StevenGuthmiller

I believe the Belair was the first one. Steve

Keep me posted. I’ll be interested to see how it fleshes out. This should allow you to play around a little with the window opening shape as well if there are any minor changes that you want to make. Have fun, and good luck! Steve

Thanks to you Jim, I couldn't get this idea out of my head until I went into the shop and doodled around with it. Actually I discovered that with the method that I described, thinning the body would actually be detrimental. That thickness will give you more surface to mount the glass. I just sanded off the external trim, glued a piece of styrene strip to the very edge of the opening, and now it looks as if the space between the opening and the new trim will be exactly what the doctor ordered for mounting new glass. Of course, this was just a test and you'll want to spend more time on it, and completing the radiuses will require some finesse, but I see no reason why this shouldn't work, and honestly, it wasn't difficult at all. Steve

I am happy to help. It won't be something that you can accomplish in a couple of hours, and will be one of those improvements that most people won't be able to quite put their finger on, but as you know, when something bugs you, you're not getting it out of your head until you address it. Good luck! Steve

Personally, I would remove the trim around the window and the center divider, correct the corner radius’s with some plastic fillers. While finishing this correction, I would make the opening about 1 mm larger on the top and sides Once the opening is where you want, use some thin styrene strips or half round for your trim, and position it so that it over hangs the opening slightly, just enough so that you’ll have enough of the trim exposed on the inside of the body to fasten the glass to. Use the same trim material to make the divider. Once you’re ready for the glass, cut the glass from thin clear plastic sheet and carefully glue it to the inside of the trim, not the body. The glass could be taped in place, and some clear glue of some sort could be flowed into the seam between the glass and body for extra strength. If this is all too involved for you, and you can live with the corner radius, you could just carefully thin the body around the inside of the opening and the divider with a Dremel and reamer bit and sand paper, and then scrap the kit glass and use thin cleat sheet plastic. Personally, I almost never use kit glass anymore if avoidable Steve

That's the route that I would go. Never liked the one dimensional look of decals anyway. Depending on the body color, they virtually disappear. Steve

Well, in any case, There's no possibility that I'm going to be able to ignore gaps of that size. My suspicion is that if the fender wells are supposed to be mounted outside of the frame rails, they're pretty close, as in the photo that Keith provided, not a scale 2 inches away as they appear to me on this kit. In any event, I believe with some massaging, they're getting closer to acceptable in my view. Steve

Thanks Keith, but I think I'm getting closer to the fit that I'm looking for, at least a presentable fit before I have to try to mate it to the new body. Some twisting to bring the "toes" in, bending at the radiator bulkhead, and some other twisting and contorting, and I think at least the gaps are addressed. I'm waiting on another donor kit to arrive before I can begin fitting the firewall, but at the moment, it looks better. Steve

All of the USA Oldies kits were re-issues. I don't believe that Revell ever re-issued their '62 Fury though. But if the Buick convertible in Craig's photo is a '59, the hard top version was re-issued as the "Boondock Bomber". I'm thinking 1962-ish? Steve

I could understand a small “vertical” gap, but not a horizontal one. You shouldn’t be able to look down into the engine bay and see the ground between the fender well and frame rail. Steve

I've been monkeying around in my shop today, working on retrofitting some parts from the Revell '66 GTO into my '64 Lemans, and I just have to ask the question to those of you that have built the Revell '66. Has the fit between the inner fender wells and the frame rails manifested itself this poorly to any of you, or am I doing something wrong? Maybe I expected too much from a widely harolded kit, but it looks a lot like horse manure to me! I'm a modeler, so I'm not going to let it stop me, but with as much tinkering with fitment that I'm going to have to do between the GTO and Lemans already, I didn't expect that I would have to straighten out fit problems with the donor kit before I even began. A little frustrating, especially for a Revell kit. Steve

Correct. And very tight in the width, which is exactly how I like it. Much easier to subtract material than add. Steve

