Russell C

Easiest paint removal ever! This is the '60 Buick I showed in the "What did you get today" thread on Sept 9, where I was wondering if the paint wouldn't come off without a fight. Turns out it already was feeling a bit tacky with a spray of 409 cleaner on it to clean off the grime, and after a coat of the spray can Easy-Off oven cleaner, the black washed right off with an outdoors water hose sprayer. Was almost the easiest disassembly ever, very lightly glued, except the headlights would not budge from behind, so I had to cut off the big bosses that the chassis screws pm to. Not enough clearance to pivot the grille / bumper out, otherwise. Had to break the bosses off the backs of the headlights and trim what was left flat to the body, and then use a long rod to punch them out to the front. They had a good grip to the buckets, but that at least saves their front faces from being marred, in case anybody will be needing them.

Recognized that build right off, but had to go digging through my old Owner Operator magazines to find it: No doubt your friend George was disappointed to come in second to me in Lou Kroack's July 1982 Tabletop Truckarama contest, to my '62 Peterbilt well driller. Knowing my own build quality at the time, if Kroack could have seen both of our models in person at the same time, George would have gotten 1st place. Yeah, I put a lot of effort into mine, but it could have been done much better. One of these days I might rebuild mine better, but additional time will have to fall out of the sky first.

Many would recognize the "Luv Machine" as the pickup that became a Revell kit:

'60 Buick out of a 2-bidder eBay auction where I got it for 50 cents more than the other guy. Helped my razor-thin budget that the (I assume) estate saler miscategorized it as "Pontiac promotional material" instead of putting it in the "Vintage model car" category, where these old buildups tend to become unaffordable for poor guys like me. No engine, missing one red lens, hood tough to fully close, has a heavy black brushed-on paint job that might be stubborn to lift off. Nice enough to not deserve a "glue bomb" label. Great to snag one with a usable enough body to lend to a street machine project idea I've had for years, was beginning to wonder if the main element was priced out of my reach.

I can see how. Had my fun shoving the chassis / wheels / engine of the '55 Chevy gasser under the Checker Taxi a while back. I should do a couple more mashups, they aren't too difficult ...

At first, I thought you were talking about the other Ford F-250 converted for use as an aeronautical craft ....

My search skills might be letting me down when it comes to dredging up the most current figures, and finding other corroborating statistics would help nail the figures down better. For example, this one page puts the total for fully electrics right around 3 million (many news items show big jumps of brand-new EV sales), while this other page puts the total vehicles altogether for all of Europe - lagging behind if I read that right - at just under 405 million for the year 2020. Unless my math skills are also letting me down big time, that puts the percentage of EVs in Europe at not yet reaching .75% of total vehicles. In that second web page above, their full PDF report has a page 13 to it that breaks out vehicles by fuel type (still lagging back to 2020), and unless I'm misreading it, their figure for all-electric cars for the European Union area is .5%, while gas cars were at 51.7% and diesels, 42.8%. Open to corrections and more firmly calculated figures, of course.

Does anyone know what the ratio of gas cars in Europe on the road vs EVs is?

Back in January I ran across another one of these, and was curious of I could minimize the 'excess length problem' by either shortening the back or lengthening the cabin into a 5-window version.

I recognize that one from an older Hemmings article I bookmarked into my links pile for custom pickups. Article says it is a "Gremlin Sport" but I'd add the word "Hornet" in front of that. Scroll down this page for the section about it: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2012/07/17/this-is-why-you-dont-feed-them-after-midnight

Well, I embarrassed myself big time and irked another guy in the process with overconfidence in my parking skills, but it turned out ok in the end. Backstory is that in AZ, some folks cluster into shade-tree parking spots despite their long distance from store entrances. Today, a guy was occupying all of the shade in his parking space and some in the space ahead of him, but I figured if I stopped within an inch of his front bumper, I could still get a decent amount of shade on my car. Problem is, I stopped more like 2 inches into his plastic license plate holder and busted one of its mounting tabs. He arrived mere moments later with his shopping cart just as I was getting out and was not pleased with this, or my initial attitude that I was certain I had stopped short of bouncing into his SUV - there's the aforementioned "overconfidence. After I saw what I did, I apologized at least twice - that's the embarrassment part. I offered to buy him a new plastic holder, but he let it go since he said his SUV was a bit of a beater anyway (AZ doesn't require front plates, and he wasn't displaying any decorative plate in it), and also said he did appreciate my apologies. Whew, glad that he didn't turn it into a Federal case, and the lesson learned for me is to err more on the side of caution when parking close to somebody in front.

