ChrisBcritter

Here you go, Bill: Back in 1988, I spotted an ad in the L.A. Times for a '61 Bel Air bubbletop at the Caddy dealer in Beverly Hills. Turned out to be a 25,000-mile metallic beige car with a six and Powerglide. That thing was near mint and drove like it too; they were asking $4,888 for it. I scraped up every dime I could and offered them my nice '66 Coupe deVille in trade - but no deal. For some reason I kept the ad; it listed the car's license number, DIS 246. About a year later, I saw an ad for a red '61 Bel Air with a 409/4-speed - license DIS 246. Out of spite I called the consignment dealer selling it; he said it was presented to them as original. I told him the car was a fake and how I knew; the guy said he was going to have a little talk with the owner...

Went to the Hobby Lobby in Paducah, KY last Thursday (we were down there for a family wedding) and picked up the '69 Corvair on the final discount rack for $9.00; oddly they also had a '70 Pontiac convertible that was marked as a store return "missing taillights" for $17.99 - never saw that happen at a HL before (I passed on it). Sunday night on eBay I got very lucky and scored this '66 Galaxie promo for only one $14.99 bid: In the words of George Carlin, "caught them cats nappin'!" First thing I'll be doing to it is fixing that taildragger stance all these '66 promos have. Is anyone building a NASCAR or custom version of the '66 kit that won't be using the stock taillights? And is the kit rear bumper same as the promo bumper?

Recent eBay sale; missing parts but you get the idea: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ITC-1-12-DUESENBERG-MODEL-PARTS-CAR-NOT-COMPLETE-USED-039-CIRCA-1960-039-S-/391551121200?hash=item5b2a43f730%3Ag%3AgYUAAOSwFdtXzJCB&nma=true&si=MY1zxLWW6WoqAJ6JTDGeoTLHVi0%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Checked the Deerfield store this afternoon - the only kit on sale was a '71 Tbird marked down to $16.79 on the regular shelf; no big gaps indicating restock yet.

Hi Sam - If you don't need the tonneau, I may have some NOS chrome bits to trade for it! Looking forward to your build thread.

I imagine the AMT Matilda Ford van didn't sell very well; the movie utterly tanked at the box office and was pulled from release. Probably AMT's worst marketing goof since The Hero? And they didn't even include a 1/25 scale boxing kangaroo!

They have disclosed some of the lost tools here and there on their forum; you do have to dig through to find the mentions because there isn't any big list. As an example, they revealed back in July that the Chevy Vega/Pontiac Astre funny car body molds are gone for good: http://www.collectormodel.com/round2-models/2906-kat-chat-lost-amt-funny-car-revealed/

There's this one by Nichimo; it's in 1/18: In 1/24-1/25? I don't think so, but you might start with an AMT Subaru Brat for part of it.

Long, long ago I had an AMT '69 Falcon - couldn't be built stock but I remember it did have a four-Weber carb and manifold setup.

I prefer the Knox Vegas Lowballers' 24 Hours of LeMons interpretation (Ken Block liked it too!): http://www.roadkill.com/lemons-team-creates-low-buck-ken-block-replica/ (Image from roadkill.com)

We could set it to music:

Depends on what I need for a project. I've had to Frankenstein several of my projects together; sometimes I'm looking for stock parts to replace damaged/missing/custom ones and sometimes I'll pick up wheels and tires to upgrade. I have a couple sellers I like that I check regularly; they have reasonable opening bids and the price goes up - or not - from there. And I'm fine buying from "breakers" - let's face it, some used parts are usually gluey due to their nature - like, say, the rear bumper, taillight lens and chrome insert on the '65 Dodge Monaco. I passed on some used ones that were too rough and got NOS parts. Wheels/wheelcovers are like that too - in many cases, used ones have tire melt, so I try to go with NOS.

That's the Collings Foundation TP-51D; they just recently got the restoration finished. It was built up from parts; the cowling with the name Toulouse Nuts came from a Mustang that was in the West Virginia Air National Guard in the 1950s. They found a photo of that plane and painted this one to match it. A bit unusual to see a Mustang in that scheme, but the Guard used Mustangs up until 1957. The real Toulouse Nuts that the cowl came from: (Photo by Locobuster via the Warbird Information Exchange)

The tires in the Piranha/Super Spy Car appear to be the same, although I'm not sure of the size of the opening: And here are the ones from the '60 Ranchero; again these look to be the compact tires (or copies of them) with larger openings. Maybe they could be sleeved to fit the wheels?

That one area with the "line" - could that be due to the way the injected plastic went into the mold (same way those molded-in-metallic kits have swirls and patchy areas)? I have a '64 Galaxie on which I painted the roof with a semi-gloss lacquer so it would craze to give it a vinyl roof effect. It worked great but there were some subtle differences in some areas - though not as pronounced as what you had happen.

Relisted and sold with a Buy It Now price of $280.00.

Just did a little measuring with some of my models, and it looks like single light setups will work fine - they will need to be filed down a bit to fit most quad lights. Headlight lens sizes vary quite a bit on kits, even when they shouldn't, so your mileage may vary...

I was looking around in the jewelry section at Hobby Lobby for some useful items; in particular something that could be used for headlight reflectors. I spotted these little earring clips: After examining them, they looked promising so I bought a pack. Pictures tell the rest. Step 1: Step 2: And there you have it. 1/4" may be pretty close for single beams, but for round quads they should be filed down to size. Maybe for spotlights too if you filed them down a bit more. The inside is more silver than chrome but some metal polish should help that. Hope this is useful for somebody!

Beautiful work - and Airtrax kits never cease to amaze me. How did you do the chrome on the bumpers?

Sold for $4,000, or 0.1% of the price of the real one.

Nice work! If you didn't have a cabinet, I bet you could repurpose an old sewing machine table for that - they have a dropdown panel for the machine and the top folds over to cover it, which is good if you're tight on space.

I think the car they built started out as a '68; the hood, doors, windshield and decklid give it away, along with the shape of the side windows (although one side is two-door and one side is four-door). So you can start with the Jo-Han '68. Rear bumper and right taillight are '63, with a '61 fin added. Driver's side rear door looks like it was reskinned with part of a '57-'58 door.

The old Revell 240Z kit had a hinged hood; check out this page from the instructions to see how they did it: http://public.fotki.com/drasticplasticsmcc/mkiba-build-under-c/instruction_sheetsh/instruction_sheets/revell/revell_datsun_240z/6.html#media

Are you going to evacuate to someplace safer, I hope?

My two favorites: And I owned an '86 back in the early '90s: V-6; blew a head gasket right on schedule at 128K (I bought it with 72k so it should have already had one set replaced).