Snake45

Very nice, very clean build! Well done and model on!

That's gonna be a beauty, Chris! Drive on!

That's absolutely beautiful!

Very cool! Ewetwo recently traded me the remains of a '67 Impala convertible which I hope to rebuild--too far gone for a "rescue" job. The important body pieces are there but I might have to sacrifice a "new" kit for some interior and chassis/engine parts, oh well. Also, the windshield is REALLY in there and will probably have to be carefully cut out. Still looking forward to getting around to it, though!

What they said.

Ah! The old Monogram kit from about 1964. It has its accuracy and detail issues, so I wouldn't advice dropping a bunch of time and aftermarket $$$ on it. But that doesn't mean it can't be a FUN and enjoyable, nostalgia/retro build. I've done two of them, have another one ready to go into the paint shop, and will probably build another one or two somewhere along the line. Have FUN with it and post pics of it when you're finished!

Last year I bought these two original AMT ’67 Impala promos off eBay, at about the same time. The eBay photos weren’t great and I wasn’t sure what I was getting, I just hoped that I would be able to get one good model out of both of them. I got—or at least opened—the white one first. The chassis was painted black and at first I assumed it was molded in white and someone had painted the interior blue. Then I realized that it had been painted white (with something very thin but good-covering) and was molded in blue. It actually looked pretty good except for the front and rear bumpers, which had been heavily brush-painted with some sort of silver (probably that old hardware store “chrome” touchup paint, which I believe is still available today). Ouch. No taillights, either. The blue one came as a complete body, glass, interior, and chassis, but no wheels/tires or bumpers. Hmmmm. I thought it might be possible to adapt the grille and front/rear bumpers from a current-issue ’67 Impala kit. (Why would I do this rather than just build the newer kit? I think the original old body is more accurate looking, that’s why.) Couple months later original, unused ’67 annual front and rear bumpers (with taillights!) came up on eBay and I was fortunate enough to score them both (same seller, two auctions). The price wasn’t much more than I would have paid for Modelhaus repros, if they were still available, which they aren’t, and the shipping was actually less than Modelhaus’s. Yay! Arrival of the chrome provided the impetus to dig the blue one out and start working on it. The glass was scratched and/or lightly etched in some way. Polishing with Trim nail sticks and Wright’s Silver Cream took care of about 98% of this. There are still a couple spots that look a bit “foggy” and it seems to be internal; no amount of polishing removes it completely, though I was able to improve it greatly. The body was polished with the Trim Nail sticks and Wrights, and took a pretty darn fine shine. The new chrome front and rear parts were detailed as necessary with matte black paint. Fortunately, the rear bumper came with original taillights. The body got standard Snake-Fu “chrome” detailing with my beloved Silver Sharpie. For wheels and tires, I used the '67 Rally Wheels from a Revell '67 Chevelle, and tires and wheel backs from a Monogram '70 Chevelle. I mounted them by jury-rigging some aluminum tubing, which worked better in the promo chassis than wire axles would have. It didn't come out too bad, considering what I started with. Finishing it encouraged me to dig out the white one and also drag it across the finish line. I had planned to polish out the fairly nice white paint on it, but a close look showed that it was EXTREMELY thin in places and I'd have probably polished through somewhere, so I gave some places a light polish with Wright's on a damp cloth and let the rest go. It's very possible that I'll strip it and give it a good paint job someday. The front and rear bumpers, as mentioned, were heavily brush-painted with some kind of thick silver, so into the Purple Pont they went. They emerged naked, clean and perfect a couple of days later, whereupon I sprayed them with Krylon Foil from a rattlecan, as described a while back in a thread up in the General section. These came out surprisingly well for the cost and effort expended, which was minimal. I'm very happy with them. Of course they were detailed with matte black as necessary. I didn't get taillights with this one, so made some out of sheet styrene covered with foil covered with Valentine chocolate red cellophane, just as an experiment. They look pretty good installed. I detailed the stock wheel covers with some Model Master Steel paint. I polished the glass and of course Silver-Sharpied the body chrome trim. I didn't do a thing with the interior of either model, other than just give the blue plastic a good cleaning with soap and water. Interestingly, the instrument portions of the dashboards are handled with a separate chrome insert piece—pretty cool! One other thing I did on both bodies was refine the lower corner of the rear side windows on the roof C-pillars. The molded shape didn't look right to me so I modified it by filing it back VERY carefully with a miniature needle file. I think the shape looks better now. I'm pretty happy with how these came out. Someday I'll do a “full build” of the “new” AMT '67 Impala kit. In the meanwhile, these look pretty good in that slot on the shelf. I have about half the time in both than it would take me to build one new kit, and both of them combined cost me about half of what a nice original '67 promo would have. Thanks for looking, and as always, comments welcome.

