Mark

The Cragar wheels, slicks, and front tires look like the ones in the Melrose Missile Satellite I picked up over the weekend.

Those kits use one of a couple of generic interiors, with decals for the instrument panel. Chassis are generic too. The kits were based on slot car bodies; the bodies themselves were cribbed from promotional models and are pretty decent but the rest leaves much to be desired.

While you are at it, the interior sides can be made more vertical to eliminate the tool "draft" that all one-piece interior buckets have. The convertible top mechanism bulges on the side panels can also be eliminated, and the rear seat widened. Too, I'd check the interior/body/chassis fit to see if the interior can be made taller. Sometimes the interior floor is molded thicker than it really needs to be; replacing the molded part with thinner material adds to the interior depth. I did that on a Corvair interior on a recent project (used the top of the chassis as the interior floor, and stood the side panels up perpendicular to the floor). That kit's interior is shallow and leaves a huge space in the assembled model between the bottom of the interior bucket and the top of the chassis. Just standing the interior sides up straight to eliminate the taper can make the interior look way deeper.

You don't want popcorn...it's junk food.

The four wheels grouped with the engine parts are probably the narrow ones that were included in the pre-1993 issues of the kit. They would be used with the baby moon caps and narrow tires. The wheels with the interior tree should be the wide rims used for the drag version, but why there are four of them is a mystery. The drag version used those wide rims only with the slicks, and used two of the narrow rims on the front. The Edsel wagon taillight parts (other than the lenses) are likely long gone. They were grouped with the rear suspension parts, right where the fuel injection intake tubes have been since the drag version was added in 1971. The parts trees in this kit have been cut and pasted quite a bit, probably for the 1993 revision. The suspension parts and exhaust manifolds were plated prior to then, now they are grouped with the rear shocks and interior "animal" which were never plated. Only one wire axle is needed for this kit; the 1993 revision eliminated the notches in the oil pan and engine block.

Converting that MPC Cougar funny car body to stock looks like an interesting project, but I've got an AMT kit for each year plus a Mini Exotics '68 GT-E. In fact, I've lucked into a couple more AMT '67-'68 Cougars in recent years as parts of small collections and large parts boxes, and resold those to help get back what I'd paid for the things I intended to keep. The Mini Exotics kit has the grilles altered to add the horizontal dividers, but for some reason they separated AMT's bumper/grilles unit into three separate parts that don't fit together too well. I've probably stashed a spare AMT part or two, to which I'll have to add that GT-E trim. The funny car bodies weren't usually tweaked too much back then, other than adjusting the wheelbase and pulling the roof down a bit in front. Some were stretched a few inches in the front too. Back then they were still pulling molds off of stock vehicles to do the bodies. The first ones to get really reworked were the '68-'69 Chargers. The all-out reworking started in '71 when NHRA allowed the subcompact car bodies. They let the guys using bodies from larger cars to cut them down to the width of the subcompacts, otherwise they'd have had all Vega/Pinto fields at every meet.

Liquor/beer laws, perhaps relating to advertising. I knew a guy who lived in Virginia (he passed about twenty years ago), he once said that Virginia's liquor laws "were passed by Carrie Nation in 1912". Some counties there were still "dry" (no sales allowed at all). There was one New York town that I used to drive through on my way to work that was "dry"; I believe they changed that only a few years ago. Across the state, we still can't buy a beer before noon on Sundays.

The reissue was out longer than the original issue. It's a unique car, it's only going to appeal to X number of modelers.

No. I've got a Mini Exotics GT-E from the mid-Eighties, but it's based on the AMT stock/custom annual kit. The GT-E scoop is cast as part of the hood, not as a separate piece. It shouldn't be too tough to fake one up for the funny car body, though.

Just checked the Rod & Custom Models issues...the Parnelli Jones Mercury isn't covered in any of them. I've probably got the Rod & Custom issue(s) with it, I'd guess they are from '63. That said, anyone who is into early Sixties nostalgia should search out the Rod & Custom Models issues. There were only eight of them (June '64-January '65), but they sure packed a lot into those eight issues. Visits to the major model companies (with pictures of production facilities, tooling, and info on the design process), two Phil Jensen scratchbuilding projects, Don Emmons, Joe Henning's circle track stuff, "pre-Monogram" Tom Daniel doing sketchpads on customizing then-new kits, advanced scratchbuilding articles featuring Manuel Olive and Michele Conti, and there's probably some stuff I've left out. The regular Rod & Custom issues (before, and after through '66) have a lot of similar material, though less in each issue because it's split with the 1:1 car stuff. If you have a chance to borrow them or pick them up for cheap, don't pass it up...

What's wrong with living in the past? That's where most of my life is...

I've got the original Dennis Doty book, but mine is hardcover. The later two-volume version is in paperback, the advanced volume adds aftermarket information which didn't exist to any great degree when the original version was published. I'm too lazy to drag out my Rod & Custom Models issues to see if that '63 Merc is in R&CM, or Rod & Custom. I bought a rough built '63 Mercury about thirty years ago, stripped off four or five thick paint jobs to find it a perfect candidate for the project, made a vacuform floorpan for it (sold a bunch of them, too!), and snagged a couple of the decal sheets someone did for that car. I should clear the workbench and get going on it other than just piling up parts. No '64 though...it has to be a '63.

