Mark

I did the exhaust removal on a '55 Nomad chassis a couple of years ago (nope, the model isn't finished yet!). The Nomad chassis would be great as a first-time project. The only area where you will break through will be the muffler. That can be filled in with thick sheet plastic after the muffler is gone. You can use a Dremel for the muffler area, to do the rough cutting. The rest can be done with SHARP X-Acto blades, slowly and carefully so as not to nick the surrounding areas. I did the bulk of the removal with the narrow #17 blade as shown above. Make sure the blade is sharp. If you have a dull blade, you'll put more brute force into moving the blade through the work. The more muscle you put into doing the work, the less you have available to guide the blade. Start by grinding away as much of the muffler as you can, to the point of breaking through. Then, cut a piece of plastic as a press fit in the muffler hole, then hit it with some liquid cement to hold it in. While that is curing, work on the other areas. I'd start at the tailpipe and work forward. When most of is gone, sand the areas smooth, putty the muffler area and anywhere else that is needed, sand again, then get some Evergreen strip and reconstruct the missing floorpan detail as a mirror image of the other side. The Nomad piece is good practice for some other project where no replacement chassis is available.

The Trumpeter Falcons are a hot mess, don't waste your time or money. If you want a '64-'65 Falcon, start with the AMT altered wheelbase body. The rear wheel openings are moved forward, and there's a recessed area for the drag 'chute in the rear body panel, but changing that stuff beats dealing with Trumpeter's "reflection in a funhouse mirror" rendition of the Falcon body. If you want 100% stock, look for a resin body or a less-than-perfect promotional model. That aside, the AMT new-tool '67 Mustang underbody is the way to go if you want more detail for the '66 coupe. A distant second would be the parts from the AMT/ex-MPC '69 Mustang fastback. Those parts originated with the MPC '66 Mustang fastback...chassis looks like the AMT '66 piece, but with separate exhaust and rear axle/spring unit. The "stock chassis for Gas class" rule fell by the wayside around the time Ohio George's '67 Mustang appeared. Mike Mitchell ("world's fastest hippie") built a '33 Willys in 1966, with a fabricated frame. At first, NHRA stuck to the "stock frame" rule, but later backpedaled, seeing how fast those cars were getting. The first few times out, Mitchell's car was moved into Altered class, but the rule change came for '67. The stock frames under some of those cars needed extensive rework for drag racing. Ever see a stock Anglia/Thames frame? (Don't look at the Revell kit; that one isn't accurate.) It's awfully puny. The Austin unit wasn't much better. I remember my older brother building a 1:1 Austin pickup; by comparison with domestic cars, its frame looked like it was made of heavy gauge sheetmetal, though several layers thick in places. A Sawzall made short work of it; the frame was intact but had a lot of scaly, scabby rust (the truck sat in a dirt floor building in Ontario for many years). Montgomery's Mustang had the Willys frame because he'd started construction on it prior to the rule change, but then again he used a Willys frame under the red '69 Mustang which was built after fabricated frames were allowed. He probably just liked them as a starting point.

Motor Trend's "awards" seemed to be connected more closely to the amount of advertising sold to a particular manufacturer, as opposed to the perceived merits of the vehicle itself...

As much of a GM hater as I am, I wouldn't call the Cavalier a failure. GM sold a mess of them, and in my area (where cars rust into oblivion) I still see plenty of them, even though the newest ones are now twelve years old. It might have been Car & Driver that remarked that they "run poorly, longer than a lot of other cars run at all". My mom got fourteen years out of a Chevette...bought new towards the end of '81, replaced by a Dodge Neon in '95. The Chevette stranded her three times in a row...three strikes, you're out. Each time it was stupid little stuff, but the floor was starting to go away, so it wasn't worth throwing money at it by then. She was happy with it overall, and got pretty good service out of it. There were things that irritated me (oil filter directly over a crossmember, no cam bearings in the head-just metal on metal)...typical GM penny-pinching. Another guy I knew bought a Chevette Scooter (the one with cardboard door panels, and no rear seat) when they first came out. He put about 160,000 miles on it, and sold it to another guy I knew. When she packed up and left him, she'd put another 100,000 on it by then, and took the car with her. The midsize and fullsize GM cars with the V6 engines were the real failures. Around here, the frames rotted behind the rear wheels where the tires threw slop on them every winter. The V6 engines were overtaxed and not up to the job. The guy who bought the Scooter brand new, later bought a Bonneville "G" (midsize) with the Buick V6...puked the engine with fewer than 50,000 miles. The rebuild didn't last any longer. He had a V8 put in after that, as did a lot of other people...

