Mark

On the 1:1 car, wheelbase adjustment could be made by lining up the front suspension, then shifting the rear axle forward on the leaf springs to center the rear wheels in the inner wheel wells. But swapping the floor pan too will keep the rear wheels wherever they fall. Stretching the wheel opening to the rear should make things match up.

I thought the gasser wagon had vintage aftermarket covers. I'll admit I haven't looked at it in a while, and mine is getting a '70 Torino 429 anyway. The Y-block will get set aside for something else though, probably a Model A coupe. For speed equipment, some of the Revell '57 kits have the factory supercharger option. Make sure you get the right one though, some kits have the chrome parts but not the other parts. AMT '57 Ford has a non-stock supercharger, similar to the factory one but is mounted on the opposite side of the engine. Disregard the fuel injection setup in that kit, the pairs of intake stacks are clocked incorrectly. AMT '56 Ford has a two-fours setup and a nice compact set of vintage headers.

They never advertise the clearance stuff. Some stores have more of it than others, and some have people who literally show up every day looking, and load up a cart when they see it.

Around here, it's people. We've never failed in being able to get reservations at my family's favored brewery/eatery, but when we go there are often a bunch of empty booths and tables, or one of the areas other than the main one is closed off. Tough to get people when so many are still being paid to stay home. It wasn't always easy before, either. The (since passed) wife of a local store owner used to be a manager in a warehouse, she'd have trouble getting people to work overtime on Fridays or Saturdays, even when some of it was double time or even triple. "Nope, Saturday is my video game night". Uh, maybe work one of those, and have a few bucks in your pocket when the next video game comes out? Just a thought...

Frames are different as '56 and '57 were two different generations. But, as Ace says, there are instances where a '57 frame was installed under a '56. Not sure what the advantages would be, though. Those who want a typical Pro Street "tubbed" chassis should look at the AMT '68-'70 B-body Mopars for the rear section. Mid/late Sixties intermediates are generally about the same size as mid-Fifties cars. The parts in the '70 Coronet are a bit different from those in the '68-'69 kits. Rear kickup is higher, rear axle is different. It's a pain to do, but I have removed the molded-in exhaust pipes from a '56 chassis. Hopefully I'll remember to post a picture of it later.

I'm not sure offhand if the K-member is, or even should be, different between the Hemi and wedge engine kits. I always thought that became a thing starting with the '66 cars, as the '64 and '65s weren't sold to the general public. If I remember to do so later today, I'll pull a couple of them out for comparison.

Stopped at the closer of the two area stores yesterday. Same kits being blown out as in other areas, shelf stickers for those marked "D" (discontinued). All of those spaces were empty last week, hadn't seen those kits in a while. One '50 Chevy pickup left...I've got a couple of those already, so someone else can get a deal. Hopefully they'll get some interesting stuff in to replace the discontinued items.

Closer to stock, the ex-Lindberg, now AMT '53 Ford is the closest thing out there. It will probably be a lot of work to fit it to the '56 though, as the areas between the frame rails are deeper than those on the '56 chassis as I recall.

Color Me Gone Dodge is an ex-Lindberg kit, nothing at all to do with the Moebius Plymouth kits.

There are two hardtop bodies, stock and altered wheelbase. The stock wheelbase body has Satellite trim, if you have one of the drag versions you must remove it yourself. I believe the interiors build up on the same platform. Items like the console are separate parts.

Revell '57 Fords all have a good one. Most of the others have molded-in starter detail. Not sure which of them (if any) have Bird rocker covers, though.

The bodies in both kits will be the same, building any of the factory competition cars will require removing some of the trim. You're probably better off starting with the Missile or stock wheelbase Golden Commandos version (same parts in both IIRC). You probably would have to find a rear seat and any other interior items that you might wish to change. Moebius kits often do have extra parts that aren't used in the version they are in, but I don't think the rear seat is among them.

