jbwelda

They're waxing down their surfboards, just can't wait for June.. yeah its kinda crazy but I had a spare XR-6 (remember that?) chassis around and I was looking around for a kool application for my new darling, the half-a-V8 Pontiac engine from the Mickey Thompson Attempt 1. Then I was drawn to the newly released Revell of Germany Trabant Universal. Throw them all together and youre gonna get a surfin safari all the way from the shores of the Ukraine to the waves of Habana, Cuba! Yeah Baby! engine has been modified so instead of a big blower hanging off it, for more "euro"ization and just plain driveability along with the sleeper factor, I adapted some left over Weber side draft carbs which still need some detailing. also, that Hemi head. yeah its got a Hemi, or half a one anyway. comments and questions welcome! unfortunately this one is pretty back burner so might not progress very rapidly, but slowly and surely! jb

well about time for a little update: body has been smoothed and shot with a base coat of Tamiya Silver Leaf, followed by Tamiya Mica Red, then a couple of coats of Tamiya Clear Red then some Clear. as you can see in the pics, its going to need a light polishing to get rid of some fair to middlin' orange peel but other than that its looking pretty good. theres also a pic of it next to the chassis...I am hoping to do the polish job early next week and maybe get it assembled before NYE! tape recorder and orange peel: thanks again for looking, any comments or questions welcomed! jb

yeah I did that too but it turned out that the interior was the limiting factor. that and the engines being in place on mine already. anyway keep an eye out for it, I am hoping it turns out good, those engines sure look nice and your chassis very cleanly constructed. its amazing how kool and detailed these old Roth kits are once you get through the fiddlyness factor. I am building a Road Agent right now, I have a build thread on it here but haven't updated it in a while. jb

>a moment when I was feeling particularly suggestible yes I have those often too hope you like it; ive yet to use mine but I will be doing some detail work later tonite so probably make a test run! jb

this ought to be great, really nice start on those engines and the restriping and rechroming. takes a lot of patience but I think it will pay off. I just finished one of these, bought off ebay, and the chassis and engines were done and done well though without any extra detailing, like I probably would have done, and you are doing. but it was built really well and strong and no excess glue or anything so I decided to keep that as it was, seeing as it was basically the running chassis. I turned to the body, molding the separate pieces together and getting a nice (though in my case incorrect shade) coat of yellow on everything. everything went well with no big surprises but there is something funny about the way it sits: way too high in the rear and it could use to slide down on the rails in front a scale 3" or so. you can look at it and see how much graceful it would be if it were nearly a half inch lower in the back (the body down on the chassis I mean). so I started thinking about how to do that and it occurred to me it was gonna be a real hairy bear, and I dropped the idea and just built it OOB. looking at it still hurts though and if you compare it to pics of the real car, the real thing was indeed much lowered down on the chassis in the rear. so what I am getting at is if you want to pursue this, now is the time to do your planning because it is gonna get severe. what I can see is to begin with the firewall needs to be relieved to let the front of the body relax a bit more than it does otherwise, and this will mean both along its sides to let the body slide down over the rails, and also in the center to clear the two engines' flywheel cover areas. but to do the back, near as I can tell, you are going to have to section it and everything in it pretty much (luckily its pretty simple) and may be able to pie-cut it in such a way you don't make the front of the interior disappear. its gonna be some amount of work but I was looking at mine last night wondering if I had it in me to start up a chassis for another try! here are some pics so maybe you can see what I mean. unfortunately I don't have a good straight on side shot where you can really see the problem. if you want let me know and I will take and post some more relevant pics. heres a direct rear shot; you can see there is ample room to lower that down and make much more of the streamlined look of the body: jb

I build until I think its done, or I am tired of working on it, but nothing is ever carved in stone. sometimes I will know something is substandard but won't want to mess with it at the time. so its "done" and on the shelf but at some point in the future I will look at it and decide now is the time to fix whatever it might be. and it never turns out to be as onerous as I had built up in my imagination, and usually makes a big difference (to me anyway) in the way something looks or sits or is detailed. jb

yep pretty beautiful stuff! pity about the 1/43, I can barely see to build 1/24 anymore! jb

well that is a spectacular result on the photos as well as the car. shows what a bit of knowledge and a cheap camera will do! oh yeah and photoshop too! jb

parts by parks is out of business? I just bought some stuff from him this past summer so that's kind of odd. and the disk wheel covers are great, come in three sizes jb