The side panel of the AMT '62 Corvair (and SMP '62 Valiant) Styline kits list the other kits in the series...at the bottom of the list is "El Camino". Presumably this would have been a third issue of the 1960 kit with Stylizing parts added (there was a straight reissue of the original version in 1961). Between production of promotional models, toy store frictions, and kits in '60 and '61, the El Camino tool was probably shot even at that point. The Jo-Han 1969 kit "sell sheet" lists 1969 GTX and Cadillac convertibles, neither of which were produced. The 1969 Auto World catalog lists the GTX convertible also, not a Roadrunner convertible as I had previously posted.

The reissue kit's box is actually a bit larger (taller) than the original. Round 2 uses the same size box for AMT and MPC branded kits, while when they were competitors (back in the day) MPC used a box that wasn't as tall as AMT's. The box bottom might be just a bit narrower because of the box top being double layer, though. Some of the chrome trees had tabs added later to stick them in the vacuum plating chamber, which sometimes made them a tighter fit in the boxes. MPC did use a slightly bigger box for some kits (Open Road camper, '71 Chevy ramp truck) but the dragster kits were in the regular box. The dragster chassis fits in, but diagonally. I'm surprised the transfer got wrinkled. The display in the Meyers Manx kit was put in the box without folding the large bottom section, unlike the original issue of that kit.

Would you be able to get Carfax info on a government vehicle? I always thought most of those are self-insured, like rental vehicles. I've heard good and bad about ex-rentals..."they don't change the oil, they change the filter and dump the drain oil back in", things like that. I rent a minivan every year for the NNL East weekend; lately all of them have had those little stickers all over that denote previous damage. I'd think it would be hard to find an ex-rental that hasn't had body work done, or doesn't have dents and scrapes all over.

That's where my interest in modeling lies, as well as music, movies, TV shows, you name it. I wouldn't build a tuner, but I do try to check out the stuff I'm "not interested in" at the shows, whether 1:1 or 1:25. Something usually catches my eye...paint quality, some added detail, overall workmanship. The idea of a "tuner rod" has been rolling around inside my head for some time, but I have a lot more ideas than interest in following through...

I check drill bits with an under $10 digital caliper from Snap-On East (Harbor Freight). Well, it's a bit over $10 when you buy a decent battery to replace the one that comes with it. Whether a costlier but more precision unit or the cheap digital piece, everyone should have a caliper in their tool set...it's great for checking the diameter of the wire you find that you think you can use for something, checking thickness of sheet plastic bought off of the salvage pile, as well as sorting the drill bits that you accidentally dumped out of their holder...

Most recent used cars are way overpriced. The dealer's rationale is usually "if this were a 2015 ---, it would cost $xx,xxx". But it isn't a 2015... it's a used 2010, 2012, or whatever. It's already got three, four, five years' use, and those were the best years. The updates to that car that took place in the intervening years aren't in the used car. The 2015 car might have a six-speed automatic where the 2010 has a five-speed, for example. If the used ones are selling anywhere close to the new ones, why bother with used? It's sitting on the lot because the previous owner no longer wants it. Just why might be perfectly legitimate (marriage, growing family) but still you are left to figure out why he/she no longer wants the car. I'd avoid cars brought in from out of state...it's often done to "wash" the title of accident information, lemon-law buy backs, things like that. BMW got nailed a few years ago for moving and re-titling cars that were bought back as lemons. They shifted them to other states that don't have a lemon law, and by doing so they wipe out the resulting loss in value. I've got a sneaking suspicion that some of the multi-state mega-dealers do this also. One used car dealer around here mentions in their advertising that their guy is always in Florida at the auctions looking for cars. No used cars around here? I can't believe that any particular car is so much more popular in one area than another, so as to make it worth transporting hundreds or thousands of miles to resell it. I'm overly suspicious...my thinking is that it's being done because it wouldn't sell where it was due to accident(s), theft recovery, or lemon law buy-backs. All of that gets scrubbed from the title when the car crosses state lines. I've said it from day one...Carfax might as well be put on a roll and sold alongside White Cloud and Charmin. I know people who sell cars, and cars they know to have been involved in accidents often have clean Carfax reports. Some insurance companies avoid providing information...after all, some of them provide "loss of value" coverage. It's not in their interest to tell the world that your car has been repaired when they might have to cover the resulting loss in value on it because of an accident. Carfax promised way more early on than they could ever deliver. Every time they come up with a new ad campaign, the disclaimers become longer and greater in number. Carfax makes money from both dealers and car buyers, more so from the former than the latter. You can't serve two masters...when push comes to shove, the dealers are buttering their bread. Every time I've looked at newer used vehicles versus a new one, for me the price gap is usually way less than for most people. Most of the used cars on the lot were sold as new cars off the lot, as opposed to having been ordered by the buyer. Usually, they'll have a lot of garbage that I don't care about or don't even want. By ordering a new vehicle with what I want on it, the price gap between it and the typical used version of the same vehicle narrows considerably. I keep my vehicles forever. My daily drivers were all bought new. Since 1979, I've bought three. Right now I don't see anything I like enough to take on a car payment and higher insurance rates. I have thought about getting something before the next level of mandatory stupidity (rear-view cameras) comes in, though...

