Russell C

On a few occasions for my GSL Contest entries, I printed out the backstory, where it was a great excuse to pass off some of my shortcomings on the build as actually being exact replication of the shortcomings of the 1:1 vehicle I was "replicating." Here's the printout from the Under Glass thread for my backwards VW bug (I really should have budgeted more time to do a better paint job).

'76 Chalet #0589 in the top pic, '77 #1460 in the bottom pic. Mentioned this somewhere else here at MCM, but for new folks, I'll repeat some of it: I used to own #1747 'til I needed the money more than a big no-ideal-available-place-to-fix-it-up rig. I am the current caretaker of the very old blazerchalet website (paying the bills to keep it online) and I have my hobby fun trying to keep track of every one of these ever made, supposedly only 1,780 (figure comes only from this 1979 article's 2nd paragraph - GM lost the figures for the GMC Casa Grande version, but has said they made 1,555 of the Chevy versions). Another 'custom' that just came up for sale yesterday with 80+ reference photos is Chalet #0258 in Texas. Myself, I thought the only class win I perhaps could achieve at the GSL contest would be in Factory Stock for one of these, but I never got past figuring out whether the Monogram Blazer / Jimmy was more of an accurate basis then the MPC Blazer or the Revell one. Snagged all three as cheap eBay buildups about a decade back, and that's all the farther I ever got …

Don't know how I missed that one top kit back in the day. Must-haves for every offroader; an axe, a shovel .... and a cannon.

No clue. But I could say that if the thing was sectioned with a bit of a top chop and lowered somewhat, with more beefy rear wheels, it might look something like this.

Here's a 2-day old link update which can be read without logging into FB, you just have to click the gray X circle to get rid of the login box ..

If I was a better illustrator (I am not), the story I'd concoct is that Steve actually only turned an old cement mixer into just a cab-only rod, and shortened the donor victim's wheelbase.

I fully empathize. Without naming names, a particular someone I knew was essentially ordered by the doctor to take blood pressure-reducing pills and was advised to learn to relax. Said person did not, and late on, while on a rant about an item where the rest of us would say, "Really?? Are you kidding me?", said person then proceeded to have a fatal hemorrhagic stroke … and that was the end of that.

As if I needed yet another project … but I have a soft heart for unloved glue bombs which might end up tossed into the trash by estate salers rather than being relisted on eBay at slightly lower prices. So, I was the one-bid winner for this $20 one, which arrived in today's mail. Similar to my '62 Ranchero speedster rebuild, I can see where the original builder was going on this one, but what it needs is the rear wheels to be moved back to a more aesthetic position, and a hood with holes for the air cleaners (they are a tic taller than where the hood surface would be), and much neater build execution. While waiting for it to arrive in the mail, I altered the seller's eBay photo to see how it might look better with a hood, chrome instead of gold caps, and a bit more subtle teal tone color. Might actually need custom wheels, considering the hood cutout = more of a hotrod or sporty car. I can hide the back wheel arches with the fender skirts that came with my years-back '58 Pontiac glue bomb eBay parts car purchase, and the better-than-average '60 Buick I got in 2022 just for its front clip might contribute some items, too, such as the back bumper.

For a short bit there, I thought I might have learned something about an uncommon abbreviation for "national." But in this Acronym Finder, that word is not among them. "Never Never Land" is, though. When it comes to the real abbreviations for "national," this page says Nat’l. Natl. Ntl. Nat. NTL Meanwhile, I forget which airportit was where I had hours of layover time to kill, but I do remember how that was a good time for watching all of Doug Whyte's Model Car Muse video on the formation of the NNL, quite funny.

That's unfortunate. I don't log into my Facebook page much, but it appeared the last couple of times I looked in, that he was flying right along with his build of a Titanic model. Many hopes for the best possible recovery!

Welcome! As a Yank growing up in the vast open American West with not refined enough knowledge of the UK, I had to look that up. Seems that a common structure style in the smaller towns is a form of really long tan stone two-story residential buildings.

This afternoon in the land where snow and subzero temps are not a huge concern ...

