Mark

Two rear doors (Thames, '33 Chevy) would make them panel trucks for most people. The '23 T falls into this category too. Not too many kits out there ('53/'54 and '60 Chevies) but probably lots of resin. Jimmy Flintstone's studio would be a good place to start looking.

If you have to put an emblem on something that says "Classic", chances are it is not, and will never be, a classic.

Mercury Cougar body, would be surprised if it still has a Mercury title though. There were a couple of "classic" builders putting together cars like that back then.

Around here, the discontinued items are already marked down. Revell '57 Ford wagon (police version, not the gasser) and (I think) the stock '70 Barracuda, AMT Lawman Plymouth and Crew Wagon '72 Blazer, MPC Volare, Soapy Sales funny car, '60 Corvette, '67 Charger, and '70 Bonneville among others.

Thanks for the replies! The urethane tires pictured are indeed copies of the 1/32 scale tires used on the 1/24 scale midget. This seller is a different one from the one(s) I have seen, who state in their listings that the tires are cast in open molds. That process leaves the inner sidewalls rough and without any detail. That's okay for a 1/32 scale slot car, but on this thing the whole tire is out in the open. I asked this seller about his tires, but have not gotten a reply yet. If he doesn't reply, I'd assume his tires are cast the same way. Looking at the two cars I have, one is missing HALF of the front axle while the other is missing the whole thing. So between two cars, I've got four rear wheels and tires, and one front. I'll probably hang on awhile longer to see if I can't run down an unused set of tires. I hadn't looked at the Surfite tires because I've only got one of those. The recent Revell midget wheels and tires would work too, but I'm not going to part out one of those to fix another, inferior version of the same subject matter. I should start looking at built 1/32 scale snap kits, maybe there is something usable there. I think I've got one tire from the old AMT All-Stars Indy roadster kit. If I had one of each size tire from that, maybe I'd cut some tread detail into them and do some resin casting. I've got to cast front wheels anyway.

I've got a couple of the old Monogram 1/24 scale Kurtis-Kraft midget kits (the ones based on the slot car body, not the larger PC-1 kit). One is missing the front axle, and with it, both front tires. Both the slot car and non-powered shelf model versions used 1/32 scale slot car tires. Revell issued several of the slot car body-based kits in the SSP program, including one or two 1/32 scale kits. The 1/24 scale kits were altered to use available kit tires, but what did they put into the 1/32 scale kits? Someone is repopping the old slot car tires in silicone, but those are cast in open molds leaving the inside sidewalls without any detail. Any information would be appreciated--

Michael's used to be relatively strong in plastic kits, maybe they figured out that they could make more money plugging something else into the shelf space. I haven't made a purchase there in a while, but did notice their stores here probably stock the full selection of Testors bottle enamels, certainly more than anyone else around here. The newer (now biggest in the area) local hobby shop is now doing coupons, so I've cut back on the chain stores except for craft items that I wouldn't expect a hobby shop to stock.

I built an original one two or three years ago, and had another one back when they were new. It only has six wheels, two per axle front and rear. The tandem axle was added to keep the built model from doing a static wheelstand when a car was placed on the ramp hauler.

I'm not so sure the current (Round 2) issue GTO (orange car on the box) has the tree, or any optional parts, included. The blue RC2 issue pictured above definitely includes the tree.

At least they weren't delivered to the wrong house, as happened with a package of mine a couple weeks back. It was a small package, would have fit through the mail slot in the side of my house that dumps directly into the hallway. I checked the tracking right after lunch, saw it as "delivered", and immediately went home to find it wasn't there. The delivery time shown was a good two to three hours earlier than when I get my mail on a typical day. Went to the post office, got the typical "we'll look into it" non-answer. I don't want to go back a third time because then they might start "losing" other mail out of spite...

The small treaded Indy tires are correct for the first issue. AMT used them in the Mach I (chopped '67 Mustang) concept kit also. The larger version of that tire was used in those toylike "big rig" kits, as well as the reissued '63 Ford pickup. I believe the second issue Fireball 500 used the hollow Goodyear stock car tires.

The body in my kit was at the bottom of the box with the other items all on top of it. Mine looked like the one pictured, except the header was split down the center. The passenger side was bent down as pictured, the driver side was still in the correct position. I was able to get it straight, so I won't bother asking for a replacement. They should watch this when packing the kits, though.

The '66-'69 kits had an all-chrome engine; all of the parts were on one tree. It's not the same as the '62-'65 kit engine, but probably won't make much of a difference. Someone mentioned the AMT Ford pickup ('75-'78) engine: though listed on the box as a 460, it's really a 360 (last of the FE series). The only really good 429/460 engine out there is in the Revell '70 Torino kits.

I've wanted to butcher an Anglia body into a Prefect for a bunch of years. My older brother once rebuilt a hacked-up (1:1) Seventies build that never ran, into a running/driving car with a rectangular tube chassis and a 455 Buick engine, and then there's the George Montgomery Hurst Gasser Passer that I've wanted to build a model of. I've fished a bunch of Anglia and Thames panel built-ups from parts boxes at shows, never paid more than a buck apiece for one regardless of how complete it was. Hardly anyone wants to rebuild one of these things. At the last outdoor swap meet, I picked up a mint-in-box Skip's Drive-In issue Anglia, five bucks. I wouldn't bother putting one of these kits on eBay, let alone a built one.

