Mark

I can't remember a Jo-Han kit wheel with an axle boss on the back like these. The front side of the wheel looks like those in a number of AMT kits, but I can't tie that color in with anything.

Recent issues of the Anglia and Thames have included one-piece tires and slicks. The picture I saw for the coming reissue showed the Ansen wheels that were in the pre-1980 issues; maybe those will be put back in. The chassis isn't too accurate, and nobody ran an Olds engine in these cars, but the bodies are well done which makes them worth having.

H-D licensing is probably the thing that would tip the scales one way or another on a reissue. If Chevy, GMC, or Ram are currently offering a 1:1 H-D edition pickup, they probably won't want a Ford kit out there at the same time.

Some of the stock (not Pro Street) AMT B-body Mopar kits include two engines, a Street Hemi and a 440. Pretty sure only one transmission is included, though. The Pro Street versions include only the Hemi, though the '70 Coronet includes the experimental dual overhead-cam setup as an option.

The reissue box art is based on the first issue...there was no '75 annual as such.

I picked up a Lawman Plymouth kit at Hobby Lobby; it was marked $29.99. I'm pretty sure their merch comes to the stores with the price tags already attached, so someone at their warehouse is probably screwing up with the $39.99 tags. But the ones already marked will probably stay the way they are, unless someone at the store figures it out and fixes it.

Haven't seen the reissue yet, but it will be a '77 because that's what it was when the original AMT company set it aside. But it will have the optional parts from the '75 and '76 kits (custom front and rear end caps, wheels, window louvers). Those parts weren't in the original '77 annual kit. I've got an original '75 so will pass on this reissue. As far as the stock version goes, '75 and '77 differ only in minor trim like emblems, maybe side markers.

But the vast majority of people who buy model kits at the craft stores have no knowledge of the secondary market...they don't travel in those circles. Round 2 has done just fine with "too many of those out there already" kits like the '66 Mustang coupe, '68 Shelby GT500, '53 Ford pickup, '56 Ford, '49 Mercury, and so on. Someone is buying the newly produced ones, otherwise they wouldn't be cranking them out. Most, if not all, of the Lindberg stuff that got blown out in the clearance stores lately is probably pre-Round 2 production.

The 442 convertible might be a Carl Rees piece. He was doing a ton of 442 stuff for a time. It's probably better than the Revell kit, which is generally good but has that banana-shaped rear bumper. I'm trying to come up with a way of fixing the Revell body to fit the Jo-Han rear bumper because I never got around to picking up any of the resin convertible bodies. I've got one of those '62 Bel Air kits too. Mine is an earlier one, with the hood molded shut. I bought that one back when Modelhaus was doing only '61-'62 Chevy stuff, before they were even doing plated parts. Later on, I bought a hood and a set of plated bumpers for it. The most recent plan involves plugging an original '62 annual kit chassis into it. Since AMT/Ertl released their excellent new-tool '62 kits, the value of the annuals (especially less than perfect built ones) has plummeted. I think I've got three really clean convertibles (each of those cost less than a new kit), and I lucked into a couple of poorly built ones with really clean chassis. I've got a Modelhaus Impala hardtop too; that one will also get an annual kit chassis. The newer Revell hardtop is nice enough, but the AMT kits still stand up pretty well as far as I'm concerned.

The AMT Deuces obviously aren't as accurate as the newer Revell kits, but assembled they still do look like '32 Fords. With them, you're better off not trying to do too much correction...fix one thing, and that throws something else up that will then stick out. I've been wanting to build each body style stock, out of the box, just get them assembled cleanly. Just seeing all of them on the shelf together would overcome any shortcomings that the individual kits have.

DON'T use brake fluid on early Jo-Han plastic! My own experience with that combination had the plastic turning extremely brittle, to the point where it is not workable. One guy I used to know did a lot of building "to order" for a doctor who was in one of the Oldsmobile clubs. This guy did great paint jobs, but on the occasion where he didn't like his work, into the brake fluid it went, even still wet. When he quit building, I bought his kits and parts. In there was a '68 4-4-2 body that got the strip treatment; the detail on the whole thing is washed out and the plastic is more brittle than usual for Jo-Han. I might be able to save it as a funny car body, but that's about it. This guy was bugging me to sell him my '68 kit; I'm glad I kept it because it might have suffered the same fate as this one. I once bought a built '65 Chrysler hardtop with the intention of stripping/rebuilding it. Apparently it had gotten rebuilt at least once in the past. I didn't use brake fluid on it, but even so parts of the body literally crumbled and fell off when I pulled it out of the strip tank. Other than the body, the parts are all still in good shape. The windshield from that one got set aside for an unbuilt '66 convertible that I picked up for cheap on eBay. That one had a cracked windshield that probably scared some bidders off, because Modelhaus didn't offer replacement glass for it, at least at the time.