Seems auction sellers are uploading more and more photos of their cars to the Bring a Trailer site: https://bringatrailer.com/search/?s=1959+Pontiac

Nice! (bought that kit for the wheels alone that are on my avatar 911 wagon)

Mike Siegman was at the last GSL contest in SLC, he actually helped me figure out the light rail ride from the airport to the hotel.

Did not know that, I have no math sense, so my guess that that the two scales were always out of alignment. Worst I've ever experienced is 8°F, where my oil probably wasn't exactly equipped to be that cold, so it sounded like my engine was grinding up ice cubes when I first started it up.

Molded in a form of red plastic that bleeds through even the toughest type of paint primer.

Finally one I know in an instant, except for the precise year.

It's been done, actually, but in small scale diecast: http://dev.toywonders.com/ProductCart/pc/Greenlight-Gulf-Oil-Kenworth-T2000-Transporter-2017-1-64-scale-diecast-model-car-Light-Blue-Orange-29929-p21102.htm

Brian Croft here beat me to the punch way better than I could have done with the link to the Feb 2018 thread which I must have missed. Great suggestions within it! My late father gave me a mini-lathe with a variable speed drive, so that's what I'll use to spin tires, vinyl or some 2 piece plastic slicks that I got from MCM's Dan Doane where I can turn straight grooves into the plastic ones. The home-made cradle for a cordless drill sure looks handy for slowly spinning large model car pieces.

This is something that I've thought about but haven't tried yet. It might work best on a tread where a wide flat center section would not look out of place. Using some form or another of plastic, I'd find a way to 'lathe-turn a dowel so that the widening center section is the diameter of the tire, while the two outer areas are cut down just enough to be the inside diameter, thus giving me areas to superglue the split tire sections onto. Or, I suppose just a straight dowel section could be cut down to match the inside diameter, and the widened section in the center could be a strip cut out of a donor tire and all three could be glued onto the dowel. Do it right, and the added center section could have the deeper levels on each side, making the graft much harder to see.

Thanks to all for the kind words! As with many models, it's not actually finished. I worked 24 hours straight before the flight up to Salt Lake City, and even then didn't have two last little details done, one was to machine the aluminum rod spike on the helmet into a more refined shape, and the other was to make a bungee cord to secure the triplane to the pedestal at the back. Took some stretched yellow sprue along with a bit of yellow electrical wire on the flight, but both didn't work out well in the hotel room, so I just left that off. So the goal is to find a helmet in better chrome shape (ignore the scratches on the passenger side), find some actual vintage decals for the helmet instead of the adhesive back paper printouts here, and make a bungee cord out of something that stays put.

If only real life would not get so much in the way that it shoves hobby time almost completely aside. ..... So, all I could bash out this year was my entry in the GSL final contest in Salt Lake City to go in the Common Kit (Revell '29 roadster) Class. A couple of glue bomb salvages off eBay minimally provided the plane, helmet roof, fuel tank, and the two sets of exhaust headers I needed because I just could not resist turning the Revell V8 into a slant 7. The machine gun is a GasPatch Models 32nd scale 3D printed Spandau which I sprayed with a DutchBoy chrome can, left over for years in my dad's garage (use up the good stuff when you can!) No easy way to realistically hollow out all those exhaust trumpet ends, so they are capped with a one-piece sheet for street legal use with a collector pipe underneath and out the back. The excuse for the whole thing was that the little triplane in the original Tom Daniel Red Baron seemed to be included in the kit as an unrelated afterthought item, while here I incorporated it into this build to be a 1/3rd scale radio control plane which is hauled to the hobby airfield on a really snazzy show rod. Call it a "what if?" version where Tom Daniel and Monogram had the same idea, but used a '29 Ford instead of a T bucket. Since the official GSL Contest entry photos are way better than my photography, that's what these are, except for my own inset closeup of the 2D Snoopy paper-printed pilot and the photo-reduced R/C airplane magazine on the back end of the flatbed.

Yep, a "very nearly there, but not quite" for me. Entirely subjective opinion, but if a zillion dollars dropped out of the sky where I could buy it or have someone replicate it, I'd go a couple of increments more toward widebody flares for the back fenders, and put ordinary old stock headlights back in. I can imagine black on black fine, but gloss on the body and just flat on the bumpers and other former chrome stuff. Can't guess what the glowing toaster element is for at the bottom of the radiator, though .....