Mark

The gullwing Merc looks like it's heavily channeled over a Seventies GM chassis. Look how high the frame is near the firewall. The floor (looks to be from the frame donor car) is awfully high. It looks like the floor is so high up as to leave the chassis as its stock ride height in this application. With the frame ahead of the front wheels as high as it is, I wonder if this guy has a radiator figured out yet. Another case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should"...

Gotta say, not a whole lot of Merc left in this one...

The custom '32 sedan was never offered by itself. AMT issued a stock/street rod sedan ONCE in the mid-Seventies. It was made up mostly from the phaeton/Victoria kit (engine/chassis/fenders) with the body and windows from the custom sedan, a modified phaeton interior bucket, and a new hood.

Both are Ford products, so the design philosophy behind them was pretty much the same. Leaf spring rear suspension, "shock tower" front with coil springs above the upper suspension arms. If it looks close to you, use it; you can tweak individual parts to make them look "right". That said, the 1:1 '62-'65 Fairlane (and '62-'63 Meteor) have a lot of unique parts. Front suspension rebuild kits are available only sporadically. The lower suspension arms on those cars were originally made as an assembly, with the ball joint riveted in. I was lucky to get bolt-in ones a few years ago. Those are seldom available, and were impossible to get for many years. The front shock absorbers for those cars don't interchange with anything else I'm aware of.

I use the retractable knife pictured above for the sharp curves, and a #11 blade/handle for the straight areas. I worked for two years at a place for a company that had a vinyl sign shop as part of the business. They bought #11 blades in mass quantities, and threw them away after a couple of cuts because even a hint of dullness would make them snag the vinyl. I grabbed the throwaways, discarded the ones with broken tips, and sharpened the rest myself. They're sharper than they were out of the box. I'm gone from there nearly twelve years, probably won't have to buy another #11 blade again, ever.

They fit certain classes very well. Besides the bigger Hudsons, the compact Jet with the big-car engine was also used. NHRA had a rules loophole that allowed pre-1960 cars to use any engine in any body, provided both were the same manufacturer and the same year. Some guys claimed that Hudson sold a kit over the parts counter to do that swap, but I don't think that was the case. Besides Matty Winspur, there was a guy named Ike Smith who ran Hudsons in various Stock classes in the Sixties. I've got an old magazine article on a couple of those guys; one bought his car from a used car dealer for scrap price because the guy wasn't going to put it on his lot. Hudsons weren't worth much in the mid Sixties. There were a few Hudson-powered cars in the lower Gas classes also. The bottom two or three Gas classes were reserved for flatheads, inlines, and overhead valve engines with fewer than eight cylinders.

How much would the double kit sell for, seeing as it would require a larger box and the output of two tools and two molding machines? And, if they were sold together, more people would complain than not: "why do I have to buy both, when I only want one of them?"

The street machine version of the '60 Chevy pickup is hard to find. I don't think it sold nearly as well as the stock one due to the custom grille, and some of the other parts like the wheels which were already dated when the kit came out. It does have some good engine parts though.

When it comes to "kit families" (groups of kits that share a substantial amount of tooling) the Revell Deuces would be right up there. Their '69 Camaros, new-tool Tri-Five Chevies, and the AMT '68-'70 Mopar kits, would fall into that group also.

The Marlin should have been built in its original form, as the Tarpon, on the American body instead of the larger Classic.

