Mark

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.

The Edsel and Studebaker were probably the last ones released, so there would have been fewer of them. I never saw those anywhere back then, so it's likely some retailers didn't carry those. The best sellers were reboxed (same box illustrations, different end panels): Chevelle, Nova, Barracuda, Mustang for sure. I don't recall seeing any of the others in the later box except the '69 Falcon, which only came in that box. The '67 Cyclone was reboxed a couple of times prior to the Street Freaks issue in the mid-Seventies.

Once you start using it, air is getting into the bottle. Every time it is used, there is less glue in there, leaving space for more air. I like the Loctite brand CA glue, the cap snaps on nice and tight. When the bottle gets about halfway to empty, the glue does start to thicken but is still usable for some time even in that form.

It's metal, it can be fixed.

The car on the lift appears to have had some patchwork done on the floors.

I'd try the Plymouth first, along with anything else that is within reach. The Plymouth is body-on-frame, but the '60 switch to Unibody wasn't as extensive as most people seem to think. What seems to have happened is that Chrysler eliminated the frame rails in the passenger compartment area, beefed up the floor, and kept everything at both ends (around the suspension) much the same as it had been. There was an online article about a guy who wanted a '59 Dodge convertible. After some measuring and checking, he took a '64 880 convertible and bolted on the '59 front sheetmetal, and spliced in the '59 upper quarter panels and trunk. He said a lot of the holes for the front fenders and bumper lined up perfectly, which would indicate that the switch from full-frame ('59) to Unibody ('60) wasn't all Chrysler had it cracked up to be.

The original series was done in '67: Chevelle, Nova, Mustang, Falcon, Barracuda, probably one or two others. I'm not sure if the F-85 and Tempest were part of the initial group as those used chassis from the Chevelle and Nova respectively. The Edsel (again with the Chevelle chassis) definitely came after the others, as did the '69 Falcon which came after the '69 annual kit was run and done. The Corvair, using the Barracuda chassis, too was not in the initial group. I only count the ones that came in the narrow boxes. I wouldn't include the '67 Corvette or Allison Thunderland in this group. The Street Freaks series included only the Nova, Mustang, Cyclone, and Barracuda as I recall. The Falcon and Tempest weren't included (why, I don't know), the F-85 because the Chevelle was made into the Modified Stocker which wiped out the chassis and engine needed for it.

They weren't called Street Freaks when first issued in the Sixties. They were funny cars, the Street Freaks were reissues of some of them with added parts like passenger seats and side exhaust that attached to the headers. There was one other funny car, the '69 Falcon. It was not a straight reissue of the stock annual kit, it had alterations: some parts deleted, radiused and flared rear wheel openings, exhaust detail removed from the chassis. It was a one-shot, short-lived thing however, AMT probably only ran it once and then altered it further to create the Modified Stocker.

Look at the details, there is likely some minor difference that makes these "unique". Bruce Meyers couldn't stop people from buying one of his Manx dune buggy bodies, making some slight change (like filling in the recess for the hood emblem) and then making a mold off of it and going into business against him. There were numerous cheap copies of Cragar S/S and American Torque-Thrusts also. Some small difference, and you're in business.

After all of the half round sections are in place, I'd knock down the high points with a sanding stick. If you were to examine the pleats on the 1:1 car by looking at them from the top of the door, they're unlikely to be half round, but rather a bit flatter.

All of the Rancher issue Eldorado kits I have had were '76s, but I understand that that box was used with some earlier bodies when it was first used. After about 1975, Jo-Han kits can be a crapshoot when it comes to the exact year (in a couple of cases), plastic color, and definitely what decals will be inside the box.

Don't sell those old sheets short. Cut one out and try it, you might be surprised. Worst case, some clear spray or brush-on "decal saver" can be applied to them.

I would never have said "lost", but would have said that the owners of them over the years would never do anything with them. And, that's pretty much what did happen, until THIS particular owner came along.

If a store is doing well selling model kits, they won't have items to blow out when they do the reset. Last week I hit the store I usually go to, lots of empty spaces on the shelves even before the reset. There was only one clearance kit, which I passed on. The eBay/FB marketplace sellers will usually clean out everything, so that one kit was probably one of only a handful that this store needed to mark down.

That it was. Making it generic gets rid of pesky licensing issues.

Wish they'd offer the suspension parts plated. The wheels all have ejector pin marks on the front side, and most of those should have a magnesium finish anyway.

Looks like a Nineties NASCAR chassis under that car.

Found these two goodies at the Three Rivers show yesterday. The Pontiac is the nicest one I have ever seen, period. It has a couple of peculiar modifications: the chrome tach in place of the lower grille filler piece, and the Moon discs on the rear only. There was a pair of homemade fender skirts on when I bought it, they appear to have been cut from some large flat piece from the same kit, maybe a tonneau cover for the rear seat area. Those were attached with tiny tabs of scrap plastic, one for each skirt. They practically fell off. There were side pipes at one time but they were cemented only at the chassis end, not to the floor pan or body. I fixed one of these that had the original kit skirts, those butt up against the side trim and the cement usually does some damage. This one is way nicer, but I'll probably keep both. The Falcon is a Craftsman kit that was just snapped together with no alterations. I have wanted to put a hardtop on one. Not this one...other than an unbuilt one, this is now "best" and the couple others I have will move down a notch.

Those parts were shared with the stock kit which was reissued not long ago. I sold two of those (stock ones) yesterday at the Three Rivers show.