out fairly crisp images, I used the above-mentioned PlatesMania site to generate and print out the personalized Utah plate for my "Backbug" entry in the GSL 2019 contest's VW 1300 Common Kit Class. (the 1659 is what I calculated the new engine cc figure would be for a 5-cylinder) But trained graphic artist that I am, I can generate plates from manipulated photos, and one of these days after I get my full retirement career act together, I could generate custom plate printouts for a modest fee … but that's still a future thing when the actual available time arises. Example here, couldn't resist the challenge.

Strange. Not seeing it in what pops up for me.

Where are you seeing that?

Zero problems for my sign-ins. Wouldn't use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome browsers if I was paid to do so.

A.I. - having no actual intelligence - cannot distinguish between the back of one car and the front of another, which might explain why it put what looks like a Galaxie back end on the front of this 'car.'

This body doesn't seem to lend itself to a good two tone look without adding additional chrome trim separators. Using an image borrowed off the internet, I can see the bottom sides and fins in a separate color without adding trim pieces ...