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Mark

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  1. Mark
    Good as any, though this is a bucket seat SS as opposed to the lightweight, bench seat regular Impala.
  2. Mark
    The old engine was never lost...it's in the '64 kit.
  3. Mark
    There was a later issue, 5-Vette set that also included the MPC '57. It was out around the time the new-tool AMT '57 first appeared. I'm thinking RC/Ertl also issued a two-car ('57/'97) Vette kit set, but for some reason the two-car set included the newer AMT '57.
  4. Mark
    Not 100% certain, but I recall reading somewhere that the Futurista (the VW engine three-wheeled car, that Monogram made a kit of) was wrecked in a transport accident, and Starbird recycled parts of its body to build this car.
  5. Mark
    Didn't Academy announce a reissue of the Corvette kits not long ago?
  6. Mark
    The '23 roadster kit came out in the mid-Seventies. It has no parts in common with the '25 kit. It does share some stock parts with the '23 panel delivery and Depot Hack kits, and shares its optional parts with the terrible, short-lived AMT '34 Ford three-window coupe kit.
  7. Mark
    Shaking the can thoroughly is more important than ever. The paint companies (all of them, not picking on Duplicolor here) are probably changing, or being forced to change, everything about the product. They seem to be putting less "solids" and more "carrier" (solvent) into the can (likely to make the product cheaper to manufacture), and have probably been forced to change propellant at some point. So, where the old product was more tolerant to settling and less-than-thorough shaking in the past, the new, "improved" product isn't so tolerant of the same treatment.
  8. Mark
    From what I am seeing, the actual eBay listing shows no "discount". When I want to go to eBay, I go straight there, never by clicking on a link in an e-mail...
  9. Mark
    Uh, I think the OP is referring to the two 1/24 scale kits listed...
  10. Mark
    Too, the round tube sections are conveniently the same diameter as a lot of parts trees (chrome or otherwise).
  11. Mark
    The headlamp lenses are carried over from the '68 annual kit. The '69 has molded-in lens detail. Likewise, the side glass shown on the box bottom is also carryover '68. Because the '68 had vent panes and the '69 doesn't, the full side glass won't work. But the quarter windows could be cut away from the door glass and used in the '69.
  12. Mark
    Not sure of the wheelbase but that frame was made to be easy to adjust. To get a longer wheelbase, cut behind the transmission crossmember but ahead of the rear radius rod attachment points, and lengthen with sections of aluminum tubing. The cut ends of the frame must be filed to slip into the tubing, and the tubing sections can be polished to match up with the rest of the chassis.
  13. Mark
    Don't know where that list came from, but the '55 Chevy sedan, '70 Chevelle, and '71 Duster have already been available for some time now.
  14. Mark
    I'm thinking the original opening-hood insert for the body wasn't found, forcing AMT to revise the closed-hood insert and tool a new hood. They did just that a couple of years later with the '61 Ranchero, because that kit didn't have a separate hood when originally created. It was a long time ago, but I did check a Prestige series '63 against an annual, and found enough tell-tale marks on various parts to conclude that both were produced from one tool. Not much carried over from '63 to '64 as I recall, just engine and underhood bits. Not having both out right now, as I recall the chassis are different (rear screw holes in different places). I'm going from memory on this though.
  15. Mark
    I'm pretty certain those slicks were first available in '70. Revell's '70 'Cuda Sox & Martin version has decals for the tire lettering, but it's incomplete as I recall (don't have that kit). The tires and slicks in the Chevelle kit are very well done IMO. They'll be good for early Pro Stock cars, before the wheel tubs and tube chassis came in.
  16. Mark
    They're probably the same ones as are included in the '69 Chevelle. Those slicks are the ones used previously for the "small" M&H slicks (the hollow ones, not the "piecrusts"). Front tires are the smaller hollow units previously printed as Goodyear Polyglas GT.
  17. Mark
    Good thing that cat didn't stumble into one of the restaurants up the street...
  18. Mark
    It's rare, but there are instances where there were more than one tool (mold) of one subject. The '64 Galaxie is one. Parts interchange between the two, but are not the same. The '63 Impala is not one. I thought there were two, but have been corrected on that. Some '63 parts were recycled into the '64 (engine and underhood parts). The recent reissue '64 has a fuel injection intake manifold that was never in the '64 kit but originated in the '63. The little chrome tubes that go with that manifold are in the most recent reissue of the '63, but are no longer used in that kit.
  19. Mark
    As for the Skylarks, both were produced from one tool (anyone I have communicated with at Round 2 calls them "tools" for the most part). The promotional model body was produced with a closed hood, for the 3-in-1 kit one section of the body tooling was changed in order to produce a body with a hood opening and a radiator wall at the front. With other bodies that were produced as hardtop and convertible versions, that was again done by switching sections of the tooling. One configuration would produce a convertible body, another a hardtop. Back to the Skylark, both versions used the same chassis. The full detail kit of course has a hole in the chassis for the engine/transmission, the promo and Craftsman kit used the same chassis with a separate insert to fill the hole and provide lower-half engine detail. Bottom line is this: when one version is changed (stock Skylark becomes Modified Stocker) the other versions (Craftsman kit) are lost because the shared tooling has been changed.
  20. Mark
    The cab on the "clone" appears to be a '60 Ford pickup unit, which has the wraparound windshield. Someone spent a few bucks building that copy: the large tires used only came in a handful of kits, and three sets were needed.
  21. Mark
    The book "We Were The Ramchargers" contains photos from the tech bulletin used by an outside contractor to convert the altered wheelbase bodies. Several were built by the contractor (a company that built ambulances) while many others were built by race teams and independent racers according to the template. Rear wheels were shifted forward 15", front wheels 10". The front and rear subframes were tied together also, creating in effect a full-frame car. The roll bar also stiffened the overall structure. The rearmost cut was made across the center of the trunk floor. Front suspension was moved forward. Some other Mopar book might have the bulletin photos, but the Ramchargers book is worth getting if these cars are of interest to you.
  22. Mark
    The lightweight cars didn't have the inner lamps. The grilles on those cars were pieced together from two grilles.
  23. Mark
    Pyro sold a bunch of those; they're all over eBay, and I see a lot of them at swap meets. Still, I wonder how well they would have sold (and how popular they'd be now) had Pyro done it in 1/25 scale...
  24. Mark
    I believe the recent reissue AMT '64 Impala hardtop kit has the convertible boot from the original annual kit included. If you see one, check the parts layout on the box bottom.
  25. Mark
    The '55 is still quite buildable, but has some quirks (one rear inner wheelwell is wider than the other) in addition to the flashing issues. The hinges in all of these kits are sloppy also. The '57 hardtop is the next "least worst": problems include poor rear glass fit, lack of headlamp buckets, frame mounts that are supposed to attach to the bellhousing miss by a mile, and so on. All of the old Tri-Five kits have post-'57 engine blocks with side engine mount bosses and ram's horn exhaust manifolds too. If you must have the '56 sedan, get a first issue kit. Later issues are unbuildable: windshield and rear glass fall through the openings among other things. Only a glutton for punishment should attempt the '57 Nomad.
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