Russell C

Fun thing about this hobby for me is getting hit in the head with a tip like that. I've used pearl paints, but the faulty notion stuck in my mind was 'pastel-paint-for-license-plate-backgrounds', when of course in 1:1 scale they are not pastel, they're reflectory..... like pearl paint colors. D'oh!

Welcome here, and this would be the place to acquire a seemingly infinite amount of tips and shortcuts for recreating scale replica stuff, along with attendance at any variety of large or small model contests. What I've seen over the years is that just about every modeler is approachable and more than willing to share such information, whether it's a person who only started building a couple of years ago to the guy who has two grand champion Best of Show awards under his belt. The other fun thing to discover is there is often more than one good way to achieve a scale model effect. For example, over in a thread about creating thin piping stripes for seat upholstery, I tossed in my tip, but read about another that I hadn't thought of and might end up using instead.

Evil Andy knows I'm a slave to temptation regarding the running joke I have for the GSL contest's "Group" category. Could be done, should they choose this model, in a hokey tractor-like manner. Wish I'd saved a photo from an ebay listing I saw a couple of years ago where somebody did up a nice 1:1 kit car dragster version. Found a different 1:1 with just the standard Chevy V8: http://www.britishv8.org/MG/EdLaBrush-MG-TD.htm

911 Turbo woody wagon, narrowed '39 Chevy panel roof and a bit of scrap plastic to 'square up' the back end. Cheated on the wood by cutting 'n pasting portions of a magazine photo of some guy's cherry wood bar onto this. The lighter wood trim is from a magazine photo, too. Also did a virtual mock-up of an Aston Martin shooting brake using my CorelDRAW program, but this is as far as I plan to go. If anyone wonders what could be done with the Tamiya Aston kit, here y'go.

So far, the silver on the radiator/headlights and the black on the convertible top cover soften up overnight soaked in 409 cleaner, and scrub right off with a toothbrush. A quick Google image search for Gowland & Gowland MG TD confirms this is not one of those, while a UK site I found does seem to confirm what John says above about this being an Aurora kit (we have to ignore the box art, the model is a right-hand drive...... unless there were British and American versions). But what that site says about the thing having real rubber tires is I believe an error. While the tires are a tad softer than the red plastic, they also have die punch marks on the backs, so I'm thinking they are vinyl.

The '89 Turbo coupe I fell in love with at the Porsche dealership I drove by every day was a deep metallic blue/gray or gray/blue, depending on how the lighting was outside. For http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/post-12144-0-51293100-1373871875.jpg, I at least wanted to get as close to scale size metalflake as possible, so I settled for one of the Testors gunmetal metalizer airbrush paints. Sometime later I discovered some nail polish pearl colors really look like 24th scale metalflake, so that's an option to consider.

Saw it recently on ebay for less than $4, it looks like a 1:32 scale, no kit maker's markings on it anywhere, don't know a thing about it other than the seller said it was "built in the late 1950's or early 1960's". The inspiration for getting this is the late Albuquerque Model Car Club builder Rick Wright's old polished plastic box-stock beauties. This model's blemish-free plastic color just seems to beg for a really good shine-up, and a much better build execution. (photos by the ebay seller of it assembled) A Google image search of these helped me figure out why the seats looked weird, whoever built this put them in backwards. They have a single backrest and two seat cushions. With the dash, I've discovered the black paint quickly dissolves with 409 cleaner, but the white.... not so much. Haven't tried removing the silver paint yet. Unless someone convinces me to do otherwise, I'll put in a couple of corrections, one for the too-long wheelbase (shortening the space behind the doors) and the height of the grille (removing some of the bottom edge of the fenders to bring that inter-fender pan up and removing a horizontal section of the lower grille). A few more refinements such as headlights with reflectors & lenses, clear red taillights, new windshield, and a nice tan interior along with some other bits ought to turn this into a nice little gem. Looks like the kit maker got the grille too tall and the front fenders' inner curves to the frame too vertical, so this model ends up looking more like the earlier MG TC at the front. Can't fix the fenders without a ton of work, though, but I can probably get away with just the shorter grille. Reduced it to its elements here, the whitewall paint on the tires chipped off very easily. Really brittle glue, it all came apart without major difficulty.

Irish. Or Irish.

Had to dig out my stalled dually project dating from 1990-ish, mostly as an excuse to be notified when more pics of that CAT Chevy racer are posted.

I'll drop by for the usual truncated visit. Care & feeding of my elderly parents tends to always occupy my weekends,

I'd commission a full size one just like that. A much better sounding one then the garden-variety tractors out there.....

I was alerted to the show by a relative after the bit aired, but I found the online version here: Antiques Roadshow, Detroit, Michigan | Hour 2 (after the obligatory advertisement, of course) Pull the time slider over to the 22 minute 55 second spot at the video link above, that's where the TV host goes over to the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum to see these models.

Yep, it was a bit before I fell into that running gag..... (borrowing Kurt Womack's photo in that link)

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. I still have a few bits of leftover interior pieces out of it.....