My original replacement hood for my ‘64 Lemans arrived this afternoon. Steve

I actually had a ‘62 Meteor that I traded away a few years back. I appreciate the offer, but the ‘63 Merc that was my main target was a Monterey convertible. Steve

Absolutely. The only one that I don’t have is a ‘63. Steve

For that matter, you can add the ‘62, ‘63 and ‘65 Mercurys to that list. I believe that the only re-issued full sized Mercurys were the ‘64 and ‘66. Steve

The color combo is over the top! But there’s no question that it works. A real attention grabber!! Steve

You know, I honestly think we often forget how pretty these cars were because we’ve become so accustomed to seeing them all hacked up. I’m sorry, but it’s just my opinion that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to improve upon the looks of many of these vintage cars. Steve

To be honest, I have no clue what I'm doing! I have very little experience at all with weathering of any kind on models. I just got to the point where I was tired of producing the perfect, straight out of the restoration shop, or off of the assembly line, model cars over and over again. I thought to myself that the only time that you EVER see a vintage car like that, is when it's some trailer queen at a car show. It just didn't equate to real life to me anymore. I wanted to recreate the ACTUAL look of a car that you would see on the street. I really have no interest in building the typical "barn find"/"junk yard dog"/"rat rod" type stuff that you see quite frequently today. I still wanted to build nice, shiny classic cars. But something that you almost never see is a combination of the two genres. A well maintained, but well driven vehicle that you would see in most classic car enthusiast's garages. In most cases, builds are either to one extreme or the other, with almost no representation of what MOST vehicles would look like if they were actually driven. So, I got out some acrylic paint and just experimented a little to see what I could come up with without having to go out and buy a couple hundred bucks worth of weathering dedicated materials. I was surprised to find that it was actually not terribly difficult to achieve fairly convincing results with nothing other than paint, and I found that I actually enjoyed the process. I don't think you're ever going to see me building a rat rod, but I'm pretty confident that you'll be seeing this fusion of genres from me for quite some time into the future. Steve

There are of course any number of ways to achieve what you're looking for. My thought is that how the base coats are applied is secondary to the materials used for the weathering itself. I do apply clear to some of the parts prior to weathering, although that's designed more towards protecting the parts from damage, or from the paint rubbing off during handling, than it is to facilitate how the weathering agents work. That of course might be more important if the materials that you're using for weathering are solvent based rather than water based. Just my opinion, but I believe that your problem with the panel line accent that you're using looking too "dark" or "demarcated" is mostly due to the fact that it's stark black. My suggestion would be to use a less harsh color to begin with. This is part of the reason why I find flat acrylic paint to be so useful. I mix a dark "oily" brown for the "base" of the weathering. The second advantage to using craft paints is that you can brush on a thin wash of the color over the entire part, and then after it has dried, you can use a slightly dampened Q-tip to lightly "roll" over the surface. This leaves a very thin mottled film over the entire surface of the part instead of just dark pools in the recesses, which helps eliminate those stark demarcations. Another pro of the craft paint is of course that it's water based, so that you can manipulate it much easier with damp Q-tips to get the effect that you desire, and it's not so permanent, so if you don't like the effect, you can just wash it off and do it again. But my experience has been that you really can't mess it up, and it's very easy to vary the degree of the weathering that you want to achieve. Steve

My assumption was that the Polar Lights GTO had either a rudimentary “snap kit” type chassis, or was a copy of the old Monogram 1/24th scale kit. Regardless, it looks like either of the Oldsmobiles, or even more likely, the Revell ‘66 GTO chassis looks to be a very good option. Steve

That’s good to know. I know absolutely nothing about the smaller displacement Pontiac engines, so it was my assumption that as with other GM makes, there was probably a demarcation between a big block and small block. This was one of the things that I was going to have to research, but as you’ve clarified it for me, it will make substituting an engine considerably easier. Thanks! Steve