The promos were done differently from the kits, in that plated parts were all separated from the trees after plating and then grouped separately in bins (front bumper, rear bumper, wheels, shifter, and so on). So the bumpers that went on a promo could have been molded and plated days before. There are error promos out there with unintended combinations of different color parts. Those usually came from people who worked for the company, as they didn't otherwise make it out of the building once discovered. With the kits, of course the plated tree that went in the box with the other parts was unlikely to be the exact one that was separated from the other parts earlier. But it was probably molded within a day or so. The Round 2 "catch the Kat" deals molded in color often had plated trees molded in white. I think I had the opposite with a Meyers Manx kit...stripping a couple of plated parts, I found transparent purple bare plastic underneath while the rest of the kit was white.

I've got one or two Jo-Han S/C Rambler kits that are molded in swirly dark blue plastic, body and all. Late production from the original (pre-Seville) company, when they were throwing whatever plastic they could scrounge into the hopper.

The "discount it and blow the last of them out" deal hasn't happened around here since pre-Covid. I figured they're probably selling everything they get lately, so they didn't have to do that anymore.

The earliest kits (late Fifties into early Sixties) sometimes had separate tooling for the parts intended to be plated. Most kits after that have everything molded together (except clear and red clear, of course). After everything is molded, the "plated" tree is separated and sent off for plating, then reunited with the other parts when the kits are boxed. Sometimes plated parts were molded in clear plastic, like early Sixties Revell kits. Aurora molded a lot of their plated parts in black plastic. For some parts, like the sports car wire wheels, sometimes the plating didn't draw into the recesses which made the wheels look better, as if someone flowed flat black paint into the recessed areas.

Still on Round 2's website, so I would presume it is still a current kit.

That's the one. There were only two Drag 500 sets, the other one had four front tires and four smaller slicks.

More like 15 years ago. Time is like TP: the less you have of it, the faster it comes off of the roll...

Another thing to watch with a lot of Jo-Han annual kits (and especially USA Oldies reissues) is the track and/or how deep the tire is in the wheel well. The Oldies in particular have those short plastic rod axles and inner wheels with short bosses that put the wheels too far in, leaving a narrow track. A lot of them sit too low also. Jo-Han probably used some of those parts in several different kits leaving them having to compromise them to fit everything. Mock up the body/chassis and move that stuff around to get the right look. If you lengthen the wheel back axle bosses, you could also ditch the plastic rods and use wire axles instead. It also wouldn't be hard to make new axle blocks with smaller holes right where you want them.

You could open up the hole in the tire, or file down the area that goes into the hole, to eliminate the interference. The wheel could then be epoxied into the tire. With the 1960 annual kits, the wheel cover attaches to an open rim which then goes into the tire. The wheel covers stick out quite a bit on those, you might think about other wheels and rims to get a cleaner, more correct look with those.

Volare/Aspen weren't awful cars in and of themselves. They were actually intended to replace both the Valiant/Dart and the intermediate cars. Just rushed to market too fast. The front fenders rusted, but they did on most everything else back then (like the AMC product that I owned then, and though it bothered me at the time, it didn't stop me from really liking that car). The styling of the Mopars was really pretty nice, the '80 is nicer than the earlier ones IMO but I'd bet someone at Round 2 wishes MPC hadn't updated it back then. MPC stopped putting the year on the annual kit boxes after '78. They put those plastic strips around the boxes with the year on it, sellers could tear those off later. For a few years before that, they were printing boxes with "new" (or just blank) instead of the year, for some department store chains that were tired of blowing out "last year's kits" when the year changed. AMT did that for several years too, but they got away from annuals entirely after '77.

Of course, "strength" of the dollar is a misnomer, especially if you are looking at retirement plan statements lately... that's as far down that rabbit hole as I'm going to go, and please, don't nobody else go any further...

I'd think anything that is abrasive enough to remove the paint will probably roughen the surface of the plastic. I wonder if it couldn't be dialed in to give plastic a texture, like to restore carpeting detail where an ejector pin mark was sanded out. Or to add cast surface detail to an engine block or exhaust manifold.

Someone on the HAMB mentioned in a thread about the Hershey swap meet, that fewer Europeans would be coming over this year because of the economy over there. I checked and found the dollar virtually on par with the euro. For the longest time, it seemed a euro was worth about $1.60-$1.65, that seems to have changed for the moment.