Eldon (the toy company) sold six show car kits in the late Sixties. (Five of them have been reissued by Doyusha a couple of times since then.) They were made for Eldon by Doyusha, and a lot of the parts in those kits are cribbed from other companies' kit parts. Some of those kits had gold/"brass" plated parts. I'm guessing that this transmission might be from one of those kits.

A lot of kit distributors are undersize, but not all. Even some of the undersize ones can be drilled for individual wires...start with a drill way smaller than the wire you intend to use, and redrill with larger bits once the holes are established. Someone posted step-by-step instructions a couple of weeks ago on making a pre-wired distributor using short pieces of wire insulation that slip over the plug wires, and some acrylic fingernail plastic. I didn't have the acrylic on hand, but tried something similar with just the wire insulation, and it worked pretty well. I started with a piece of round styrene rod drilled at one end for the coil wire, then superglued eight short lengths of insulation around it, spaced evenly. Once everything cured, I then sliced the "distributor cap" off in one piece. It looked pretty good. I've made distributor caps by drilling the holes into a length of round sprue (a lot of newer kits have perfectly round parts trees) then shaping the "cap" around the drilled holes. Those tend to look rough compared to the molded parts, so I only use those where the distributor is at the rear, buried behind other parts like air cleaners and ignition coils. As for wire, "cheap" and "wrong" don't necessarily go hand in hand, provided you can measure the cheap stuff you find and then figure out what it can be used for. If you haven't got a digital caliper, get one. The cheapie Harbor Freight units (under ten bucks on sale or with a coupon) will work just fine. First thing you do is throw away the battery that comes with it and get a name brand one. And, take the battery out when you aren't using the thing. The caliper has lots of other uses: measuring drill bits after you accidently dump all of them out of the drill index, measuring the thickness of sheet plastic bought off of the scrap pile at the local plastics supplier, and many more. Pop the hood open on your car, measure the diameter of the plug wires, heater hoses, battery cables, fuel line, and anything else you might want to do in scale. Divide by whatever scale you are working in, to determine what diameter material you will need for each application. Then measure the wire you have. Whether 1:1 or in scale, don't go by the wire manufacturers' reference, because they are measuring the bare wire and not the insulation. We're not using the wire for its intended purpose, so our measurements need to include the insulation.

That piece looks like the one from the AMT Grant King sprint car. Unfortunately that kit doesn't include a grille to go with it. The 1:1 sprints didn't have grilles by then. The Monogram Eighties sprint cars don't even have the nose, as the 1:1 cars of the period didn't have them.

About ten years ago, I had a tree in my yard taken down by an ice storm. The leaves were still on it, it got loaded up with moisture and then froze making it top heavy. The wind did the rest. It wasn't an evergreen but it did have shallow roots, so it fell across the two fences between my property and next door. My property had an old chain link fence but the neighbor had a swimming pool put up in the yard much later, and built a taller wood fence alongside the existing one for privacy. My homeowners' insurance paid for the removal of the tree (and grinding out the stump, though initially they didn't want to pay for that). They didn't pay for any damage to either fence though. I simply removed the section of chain link fence that abutted the neighbor's wood fence. One section of their wood fence got taken out, but they had a spare section. I helped them take out the damaged piece and install the spare one, and they were okay with that. My only expense was renting a jackhammer for a day, to bust the concrete around the fence posts I wanted to take out.

The 30 AWG wire (size refers to the wire without insulation) is all over the place on eBay. Apparently the video game geeks use it to fix their stuff. I've never seen anything but red at Radio Shack (I'd either paint it with thinned black acrylic, or color it with a Sharpie) but you can get it in black, white, whatever on eBay.

The Deuce kits have the AOD unit. The only really decent C-4 I can recall is in the Revell John Buttera street rod kits, but it may be on the small side.

Every magazine article from back in the day recommended applying the flocking to wet paint, but a lot of guys used liquid cement instead. That might be the case here, meaning you're literally "stuck" with the flocking short of sanding it away.

I'm convinced that most IT people just fiddle with a program until they stumble into a change that they think looks cool, then they push that change-for-the-sake-of-change as the latest "improvement". I've lost count of the "improvements" that add steps to a procedure, while claiming to "simplify" said procedure. They don't work with the program on any regular basis other than to tinker with it, clutter it up with "new" functions that nobody ever uses, and change the graphics and move the icons around. They haven't figured out that what separates a great artist from a mediocre one, is that the great artist knows when to put the brush down. Get it to work, then leave it alone. It's particularly aggravating when they are doing this change-for-the-sake-of-change nonsense, while existing, glaring problems are ignored. eBay's mission seems to just get you to look at the site longer so they can sell more listings. They're already giving away continuous re-listings to the various "sell a model kit one piece at a time" dreamers...just make those clowns pay ten cents for each re-listing, and watch the site magically clean itself up...

Yeah, they always ran out of the engine from the more expensive car. You never heard about GM running out of Chevy engines, and substituting Olds or Cad units...

The Michaels stores around here have had a pretty lousy selection of kits the last couple of years (one has no Round 2 stuff at all). But they've probably got the complete selection of Testors brush paints. The spray cans were locked up for a while, but I believe they have undone that brainstorm lately.

Make sure the primer is thoroughly shaken before spraying it. The manufacturers seem to be using less "solids" and more solvent in recent years. If you don't shake the can, you are leaving the solids at the bottom of the can while blasting a higher amount of solvent onto the plastic.