Mark

They could make those with the GEICO gecko on them now...

Big tires don't fit those Novas unless they're tubbed, jacked up in back, or have the rear wheel openings cut out. "Rolling" the fender lip might buy you one tire size, but those cars won't fit anything like an L-60 in stock form.

Another alteration that can be done to "tub" interiors is to stand the side panels straight up. As molded, they have a slight taper, that is to ease removal from the tool during production. The simplified tooling is also why the detail on the side panels is on the sparse side. Standing the side panels up straight will make the interior look deeper. Material will need to be added to the floor at the outer edges, but it'll be worthwhile. Too, check the depth of the bucket. Some kits have too-shallow buckets that leave a gap between the floor and the top of the chassis. An extreme example would be the AMT late model Corvair...if you have one, stick the body/interior/chassis together, then look through the hole in the chassis under the rear seat...

MPC decals from that era will definitely need to be sealed!

There's an article on thrill shows in an early issue of the old Special Interest Autos magazine. The AMT illustration showing the '49 Ford jumping over the '50 duplicates one of the photos in that article. That particular show did use '49 and '50 Fords, but all of the cars would have been from the current year, whichever it was. They did use a convertible or two, but they used sedans and not coupes.

I've never heard that one...the Lesney created tooling would have been brand new, or nearly so, then. What some have said, including an ex-employee I once talked to, is that with the closure of the Troy, MI building (it had been sold) most of the existing AMT molds were shipped to Baltimore. Some of THAT stuff did sit outdoors and get damaged. What was lost, we'll never know.

Clean the parts before doing any sanding, otherwise you are grinding mold release into the sanded plastic.

Think of the pop-ups as virtual toilet paper. But don't try to use it... Around here, no problem getting TP. I even got some paper towels yesterday, haven't seen those in three weeks.

Pretty sure he, or his family, started the Schumacher battery charger company. He didn't drive or run the team for all of the Wonderwagon cars, but took the program over when the original guys weren't getting results.

If you want to use the custom front end parts, the more common '64 kit can be altered to take them. Make a pattern of the '63 front fender forward of the wheel opening, lay it on the '64 body, then hack away. The rear end parts fit as-is. I lucked into a couple of '63 kits that were started as custom versions and were too far gone to go back to stock, but I wanted customs anyway. The '63 is way better looking than the '64 IMHO.

The pro street '41 Willys has a great chassis, 392 Hemi with Torqueflite transmission plus a "street version" blower setup (with pulleys and water pump that older kits overlook when old drag cars take to the street), also a Mustang II front suspension with stock A-arms (it's narrowed but that's easy enough to fix). I've bought three or four of them for cheap, then peddled the bodies to slot car guys and recouped all of the money. Free chassis and engines! I've bought leftovers from the slot car guys too. A Revell '68 Dart had the full chassis, two engines, and the gutted interior parts, but the engine compartment was missing because Slot Car Guy got it with the body. Fortunately, I had a damaged body that came in a kit I bought when the Dart first came out. It was damaged, so I wrote Revell and got a replacement. Lucky I kept the damaged one! Other "parts mine" kits include the Revell 22 Jr. double kit, the AMT Double Dragster, and the AMT pro street kits (chassis and rear halves can be made to fit whatever you want them to fit).

Either Rod & Custom (or the short-lived model car magazine) had a couple of articles on building Model T speedsters. One had a body made entirely of paper, I believe the other had a tail section made from a Double Dragster streamlined nose piece. A bare bones floor/seat/gas tank setup might make a neat hill climb or Race of Gentlemen type of thing...

The Parnelli Jones/Bill Stroppe '63 Mercury, the one Don Emmons built a replica of in Rod & Custom when the kit was a "current" annual. I've got the kit (actually have five or six of them, including two started Advanced Custom versions that I found that way). One is a builtup that I stripped five or six paint jobs from. I created a vacuform floor pan for the project (sold a few hundred of them too), and have a pile of different engine and suspension parts for it. Every time a more detailed kit came out, I'd set aside more parts for this thing. I've even got decal sheets for it (Emmons had to paint the markings by hand). I've even got AMT Turnpike tires, same ones that were used on the original build. Just need to get on it...

No such thing as free money.

They might be a bit too quick in spending money. I've already heard one guy say that he might not come back to work right away, because the way he has it figured, he can make as much staying home and taking the special handouts as he would working.

I work for a construction company (in the office), and certain types of construction (infrastructure among them) are still considered essential, so right now we're back up to speed as normal on those jobs. Residential construction (streets in new subdevelopments) are not considered essential, so those jobs aren't going right now. Jobs at schools are kind of in the middle. With students being away right now, those jobs should be up and running too, but that is still to be settled.

'63 was the first year all of the annual customizing kits had engines! Only about half of the '62 Jo-Han kits had them (Chrysler products, Olds F-85s). Most AMT '62s had engines. The Styline Valiant did not, the Buick Special wagon didn't have one for the car (only a Chrysler engine as an extra), and the compact cars (Falcon, Comet, Corvair) had display engines with no provisions for putting them in the car (though some builders did do that). Things like slicks for the drag version in annual kits was still another year off though.

The Pontiac kits all have manual transmissions. The Buicks used Dynaflow which was entirely different from the Roto-Hydramatic (Slim Jim) that Pontiac used. Chevrolet used Powerglide, different again. The Jo-Han Olds unit is the best/closest available. Their Cadillac piece is pretty similar as I remember.

Poster? There WAS a poster. This apparently predated the kit, note the different wheels on the rod version...

I like how they claim "choose from 40 colors" with the Extreme Lacquer line, when it's actually 20 colors with two different bilingual labels on each...

Skyhawk (and the Olds Starfire) may have been V6 only at the start, though I think the Olds may have been offered with a 260 V8 later. The 260 was an underbored 350 (bore was barely big enough for the connecting rod big end to pass through), so anywhere a 260 fit, so did a 350. It's surprising you didn't see more of those with a 350 swapped in...

Pretty sure the 1:1 Skyhawk came with a V6. No Vega four, no Iron Duke four, no V8. The MPC kit was one of those mid-year deals, in between the '75 and '76 Monza annual kits. The MPC reissue Jeepster (Commando) has a Buick V6 (incorrect for that kit) that is a good start on a stock engine for the Skyhawk. Needs only the air cleaner, maybe exhaust manifolds and pulleys/belts.

If the waiting list for treatment gets long, this knucklehead should remain at the bottom of said list.

I don't understand cutting down trees to avoid raking leaves. The leaves blow around! My mom had no trees in her yard, but still got leaves. I rake some (not a lot) of leaves in my back yard, and the only tree in my yard is an evergreen that was there when I bought the house. There were two, the other got loaded with ice during an early winter storm and came down. I did get rid of three evergreens that were next to the driveway because they were dripping sap all over my car, and dropping needles everywhere including the neighbor's gutter. She thanked me for getting rid of those trees, they were just in the wrong place.

A '67 kit body will have the lower half of the grille surrounds (including the center) as a separate part that glues to the body. '68 and '69 have them molded as part of the body.