Those ribs on the inside of the tire clinch it as the AMT version. I've got a Nomad in the works with those tires, but the wheels are already assembled into them so I couldn't look at that part of the tire. I checked a first issue '56 Ford, and there they are. The instruction sheet specifically shows that tire, and they are called "racing front tires" to distinguish them from the stock tires normally used on the front of most other kits' drag versions. I checked an incomplete first-issue Nomad: the instruction sheet again shows those tires, but in the box were two Trophy Series tires in addition to the four narrow stripe Firestone Supremes that were included for the stock/custom versions. My '32 Ford/'40 Willys double kit also includes Trophy Series tires for the front of both cars. Strangely, none of these kits have the racing fronts illustrated or even mentioned in their box art. You'd think that AMT dropped a few bucks to tool some new tires, they'd call them out on the box art. I'll stick to the story...something probably happened to the tool used to produce that tire, and it flat-out vanished nearly as fast as it appeared.

Wheels are the rears from the first (and only the first) issue AMT '49 Ford coupe. The slots are not open on that wheel as it comes in the kit. The tires could be Revell Orange Crate (came in one issue of the ex-Tweedy Pie also), or they could be AMT. AMT had a tire that looked exactly like that, they included it in a parts pack with some wheels as well as the first issues of the '56 Ford and '55 Nomad kits. It may have been in the first issue '32 Ford sedan/'40 Willys double kit also, but I'm not 100% positive about that one. Something must have happened to the tooling for the AMT tire, because it never appeared in anything else later. I'd guess those are AMT tires, but I'd have to have one of them in my hands to be able to tell the difference.

I just checked a couple of JF bodies that are packed away. The '51 Chevy sedan delivery is still stuck together with the hot glue...and the kit hood fits the body as good as it fits the original kit body. It has the kit firewall, interior platform, and chassis in it. The upper part of the floor (behind the rear seat) has been cut in preparation for building the load floor in the back. Prior to gluing it up to pull the body sides in, the hood didn't fit worth a darn. The '53 Studebaker phantom sedan delivery is also still stuck together with the interior and chassis. That one didn't have any problems with hood fit, but the lower body sides were splayed outward a bit. I've got to figure out just how I want to do the interior for that one. I've also got a pre-chopped Studebaker salt flats body that got the rubber band treatment. One of the rubber bands fell apart and the other one dried out (from not even three years ago; I bought all of these at NNL East over the years). But the body is pulled into the correct shape and has stayed that way. This body has the pre-chopped top piece built into it; I've got to tweak that because the kit windows don't really fit that top very well.

I've never seen hot glue cause damage to styrene. I've used it to temporarily attach Jimmy Flintstone resin bodies to donor chassis, applying it along the inside of the body to pull the sides back to the proper shape. Often the JF bodies are pulled off of the molds before the resin has fully set, and that causes the body sides to bow outwards a bit. When I'd get one of those bodies, I'd compare it to the body from the donor kit and, more often than not, the rocker panels would be further apart on the resin body. Clean up the inside of the resin body, stick the interior in (and other parts like the firewall if you think that will be helpful), and hot glue the body to the chassis in the same relationship as if you were using the kit body. Throw it into the box, when you get back to it and take it apart the body should hold the correct shape from then on. The glue method pulls the body into its intended shape, and also fixes other issues like hood fit which can be thrown off by the lower body distortion. If you do this with, say, rubber bands around the body, that could cause other problems like pulling the roof down. The rubber bands often dry out and fall apart too.

Would it be possible to post a picture or two? No 1959 annual kits (AMT, SMP, or Jo-Han) had engine detail or an opening hood, so most people call all of them "promos" when in fact many of them are assembled kits. I'm pretty certain the switch away from acetate for promo models didn't start until '61 ('64 for Jo-Han), so if you have something from '59 that isn't warped or distorted then it may well be a kit.

All issues of that '57, even the original, have the enlarged rear wheel openings. If you have an MPC '60 kit (one of the stock versions, not the flip-front one) compare the rear wheel openings on that body to the '57. The stock '60 body would be good to use as a template for fixing the '57. MPC also offered a '57 Corvette slot car. It too had the enlarged rear wheel openings. I wouldn't be surprised if the '57 slot car body (hood molded shut) eventually got converted to the flip-front body.

If the black Milliput epoxy is similar to the other colors, I would have doubts about having the ability to press it into a open, one-piece silicone rubber mold without the mold itself distorting. I can't see two-piece molds of any kind being workable with epoxy putty as the casting material.