I've gotten great results numerous times from Chrome-Tech (one attempt with LMK about ten years ago came back with contamination in the plating, tossed 90% of the parts). I'm nowhere near Modelhaus or Missing Link but over the years I have had thousands of parts plated, from hub caps to bumpers. If your resin parts are coming out pitted, in all likelihood there are issues with the castings, meaning the resin. Maybe the material itself is old, maybe the A:B mix is off, maybe something else...can't diagnose without seeing parts before/after, close up. If you are buying the packaged Alumilite kit, you are probably getting old product. It may have just gotten to the store, but you don't know when it was packaged or how long it was sitting in some distributor's warehouse prior to that. That's not a knock on Alumilite; all of the "hobby" casting stuff is in all likelihood industrial stuff that is past the "use by" window for its original use. It's still good for hobby use but you have to use it quickly once opened. Resist the urge to "save" it for a "special project". Time flies, and before you know it you've got two bottles of hardened goo that's useless. I've tried Alumilite a couple of times but never had success with it; again not singling them out but you might try another system. Unless you've done a lot of experimentation in the past, stick to compatible products from one company. There are eBay sellers offering resins and mold material. Someone who moves a lot of product will have fresh materials in stock. They'll usually offer advice on the stuff they sell too. They want you coming back later for more, so they won't stick it to you by selling you materials that don't work together. At first, DON'T use mold release on parts you intend to have plated. The molds last only so long, so many "pulls" before the heat from the curing resin starts drying them out in detail areas. Once they show deterioration, you won't use them for parts you want plated anyway because they'll require surface prep. I dust molds with talcum powder; it breaks surface tension letting the resin fill in details better. The molds do last a bit longer before showing deterioration also. If you are making prototypes for NASA or the Wayne Foundation, they might require some special mold release, but for hobby castings the miniscule amount of powder left on the molds absorbs into the resin as it fills the mold. It doesn't sit on the surface of the finished casting. The stuff is actually sold by some suppliers as filler material for some resins, and doesn't cause problems with plating or painting. It doesn't have to be cleaned off. When I prep parts for plating, I do wash/rinse them, to get rid of resin dust from sanding the back side of the parts more than anything. I have NEVER had plating fall off or flake off of parts cast this way. Not one, not ever. When I toss a part (I don't strip/replate castings) it's because of contaminants in the plating, or a flaw in the casting that I missed. If you're apprehensive about mold release at all, then do the chrome parts without it. Some of the greasy-kid-stuff or silicone mold releases DO absorb into the resin, and that stuff does cause problems when you can't clean all of it off of the surface of the parts. I've seen problems with bodies from one "volume" caster that tends to blast a lot of that silicone stuff on their molds. Used in moderation, it's okay (I used it on the couple of bodies that I had cast in the distant past) but I've kept it away from anything I intend to have plated. I've still got a couple of cans of silicone mold release; I spray it on my snow shovels and snowblower a few times each winter.

A couple weeks ago, I went to a nearby plaza to pick up something at the Lowe's there. I noticed a Carhartt store had opened nearby. I've got an older jacket with the ends of the sleeves worn through and the insulation falling out, so I thought I'd start looking for a new one. With all the stuff there made offshore, I figured either they shifted production themselves or someone just bought the name and started slapping it on the foreign stuff. The search continues...

Maybe get your feet wet with it, then step up to a quality piece and resell this one to someone else wanting to try it. One problem with the Chinese stuff is you won't be able to find replacement parts if you have the need. Next year, the units they'll be selling will be different, made in a different factory, and nothing will interchange. Kind of like Sears weed whackers...

The (rear) seat might be from the '64 Fury again. It's either from a Plymouth or a Dodge. '63 had the seats molded as part of the bucket, '65 was bigger (and Jo-Han didn't do a Dodge that year), so again we're looking at '64. If you have a Jo-Han '64 Dodge, check against that; if the pattern is different then it's from a Plymouth. The color looks similar to the dashboard. The '64 Dodge was reissued a few times with the interior left unchanged, but only the annual Plymouths had the rear seat included. Later issues were all as the Petty NASCAR, no rear seat needed for that. Interior bucket is Thunderbird, could possibly be anything '64-'66. I don't think earlier ones had the rear seat that wrapped around like that. The '66 was reissued a bunch of times; if you have one of those, check against that to narrow it down.

I'm 99% certain the bumper is a '62 Chrysler unit. The 1:1 '61 Dodge actually used the same bumper, but with a single wide guard under the license plate. The dash is a '64 Plymouth Fury piece. Jo-Han only made one Plymouth model (Fury) in those years. It's definitely not '62, '63, or '65, has to be '64. The other rear bumper is self-explanatory. Not an easy piece to find; '61 Comets always seemed to be seen less often than '60 or '62.

Possession is nine points of the law.

Model King initiated a search for the Ford pickup when he did the drag team with the MPC Cougar funny car. It was determined that it was gone even then. It probably didn't make the trip to Baltimore when AMT sold the Troy, MI facility. Lesney owned AMT only a couple of years, so they probably didn't do much of anything as far as inventorying or checking tooling goes. I'd doubt Ertl scrapped much, if anything, during their ownership. Racing Champions probably wouldn't have gotten rid of anything either, and Round 2 just bought everything not long ago so they certainly aren't going to scrap anything. The ('66) Chevy pickup does still exist, but someone else has that. About 500 of them were run off in the Nineties, and sold as pre-assembled retro-promos with vacuform glass. Apparently whoever has that tool hasn't got the clear window tooling that goes with it.

The caliper is an overlooked tool, but it's a great investment. Having that lets you check scrap wire you turn up, to see if you can use any of it for what you want. When you use the caliper, you won't be relying on the gauge of the wire; that's the measurement of the conductor, and isn't of any help unless you plan to remove the insulation. The 30 AWG "wire wrap" wire that a lot of people use for plug wires can be found on eBay. From what I have seen there, the gamers use it to repair their stuff. I used to get that at Radio Shack, but there aren't so many of those stores around anymore. In my area, the only color they carried was red. I used to paint it black with Polly S acrylic, but the wire I bought on eBay is black so I don't have to mess with that now. Don't overlook scraps; if you are recycling anything electronic, try to get what wire you can from it. You want to avoid using the same gauge wire for more than one thing on the same project. The plug wires aren't the same gauge as the battery cables, and they certainly aren't the same diameter as the heater hoses!