The engines in the '32, '34 pickup, '36, and '40 Fords interchange for the most part. The Lincoln engine in the '25 T has similar engine mounts but I'm not sure if it interchanges with the others. The Chrysler 392 in the '32 roadster has a couple of spacers that usually have to go with the engine, and the FE-series Ford in some of the Deuces (and the '34 pickup) might need to be cheated a bit by installing the oil pan backwards, but otherwise they'll usually fit. The Chrysler might not fit into the '36 with its steering column, and the '40 bodies might need some firewall work to get it in also. The engines in the '49 Merc and '49/'50 Ford kits swap about as easily (among those kits), more so since the '49 Ford had the front wire axle eliminated awhile back. With the '50 convertible, you'd have to either drill to get the axle in or do something to eliminate it.

I could see X amount of drag team kits sold, but not many. If you can live without the box, the Piranha drag version reissue kits can still be had, as can the Fireball 500 (which contains that trailer).

Tom Cotter's excellent Dean Jeffries book includes only a couple of "period" color shots of the Monkeemobile(s). One shows it with a white top and interior, the other with a tan top and interior. Both photos are credited to Jeffries' own collection. The "tan" shot looks to be from back in the day because the car has Goodyear "blue stripe" racing tires and not some off-brand lettered tires that Barris probably put on the car later as part of some promotional deal. The "white" shot looks like it was taken later, but who knows? The text, however, mentions that Jeffries used stock white GTO bucket seats front and rear. But the upholstery pattern on the seats doesn't look stock. Two cars were built originally...maybe one had white, the other tan? The exterior color looks like a solid (not metallic or candy) red. The solid color probably would have been a lot easier to touch up when the car(s) were bumped or scratched during filming. The Jeffries book wouldn't be of much help with the Monkeemobile project, but it's a great read nevertheless.

The sedan delivery was never offered as a Switchers series kit, but was converted from the sedan body in the Deuce sedan/phaeton kit. RC2 converted it back to the sedan for their Buyers' Choice Switchers reissue, but the picture on the box showed a delivery. Besides the exterior alterations, the delivery had a deeper/fuller interior that is not in the Switchers reissue. The Switchers sedan/phaeton had a weird shallow interior that could be used for the channeled/fenderless version as well as the stock height/fendered version. The delivery interior can only be used with the fender unit, or for a fenderless un-channeled car. The Switchers phaeton body is a pretty decent fit on the "1996" Revell Deuce fenders/chassis, but the interior needs a bunch of work. The Revell two-door sedan kit makes all of the other sedan bodies obsolete (with the exception of the Orange Crate body). The AMT and MPC sedan bodies are too narrow at the rear.

I'm pretty certain those are '61 Imperial headlights. The units in an Imperial kit might be a bit smaller, but I'd bet that the entire Imperial kit is a bit undersize...

That kit isn't all that different from the MPC annual kit. It's a so-so conversion of their excellent '68 annual kit (MPC had the promo contract for '68, AMT for '69). Between the annual and the black car, it was the Dickie Harrell funny car, then the Jeg's dirt track car. If you look at the inside of the body, you can see where MPC tooled exhaust holes for the dirt track issue. Back when the black version was issued, I was playing around with the idea of using pieces from a second body to raise the styling crease and the tops of the front wheel openings. I think that the low wheel openings can be concealed to some extent by painting the car in a dark color and applying the white SS stripes that come in the kit.

There was a later version of the Wild Dream without the slicks on the front. The later version won the Oakland Roadster Show (America's Most Beautiful Roadster) trophy in 1968 (joint winner with Bob Reisner's "Invader", which won the award by itself the previous year), The revised Wild Dream was gold metalflake with a black interior, had a slightly different grille shell, and had a black padded removable top. Only a half dozen or so AMBR winners were ever done in kit form; it's strange that two were sold in one box...