About 'yay' much, if I could offer a photoalteration to illustrate that?

https://theminitimemachine.org/exhibitions/on-point-sculptures-on-the-tips-of-lead-pencils/ Saw the choo-choo example years back, entertaining hobby. "Lead" is actually graphite, of course, soft stuff. I'm tempted to try it myself, but I should finish some plastic model car projects, first ......

They are! Not mine, however, they are @tim boyd's visit to the Museum a decade ago, but the place hasn't changed much, apart from new acuisitions. Here's Dale Angel's video from 2015:

"A Visit to the International Model Car Builder's Museum" https://public.fotki.com/funman1712/model-car-events-co/international-model/

The media folks back east who bat this idea around in their newspaper/magazine articles and cable talk shows have never traveled an inch across the American southwest. There is no way that could possibly work out.

Some were displayed at the 2015 Salt Lake City GSL contest, MCM covered that in its Nov 2015 issue: https://www.gslchampionship.org/fisher-body-craftsman-guild/ The first 29 pages of this GSL PDF show for the overall contest show those Fisher models: http://www.gslchampionship.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/GSL-XXV.pdf

Is it this? https://www.motortrendondemand.com/show/steve-magnantes-super-models-motortrend/17083/

The June 9 post at the Model Car Builder Facebook page had this announcement about Pat Bibeau, a fixture at the Greater Salt Lake contests for multiple years. This link should be be viewable for people who don't have FB accounts, to read the entire announcement. Here's just the first 3 lines: Our hobby has lost another good friend, our prayers go out to his family & friends...Pat Bibeau August 31, 1941 - St. Boniface, Manitoba May 31, 2022 - Calgary, Alberta Pat passed away at age 80 years after a battle with cancer, which he fought with courage, grace, and his wonderful sense of humour. ...............

Thumbs up on the driving lights, not so much for the giant wood handle. Huge mudflaps with the tristar logo.

A.k.a. the "Sugga": https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/1953-58-volvo-tp21

I need another project like I need another hole in my head. But I also have a really soft spot in my heart for old good quality builds on eBay estate (?) sale-looking auctions that seem like they are being neglected by bidders. Got it with a single bid, $29 total including shipping. Seller had another dual engine roadster, which somebody else saved with a single bid: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275352028692 . Really dusty, all photos here are of it mere minutes after unpacking from the shipping box this afternoon. Apart from the huge sink lines in the door panels, it's still in very good shape overall for paint & build quality, no other major sink areas where the fenders were filled front & rear. Distinctive details are the quad headlights / oval grille opening, fuelie engine, one-piece rear window, and TV in the trunk. Judging from the wire "hinges" for the doors & trunk lid, they were meant to be displayed permanently open, so that's why I can't put them all the way shut. It should shine up nice, and if there's only one bit of remaining minor glue holding the body on, I might be able to pop it off to clean the interior. Can't say I understand what the "thing" is (looks like the pulley end of a 2-part alternator) n the oval grille opening area, or the choice of what appears to be unfinished taillights at the back, though. Anybody recognize it from ancient '60s model car mags?

The dimes you use for comparison keep getting bigger .... ?

My problem is I see things that aren't there. In this one, it's a combo of Jeep Gladiator and Bentley ....

Fortunately, the build I'm working on will have a different little windscreen if it ends up with one at all, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it when I cut out the grille shell for measuring how long my frame extension needed to be, but now that I look at it again ....... geez!