Mark

A/Modified. I think those decals are from a '32 Ford roadster, where they would have been more correct.

The designers tried to put the most detail in areas that would be seen the most. Often they wouldn't bother to tool parts that wouldn't be seen at anything past a casual glance. For example, you'd have the Monogram street machine kit versions where you'd see a supercharger sticking through the hood, but you'd peer into the engine bay and see exhaust manifolds instead of headers. The opposite of what you'd see an a 1:1 car.

Having extra plastic strip/rod/tube/sheet on hand makes a lot of sense. Saves trips to the hobby shop when you're in the middle of something and don't want to break your stride, and might not be open anyway.

Most of the kit units are simplified in the extreme, lacking the "adapters" that join the intake tubes to the cylinder head, and always having the fuel block molded as part of the valley cover. The AMT altered wheelbase Nova and Tempest have the adapters, but those are simplified. For an out-in-the-open setup, scratchbuilding or 3D print will be the way(s) to go. Really, with many of the smaller parts, scratchbuilt parts will often crush the molded plastic equivalent. The kit designers have to deal with removal from the mold which means you're going to see ejector pins, and they have to bring the whole project in at a target price which will bring compromises along with that.

Most of the kits with a setup like this included it as an optional item. More optional parts generally equal less detail on each of those parts. They'll look okay in the original application (under the hood of a full-bodied car) but you'll find them wanting when they are sitting out in the open. The best kit items out there will be the McLaren, or the Monogram sprint car unit.

The 1/32 scale semi chassis make decent 1/25 scale medium duty truck chassis, like under Jimmy Flintstone phantom crew cabs and such. Strange, but the Ollie's stores around here had the 1/32 scale reefer trailers but no trucks.

It's the same kit, just the promo version. The '60 promo and kit were four-doors. '61 promo was again a four-door; '61 kit was a convertible body with separate hardtop but still had the lower four-door rear wheel openings. '62 kit has a correct coupe body, '63 was a convertible, '64 went back to the coupe.

Were Modelhaus still in the game, their complete kits would likely be in the $150 range, and they'd be worth that. But they'd have plated parts.

The mail-order Corvairs were SMP, not Hubley. Though they were kits, they weren't the customizing kit but rather the promo in unassembled form. There were a few differences: wheels, headlights, and taillights were simplified compared to the 3-in-1 version.

Can't wait until he decides on a new paint scheme.

The earliest AMT Deuce (roadster with raised top, rear mount spare, and trunk lid molded closed) was probably designed with little or no access to an actual car, only pictures. That could have been the root of the lower body issues. The dimensional error was probably continued in the other body styles as a conscious thing, to maintain continuity and make more parts interchangeable between all of them. I did once see an "in progress" photo in one of the rod magazines (Hot Rod Mechanix?) where a guy was building a fiberglass Deuce roadster of his own design. He scaled up the AMT roadster kit body, sectioning and all. I never saw anything about it again; hope he finished it...

Earlier this week I ordered the Baja Patrol '53 Ford pickup via eBay. I wanted the new one because the original decal sheet has lettering in black, which doesn't match the white lettering in the box art (and won't work with the red as illustrated on the box). The vendor I bought from had the Mod Stocker combo for a buck LESS (and the BP price was the lowest I had seen for it). Still, the Hobby Lobby at 40 percent off is the best price for that combo kit.

Same here, only National Fuel. I got the phone prompt to call in a meter reading for gas. Called it in yesterday, it was rejected. Turns out they misread the meter last month, and I nearly caught up to that number this month. They always bug me to submit a meter reading...I do just that, then they estimate the bill anyway. I offered to send them a picture of the meter so they can see the reading; at that point they backed down. Someone either ain't doing their job, or ain't paying attention...

There were a number of exotic conversions back in the Sixties: the Moser small-block Chevy heads, the Leo Lyons Hemi heads for the small-block Chevy (only one or two sets made), and the Mickey Thompson Hemi heads for Pontiac and Ford engines. Not to mention the Arias big-block Chevy Hemi heads in the Seventies. Just an opinion, but none of them sold in any numbers because the conversion would have put you in the hands of one, and only one, vendor for replacement or additional parts. And if that vendor fell by the wayside, you were stuck with an orphan engine for which you'd have to make replacement parts. The M/T Hemi Ford heads supposedly used an articulated three-piece pushrod to make it work, which didn't help. Back then it would have been a lot cheaper to just start with a Chrysler engine, for which you could get speed equipment from any of a bunch of vendors who had to compete with one another on quality and price.

Same kit, with a few added parts for the other versions included.

And, right after RC2 ran those kits for DTR, they ran another bunch of the coupes for Walmart, in the under $7 "checkerboard box". Only difference was the decals. There was a later run of those for DTR in an original style Trophy Series box. The parts illustration on the side panel showed the brackets for the cycle fenders, but not the fenders themselves (because those weren't in the box).

People get rid of things for a reason. The challenge is to determine what that reason is, and if it's something you are better equipped to handle than the seller.

The later issue kits were sometimes called "1939". The original issue is a 1940, "with optional 1939 parts".

Some of the "street" versions don't have the headers or injector scoop (and the wheelie bar either).

All of the Jo-Han intermediate AMC car kits use the Marlin chassis plate. Some of the promos had a better one, but Jo-Han never saw fit to use it in the kits. Same goes for the engine, the Marlin was the only kit for which it was correct. Jo-Han had a better chassis plate for the '69-'70 GTX promos too, but never tried to put it into any of the kits.

I have heard that the lowest production Jo-Han annual kit was the '69 Rebel, as its body was converted from the '69 Ambassador right after that kit was run, then the conversion to the '70 Rebel Machine was started not long after. The Rebels are among the small group of Jo-Han annual kits that were not also produced as promos. The funny car version in the '69 kit isn't 100% accurate, as the Grant/AMC project ended towards the end of the '68 season. There was no 1969 version of that car.

The engine pictured was never made available, and never actually ran. One was turned at high RPM using an electric motor, to test the valve train, but that's as far as it got. Chrysler only publicized it in order to get NASCAR to step in and stop the escalation taking place with experimental engines at the time. The Moser conversion was an aftermarket thing that apparently didn't get off the ground.

The annual had AMT's pretty decent Keystone mags, all reissues (Countdown series was the first) have the American Racing Vector wheels.

I have never seen one of those short handles (never knew about it until now, otherwise I probably would have dreamt up a reason to get one). It's rare that an X-Acto blade is a good fit in another company's handle. The other companies usually make theirs different enough to force you to buy their blades too. Sometimes the X-Acto blade is a loose fit, you're tempted to go with it anyway but that isn't a good idea.

One of my older brothers (now deceased) used to love those parts-cannon guys. He used to look for those cars where the owner threw a bunch of new parts at it and then gave up...he'd buy it for cheap to get it out of the driveway, figure out what was actually wrong, then fix that and end up with a car with a bunch of new parts on it. One of the last ones was a mid-Nineties front-wheel-drive Dodge he found on eBay in Pennsylvania. Shade tree mechanic up the street put a new long block in it, it was overheating after that. Took several hours to get it home (buddy with a ramp truck backed out at the last minute). Takes it apart to look at the water pump, compares the new car to the one being replaced, everything looks the same. Takes the water pumps off, they are different. Turns out the long block was sold for multiple applications, but included a minivan water pump that turned in the opposite direction and used a different drive belt routing. Gets the correct water pump, puts it on, ran fine that day and a few years after that, until the next parts-cannon car came along.