Revell '57 Chevies (the 1963 opening-everything kit, though I do have at least one each of the newer ones too). Recently finished the first one as a club project, in typical fashion spending too much time on it after dragging my feet over most of the summer. I should have just gotten it into one piece, but instead made a number of improvements including some photoetch parts (grille, hood and decklid trim, door locks, license plate frames), and a few scratchbuilt parts (interior and exterior door handles, arm rests, under-dash tissue dispenser, generator). I tried to get rid of some of the deficiencies (generator suspended in mid-air) without changing the character of the kit. I should have replaced all of the hinges, though I did get the ones in the kit to work okay without a lot of slop. I only swapped a few parts in from other '57 kits: wheelcovers (my kit was a 1998 issue without stock wheels), intake setup (so I could sand off the weak Fuel Injection script), and tires (so I could get five matching tires). It actually came out pretty good, though I polished through the paint on the roof with only a couple of evenings left before it had to be completed. Now that it is done, I'm working up the courage to mask and reshoot the white roof on the finished car. The thing actually went together pretty well, probably because I didn't try to re-engineer it. As frustrating as it was at times, it actually provided a lot of enjoyable build time. I learned a lot from the first one, which will be applied to however many of these I get to from here on out. I do have a few more of these kits including the current Ed Roth issue, the Seventies low rider (first low rider kit I can recall that had new parts added as opposed to just being called a low rider), and a couple of first-issue kits (which differ from later issues in a lot of ways). Plans are for the first issue to go together out of the box with the exception of new plating and resin cast stock wheels, so I can use those plastic-softening US Royal thinline white sidewall tires. I might even paint the chrome trim with some One-Shot silver. I picked up another Revell Nomad kit, but the body in the sealed Skip's Drive-In issue was twisted like a pretzel. Which, of course, led me to grab an original issue kit on eBay. Looking at the built Nomad on the box, it looks to have been constructed from a Revell hardtop with an AMT '55 Nomad roof. Just my opinion though. I've got one of those nasty MPC/AMT '69 Camaro hardtops too; it's going to get stuck together at some point. I've been thinking about revisiting some projects that got shelved due to better kits coming out (stock '67 Corvette based on the MPC kit, things like that). The material is paid for and sitting on the shelves already...why not?

I've never seen clear styrene at the place where I get plastic. For industrial applications, acrylics are used because they are stronger and don't scratch as easily.

I've seen people break tail light lenses...they cost a lot, but not enough to meet the deductible most people have. About ten years ago, a girl I worked with had her car keyed. She was seeing a married man, and the Mrs. found out. She'd just bought the car, too...it was one of those last-generation Mercury Cougars, the little front-wheel-drive coupe. Wifey didn't just scuff the clear coat...a lot of her handiwork went right down to the primer...

As I understand it, Cadillac's headquarters are going to be moved to New York City. Supposedly, that's going to put them more "in touch" with their clientele. Doesn't the average New Yorker think of a car as being yellow and having a light on the roof, and driving past them while they walk to the subway? They're wasting their effort trying to compete with the high-end imports...most of those buyers won't consider a Cadillac no matter how good it is, simply because of its brand name.

If General Motors built commercial airliners, would you fly on one?

Parking like that just screams "key me". I've also heard of people using a ball peen hammer to chip the windshield, right in the driver's line of sight...

Check the phone book under "plastics"; most cities will have a couple of plastics suppliers. Some will have a store that's open to the public (though only during business hours) and sell scraps/cutoffs from production jobs. One in my area does just that. For a long time, I've gotten sheet styrene in decent sizes for $.75 per pound ($1.50 per pound; buy five pounds, get five more for free). What they consider cutoffs and scraps are plenty big for the stuff we're using it for. Selection is limited, but the pieces I've bought are still bigger than anything packaged for hobby shops. They've gotten wise in pricing some of the styrene lately, but it still isn't bad. The last chunk I found, 1/8" thick, 16" x 30", cost me about eight bucks, including sales tax. Most of what I've found is in the .030" to 1/8" range in terms of thickness. I haven't looked for thinner stuff, as I still have a lot of .020" cutoffs from the days when I was having parts vacuum formed.

The '67 was made by a company called Wen-Mac, as a promotional item for Ford. A buddy of mine found an unused decal sheet for one of those...sold it on eBay for stupid crazy money. Maybe the underbody from the Renwal/Revell kit could be pieced into one of those...