I just applied for a job as a tail gunner on a Charmin truck. Wish me luck!

Which kit? I'm a bit of an F4U-4 maven, if I do say so myself.

I don't personally like that style of spoiler, and if I did EVER so much, adding it would require grinding off the Jada's molded-in Trans Am-type spoiler, which I think looks pretty good. (And then repainting.) Not gonna happen--on mine, anyway.

Agree completely. That's why I suggested this thread not be allowed to get off the ground. It was clearly going to go off the rails from Jump Street.

Such as reporting campus rapes that never happened? Please.

Since when is Rolling Stone considered a nonpartisan, unbiased source of information? They're clearly political and everything in it is political.

Classic Bowie, of course.

You were a talented aircraft modeler. I'll bet you still are! These are very nice! Like you, I used to consider myself mainly an airplane guy, but for about the last 10 years, I've mainly done cars. They're just more fun, and fewer "rivet counters" ragging on your work.

VERY nice! Looks great! Drive on!

Plymouth was actually using that--or something very much like it--in their magazine ads of the time.

Never thought about it, but you're kinda right.

More than two years ago I bought this ugly Maisto '69 Firebird at the local toy show for $10. (Maisto Designer #1: “Boy, some of those Jadas sure look like big Hot Wheels, don't they?” Maisto Designer #2: You think those look like Hot Wheels? Hold my beer....”) It's obviously based on the inaccurate old MPC '69 Firebird, scaled up from 1/25 to 1/24. One of the biggest eyesores of the MPC Firebird (and their '68-'69 Camaros) is the “hip” line on the rear quarters. This comes all the way up meet the rear side windows, and it shouldn't. The crest of the “hip” is an inch or two below the bottom of the window line, and parallels it. Look at pictures of real 1G Camaros and Firebirds and you can see what I mean. Now look at that area on the Maisto and you'll see what I'm talking about. The last two MPC '60 Camaro kits I built, I figured out how to improve the looks of this area quite a bit by carefully filing, sanding, and reshaping it. You can't QUITE carve the correct shape out of the kit meat, but you can sure make it look hella better. I did exactly the same thing with this diecast, except instead of taking about a half-hour per side, it took about two nights in front of the TV for each. I think you can just see it in the After pics. This work of course meant I had to repaint the thing. I wasn't a fan of the Hot Wheels-like dog puke green anyway, and it wasn't especially well applied, so no big deal. This was my first diecast repaint. I didn't bother to strip it, I just roughed up the green with a Scotchbrite pad, giving extra attention to the edges of the black stripes. I masked off the tail panel to preserve the taillights and Pontiac emblem. As I previously mentioned, I didn't want to polish this body with its one million sharp edges, every one a potential disaster, so matte black it was. The body got one coat of Touch N Tone black primer as a true primer, which showed a couple little flaws to be smoothed out, and then one wet coat of the TNT for a color coat. Spoon-testing showed me that this paint (like nearly all mattes/flats) could pick up scratches and bright spots from handling, so I gave one final barely-wet coat of Krylon Matte Clear as a protectant. This gave me exactly the sheen I desired. From there it was all 1st degree Snake-Fu: Sand the tire treads, detail the grille, white stems for the headlights, and Silver Sharpie for the trim. The headlight “buckets” got Sharpied, too, as I noticed that these areas were chrome on real '69 Firebirds. Oh, and I removed the tampo and wipers from the glass pieces and polished them out. I never did find a suitable replacement for the wheels, so had to work with them. The spokes look like giant 5-armed Maltese Crosses, not particularly attractive. With any other paint job I'd have done the spokes in Black Chrome Trim, but felt that was just two much matte black on one model, so I painted them Model Master Gun Metal, which is a very dark matte metallic gray with a bluish cast. Still don't like 'em that much, but they're now way better than they were. So there it is. My fellow modelers and diecasters, may I present to you—Nightbird! The name is a tribute to Stevie Nicks and Robert “Waddy” Wachtel. (Come to think of it, I could have gone one step cuter and called it Birdylicious. ) It's not great but it's hella better than it was, and it's now fit—just barely—to sit on my shelf. Thanks for looking, and as always, comments welcome!

I bet he's a big fan of the Get Fuzzy comic strip. If he's not the star of it.

Didn't you already have one thread on this topic pulled for politics? If it wasn't you, I apologize--someone did.

VERY clean build! Well done and model on!

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/another-skyraider-kit-gets-it-wrong-sigh-t513341.html

He just said exactly what I was gonna post. Well done and model on!

Thanks for the encouragement! Now I just might do it. Thinking of airbrushing bright lime green on plain clear or white decal to make a solid area, and then cut it out of that with an Xacto. That could work.