I've got parts from the '32 sedan in yellow, light blue, red, and white. Besides the first issue pictured, there was a second "wordless box" issue after that, with no wording on the box top and no illustrations on the end panels. Similar style to the current Round 2 '32 Victoria, '50 Ford convertible, and upcoming '49 Ford coupe. Some (but not all) of the Gasser issue Willys coupe kits also contain the custom '32 sedan. That issue was changed during its run; early ones contain the double kit, later ones contain the Willys coupe only, but with the alternate pickup version. The box is unchanged; the artwork shows only the Willys coupe. The later Gasser issue kits were catalogued and sold alongside the first issue coupe/pickup in a different box (the one Round 2 replicated for their first reissue of the Willys). If you had both versions of the Gasser issue kit in sealed boxes, the one with the Deuce sedan would weigh a bunch more than one with the Willys coupe/pickup though.

It was the '63 Ford pickup that had the kart. I don't know if the parts were the same as those scattered among the '62 kits, but the '63 kart also included larger wheel/tire units and a streamlined body. Likewise, the '63 Chevy pickup included a complete Triumph motorcycle, with an optional streamlined canopy. AMT never repeated the scattering of parts for an accessory item among several kits after the '62 deal. It was probably something that didn't drive sales of additional kits as planned. During '62, Revell started their Custom Car Parts series, which included four different motorcycles. For 69 cents, you could get a complete one instead of having to buy several kits with only a few parts in each. I've pounded the ground at swap meets for decades, and can't recall ever seeing a complete, built kart or cycle made up of parts from the '62 kits. More often than not, those parts got hacked into something else using whatever the builder could scrounge at the time.

Several parts for either the kart or the cycle were included in each kit. These were mixed in with the car kit's other parts. One kit might have had the kart's plastic tires, maybe a seat, and another small part or two on an unplated tree, and would have a set of wheels and a fuel tank on the plated tree. Each kit's instruction sheet had the full parts breakdown for the kart or cycle with the parts included in that kit highlighted. It would tell you which other kits also had parts for that item. Some parts were in more than one kit. I've got a complete kart, and I'm pretty certain there were plated wheels in one kit and unplated ones in another.

Someone was buying those Sting Ray III kits! I remember talking to one of the AMT/Ertl folks at a meet somewhere, and someone else asked him why they tooled their promo model when Revell already had done a kit. His response was, that they'd found out that it was a consistent seller for Revell, so they (Ertl) thought they could grab a slice of that pie. For a while there, you could go to a model car swap meet and expect to see that kit (built, unbuilt, started) on, or under, a number of tables...

Those early Monogram NASCAR kits have really come down in price recently. More recent ones have dropped like a stone, but the early ones were still good. I picked up one of the first two Buick Regals, and (I believe) the second version Elliott Thunderbird (the one with the Coors markings), sealed, for single-digit prices. I'm not that much into NASCAR (do have a few kits; I bought ones that looked interesting) but when you can pick up the earliest kits in a groundbreaking, long-running series for cheap, I figured why not. Same goes for the early Monogram Pro Stock kits. The reissue of the Reher-Morrison-Shepherd Camaro a couple of years ago brought the price of originals down. I had all four of the original kits on my sale pile, couldn't sell them so I figure I'll keep them instead of giving them away. Again, great kits, and they cranked out a lot of variations over the years...

In the early days of eBay (1999-2000 for me) I bought a case of 12 Jo-Han '69 "pro street box" SC/Ramblers. It was a screaming deal even then, I think the whole thing was under $50 with the shipping. Nobody else bid on them. Sold off four or five of them for $15-$20 apiece shortly afterwards which means the ones I kept didn't cost me anything. I had three or four of them prior to that, so I was still right around a dozen "in stock". Later I found a couple of very early SC kits with wire axles and $2.00 price suffix on the box (didn't know any were made like that) so of course I had to have those. I might have about as many AMT '25 Ford kits, though.

There are articles in the old model car magazines (Car Model, Rod & Custom Models, Model Car Science, Model Car & Racing) covering working with the clear bodies. Some guys did reinforce them on the inside with fiberglass cloth and epoxy and then painted them on the outside with automotive touch-up paints. Another guy grafted the fenders cut from a vacuum formed slot car body onto a molded styrene one. The question is, are the modern bodies made from the same material as the old ones? I'd bet not, but you never know. For this project, I'd pound the ground and try to turn up a resin body.