Mark

I need another '57 Chevy kit like a hole in the head...but the shelf space is already cleared for one more...

Yes. Polar Lights did a pretty good counterfeit of that tire for their funny car kits.

That's a Jo-Han funny car front tire.

If you can get then to add dragster wheels to their product line, that would be the way to go. Actually, it's surprising they don't have them now. MCG does do some drag racing stuff, and their quality is great. One of only a handful of aftermarket suppliers I'll buy from sight unseen, based only on past dealings and reputation.

True, if you are doing it for your own use. But it's more work/expense than it is worth to do them that way to include them as a component in a conversion kit, especially one that might account for a small portion of sales. The vendor I referred to originally (not the PE guy) has been around a long time, offers a massive assortment of cast parts, and sells a lot of them. He's probably okay with dropping conversion items that include PE, as he can easily fill the void with other items that consist of only castings. That way, he's still doing only castings, as opposed to dividing time between castings and PE. I'd still bet that if someone wanted to compete with MCG, the toughest part of that deal would be finding a PE company willing to work with them. You'd be stuck in the middle, between "too much to do it yourself" and "not enough for a mass-production company".

The Jo-Han wheels don't have open slots, but sanding (not grinding) the back side will open them up. A couple other Jo-Han kits had those wheels, but they are tougher to find than the Plymouth.

If it's the guy I'm thinking of, I had PE stuff done by him also back when I was doing conversion parts. When I contacted him originally, I believe he mentioned R&M as being among his clients. (This was about 30 years ago; of course R&M may have switched sources between then and now.) I don't know Norm (R&M) personally, but on the surface it appears he does the castings but others do the PE and creating some of the masters for the parts. The guy doing the PE (if it's that guy) pretty much did stuff only for model kit aftermarket parts guys (military, cars, whatever). Of course, many other companies do photoetch, but it's not easy to find one willing to do the hobby items. They'd rather do production stuff that they can run off in far bigger numbers than the things that interest us.

Well, I wasn't the one that thought they were in the '55 kit (which does have one like the larger/single scoop)...

What's different about it, other than the slanted front of the 1:1 piece?

The Revell opening-doors '55 has the Cal Custom aluminum scoop that attaches to the top of the hood. I don't know where the scoops pictured came from.

The ?? part is the extension that goes at the back. The cap without that extension might fit a short-bed Dodge, but MPC never made one with the wide box.

By Tom Daniel...the only one he did for Revell back in those days.

Besides the body difference, the Foose Cadillac chassis looks like it is based on a stock Cadillac unit (as opposed to the fully fabricated frame under the FD-100 pickup). It wouldn't look quite right under a Chevy or Olds. I had figured on a completely new chassis when the kit was announced, and was somewhat disappointed with what ended up in there. I'd probably have picked up a couple more of them for kitbashing had the chassis been a wholly fabricated one.

Another thing to consider: packaging. A 1/20 scale car kit will require a slightly larger box than a 1/24 or 1/25 scale kit of the same car. Those boxes will take up just a bit more space on the store shelf, literally crowding out other companies' stuff. They couldn't just stick the 1/25 scale kit into the larger box, because it would cost more to ship and would have to sell for more than the competition. The fact that you, the end user, might prefer 1/25 didn't really matter, as MPC wasn't selling them to you, but rather to the person in charge of buying toy/hobby items for K-Mart or Monkey Ward. Sure, 1/20 scale might not have sold in the numbers that 1/25 did. But in those days, they were selling enough of them to keep those 1/20 scale kit tools set up on production lines. And, they sold for more ($3 vs. $2 for most 1/25 scale kits) so there was more profit on each carton of kits that left the factory. Yes, they used more plastic to make the larger kit, but in those days the cost difference was minimal. Many books and articles on model kits make mention of other things in a kit (like decals, or even boxes) that surpassed the cost of the plastic used in manufacturing a kit.

The masters for the promotional models were carved in 1/10 scale and pantographed on a scale of 2.5 to 1 for cutting the tooling. There's no reason that the factor couldn't have been 2.4 instead of 2.5. But when the early promo models were being made, nobody was doing car kits in 1/24 scale. (Or 1/25 for that matter; it was several years before someone at AMT realized that kits could/should be produced based on the promos).

The Chevy and Ford kits were 1/20, but I believe the Duesenbergs were slightly smaller (1/22?)

The Comet was originally supposed to be an Edsel. With the discontinuation of the Edsel lineup, it was sold by Mercury dealers but was not badged as a Mercury until '62. I'm not sure if the title or registration for a '60 or '61 would read "Comet" or "Mercury" however. The Comet taillight lenses look slimmer than the Edsel units, and the radius at each end looks smaller too. Chrysler's Valiant went through a similar period: it was a brand unto itself for the first couple of years before being integrated into Plymouth for '62.

If 1/20 scale kits "didn't sell", they wouldn't have kept updating the C3 Corvette through '82, they wouldn't have issued the Ford van in so many different versions, and they wouldn't have done so many other kits in 1/20. Someone was buying them...

You want it to harden within 2-3 minutes of mixing it. If it gets sticky on the surface, either there's not enough catalyst or it isn't thoroughly mixed.

Look at the lower part of the tube... what's hiding behind it is the tube of catalyst. You don't need much at all, but if you have to choose then "a bit too much" beats "not quite enough". If you add way too much, the stuff will kick off before you've had a chance to do anything with it. You want to knead the little tube, as the catalyst does separate quickly. You want that to come out consistent (not watery), then you're basically just adding enough of it to the filler itself to (barely) change the color. Mix until it's all one color with no swirls, and you should be good to go. As for where to get it, check the websites for whatever auto parts store chains are in your area. Around here, there's Pep Boys, Auto Zone, NAPA, and CARQUEST. I'm pretty sure I got it at Auto Zone. There are a couple of body/paint specialty shops around here (one of which mixes paint and puts it into spray cans), but those guys generally don't carry the tubes, they sell it in larger quantities.

They do have the stock '70, I saw a couple of them locally a week or so ago and mentioned that to someone who was looking for one. With Christmas coming, HL will probably start discounting kits by 20% or 30% in a given week, which may prevent the use of the 40% off coupon. Sometimes they still let you take the 40% off of the regular price (not the discounted price), sometimes they don't. Not everyone is on the same page when it comes to that. Might be easier to just wait a month or so...

Metal ones are included...they just left the plastic ones in. Probably more work to block them off in the tool than it is worth.

When I was making epoxy molds for vacuum forming, I'd have to drill a number of smaller (wire-gauge) holes into each mold in order to get the plastic to "pull" into it under vacuum. With those, I'd have to go extremely slow also, otherwise the friction from the drill bit would melt the adjoining epoxy. I wouldn't say one rule fits all materials...some are brittle, some have a tendency to melt, some are more elastic than others...

I didn't spot it right away, but there are two versions...one with the slight roof extension and added side window. Ford was on to that extended-cab deal with this one. The side profile looks like a combination of '63 Pontiac (front) and '63 Buick (quarter panels) though, and that recessed center section makes the front clip look like a night stand...

That one looks decent, it's way different from the one I used to have. That one held the Dremel tool in a fixed position, and the work table rose up to meet the drill. I never could get used to that, and sold it. That said, if your Dremel tool has the speed control built in (as opposed to single-speed) even the slowest speed won't be of use with super-small drills. The drill pictured in the tool is about as small as you'll be able to use.