Well, I've decided that I'm going to continue on with the final installment of my 1964 Poncho trio. The '64 Grand Prix and Bonneville are now in the history books, so all that I have left to do, (Short of an original AMT '64 GTO presenting itself) is this somewhat derelict AMT '64 Lemans convertible. I began working on converting an old X-EL 1959 Desoto Fireflite 4 door hard top into a convertible a few weeks ago, but I'm just not feeling it at this time. It was going to be a very involved project that would need a completely scratch built interior, and it was having a hard time keeping my attention, so I thought it might be better to move on to something a little less involved. Not that this project will be a simple one, as it's still going to be a full detail build with all of the usual goodies, but it will be a little less ominous undertaking than the Desoto. So, in any event, I picked up this kind of abused '64 Lemans at an antique shop many years ago for $12.00. It was missing the hood and tail light lenses, but I was able to replace those via Modelhaus before they closed up shop. Interestingly, as I'm not a big fan of working with resin, and I'm not particularly convinced of it's long term viability, on a whim, I went on eBay last night just to check on the odd chance that there might be an original hood available. Lo and behold, there was a pristine original hood that someone was selling for $20.00, so I snapped it up! At least now, short of the tail light lenses, the entire model will be styrene. The hood should arrive within a week or two. There is some minor damage to this kit, including a mild windshield frame crush, consisting of damaged and missing vent posts, and a crack in the center of the windshield header, but those are easy fixes. A little more of an issue is some of the interior glue rash. The previous builder had of course glued on the seat belts to the front bucket seats, causing some relatively minor damage to the upholstery pattern. These shouldn't be extremely difficult to repair. More daunting is the fact that he had also glued custom parts to the center console, completely destroying the fluted panels. Unless I can find some suitable material to replace those panels with, the entire console might have to go. Not that I have any aversion to console delete 4 speeds. We'll cross that path later. So in conclusion, I believe that one of the '65-'67 Chevelle chassis will be a good fit, or even more so, if the wheel base is correct, either the AMT '66, or the Lindberg '67 442 should be the ticket. I'll have to do more research on the engine to make an informed decision, but at this point it appears that a 6 cylinder, a 326 2bbl, or a 326 4bbl were the only options for the '64 Lemans, and if that's the case, finding a suitable Pontiac small block is likely to be all but impossible. In that case, I'll have to find out what the appearance differences were between the 326 and 389, and either do some parts swapping between them, or try to do some upgrading of the original engine. So, here's what I'm starting with. New chrome some time back and a new hood on the way. The tentative decision on color at this point is correct '64 Pontiac "Singapore Gold" from scale finishes. I'll have to do some research and thinking about it, but my initial thought off the top of my head is a dark red, or white and red interior. Either that, or some combination of gold and white, or just gold. Steve

I can't get enough of the AMT '62 Catalina, Moebius '61 Pontiacs, or Revell 1966 GTO kits. Not because I have any real desire to build any of them. But because I need them to raid for parts for my many vintage AMT and MPC Pontiac projects!! Steve

I'm with Bill and Marcos on the panel line question. It's become evident to me that scribing deeply pretty much eliminates any need for darkening panel lines, and in fact, looks more realistic than using a panel line accent. These panel lines had no accent added whatsoever. Just deeply scribed, and left at that. As far as weathering goes, It's my opinion that there are a great number of other techniques that can be used to better represent weathering. I think what you're accomplishing here Jeremy is not exactly what I would consider "weathering" but more just trying to add a little extra "depth" to the part, rather than "age" or "use". When I think of weathering, I think of adding a little, (or a lot of) extra oil, dirt, road grime, rust, etc. I've discovered that a little playing around with some simple and cheap acrylic craft paints works extremely well for various degrees of "weathering". This Coronet's engine and chassis were weathered very lightly with acrylic craft paint to represent light use. The engine and chassis on this Bonneville were weathered a bit more heavily with the same products to represent a vehicle of a few years of age, and 20,000-30,000 miles of use. Steve