Mark

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...

Prototype for the Nissan Leaf...

I picked up the new issue, even though I don't need another one. There isn't a lot of flashing on the parts, which is surprising considering how many reissues there have been in the last twenty years. It's really in pretty decent shape overall. The roof pillars are marked on the inside for cutting, for the chopped top version. A chop as severe as the one in the kit is usually reserved for the salt flats, as depicted in the kit. Most street versions use what I have heard called a "gentleman's chop"; just cutting the A-pillars an inch or two and pulling down the front of the top, to level it off. The Stude is pretty low as is, even stock. This car would look modern if it were built today. The fit of the chopped glass isn't (and never was) too fantastic. I pulled a started Bonneville version out and am redoing the roof, reworking the roof skin to better fit the windows. The changes involve narrowing the custom piece and pulling the last 1/8" of the roof down to get the window molding right next to the glass. As built from the box, there's quite a gap between the molding and the glass all around. I pretty much "narrowed" the roof by simply cutting it twice, lengthwise, within 1/4" or so of the drip rails. The saw kerf takes out about as much material as you want to lose. Next up, I've got to slice the rear of the roof and bend it down a bit to get the molding tight against the rear window, then cut the corners and pull them in. I'm going slowly with this and keeping track of what I'm doing, as I've got the Jimmy Flintstone slicked-up body and plan on doing the same alterations to it. A couple other things to remember if you've never had the original issue kit: -The box art shows wide whitewall tires, but narrow stripe Firestone Supremes are in the box. Those are what was in the original issue kit. For wide whites, you can grab the Firestone Deluxe Champion tire pack and set the Supremes aside for something else. -The red taillight lenses are included but are not needed. Some time in the Seventies, the original AMT company started engraving lenses into bezels and bumpers to eliminate red lenses. The Stude was one of the kits that got this treatment. -A second set of clear parts in blue tint is included in the new issue, however the stock windshield and back glass are included in clear only.

The Motor Trend name is the kiss of death. Launch it under another name, and it will take off...

I'll lay odds that the financial guys aren't eating mac and cheese, or meatballs...

Monogram called it an Olds for the Tom Daniel redesign (Boss "A" Bone), and again for the Early Iron Series issue. The early Olds and Cadillac engines don't look all that different, though. Unlike the Tom Daniel redesign of the Little Deuce, where they called a Pontiac engine a "Boss 302 Mustang" mill...

MPC's George Montgomery Mr. Gasket Gasser ('69 Mustang) had a clear body. The windows were still separate parts that had to be cemented in, creating visible glue marks. If you painted that body, you couldn't see the engine because the body was one-piece (no tilt front clip). Polar Lights molded its Charger and Barracuda funny car kits with clear bodies, one per shipping carton having a red-tinted clear body. Some of the Gunze Sangyo High-Tech kits (usually the microcars) had clear bodies with the windows molded as a unit with the body; you were supposed to mask the glass before painting the body.

I had the same thing happen nearly three weeks ago, by coincidence with a package containing PE parts also. Website tracking says "delivered"; I get home, no package. Next day, I go to the post office; supervisor tells me he will contact my carrier and ask about it. Never heard back. Two days later, I've got another package scheduled for delivery, so I take a couple of hours off work to be home when the mail usually gets delivered (around 1:00 pm). Mailman comes up the street, I meet him to make sure I get that package and ask about the other one. His story just doesn't fit; he tells me he left the package outside when it would easily fit inside my side door. A five-ounce package, left outside...really? My next door neighbor was home all that week, working on his motor home in the street in front of his house. Nobody would have walked up and grabbed that package. I've had hundreds of packages delivered over the years without any losses, including several left inside the door which later blew open tearing the closer bracket out of the door frame because it was not closed on a windy day. I never complained about any of them, just fixed the door, because I didn't want to do anything to make the carrier's job more difficult. First thing this guy says after the iffy story, is that I can fill out a form and keep it on file, to have all my packages held at the post office for pickup. Ding, ding! The guy doesn't want to do package deliveries, so he "loses" a package so that I'll pick them up myself in the future. I've got a bar code sticker with my address over the mail box; the carriers used to scan that when delivering a package, but don't do that anymore. The supervisor told me that most carriers now scan several packages at a time as "delivered" while sorting them inside the postal van. I doubt the guy is a crook...more likely just a lazy screwup. One very costly lesson learned. When I get other peoples' mail, I always hand-deliver it; I was hoping that would translate into good karma this time, but so far, nope...

Seriously, does anyone think Revell would do any of those bodies better? Nearly everything they've done in the last few years has had some major screwup with the body: the wonky door frames on the '50 Olds, the lower body on the '69 Nova, the curved '72 Cutlass rear bumper, the wavy body crease and exaggerated wheel flares on the '70 Barracuda...

I don't think there was a '67 Hemi Under Glass kit. AMT issued the '67 Barracuda annual kit, then somehow MPC got the tooling for it (and the Chevy Fleetside pickup) after that. The '67 versions were AMT, both had AMT tires. They weren't an "MPC kit in an AMT box" deal like the '65 Coronet.

You mean billionaire, of course. The football team in my area is currently being sold; the league seems to be doing whatever they can to prop up the selling price. Each time a team is sold, they'd like the selling price to set the bar a little higher. It won't happen this time; from what I heard, the last sale was something like $1.1 billion while this one won't chin the $1 billion bar...

MPC's kit was issued as a '69 also.

"They won't tax you, they won't tax me...they'll tax that man behind the tree...". That's how they get elected: divide and conquer. You're going to get something, and someone else is going to pay for it. How can you beat Santa Claus? I like the taxes on hotels and car rentals to pay for a stadium. Let's tax people from outside the area. I read somewhere awhile back, that not one of those deals ever raised as much money as was estimated...

Dodge bodies were all-steel from day one; that was one of their selling points. There was probably some wood used in the roof to install the rubberized cloth insert, but the side structure, door frames, etc. were steel.

Apply some talcum powder (dollar store baby powder works fine) to the mold; it will allow the resin to flow more quickly. I apply it by putting the powder into a small container with a snap-on lid, putting a few molds in with it, then shaking everything around to give the molds a light dusting. The powder won't affect the ability of the resin to be painted or plated, and you won't have to clean the molds or the parts. Of course, you want to mix the resin without whipping air bubbles into it also. For small parts, pressure is nice but not absolutely necessary. I've done thousands of parts, bodies included, without it.

You've got an MPC Torino stock car body. Jo-Han's Torino stock car body wasn't altered other than a hole on the drivers' side quarter panel, for a fuel filler. It had a separate flat hood, and all of the stock trim was left on. The bumpers were stock; the headlamp fillers, grille mesh, and taillight fillers were separate parts.

The body in that issue was reworked back to stock from a previous NASCAR issue...it isn't as sharp as the annual. $50 is a bit high; add a little to that and you should be able to hunt up an annual kit that you will be happier with...

It's cribbed from AMT's kit...look at the top of the MPC kit's chassis. It has some of the "trunk mat" detail copied from AMT's kit. You can even see remnants of the engine block seam on the oil pan on the snap kit's one-piece chassis. The snap Willys sedan delivery is pretty clearly copied from AMT's kit, as is the snap '40 Ford coupe. There are some interesting differences though...the snap Merc has 1950 front fender trim, the Willys has a stock grille, running boards, and '34 hood sides.