Russell C

Could it be that no kit or promos were made of the '80s GM N-body Pontiac Grand Am / Buick Somerset / Olds Calais? '80s widebody fan that I am, the IMSA race look option would be nice in such a kit.

Really old, but still cool to me the way it was set perfectly to a TV theme song. How to survive no less than 3 PIT maneuvers. Or 4 if the last swing around counts.

I'm bad that way, too, where I'd love to sink into the seats of this one ... but I'd add extra ponies just to give it a bit more zip that it might have been a tic short of at the factoryL https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1977-chrysler-new-yorker-brougham-3/

Ditto, and following, in order to borrow many of your detail points. I told in my Dec 6 "What didja get today" post how I got a "missing major parts buildup" of these and have evil plans to turn the back half of it into a fictional massive fender flare car body / F1-ish combo. I have my fun doing such comical things, such as my V7 4x4 top fuel dragster, and my 'use-the-available-1:1-engine-reference-you-have' NASCAR Mercedes. The objective is "technically accurate totally incorrect," allowing me to take some liberties here & there, but my goal is nevertheless to avoid the situation where a knowledgeable modeler would look at my blasphemous abomination and say, "Well, that's funny and all …. but you've hooked up the water pump backwards." Since I don't hardly have the first clue what I'm looking at, your kind of reference material is very valuable. Having finally found the time today to disassemble a bit of this old buildup, I was impressed to see that the lone driveshaft it came with has fully functional U-joints!

Our own "89AKurt" had this foil reflector tip back in 2018. I'm almost out of round kit headlight reflectors that I bought from some guy eons ago, so I'll need to try out this solution soon ...

Squashed like a bug. I know where there is a squashed Crosley pickup. Don't know how my dad ended up with it in the first place, all I know is that in the woods part of our property, the poor thing was laying on its side with the chassis separated a few feet away. Don't have a particularly clear memory of it since I was only 7 - 8 years old at the time, but the impression I get is that it was originally a wagon like this with the back part of the roof removed. Don't think it had a rear cab wall. Anyway, relatives and their kids came to visit, didn't know we owned it or that it was on our property, and their kids smashed out all the windows. Mom declared it to be garbage that must be thrown out, so somehow it was loaded sideways onto my dad's new '72 Datsun pickup, and off we went to the county dump where I watched the bulldozer driver mash the cab flat with his blade. Couldn't watch the rest of the carnage. Should be under the dirt right around this area, square in the center of the view.

Following. thanks for the mention back in your first post, and no idea how I managed to miss this thread back at the start. Do love such mashups, I kept one other guy's illustrations on such things. Great (or warped?) minds think alike? The cheap V12 Matra buildup I showed on Dec 6th in the "What didja get today" thread will be a donor for a similar but different project, classic American car front end to be announced at a later date ....

My wire scrap ... in classic kit boxes. Came from everywhere over the years, mostly dead electronic devices. Other folks through out dead DVD players & computer printers, I disassemble 'em because I see model car parts in 'em. Don't remember what the brake lines came from in my "Snoopy Steals the Red Baron" - second photo here - but it was the combo of right diameter and soft enough for easy bending but stiff enough to hold its shape. However, the TJ Models insulation wire I bought eons ago turned out to be perfect for the spark plug wires, a neat shade of red. So, commercial-bought wire is fine, too.

Yesterday's arrival for me was a free plastic cone-shape piece for a future cement truck comedy act. Today's arrival is more elaborate and fun, a nicely priced $25 + shipping eBay score. I spotted this one around a month ago, the seller misID'd it as an Indycar, looked like '60s F1 to me, but probably not a Ferrari. The seller had a tape measure next to it showing it as a foot long, so via a combined internet search of the "Matra" lettering on the valve covers plus my guess of it being 1/12 scale, it turns out to be a Tamiya or Ebbro Matra MS11, confirmed by our own MCM forum's John Brolin in his ongoing buildup of one of these. Never heard of the Matra team, I'm more of an early '90s F1 fan, so I learned about how spiffy their V12s were, plus it was a French team with blue cars. Who knows what the long-ago builder of this one was thinking on painting it candy apple red. I alerted the eBay seller what this was, he fixed the title/description in his first listing. No bidders in that one or the 2nd, same happening in its 3rd relisting, so I just could not resist on the last day. Single bid win! It's missing the nose / radiator, but that's ok, I have alternate plans that I've been kicking around in my mind for a long time based on computer illustrations like what's seen in the bottom image from a guy who combined exotic cars with F1-style exposed engines. Seen that similar idea drawn by another illustrator, plus there was a image right here at MCM a decade+ ago of a C10 Chevy pickup with major F1-syle enginework out back. A cheap 18th scale (close enough for government work / custom work!) diecast American classic car is "in the mail" to me.

