Mark

I've always used Elmer's. Cheap, it holds, and it's easy to remove. Works for me.

If it's the one molded in dark red, it's the most recent issue. RC2 announced a reissue not long before they folded their tent, but it never appeared. The body was used in a couple of NASCAR kits (with that generic chassis) and some restoration was done to get it back to stock. A couple of areas aren't as crisp as in the annuals, but it's a serviceable kit. The reissue didn't have the station wagon conversion parts included, and it didn't have any stock wheels, but other than that it was pretty close to the '74 annual. Just the other day, I was looking at a built '73 annual that I've had for a while. When I got it, it had been converted to the wagon but the wagon roof and glass weren't part of the deal, and the hood was missing. I've since found a couple of hoods as well as the (used) wagon pieces. It's assembled fairly cleanly, should rebuild easily. I should get on that one.

The multiple-belt setup had to be molded with the "steps" in it. If it were molded with grooves between the belts, it couldn't be pulled out of the tool. You could scribe the grooves using the molded-in steps as a guide and then file away the steps, or just file away the steps and end up with a single wide belt. Other more recent kits have stepped areas instead of grooves on certain parts; if you have a Revell Deuce three-window kit, check the trunk lines on the body...

Revell-Monogram did, but that one is 1/24 scale and the engine is noticeably larger. The AMT Duster kit includes a six-pack setup, but the builder here wants a single four-barrel intake.

I'd wager that you couldn't find a person in that factory that has ever seen a picture of a '57 Chevy, let alone an actual one...

Those wheel covers are from a Monogram '58 Thunderbird kit. But, I have seen a review or two of that kit saying that they are closer to being accurate for '57 than '58.

#1 AMT '55 Nomad, #2 AMT '57 Ford.

The Model King issue Cyclone includes stock Cyclone Spoiler decals for 1970 and 1971, and also has the stock wheels on the plated tree. I don't have the Round 2 Allison issue, but I understand the stock wheels aren't in that one.

If you want a showroom stock Cyclone, get one of the Revell '70 Torino kits. The Torino and Cyclone are based on the same unit body, the Torino has the correct engine, and a lot of it fits very well considering the kits were engineered thirty years apart by different companies. The Torinos have separate door handles and side markers, the engine compartment is a good fit too. You'll have to do a bunch of work to convert the interior though. I'm working on one myself (using an original Cyclone interior) but I have seen another one done using a converted Torino interior.

Don't they say six more weeks of winter most of the time anyway? Chances are, there will be six more weeks of winter (which makes the prediction right), and if there aren't six more weeks of winter then you'll be happy about it and forget the "prediction" anyway...

Around here, one store had the MPC NASCAR '71 Cyclone, Jawbreaker, and Cosmic Charger, AMT '70 Impala, and a couple of newer Revell kits (I think they were the Foose Challenger and Camaro). They might add a couple more at some point, generally about eight or ten kits get broomed out every time they reset the stock.

One has the three-speed, the other a four-speed. A number of parts are identical but the block/transmission halves are different.

They'd give you a set (or a choice of a couple of other items) when you had to reorder something that was out of stock (which was pretty much every time you placed an order). A couple of the early catalogs had a set folded in half and inserted between the pages. Those sets were printed on slick paper without any adhesive.

Some Jo-Han kits had that air cleaner also. The '65 reissue '64 Dodge hardtop (same as the annual except with the Wedge swapped out for the Hemi) has it, as did the '65 and '66 Plymouth annual kits. I'm not sure about the '67-'68 Plymouths (don't have any of those other than already built) but they probably had it too. All of the Jo-Han units that I have seen are plated. Other MPC kits would include the AMT-boxed '65 Coronet (underbody and engine from it were reused in the '66-'67 Charger) and '65 Custom 880 convertible. The '65 Monaco hardtop, and '66 big Dodge kits, did not include the Hemi as an option so those do not have that air cleaner.

A lot of them were built like that. I'll bet the kid who built it had a blast back in the day. I couldn't bring myself to stick one together exactly like that, but I do have a couple of started Advanced Custom kits (including a '63 Merc hardtop) that I intend to finish using the kit's prescribed custom parts. In the case of my Mercury, I had to fix some overzealous trim removal and realign a few already-glued-on parts. But it's too far gone to save as a stocker, I've got a stock one already, and the butchered/customized one was cheap...

Did the words "screw bottom" appear anywhere in the listing?

The hot glue peels off. I don't think it leaves a residue, but you will pull it all off before doing the rest of the trimming/fitting work, so you're going to be cleaning the body at least once or twice anyway.

