Snake45

Sorry to hear of your loss, Ray.

Probably, but not sure. That's what was on it when I bought it off eBay. I just cleaned it up and gave it a little Snake-Fu. One of the cleanest eBay models I ever bought.

You mean something like this?

Beautiful color and finish! VERY well done and model on! ?

I'm very stoked about this. Even though I bought and restored six or eight of them from eBay in the last few years, the new wheels and tires and decals alone are almost worth the price of admission to me. Interesting how they handled the roof vents--separate piece. Pretty obvious that a '66 GT350 and/or GT350H will be coming eventually.

And dat's the name of DAT tune. Blake was pretty good in Electra Glide in Blue. I believe he was also in In Cold Blood. He was also hilarious on Johnny Carson. I remember one story where he talked about coming down with "farfalonus of the blowhole," a phrase I still use to this day to describe any unknown or unspecified sickness. He was a character. The opening of Electra Glide in Blue is one of the greatest movie openings of all time:

Revell's. I built and reviewed them both when they first appeared in the early '90s and comparing them side-by-side, the Revell is more accurate in every way. In fact, it's one of Revell's best kits EVER IMHO.

I've been very fortunate and blessed over the last decade to find most of my "holy grails" on eBay or the local toy show (including quite a few that have already been mentioned in this thread), or have them reissued. A while back I'd have said any '63-'65 AMT Nova, but then Mobius brought out a new, much better one. More recently I'd have said the AMT "Time Machine" '65 Chevelle AWB funny car, but that will be reissued soon, too. So....did JoHan do the '68 Road Runner, or did they start with '69? If they did one, then that. If not that, then I guess the JoHan '68 4-4-2, and while I'm dreaming, I want all the funny car parts in it, too. Or the JoHan '69 GTX.

Hey, improvise, adapt, overcome, right? At least it got me back into building something. Next up should be the '67 El Camino, which is a MUCH better model overall, and I'm looking forward to laying the finishing touches on it. Got everything done on it now except touching up the chrome with my beloved Silver Sharpie, which I've been dreading because it will require a lot of tedious masking to ensure it's all straight, but hopefully the results will be worth the effort. Got several other diecasts to Snake-Fu, too, and I'm hoping to start on an all-new AMT '55 Nomad kit in the next week, "The Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise."

Thanks for jumping in, Geno! Wow, yours looks good. As I said, if mine had looked as good as yours, the Snake-Fu would have only taken me about an hour. I can see why you like it so much. Your pics are way better than mine, too.

Note: Geno has one of these too, and can probably provide better pics of how it comes out of the box. I invite him to post them here if he wishes. Ever have one of those models that just fights you every step of the way? This was one of those. First off, it isn't remotely close to stock, so you can forget about “converting” it back. It's a widebody, and has a mid-engine. (I might not have bought it if I'd known that going in.) It IS acceptably close to true 1/24 scale, as Geno demonstrated by comparing it with a stock Danbury Mint '68 model. Geno got a better example of this model than I did. First problem was that the rear “bumblebee” stripe on mine was mis-printed—the trunk lid portion didn't come close to lining up with the stripes on the quarters. (More on this later.) Second problem was that the right-side door didn't come close to closing. Upon closer examination, it turned out the left door didn't close completely, either. This SHOULD have been about a one-hour Snake-Fu if I'd gotten as good an example as Geno's. I decided to start with the doors, because if I couldn't fix that, anything else would be a waste of time and I might as well throw the backbirth in my grandsons' toy box. Disassembled the thing and removed the right door (one screw). Spent over an hour filing out the hinge hole so the door would sit more forward. Finally got it to where it was no worse than the left door and got tired of effing with it. Took off the left door and tried the same thing for a while but didn't seem to be making any real progress so I put it back on. Next problem was dealing with the misaligned tail stripe. Figgered it would come right off with acetone-free nail polish remover, my go-to for removing diecast tampos. I figgered wrong. The NPR had NO effect on the stripe, and neither did rubbing alcohol. Only thing to do was paint over it. I smoothed the area with a fine Scotchbrite pad, masked off the rear window, and hit it with some Touch-N-Tone rattlecan flat black. This dried much flatter than the factory matte black paint, so I rubbed it with a piece of felt until I got a near-matching sheen. It's not a perfect match, but if you didn't know it was repainted, you might not be able to tell—it's not stand-out obvious. There was no indication of windshield or backlight framing—not even anything molded in. Ordinarily I'd have masked the framing off and hit it with Silver Sharpie or Deco Color Premium Silver Leaf, but decided that this hot mess just wasn't worth the time and effort. Having now fully embraced the Dark Side, I decided to also paint the wheel spokes black—I'm not a huge fan of 6-spoke wheels and wasn't wild about the gold color anyway. After painting the spokes, I hit the knockoffs with the Silver Sharpie. Oh, and I sanded the tire treads and painted the front turn signals white. So that's basically it. It's not my favorite diecast, but it's sorta-kinda okay as it sits now. (It actually looks a little better than these pics.) And it's my first completed project since my stroke last April, so there's that. If you're interested in one of these, try to see if the tail stripe is on right, and the doors are fully closed. As always, thanks for looking, and comments welcome.

The Cuda was reissued as a "street freak" in the '80s. Not too long ago I bought one at the local toy show for IIRC $25. So the molds for that one SHOULD still exist. It could use a better grille, though.

Not an easy kit to build. The windshield frame is MUCH too thick, for one thing. I did manage to wrestle it to the ground and make it my Joy Behar a couple years ago, though. In other news, Diecast Model Wholesale is advertising the '66 Mustang 2+2 and the '63 Corvette roadster. Hmmmmm.....

Geno, have you done anything with your Hellacious '68 Charger yet? I got in the mood to do something with mine today. First thing I had to do was fix the doors--without that, everything else is a waste of time. I spent about an hour filing out the hinge on the right door, and finally got it to where it ALMOST closes. Next step will be to see if I can get the mis-printed gold stripes off without ruining the flat black paint. We'll see where it goes from there. If you haven't started a thread on yours by the time I get mine presentable, I'll start a thread on mine.

I got one of these and it looks like a pretty cool little kit. Thinking of coming up with some kind of appropriate wheels/tires and doing it as a '70s-early '80s "street freak."

Tim (or anyone else who has any influence at R2), see if you can talk them into tooling up a new, accurate grille for the Motown Missile Cuda, just for a change.

Been working on this. Yesterday I masked off the WAY too thick vent window chrome frames and "thinned" them with brushed flat black. Sanded the tire treads and painted the area behind the headlights white--originally came painted silver there which didn't show up too well through the lenses. Today started detailing the grille, and painted the wheel spokes a dark gray metallic--they looked okay black but they were nice wheels and I thought having them lighter would dress the model up a little. Got a few more things to do but I hope to kick it through the goal posts in the next few days--most of the hard work is done now.

Like ALL 1/25 '67-'68 Camaro kits I know of, it has its flaws. I have an original in my "To Be Rebuilt" stash. Probably the best of the '67-'68 Camaro kits was the original AMT '67 annual, but it has its flaws, too.

Here's the work I did yesterday. Those too-thick vent window frames were the first thing I noticed about this model when I first saw pics of it online. It was a PITA "thinning" them but now that it's done, I think it was WELL worth the effort. Notice also the behind-headlights area I painted white; this came painted in a dull silver which I didn't think looked very good. Today I got the wheels painted, and the grille about 95% done. Before and after pics to show the vent window improvement: