Snake45

Good call and I couldn't agree more. Those ugly lumps gotta go!

Just went back through your build thread. Not many interior pics of the original, but from what I can tell, it did have both aluminum panels and red-orange paint on the inside.

Couple years ago I acquired, in a junkyard deal, a nearly complete (missing only the windshield frame) Palmer '66 Corvette roadster. As we all know, Palmer kits of this era are bad jokes and this one is no exception. It looks like a cartoon of a Vette drawn by someone who didn't particularly like them. But I was surprised that, instead of being substantially undersized like most Palmers, it's actually pretty close on length and width, although seems to be a bit "tall" in height, which makes it look chunky. Here's the taped-together body compared to a glue bomb Revell '67 1/25 Vette I just got. My first instinct was just to build the wretched backbirth and put it on the shelf for my "complete" collection of 1/25 C2 models. And then somewhere I got the idea that it might make a cool kit car/dune buggy model--something built with obvious Corvette overtones but obviously not a clone (that might bring the attention of GM lawyers). I've been looking for a suitable chassis donor and yesterday at the local toy show, I scored an old MPC "Dean Jeffries Station Wagon Dune Buggy" which looks like an ideal candidate. Wheelbase is close enough to work with, and the MPC's Corvair engine fits nicely under the Palmer Vette's trunk/rear deck. So the current plan is to see if I can "section" about 1/8" of depth out of the Palmer body, and maybe clean up the contours of the front fender bulges a little. I'll cut a "hood" opening in the rear deck to allow access to the engine just to make the point. Looks like a good place to use up some of that sparkly "Shimmer" paint I bought a couple cans of (the metalflake red, probably, though blue's not off the table yet). And I'm tentatively calling the little hot mess a "Por-Vet." Thanks for looking, and comments and suggestions are welcome!

And here they are. The red Mono '65 Corvette looks like it will clean up nicely and I think its red paint will respond to a light polish. It'll never look as good as one of my original builds, but I think with a couple hours of Snake-Fu it'll be fit to sit on the shelf with my other 1/24 diecast C2s, most of which are either '63 coupes or '67 roadsters. The yellow Revell '67 is complete and at first looks like it would clean up nicely (assuming the scuffs polish off the right side), but there's a fair amount of glue damage around both the windshield and backlight. Dunno if that can be fixed, or ignored, or maybe I could just paint the windows black slammer-style. Worse comes to worst I can cut the front fenders off and graft them onto a Revell '67 roadster body, which is just horrible in that area. Oh well, I only paid $3 for BOTH of the Vettes. Kinda looking forward to diving into that dune buggy. Went through the box and all I can find missing is one headlight and one red taillight lens. Might be a good place to use that can of sparkly Krylon "Pumpkin Shimmer" which was supposed to be orange, but is actually more of a gold/copper color.

Didn't watch the game (just don't care) but after hearing about it this morning on talk radio, I went on U2be and watched the halftime show. I've been to "gentleman's clubs" where the action was a bit tamer!

Yah it would, but they couldn't base it on the '69 4-4-2 because the chassis are different (wheelbase). Unless they could use the chassis from the '68 El Camino. Come to think of it, '68 Chevelle wagon?

I'm gonna be building up at least one Corvair engine for use in dune buggies. Any characteristic/necessary colors I need to be aware of? Engine block? Air-cooled heads? Anything else? Would black block with aluminum-colored heads be appropriate?

The '64 Chevelle wagon (and Elky, and HT) became the '65, so that's gone forever. When they reworked the '63 Nova wagon into the Bossa Nova drag car, they erased the door lines, which probably means that mold can never again be reissued as anything close to stock.

And More On Trivia was correct again, too!

It can see Russia from your house!

Looks likes he's preparing for a meeting with your Mayor!

Yes, he did. He drove the Zero Rez racecar.