Those base models just weren't promoted very much. AMC offered a similar first-year-only Gremlin, no rear seat and no opening rear glass (cargo area was accessed through the doors). Some of those were later upgraded with a rear seat and an opening hatch, to move them off of dealers' lots. Plymouth later had the Feather Duster, the version with some aluminum body panels. I remember seeing a grand total of one of those back in the day. In theory, you could actually buy any of these, but you had to jump through flaming hoops to actually get one. Most dealers would instead give you a really good deal to sell you something that had been sitting on the lot. For the Chevette Scooter, I poked around online and found pictures of the door panels which are simpler than those on other Chevettes. The car I found had a rear seat though. I'd stick a flat piece over the kit's molded-in lower seat half and call it done. As for the radio, it would appear as though if one were not included, the fender just wasn't drilled for the antenna. A flat plate would probably have taken the place of the radio. The radio was still an option on some cars even into the Nineties. My mom bought a first-year Dodge Neon. She wanted one with an automatic transmission and nothing else. The closest thing the dealer could find also had a rear window defroster (required in New York), side moldings, and an AM radio. Mom was okay with the side moldings but didn't want the radio. The dealer threw the radio in rather than go to the trouble of taking it out. They probably didn't have the pieces to fill the hole in the dashboard or the antenna hole anyway. That car didn't have a passenger side mirror either.

Keep searching, maybe you can find pictures of a survivor online. Usually the bare-bones versions were produced in low numbers, just so the manufacturer could advertise a low base price. Larger dealers would maybe have one on the lot while smaller dealers would usually not. I remember seeing a number of these on the streets back in the day though. A guy I worked with bought a '76 Scooter new, put about 200,000 miles on it, and it was a running/driving car when he sold it. They wouldn't have just stuck a folded seat in there, there would have been a panel of some sort to fill the empty space. As I remember, these cars had plain cardboard inner door panels also. As for exterior details, these cars had silver painted bumpers and grille/headlight surrounds, and "Chevette Scooter" decals instead of "Chevette" script emblems on the front fenders. A radio would have been an option even on the regular Chevette models. You'd have to do some research into whether the right front fenders were all punched with the antenna hole (with a plug added to fill said hole for no-radio cars) or if the no-radio car just had a fender with no hole. My mom had two Chevettes (neither a Scooter) but I don't remember if the fenders had any special stamping around where the antenna went. The latest Chevette that MPC offered was the '79, with the larger grille and the later hood that didn't extend downward to the front bumper. '80-'87 had different quarter panels, hatch, and taillights. MPC never updated the kit beyond '79.

Most MPC late Hemi engines are that size. To add to Ace's post above, there was no '76 Duster kit. MPC's '75 annuals included a Duster (one of the first bunch of '75 kits released), then it was converted to the Dart Sport which was released towards the end of the '75 releases. Even the '75 Duster is pretty tough to find now because they were run only once, and briefly at that.

The Hemi engine first appeared in the '72 pro stock Duster kit (California Flash) which was produced in between the '72 and '73 annual kits. MPC would often include parts from those in-between kits (pro stockers, Street Funny Cars) in later annual kits. The '71 and '72 Duster annuals, and the '71 Demon (and about half of the other '71 and '72 MPC kits) didn't include a lot of usable optional parts because they had those incredibly stupid "spoof" parts. That garbage got broomed out after '72 ('71 for a couple of them), and MPC started putting decent optional parts back into the kits (with the exception of those "belt badges", another waste of plastic). We don't need no stinking badges! Those went away after only one year. MPC stuck to optional parts for the most part from then on. The '73 Duster Hemi is pretty much carried over from the California Flash kit except for the intake setup. The '73 box art mentions vinyl hoses to connect the air cleaner snorkels to a couple of Olds W-30 style under-the-bumper scoops, but the vinyl hoses didn't make it into the kit.

Stopped in at my LHS today, he says he'll get them next Tuesday, Wednesday the latest. I've got three on order, two are gifts but not needed this weekend, next Saturday will do.

Other than the 1969 engines, what's wrong with the Cougar chassis/underhood setup? It was way ahead of its time when new, and still holds up pretty well compared to a lot of newer stuff...

I've sent a number of racks to Chrome-Tech (none in the last four or five years, though) with thousands of small parts. Never a problem with any sort of reaction with the silicone. Chrome-Tech does recommend a particular brand, though; maybe there are problems with cheap/off-brand products. There is a potential for trouble, though, if you get any silicone smeared on (or even touching) areas that are meant to be plated. If you are re-using a rack, you need to make sure all traces of the silicone from the previous plating job have been removed.