Mark

I don't think the Camaro ever had a base Camaro hood. It's always been issued as a Z/28 that I can recall. The "grid" parts trees for the Blazer kit will probably minimize ejector pin marks on those small parts...smart move on Revell's part.

Monogram probably used patterns from earlier kits to create engines for the Tom Daniel show rods. They weren't repetitive with details like that. The Tijuana Taxi has a Pontiac mill similar to that in the original issue '34 Ford, the Dragon Wagon and Paddy Wagon have Ford FE engines that resemble the '58 Thunderbird mill. Daniel seemed to be accommodating Monogram's tool designers by selecting engines that were based on previous kit designs.

I'd do the red first, then the chrome.

I'm guessing that the SBC is an AMT Chevy Monza unit. The timing cover with the oil filler looks like it is for the DeSoto mill in the AMT '53 Ford pickup. The first engine is a Cadillac, from the AMT '49 Ford coupe. AMT's Merc has a Chrysler B series engine as optional.

Pie Wagon should appeal to a wider group of buyers, though. I was in a Joann store the other day; they had several Atlantis kits but nothing with particularly wide appeal (big Monogram midget racer, Jungle Jim Camaro, and Mack Bulldog truck). The TD stuff should jump off of the shelves at those stores.

Dean Jeffries built the Landmaster.

The ones not shown in the instructions are probably for the NASCAR version kit.

I have found the super glue to often be harder than the surrounding plastic. Some putties are softer. You want the filler to be approximately the same hardness as the plastic, so that it is easier to sand it smooth with the area around the fill. That's why some builders use "sprue filler" (pieces of sprue dissolved in a solvent or cement). But that shrinks too, because the solvent evaporates over time. I used to use that stuff a lot, but have since found the two-part epoxy to be pretty close to styrene in terms of hardness and sandability. That's why I now use it for jobs like seams and splices.

That '33 Willys is an early production one, it having plastic tires and slicks.

Single stage, lacquer-based spot putty is at its essence extremely unthinned lacquer primer. It's going to shrink over time, and it will "reactivate" at its surface when lacquer primer is applied over it. It's okay for minor flaws, but for filling routed-out panel lines and everything beyond minimal depth, two-part epoxy is the way to go, period.

The '69 Galaxie kit (which came out earlier this year) has Goodyear tires. Round 2 isn't selling Goodyear tire packs anymore, but some of the kits do still have them.

Milliput will work just fine. Get the "fine" (white), not the "medium" (green). Rout out the panel lines before applying the putty.

eBay is only an indicator that two or three fanatics will beat each others' brains out fighting over an offbeat kit. And one of those bidders is probably a shill trying to max one of the other two out. Back when eBay was a bigger thing, you'd see something out of the ordinary pop up, a couple of guys would bid the thing way up, then the following week three or four more of the same item would appear. With the top knucklehead now having one, and with one less bidder to fight over the newly listed ones, prices came back down to earth.

We're a relatively small percentage of the model car kit buying public. The manufacturers go by what sells in order to determine what to reissue, and when. Some items are consistent sellers and just get new packaging every couple of years. For new stuff, the manufacturers do set up displays at IPMS conventions and shows like NNL East, and do use some of the information they pick up at those places. Someone mentioned Atlantis not wanting to do short track cars. They are a different case from other companies as they do only reissues of items offered by other companies in the past. They're concentrating on things they already have.

Carroll Shelby lost interest after about 1967, when Ford started offering the exact same engines in the regular Mustang as in the Shelby models. They weren't holding anything special over for what was supposed to be the flagship model. I'm not sure about the '67s, but '68 and '69 Shelbys were converted in Michigan by A.O. Smith (among other things, they make water heaters now). The '70 Shelbys were renumbered, leftover '69s with the front spoiler and hood stripes added to differentiate them.

Years ago, didn't one of the astronauts talk about "traveling through space, at high speed, in a craft where everything was built by the lowest bidder"?

Those '53 pickups SELL.

The orange Badman is a weird one. Monogram did switch colors with the 1/32 scale kits, because those were molded more than one kit at a time, together. But they were pretty consistent with the 1/24 scale kits. The Badman kits sometimes came with clear "clear parts" instead of the usual red tint. But the main color was (almost) always as stated on the box.

Waymo trouble than it's worth...

For decal sheets, don't use those photo albums with the clear plastic covered, sticky pages. The sticky on the pages will start sticking to the back of the decal sheets stored in the album.

The dragster isn't modeled on any specific car, but there were a number of similar 1:1 dragster built in the late Fifties and early Sixties. Few, if any, used the clear canopy though. Most were just left open. This kit is a masterpiece of model car kit engineering, with all of the interchangeable parts and different designs that can be built with it.

If I get poor service somewhere, it's usually the last time I go there, at least to that location. No point telling them off...next time you're there, you might get some "extra protein" in your value meal. Just sayin'...

The AMT Challenger has a convertible body with a separate, add-on roof for the hardtop version. There are two Revell kits. One is the ex-Monogram T/A which is in 1/24 scale. The other is the ex-Vanishing Point diecast, now molded in plastic. Claimed to be 1/25 scale, but little different in size from the 1/24 scale one. The Lindberg (ex-PSM) kit is a crib of the MPC annual. It is a '72.

50th anniversary of Niagara's final season (1974). I understand much of the actual track is still there, though both ends have been dug up and all of the buildings are long gone. I was there only once, in 1973. My older brother was racing a '66 Chevelle in Modified Production at the time.

The Ideal Indy car kits were created by, I believe, a company called Best. Ideal acquired the tooling for them at some point. The Monogram Kurtis was pretty much "it" for 1/24-1/25 scale Indy cars until AMT tooled the Watson roadster and Lotus, then IMC jumped in and did another Lotus soon after they got up and running.