What, no comments about the shape/accuracy of the roof? To me, the AMT roof looks closer to the Greenlight diecast's (although a little better) than it does to the real car's. Discuss.

Don't feel like Lone Rangers. EVERYBODY has that cold right now!

Very, VERY nice! I'll be following along as I plan to do exactly the same thing someday, except I'll be using the JoHan '71 body for both, as I think it's overall much more accurate than the Revell, though I'll be using the Revell detail parts to convert it to a '70. Don't forget to paint the engines Ford Engine Blue!

Hell, that doesn't look bad at all. If I wanted that in aluminum, I'd do the floorboards in the dull side of household kitchen foil (everything flat or simple curves, no compound curves to fool with), and then mask the foil off with common masking tape and shoot the black frame rails. A bit of work, but definitely do-able if you want to. I think the spatter paint might be possible. I'd lay down a layer of black, then go back over that with LIGHT coats, shot from a distance of a foot or more, of white, medium gray, and medium/light blue. You're looking for maybe 5% coverage with each color. You might be able to play around with the paint and pressure on your airbrush to get some droplet-type stuff to come out of it. Could be interesting to experiment with. Do you have any pics of the interior of the car you're building? I forget if you had any of those--will go see if I can find them.

Local toy show. Bought two built Corvettes, a Revell '67 and a Monogram '65, for a grand total of $3. Bought them just for parts but I think at least one of them is in good enough shape to "rescue" without too much trouble and display. Maybe both of them. Then scored a built (fairly cleanly, and unpainted, and pretty much complete) MPC "Station Wagon Buggy" for $7, including box, instructions, and decals. What caught my eye about that was that it seems to have the same wheelbase as a C2 Corvette. You know I been talking about turning a Palmer '66 Vette into a kit-car "Poor-Vette" and this could be the perfect chassis for it. In fact, I might even be able to set it up to switch bodies between the Palmer Vette and the dune buggy. We'll see what happens. Also got an orignal AMT '66 Impala body that someone did as a Demolition Derby project back in the day. The top MIGHT be good enough to graft onto an orignal '65 body I have with a trashed roof. If it doesn't work out, I'm not out much--the vendor GAVE the thing to me as a "good customer" freebie.

Was on my way to the monthly local toy show this morning and my car died. Just flat died for no apparent reason. I had enough momentum to make it to the exit and coast off the interstate. Got it towed and it's now at the garage--again. It just got an $800 radiator last month so I hope this is something cheap like a malfunctioning sensor. Ah shucks oh well.

You did what you could with it, and ya done good, but those wheels/tires would have been a deal-killer for me. Any idea what scale it is? I think I've seen these at Walmart and they looked a little big. I have another '70 GTX by somebody (Maisto?) that's stock and, even more important, 1/25. Looks just like a Monogram 1/24 shrunk a little, which is to say it doesn't look nearly as good as an original JoHan. I just checked my hard drive and I don't seem to have ever taken any pictures of it.

I saw at least a few, but I don't remember much if anything about them.

Ya got me! RED I've seen on '60s cars (rarely), but have never seen yellow or blue in the '60s before. I've been assuming they were a '70s Day Two thing.

I don't think there's any easy or particularly good way to do what you seem to want to do. If I were faced with this problem, I would just shoot the whole thing in the semigloss black. There's nothing saying that if something were made out of aluminum, it HAD to be left bare and unpainted. And, if the truth were told, there was a lot less bare sheet aluminum used in the interiors of the funny cars of the day that you're building (1965-66, right?) than we seem to think today. Most of these cars started as steel bodies (or full cars) and just had all the nonessential guts ripped out of them, with the bare steel structure remaining--sometimes painted semigloss black or in that "spatter" paint that was popular at the time. Somewhere I have an old magazine showing the interiors of about a dozen early funnies, and there's not much sheet aluminum in those pics.

Yellow plug wires on a '60s car?

You don't need one here. It's easy and free to upload pics to this site.