Merit Lotus XI and improved with nicer wire wheels and reshaping of part of the nose. oh and without the raised panel lines please, still haven't gotten up the courage to try to apply some lines (decals?) to this one. as it is you cant really even see the raised ones but they were there! jb

simply breathtaking. whats the deal with your backdrop. it looks like Bonneville sort of, but sort of not too, but doesn't look like a photo backdrop. is that posed somewhere out in Australia? looks super nice with the car in the foreground. jb

I have and have built those little garage kits, they are pretty neat but I remember I had trouble with the cover or the floor being warped enough to make a difference. I got a Tamiya diamond file for photoetch work. typical impeccable quality in every way and I don't believe I have ever seen a file so fine. jb

plus didn't those advent rebox kits not include the plating on their chrome trees? seems to me that's what I have read here on one forum or another jb

AMT 32 Ford sedan and 40 Willys coupe double kit. jb

>I'd like to think we'll have Comet on shelves before end of the year.. as in THIS year, 2014? if so, wow! jb

3/16" * 1/25 scale = 3/400 of an inch that's pretty much the thickness of the decal don't you think? I guessed at 3/16" being a typical thickness of a 1:1 insignia jb

>That was the 914's stronghold. yep. jb

here ya go, this has got to be the same kit? http://www.ebay.com/itm/MPC1975-Pontiac-Firebird-Formula-Promo-Kit-Rare-Factory-Sealed-/221629456069?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item339a251ec5 jb

thanks Art; I wasn't trying to be difficult I was just wondering specifically who you class as not having a clue. because I do have a clue or at least think I do. and I know there is an axiom in marketing about giving people good value for their money. that's all I am saying...if you are going to charge near full kit price (yeah I know its not literally NEAR full kit price but its creeping up toward it) then give the people a full package. I was quite surprised to see what came with that newest tire/wheel set...I thought it was very skimpy for the price and I think it would have been much better if they gave 2X what was included. people aren't dumb and of course a certain segment is always happy with anything they get but for me and most I know, we want value for our money or we just aren't going to part with the money. the funny thing is about those engine and body parts packs is as I have pointed out before, all that has more or less been available, if not on the new market than at least on ebay, forever and the prior issue of it included all the engines, the body, frame and a bunch of other stuff for only twice or less than twice the price of one engine kit (containing two engines). and that tooling had to cost close to nothing to get ready to run, there was no new tool making involved that I know of, so there was just new packaging and of course the marketing and advertising budget to consider. jb

yeah I remember building one of these along with all the other famous monsters kits back early sixties. I have been tempted to try to find one or a repop of one just for the heck of it. yours is really inspiring, very nice job on the finishing. jb

lets document this: >from people completely without a clue. whom exactly do you mean by that, Art? jb

>56 Chevy with a 327 in it would blow my 240Z off the road. not many curves in Indiana evidently jb

>You can use search terms to exclude, like "-NASCAR,-decals,-decal,-ONLY,-GMS..." etc. to exclude certain items and/or >sellers who regularly use certain keywords or acronyms in almost all of their listings. is there an echo in here? jb

ebay doesn't really make anything on buyers, you realize, all the fees come from the seller. even paypal is set up like that (coincidentally being part and parcel of ebay at this point), someone spending money pays nothing, all the fees are on the receiver (except under certain special circumstances blah blah blah). of course the sellers wouldn't have anyone to sell to if there were not buyers, but in the ebay pay equation its all on the sellers. and that's why its unlikely they will go out of their way to let you block sellers. if the report above is correct that is already the case: they make you re-enter the blocked buyers when you do a search (sounds kind of funny to me but ive never tried it so I take it at face value). the only reason to make you do that would be to get you to effectively "unblock" those blocked sellers...which is a giveaway to the seller and perfect example of what I am talking about: them favoring sellers over buyers. really though a better tactic would be to perfect your own search techniques. realize that showing any category is actually a search and the search box above is active. one guy who sells in a category I look at uses the literal "PS" in all his titles. use the negator operator (the negative sign "-") in front of a string means "do not select items with this string". so just enter -PS in the search and bingo those items do not show up. takes some tuning but easy to do and quite effective. sorry if I am speaking below your level and you know all this already; just a suggestion. jb

so you are asking a company that makes money based on the price things sell for to offer a shield to protect you from the very sellers who are their bread and butter? good luck on that. by the way there are a number of low impact easy solutions to the problem you say you have. jb