Mark

Those stands with the mounting pins are the most useful, as you can set a partially assembled engine/transmission into those, even ones without those mounting provisions. Most of the other stands require either some glue, or extremely good balance, to hold the engine and not let it fall off every time you turn around.

"...but all components were either modified, or of completely new design..." The block is extremely different: longer "skirt" at the bottom, and the oil pan is flatter and shallower. Blocks look nothing like one another. Get one of each, put them side by side, and the differences jump out at you.

That V-shaped stand in the foreground is a '49 Merc piece. The style that came in the '34 pickup also came in the '40 Ford kits. The delivery is pretty much the coupe with a different body and interior bucket, so of course both have the same one. I believe the sedan has one too, in the same style. Right now I'm drawing a blank on the Deuce coupe and roadster. The Victoria, phaeton, and one-shot stock sedan have the style pictured, the two behind the '49 Merc stand. I'm drawing a blank on the '36 Ford too, but I don't think it has one.

Eggnog and pumpkin spice...conveniently combined to make it easier to ignore two things at once! Now, for Halloween, someone needs to combine circus peanuts and candy corn...

The Pontiac OHC engine did use some internals from the Chevy six, but the blocks are NOT the same, and don't look anywhere near the same other than being inline sixes.

They can't reissue something that doesn't exist anymore. Anything can be reconstructed (like the '63 Nova wagon, and the upcoming '68 Coronet convertible, which are all new copies of old kits with improvements). Or do a partial reconstruction on a kit (like the '64 Cutlass and 4-4-2). But they have to see enough sales potential to do any of that. The '64 Continental was reworked to create the '65 that exists to this day. The '66 was updated through 1969. Often a particular generation of a given car only exists as its final model year, as the tooling got revised for each year's promotional models. That was the primary reason many annual kits existed at all, the promo business was what drove the selection of cars available as kits for many years. Over the years there were several purges of old tooling thought to not have potential for future reissues. Other tools were stored carelessly and were later found to be unusable due to rust or other damage. And that's the AMT stuff. Over at MPC, more often the tools were altered to create something new, to the point of sometimes combining parts of two kits to create one. Current owner Round 2 certainly doesn't seem to be scrapping anything, and has in recent years restored older kit tooling that previous owners hadn't gotten around to for whatever reason.

I haven't seen that one in a while, I believe he was billed as Steven McQueen. More recently I saw an episode of Tales of Wells Fargo, where the billing was "Introducing Steve McQueen", which probably came a bit after The Blob.

Or, how about The Blob... Steve McQueen, and, as one of the guys in the hot rod club, Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins (film was made in his then home town)...

But we haven't seen the last two AMT All-Star 1/32 kits yet (Watson Indy Roadster, '40 Ford sedan)...

The Willys does still exist, as a tube frame Pro Mod type car. I saw it once, it was lettered "Hot Rod Willys". I believe it was wrecked and rebuilt some time ago. The 4-4-2 supposedly still exists, as a rough hulk minus any important parts.

Remember it? I'm still trying to forget it...

I'm guessing that the chassis and interior can be inserted into the body with the front OR rear fascia attached--but NOT both.

Probably a good number of Mets fans out there wishing they'd forgotten to set theirs...

Get the data sheets for both products, or check the info on the labels. Most likely just new packaging. Paint companies tend to change labels every couple of years, so buyers can spot (and avoid) old stock.

When the two versions (stock '69, modified '68) were first issued, I did get both and threw the '68-specific parts into the '69 kit, and vice versa. Shortly after selling the "leftover" modified '69 kit, I picked up an MPC '68.

The Monogram "68" only had a handful of '68 parts like the rear bumper and grille, the rest was carried straight from the stock '69 kit. They never tried to sell it as a 100% stock '68, it always had the modified engine, custom wheels, and hole in the hood.