Back in 1986, I traded/sold off nearly all of my leftover 25th scale truck stuff in exchange for a bit of cash and two kits: a Monogram Folgers Monte Carlo and the kit that's the basis of this model (brownie points to any who can identify the make & model + what the kit was). Don't ask me what prompted the 'hobby career' switch from sane model trucks to wacko model cars. I like to have some fun messing with people's minds, I guess. I'm more of a Ford NASCAR guy than a GM one, but the body lines of this one seemed to be a nice (although utterly impossible in reality) fit at the time. But "why stop there?", is what I thought, so I gathered up what I could find out of SAE 1:1 reference photos and did the best I could to replicate the wiring and other detailing found in Cup cars circa the mid '80s. And in a good effort to make this an accurate "inaccurate", I did a reasonable amount of research into what would be seen on a Cup version of this car, along with some bits on the optional in-car bulky camera, and the color scheme for the main sponsor decals. Yep, besides the base car being wrong, you'd never see that sponsor on an '80s car. The Rock Island railroad went bankrupt in 1977. And if I have it right, #14 was already a taken number by the Foyt team, but it is my favorite number, so tough beans. Plus, I always wanted to drive one of these, so there's my name on the upper doors. That Thermos jug next to the seat is painted in accurate colors, by the way. I own a '70s-era jug that looks exactly like that. The gearshift knob is painted to resemble a #14 pool ball. I forget if the number on it is a decal or if I had to paint it. All of the NASCAR bits on this came from the Monte Carlo, including the fender flares and of course the chassis, which happened not to need any adjustment of its wheelbase. The reflection under the model, by the way, is just what happens when I use the smoked glass pane from my coffee table on top of a piece of white poster board. One more added bit is the fuel overflow tube sticking out the back, the end piece of a Pentel pencil where the lead comes out. Within the sights of the in-car cameras in those days were decals on the dash of the driver's number and name, his primary sponsor, and the TV network. So, I couldn't resist creating paper 'decals' for the Public Broadcasting Network. Some heat stretched & shaped red sprue makes a reasonably realistic set of air ducts for the brakes. Four pipes on just one side of the engine indicates another major intentional inaccuracy, though. Yep, that's an Isuzu 4-cylinder in there (my dad lathe-turned the air cleaner out of aluminum for me). The problem with all those 1:1 reference photos I had, none had good views of the engines. But I did have perfect 24/7 views of the engine in my Chevy Luv pickup, so I used that as a reference to turn a scrap parts engine & tranny into an accurate replica. Who was going to stop me? Yep, I had fun with it, I still get a kick out of it. If you think this one is blasphemous, wait 'till you see the rest of the top fuel dragster I did as a lark for a special theme category at one of the old Arizona contests Tim Pentecost and the White Mountain Plastic Modelers used to have.

That got some rusty old unused gears turning in my mind, but the name still didn't sound right. Finally remembered it, it was Power Graphics Truck-Um-Up Posters, and a bit of searching turned up the original printer company and that guy's ebay store page where he sells reprints.

Just kidding, actually, I prefer the direction you are going. And, "Foxer" beat me to the bit on embedding links. Though if you had a resin version available later, and if I had the time later, I can already envision the pickup version via a quick & dirty photo alteration using this guy's pic. Perspective is still a tad off, and I'd have to do something a bit better with the angle of the rear surface, but it gives the general idea, particularly the application of the 914 taillights.

And in case you need any additional ideas, there was actually a full size 914 'ranchero'.

The biggest mod was to fill in the bottom edge of the windshield opening. The center section of the bumper was flat plastic sheet, while each end was bare metal foil covered modified ends of the Astro bumpers. All 'eyeball engineered' rather than by using real measurements, so one could perhaps get side & front views of both where you could overlay the printouts and see more accurately where they differ... The bigger chore was using the Astro dash as the basis for the new one, where I used sheet plastic and rather uncooperative cardboard to form the new dash pods. I might be able to dredge up the bottomside photo of the dash later.

Heat-stretched green plastic sprue might be another option, though it would be a bit tricky to glue in place. I used red as stripes on a 32nd scale stocker's wheels since there was no way I could paint a really thin consistent width red stripe.

And thanks again for the kind words, all. I'll be digging a couple others out of storage later, all from the '80s.

Back in this thread, I had one photo showing the Ertl unit that I had altered to be a Crown 500. That was a long time ago, back in the mid '80s. I forget where I saw a full size one, but I thought it was neat how the Crown 500 had a little outside exhaust stack.

Don't look too closely. The project was beyond my skill level at the time, I used it later at a model car club meeting as a demo on how a person should be his own harshest critic when it comes to 'big league' model car competitions. The person with the garbage truck who came in second to me at Lou Kroack's monthly contest should have gotten first. I'm thinking of re-working it to clear up all the junior modeler mistakes I have in it, but that'll have to wait 'til I have a lot more time.

Oh, yeah. Starting around the "Movin On'" era and on up to the mid '80s, I looked forward to going to the truckstop every two months to get the magazine. Got my two differrent 15 minutes of fame with first place finishes in Lou's monthly contest, May/June '82 with my Pete well driller, and July/August '81 with my Diamond Reo C-90 (based on the Autoworld "Building Model Trucks" how-to article). The Pete is a bit harder to dig out of the closet, but I still have it.

Naw, friction fit. Which probably explains why my 1:1 that was rebuilt as a scrap write-off sheds its parts.