NOS, maybe left there by previous owner of the shop? Those may have been around in certain areas in the Eighties. I went to a couple of Cleveland area toy shows in the early Eighties; one vendor there had cartons of sealed, untouched late Sixties MPC kits. There was no massive selection, but there were several cartons each of what were presumably slow sellers. I don't remember what many of them were, but I think I bought a few including a first-issue '69 Trans-Am which came out in late '69 after the normal annual kits. That one wouldn't have gone for much more than a new current kit at the time, because MPC had a reissue of that same kit out not long before then. He had a pile of those MPC 1/20 scale snowmobile/dragster kits too; I passed on that one. I'd imagine some kits sold better in one area than another, especially if the store doing the selling was in an out-of-the-way place, or charged full retail. I put together most of my collection of Revell parts packs in the mid/late Seventies. That whole thing started when some guy had a booth at one of the local flea markets (which folded a few years ago after a long decline). All he had was Revell parts packs. No kits, no other stuff. If you bought enough of them, they were ten for a buck. He didn't differentiate on them either, to him a parts pack was a parts pack. Who knows, maybe he found them in the trash or cleaned out an old hobby shop and got them for free. I went through that stand pack by pack over a couple of Sundays (should have packed a lunch) and dug out all the different ones I could find, including most of the engines and all but one of the motorcycles. (I didn't find a Harley-Davidson, not one, in all that stuff. My older brother told me I'd never find that one anywhere...it was about ten more years before I did find an original one.) At the time, I didn't have a listing or any other information to determine how many I had or didn't have. I eventually figured that out (some item numbers went unused), I'd found all but four or five of them. The guy with the parts packs only set up there for a few weeks...never brought any other stuff there that I can recall.

What a breath of fresh air...Eighties-style billet is nowhere to be seen (it had its place but enough is enough), not one of those "let's pile all of the rare parts onto one car" monstrosities in sight, and you can recognize what all of these started out as. You might want to say one car should have smaller front tires or another should have a different color interior, but that's just personal preference. Every one of these cars looks like someone had a vision, and followed through on it.

The parts pack-based double kits were probably a "one run, and done" thing. The parts packs themselves ended in '65; that year, the last couple of them were introduced, but all were broomed out of the catalog at the end of that year. My '66 Revell catalog doesn't include any parts packs, or any of the double kits based on them. (I've got two different '63 catalogs, both of which include parts packs.) The double kits not going over big in 1965 is understandable; some of the dragster chassis were obsolete when they first appeared in 1962; by '65 or '66 they were downright Stone Age. To a lesser extent, the Fiat/Bantam/T-bucket type altereds were taking a back seat to gassers and F/X cars by then too, at least with model builders. Slot racing was at its high point around that time too. The Tony Nancy double kit was reclaimed in the Eighties (one chassis was used under the Revellion Dart in the meantime) for the HOT ROD Magazine branded series. One of Nancy's Seventies dragsters was added to make it a triple kit. It was reissued as an SSP item in original-style packaging at least once; maybe as many as three or four times in the last twenty years.

Revell reissued all of their '62 Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge kits as Metalflake versions after the initial issues sank like a stone. I've got a '63 Revell catalog; should look at that to see if those are in there. The "paint it on the inside" deal didn't really work because the bodies were thicker (a LOT thicker) in some areas than in others, and that's not even getting into the chassis mounting posts, molded-in radiator wall, or interior mounting bosses. The Metalflake issues have custom parts. I'm not sure if the original issues did or not. I've got a first-issue Dodge Dart four-door hardtop, but it's still sealed. I haven't looked at it in a long while but I don't recall optional parts being mentioned. One of my older brothers was building models back then; I remember him telling me about one of his buddies trying the "paint it on the inside" method back in the day and being bugged by all the stuff on the inside of the body. Had they been designed with that in mind, they probably could have pulled it off to some extent. I've got an Imperial four-door hardtop kit now; didn't get it for the Metalflake deal but rather because I wanted the four-door to go with the AMT hardtop and convertible, and the Metalflake kit was the first one I ran across. If I'd found the regular issue first, I'd probably have snagged that.

He's got a Ford Econoline van body out now; I just picked one up (he's selling direct on eBay now). It looks like it's mastered off of a diecast one that I saw somewhere awhile back. The castings look good; really clean, nice panel lines, and not nearly as much mold release as on earlier bodies. It measures out slightly undersize (1/25.7 or so), but then again the intended chassis donor (IMC/Lindberg Dodge A-100) is similarly undersize, so everything should fit together pretty well. Hopefully he'll eventually offer a pickup version as well.

Right after I dump HCC, they now have to start doing some decent articles... Thomas Graham has written books about Revell, Monogram, and Aurora. Nothing about AMT (or Jo-Han); from what I have heard he isn't a "car guy". With the founders of those companies long gone, we'll probably never see anything on them in any great detail. I haven't got the Aurora book, but the other two are very good. The old Rod & Custom Models magazine had short articles on several companies also. No real history provided (there wasn't as much of it in 1964!) but some good pictures of work in progress.

I've got a built one (not built by me) and it's really nice. The main thing you have to watch for with JF bodies is that the rocker panels are often further apart than those of the donor kit's body. They tend to de-mold the bodies before they are fully set (probably to save wear and tear on the molds), and they then take a set with the sides bowed out slightly from pulling them off of the core of the mold. This affects hood fit on Fifties cars with taller hoods. Before starting any alterations to any of the donor parts, you need to get the body pulled 100% into the correct shape. If the rocker panels are further apart on the resin body than on the plastic one (hold the two bodies bottom-to-bottom to check), you need to mock up the resin body with the donor chassis and whatever interior, and pull those body sides in. When you hold the resin body with the sides pulled in to match the donor kit body, the donor kit hood should fit either body exactly the same. Don't use rubber bands to pull everything into shape. They dry out, and will often pull other areas out of shape while correcting the areas you want to fix. I stick the body sides to the chassis with hot glue, and let the whole thing set for a week or two. After that, you should be able to peel off the hot glue and the body should stay in the corrected shape. I've done a couple of them ('51 Chevy sedan delivery, a couple of '53 Studebaker bodies) in this way, and in each instance the plastic hoods fit as well as they do on the original kit bodies.