If the shipping charges are spelled out in the listing, the buyer shouldn't gripe after the fact. You want free shipping, go to Amazon. With eBay, I look at the total including shipping. High shipping charges knock a couple of bucks off of my high bid, low shipping adds a couple of bucks, simple as that. I buy CDs on eBay a lot. Most times, I end up buying from the same vendor (they almost always have the lowest price) and that vendor ships free. Sometimes, I don't know how they're making anything on my stuff.

The first Funny Hugger had the early style chassis (shared with the Mustang and Cougar, and with longer frame rails in the Gas Ronda Longnose Mustang). The Camaro body was stock except for those butchered rear wheel openings. They were cut way bigger than they needed to be. The box art shows the body with stock-looking wheel openings. I'd bet most kids were surprised when they opened the box and saw the body. The Funny Hugger II body has more modifications unfortunately, including front wheel openings that are shifted forward. It's too bad really, the AMT body looked pretty good. But the Revell '69 kits are good too. I wanted the first Funny Hugger kit, had started piling up parts for one including a Revell body (I wasn't going to butcher the wheel openings) and a parts box chassis. I gradually turned up original chassis parts, as well as the interior "tin" (which I think is exactly the same as the Mustang/Cougar piece). Later I bought a messed-with annual kit to get the interior bucket for another AMT annual, leaving the spare body for the funny car. And I'm still not going to cut the wheel openings...might have to tweak the rear suspension or use smaller slicks so that the body will tilt up and down, though...

That body is from the AMT funny car kit. I never had one but I've seen a few of them; I remember the radiused rear wheel openings but not the altered front ones. They probably had to do that so the body would fit a chassis that was shared with two other kits at the time (a '70 Mustang, and a '69 Camaro). The Countdown issue box art is doctored up to put the stock wheel lip trim back on, but it does look like the front wheel openings are the elongated ones left over from the funny car. Whoever built the box art car probably had to work with the combination of the funny car body and annual kit interior and chassis.

The AMT '69 funny car was issued only once, though I believe it was in a couple of catalogs so it was available for two years or so. The body is from the stock annual kit, but the rear wheel openings were messed with a bit. If you have access to the box from the Countdown Series '69 Cougar, the custom version pictured on that box still has the modified rear wheel openings. The stock version on that box was an illustration. That was the first reissue of the stock version, and the first time that body was used after the funny car issue. At the time the box art for that kit was done, they probably hadn't changed the body back to stock (or maybe they weren't aware that there was a need to do so).

The AMT body had the rear wheel openings messed with, not sure about the fronts. Let's see those pictures!

Those are all essentially the same (MPC) kit. The Cougar Country version (with the clear body) was the first one. At some point the body was altered a bit to put a separate escape hatch into the roof. I'm not sure when that was done. There may have been other minor changes like engine parts, nothing major though. If you wanted a '69 Cougar funny car, you could get the body from the stock '69 and drop it over the '68 chassis with some tweaking. The AMT '69 used the stock body with a couple of alterations, which were reversed when they put the stock version back together later.

No. The '69 was an AMT kit, the '68 was an MPC kit. When those kits were first manufactured, AMT and MPC were competing companies, not separate brands with one owner as has been the case since 1985.

I'm pretty certain there was more than one such build, especially if one made it into a 1966 or '67 annual (compiled from earlier issues) and another article turned up in '68. After looking at these, you'll understand why Revell parts pack dragster chassis are relatively easy to find, while the suspension parts meant to go with those chassis are thin on the ground...

Paint is probably the thing that puts more projects into boxes and on the back burner more than anything else.

The AMT Chevy vans. I built one a couple of years ago, wired the engine and you can barely see the engine at all when you cut the hood open like the earliest versions. The chassis has an insane number of parts considering the interior has no inner door panel detail. I did add full interior detail, but that was a pain. They got it right with the Ford Econoline later on; that one does have door panel detail (though only for the passenger doors, not the cargo area). The chassis has fewer pieces than the Chevy, but has the same level of detail.

The Pro Street version of the Coronet has been popular too; it has the parts for the experimental overhead cam engine, the tubbed chassis slides under a bunch of other Mopar bodies, and the rear part of the chassis is the right size for a bunch of Fifties cars. More of the Pro Street issues are available right now because that's the one that has been out most recently. For those who don't know it: the tubbed rear half of the Coronet chassis is different from the one used in the '68 Roadrunner and '69 GTX kits. If I remember right, the kick-up over the rear axle is higher.

Great! Just wanted to make sure it didn't get lost in the mail. Every so often, I get mail addressed to someone on the next street over (with the same house number as mine). On those days, I wonder what happens to my mail, as the next street over from me is a main drag, and the numbers are way off...

Have the vendor packets been mailed yet? The website has 2/15 as the mailing date.