Russell C

Definitely a striking color.

x2. Will be interesting to see what ends up being used for the new headlights.

Tried to clear the neck of a Zap bottle into a tissue so it wouldn't have fluid to turn onto a clog. Just the sudden evaporation created the white vapor then the flash fire. DO NOT try that yourself. Meanwhile, another cautionary tale from first hand (pun) experience, when I thought It would work to make brake rotors by cutting thin sheet aluminum into four squares, drill a hole through the centers and then bolt them into a fixture that would allow me to grind off the corners so I'd have perfect metal circles. It did work out in the end, but a delay was encountered when I gripped the four squares between my thumb and index finger while drilling the hole. Let's just say I made it through the first three squares without incident, but upon going through the 4th, they all bound up on the drill somehow and starting spinning with the drill at 10k rpm or so. Four jagged and sorta parallel deep cuts on the thumb and finger, took a while to heal up.....

Ditto, and bookmarked for future replay. Nice of the van and two pickups to clear out of the way. I always do that at the first opportunity when something like that comes up behind me, and it is refreshing when random slow folks realize my old hotrod hatchback has a little more zip than them. Man, how I'd love to have that level of torque, tires and brakes under me....

Nuts. Every time I see this B-N-L thread topic, I can't help but think of the B-N-L commercials.

Good question. Being an old fuddy (still livin' in the late '70s) duddy who doesn't keep up with pop-culture cable TV shows, I had to look up who he was. I found this pic of him leaning against the car, but other Mustang & such forums suggested it could be a replica of the movie car. Unless my search skills are letting me down, I can't find any reference to the car right at his main web site. I surfed across a thumbnail pic of a black convertible undergoing that conversion, but now I can't find it. Here's someone else doing that conversion from a few months ago, though.

Sharp! Makes me nostalgic for the days when I saw something similar to it roaming around where I used to live. Senility these days prevents me from remembering what that was, but you've captured the look with this model.

Me, too. Drives me up the wall.... "Vincent: No questions. No answers. That's the business we're in. You just accept it and move on. Maybe that's lesson number three."

Very good, the remake with Pierce Brosnan. A brief write-up of that 'Baja' Shelby is here.

Meanwhile, how about the fake Shelby offroad thing here?

Ronin, some time after the point where the characters played by Robert De Niro and Jean Reno ambush the Russians and have to chase 'em down. The other chase later in the movie of De Niro vs Natascha McElhone must rank in the top 20 best movie chases.

Some progress, temporarily taped together for 'yall's viewing pleasure…. The basic problem with this model is that Aurora made it too chunky overall. Overweight, considering how delicate the full size car is. So, I put it on a diet, whacking out a significant amount of material from the bottom edges of the fender openings and bottom running board edges, reducing the length of the seat cushions, and most important, shortening the whole model right behind the vertical door edges by about an 8th inch. The too-tall radiator wasn't lowered at its top edge, I sliced off about a 16th inch of its bottom edge, removed material from the bottom of the inner fender edges in front of the radiator, and raised that 'pan'/front axle piece up into the fenders. The model was sitting too high overall anyway. Another 'weight' removal is the loss of the way-too-thick panel ridges at the back of the hood edges and where the back of the front fenders meets the front on the running boards. Finally the too-tall convertible top cover was reduced in height, along with that whole body area above the rear fenders. Along with those removals, I also removed the headlights from the grille, erased the molded on parking lights on the front fenders, erased the taillights, and filed down the bar ridges on the fuel tank. Perhaps the Gowland & Gowland (a.k.a. Highway Pioneers) little kit might have had more accurate proportions to deal with, but I still really like the rich red color of the Aurora kit's plastic, which shines up very nice.

I tend to favor going mostly original in my car ventures (some would call a few of my works http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/gallery_12144_1240_130902.jpg). But every once in a while I spot somebody else's infinitely clever model that I'd really like to replicate just to I can have my own copy of it. Cheaper than buying it from the builder, I'll bet, such as Michael Turk's "Das Heir Uber KerBoomerVagen" Red Baron bomb truck custom.

Bob Paeth, funny guy. I snapped this blurry photo at the 2001 GSL contest of his teddy bear-powered chain drive racer. If I remember right, he said the car 'body' was made out of a plastic razor shaver handle (sorta like this one).

Found 1 1/4 pages of mostly AMT truck kit announcements in the May 1971 Car Model mag starting at the bottom of pg 42, but it begins with the never-produced IMC Dodge LVT-1000 cabover that was mentioned by Tim Boyd in his modelcarsmag post here.

Always had a weak spot for 427 Cobras, and one of these days I need to get on with my V12 berlinetta project. Slightly annoying thing about all my various projects is how my photo & web link references come from so many scattered places. The link above is fabulous for having so much in one spot!

Thanks for the kind words, glad to prompt some of the inspiration your main project here. Thanks also for the parts offer, I'll have to figure out what I have to trade at some future point, parts all need to go to good appreciative homes. The Raider project is quite some distance down the road, but at least I have the front end for it.

No school like old school. Thought I'd use the occasion to dig out what remains of my original http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/med_gallery_12144_1240_329954.jpg, painted with what ended up to be a sort of matte finish Krylon blue. Many of the parts ended up in my http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/gallery_12144_1240_51429.jpg (which needs restoration). But as can bee seen in that first photo link, I still have plans for that original cab and a few of the leftover parts. But, that's likely a much-future project, at the current rate I'm going.

Harbutt Plasticine Ltd Bugatti Type-35. I completely forget where I found this one long ago. This site shows the set it came from, where there's a one instruction sheet for all 10 cars in the set.

4x4 custom station wagon. … van …... or something. Routinely parked in varying quantities beside the area where I go for afternoon bike rides.

Sectioned hood / heightened cab Dodge Bighorn I always thought the Dodge LCF trucks' front ends looked like a total 'just-throw-something-together design, so when I first saw the Dodge Bighorns, I liked the way the sides of the cab were carried forward along the hood sides in a proper way. Except Bighorns always seemed front-heavy, with the cab being too muted in size relative to the front. So, if I was to do something with the RMR resin hood, I'd knock out a section basically at the bottom front and lower the whole cab a corresponding amount, and then either use an entire AMT Ford LN cab or at least the greenhouse part of it, while keeping those distinctive Dodge door sides. Original pic of the truck below here.

From this page 48 of the old March 1971 Model Car Science magazine, the late Lou Kroack puts release dates on several of the AMT truck kits, as part of his article on the tour of the AMT plant. It takes a while to rummage through the rest of the MCS magazines at this guy's site, but in those various magazines, we can see the ads for new model releases. I forget which one had the Diamond Reo and others, but they are in there as ads or as announcements in Kroack's "Model Truck Corner" in the '71 and '72 issues. There's a few how-to articles for trucks in the Car Model mag scans as well. *sigh* Those mags were just a bit before my time, but not by much. Seems like it wasn't all that long ago.

Very cool, luv the old stuff from my youth. Now, If I could just inspire myself to create time to build 'em. Glad to inspire others, and Diamond Reos are my favorites overall.

Paranoia on my part. I usually gave up since all I had at my disposal was a pliers holding the bottle and another pliers twisting the cap off. They either opened or they were destined for the trash. Now, if I'd had access to a vice to hold the bottle and a pipe wrench.......

Press’n Seal®, never heard of it before. I'll have to get some to solve my own paint problem as well as to replace the worthless cling wrap stuff I try to use for my leftover food. And, despite all my years of model building, I wasn't smart enough to think of using solvent in the upside-down bottle threads. Brute force has been my friend most of these years, with the ever-present fear of twisting the neck clean off the bottle,