Mark

Besides the Rambler wagon, the snap Chrysler Turbine Car kits were (then) newly produced. The Plymouth police cars had new decal sheets and vacuum formed clear windows but were otherwise packaged from stock. There were some Comet pro street kits, and possibly some '70 4-4-2s made up from stock also.

Haven't seen the hauler/trailer, but I think I might snag one on the "40% off week" if I do...

I'm surprised that someone hasn't gotten around to doing a 3D printed V12 version, at the very least.

It must be able to come off, provided the correct plastic is used. You couldn't get away with brittle Jo-Han plastic for example.

There can't have been much usable stuff left at the end. SeVille started out promising more reissues and even some new stuff, they must have figured at some point the operation wasn't throwing off enough money to do any of that. I don't think any of us can realize just how small an operation the original Jo-Han company was, especially after all the promo business was gone. They lost the last of that after 1979 (Cadillac), lost AMC after 1974, Plymouth after 1970, Dodge after 1964. They had some Ford work briefly, but did only three Ford promos (two and a half, if you consider the Comet was converted from the Maverick). Still, that's more Ford promos than MPC did! The reissues after about 1972 or so seem to have been chosen by "what can we do most easily" as opposed to "what were the most popular items in the past". They seem to have been operating hand-to-mouth from the mid-Seventies on.

The GMC V6 is a heavy slug of cast iron. A couple of Sixties car magazines ran articles on swapping them out for Cadillac V8 engines. Less weight over the front axle, and better fuel economy with the Cad.

So the body can be pulled off of the inner core of the tool.

May have been scrapped by SeVille. I doubt they have been just sitting somewhere for twenty years plus. The Jo-Han building in Michigan is long gone, anything that was there is either somewhere else, or gone also.

The Comet/Maverick, Barracuda, AMX, and possibly other Jo-Han/Seville kit tools are MIA, nobody seems to know where those went. Johan (the latter day company) sold some Comets, but those were just a case of packaging previously made product.

I bought the .040" thinking about using it for louvers...as you have described, cut a bunch of them to the same length, round off the corners, and cement in place with the rounded corners facing forward. After they are in place, round off the corners sticking up, then knock down the height of the louvers a bit. .040" would translate to 1" in 1/25 scale, it seemed to compare well with the strips of louvers included in some early Sixties car kits.

Most of the time, they don't have anything not pictured in the flier. The store here had the '56 Chevy and one, maybe both, of the Mustangs...everything was $ 12.99. I didn't need/want any of those, I was there hoping they'd get some Duplicolor paint in...no luck...

Might not be a need to split half round styrene strip stock...Evergreen does make quarter round. I have a pack of .040", but that can't be the only size they offer.

I stopped at one store this past Sunday. Only two kits, Monogram 1/24 scale '56 Chevy hardtop, and Revell snap '15 or so Mustang. They're now $ 12.99.

Montgomery built both Mustangs (blue '67, and red '69) on Willys frames. NHRA changed Gas class rules for '67 to allow fabricated frames, but George had already started on the '67 car. He could have used a scratchbuilt frame for the '69, but he probably just used what he knew would work. As for the radiator, the cars had them because the rules required one. For one pass down the track, the car might run for a minute or two at most. There were no rules to prevent circulating coolant through the engine in the pits between rounds, which is pretty much what everyone did anyway. Some of the Gas class "radiators" look more like old bed frames, just a few tubes with no cooling fins. Just there to meet the letter of the rules.

Pay for productivity seldom applies in offices, or in places where there's a union. In the latter, everyone with the same title gets the same pay per hour. Offices, it's usually by position, if two or more are doing the same job then the person who has been there longer is getting more.

As long as the work gets done, most bosses don't give a hoot if each of five people pitch in 20%, or if one person does it all and the other four loaf along. As long as everything gets done...

MPC Toronado is a different kit from Jo-Han's, though they did copy much of Jo-Han's "design". Jo-Han captured the promotional model contract for the debut 1966 model, MPC got it for '67 so they had to create their own.

Think about getting more handles, too. One for trimming foil, one for the next sharpest blade, another for general use, another for any other specialized use you can think of. I've gotten extra handles in parts boxes, with partially assembled kits, and off of "anything for a dime/quarter/etc" tarps at automotive swap meets. Often the cheap ones are oxidized or have blades bent or snapped off, but soaking the blade end in penetrating oil lets them come apart.

First thing I'd do is try the pro stock body for fit with the '87 interior and chassis. I'd be inclined to use the '87 body and graft in the needed sections from the pro stock body, but that's me.

I'm not wild about brake fluid for stripping paint. Besides the disposal issues, both the brake fluid and the plastic going into it are essentially based on petroleum in some way, and the brake fluid will either get into the plastic or take something out of it. My experience with it has often left the plastic more brittle, even with minimal exposure.

Nobody knows what happened to any of the kits that were sold by Testors. Testors did not manufacture kits, they bought "bagged kits" from other companies and put them in their own packaging with improved decals and instruction sheets. I have a couple of their reboxed Fujimi Enthusiast Series kits, as well as a couple of reboxed Jo-Han kits. Those included extras; their versions of the AMX and SC/Rambler included small frets of photoetch emblems. Others included cast metal wheels supplied by Jimmy Flintstone, that used Monogram tires if I remember right. One of the Testors boxes I have (the Comet, maybe) states in the fine print on the side panel that the kit was "manufactured for Testors by SeVille Enterprises". The others don't have any clear information. I would suspect that all were made in the SeVille/Jo-Han facilities, as all seem to be made of similar plastic and are of similar quality to everything else produced by them at that time. The AMT pro stock Maverick was indeed the Jo-Han kit. AMT sold a number of Jo-Han kits in AMT packaging between late 1966 and about 1974. The Maverick was one of the last ones issued under this arrangement. These were manufactured by Jo-Han in their facilities and packed in AMT boxes with decals and instruction sheets printed by AMT. Nobody in the know about the arrangement has ever publicly talked about how it started, whose idea it was, or why it ended. I'd suspect that AMT had simply run out of Jo-Han items that they felt were marketable, and weren't interested in the USA Oldies series items Jo-Han was beginning to issue in 1974. AMT had much better distribution for its products than did Jo-Han, so they (Jo-Han) could sell many more kits with the AMT name on the box than with their own. On the flip side, they probably didn't make nearly as much per item doing things that way. AMT, on the other hand, added a few items to their catalog every year without having to tool up new kits.

I don't think I ever had a prepainted Revell kit. But, I have used the 91% alcohol on several AMT prepaints with excellent results. Paint often falls off in seconds, and a good scrub with a soft toothbrush gets all of it. It has to be 91% rubbing alcohol. Lower percentage concentrations won't do anything. As for brake fluid, I haven't used it in many years so I can't comment on it as a paint removal agent.

91% rubbing alcohol has worked on those every time I have tried it, within minutes (sometimes faster).

Often, but not always. An automatic in a gasser or early funny car would probably need a "torque" oriented engine, and those generally had the longer stacks. But that wasn't always the rule.

To be fair, he's not involved in any of this discussion, which all pretty much started with the idea of other companies using old Jo-Han kits as scanning material, as Round 2 is now doing but with old AMT and MPC kits. Something like that is unlikely to happen, as nearly everyone else seems to be capable of designing a new kit from scratch.