There are a number of recent (last couple of years) kits from Revell, Round 2, you name it, that I have never seen locally at all. The one LHS here has been getting in all, or at least nearly all, new items in, some faster than others. Prices in some cases have nosed above retail, but the stuff still moves. I suspect he's buying in lesser numbers, and some things are in and out inbetween my stops there. Another shop, somewhat further away, also gets in pretty much everything but at better prices. He too seems to be moving a fair amount of stuff. I picked up the Revell ex-Rat Roaster Deuce and new reissue AMT '64 Mercury Marauder hardtop kits there yesterday. I noticed he was cleaned out of some "hot" items like the Moebius ramp trucks and Novas. Around here, the Ollie's stores are loaded up with what looks like another shipment from the Toys R Us buyout from a couple of years ago. Not a model kit in sight, and the spray paint shelves are down to near nothing too. You don't ship stuff like that off to closeout stores when it all moves off of the shelves at regular price, sometimes higher.

There was a more stock Dart body, in the MPC Ramchargers Dart funny car kit. That's the one that was reworked to create the LA Dart body. Ramchargers ran a Dart in '67, not '70, and that car was way different from MPC's kit. The body (itself updated from the Charlie Allen '69 Dart body) was for the most part stock looking, it of course had a trunk lid, it also had a front bumper which was deleted for the LA Dart. Front wheel openings are a bit too far forward for stock (again, going back to the Charlie Allen version) but otherwise it's not bad. The front wheel openings were moved too far back for the LA Dart, so the chassis pan from the Hurst Hemi Under Glass Barracuda could be used.

I may have glossed over it, but didn't see it mentioned in the last couple of pages. Get ready, the new stock of Revell kits going on the shelves have a new price, $37.99. One of the sellers at the Three Rivers show had current Revell kits in the $31-$32 range so it would seem that $38 is the new retail price. Haven't seen the new Round 2 items yet, so I can't say how those will be priced. I'd suspect they won't be far behind. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything to hit the closeout stores, it appears everyone can sell all they can get their hands on.

The story doesn't say what happened to the trailer, which is probably the object of the theft to begin with. A lot of stolen trailers end up getting used by people selling items like counterfeit sports gear, where they can't make enough money selling that krap to afford the trailer. Or they get stripped down and used for hauling landscaping equipment. In this case the cargo was too personalized to be easily sold under the radar, so in the hole it all went.

Heresy!

A lot of manufacturers went to "universal fit" around that time, probably to encourage speed shops to carry their wheels. The universal fit meant that the shop didn't need to stock as many wheels as before. If you eliminated the biggest GM and Ford cars (5 on 5" pattern) and some of the small Mopars (5 on 4-1/4") that left 5 on 4-1/2" (AMC, Ford, remaining Mopars) and 5 on 4-3/4" (remaining GM). One wheel, with the universal fit feature, could fit both, letting dealers either stock half as many wheels or twice as many styles. Appliance had "Roto-Lug", as I remember the lug nuts for their aluminum wheels had long shanks with eccentric washers built in. The washers were round but the hole for the lug nut was offset. You'd hoist the wheel/tire over the lugs, and maneuver it into position while you got a couple of the lug nuts into place. The eccentric washers would find their positions in the large (but offset versus the lugs) holes in the wheel, and when tightened they would clamp the wheel in place. My mom had a set of Appliance Wire Mags on her '77 Cutlass, I was the one who usually switched tires/wheels in spring and fall.

'36 frame could work as far as dimensions go. Ford cars '35 through '40 use the same frame, with some differences as far as body mounts and front crossmember. '35-'41 pickups use that frame too, again with differences in those areas.

Looking at those photos again, using Plastruct channel is certainly an option, just measure the Revell piece and see is Plastruct offers something similar. I'd bet many builders of 1:1 rods build a facsimile of the '40 X-member rather than cut up an otherwise good frame to get one.

Scratch the center member. Use the '40 kit parts as a pattern, trace onto .020" sheet styrene, and start cutting. The kit piece is probably "too thick" in scale, .020" should be sufficient once the pieces come together to form a channel as the '40 member is formed. The individual strips will feel flimsy, but start piecing the thing together and it will stiffen right up. After you've done a couple of them, you'll probably figure out how to cut the pieces out and not leave much wasted plastic.