Got a tapered plastic cone today. Found it where house building contractors had thrown a bunch of scraps into a dumpster, might be a cap end for PVC pipes or something. What I've been thinking for several years after I won a pile of glue bombs in an eBay auction, is that I could use a cone shape like this for the one really forlorn-looking 32nd scale Pyro Ford Model T Coupelet that was included in the pile. (I couldn't bring myself to toss it out because … save the gluebombs by any means possible!) Now, with this cone and a bit of re-shaping and 'angle work' to the roof, and some other scratch built mixer machine items, I'd be able to prove Steve Scott really did use a T truck cab from a 1915-era cement truck to make his Uncertain T. 😂 Mixer drum probably needs to be a tic shorter, and have a tic smaller diameter front section made from an old film canister or similar diameter thing like a small aspirin bottle.

?? You might be thinking of someone else. My Sept 2 irk would more likely start with an "N", as in nutcase.

Elvis would at least get the person sorta back on track for the season. But this is the same increasingly irrational neighbor (with equally similar visiting relatives) across the street that I described in my Sept 2 irk. White, red and neon super bright green lights right now would at least make sense for the next 4 or 5 weeks. But this 6 months-out-of-date show makes me wonder if the resident is not right in the head. With my luck, the person would instead start blaring Yankee Doodle Dandy music or the William Tell Overture and start firing off roman candles.

Since I'm a stickler on "Christmas starts after Santa arrives at the end of the Macys parade," it's a little bothersome to me when folks put up their Christmas lights barely into November, but that isn't the irk. It's the display of the neighbor across the street. Her all-LED lights are up now a day early, red and white - Christmassy colors so far - but the 3rd color is best described as 'nuclear-reactor-meltdown-radioactive blue.' Super bright. It looks like the 4th of July over there.

My one-and-only daily driver didn't start out as a classic, was only 7½ years old when I got it in late 1993, but with just the exception of the last two years in a row (local obligations interfering) and with one other school attendance obligation, my annual summer vacation road trips to SW Colorado have always been around 540 miles each way. Replace the items that wear out, and they just keep on going. Will celebrate its 39th birthday sometime next year. Really needs new paint these days. I'm poor, however; accepting donations - just remember to make the checks out to "Cash." 😂

Got jagged scraps and sorta roundy scraps ... 'cause ya just never know when one of those will come in handy in this hobby.

You'll shoot yer eye out, kid!

Fixed a little, maybe. Front wheels farther forward, back end truncated, and a bit of sectioning above the beltline. No clue what the make/model is, though .....

Where I go vacationing in Colorado in the summertime, soft dents only on the front = sudden deer or elk encounter. Soft dents everywhere and no windows? Likely a very angry human.

No use for "oil" or "smoke" switches, but probably could use a "hindsight" switch in my daily driver 38 year-old VW GTI. How you folks across the pond can drive cars with center mounted manual gear shifters is beyond the comprehension of hopelessly right-handed drivers like me, thus I'll gladly be able to drive Bond's Bentley.

Older post, don't know how I missed it, glad it was brought back up. Fabulous work!

For model cars, the question is whether you build a vintage kit, and wreck its unopened box collector value, or leave it unopened. For vintage food, I can personally attest regarding a somewhat vintage but otherwise mint condition box of Kraft macaroni & cheese, it was not a terrible idea to go ahead and cook it up and eat it … it just wasn't that great of an idea, either.

A couple years back here at MCM, a different person asked about Hank's, and I had a go at trying to see if his pages had been archived somewhere. I think he may have prevented the Internet Archive site from doing crawls of his pages, but I thought I'd have another look into a different archiving page. Check this one out -- scroll down its page and click on (if you are using a mouse & computer) the individual truck maker names. Works for me, I see loads of IH pics, but first I have to jump through its hoops of doing a verification to make sure I'm not a bot. (edit: It looks like some of the clickable truck makes like the one for Kenworth divert to a pointless site with a far east language, but others like Mack show Hanks old pics at least as smaller thumbnail pics, but if you click on those to see the larger image, they divert to the pointless site instead) https://archive.is/gElQE

Turned out great right up to the point of the giant flashlight strapped to the top of the engine ...