Snake45

Never thought of that before, but now I just want one!

Sorry to hear of your loss. I lost my Dad last year and Mom a couple years before. You think about them every day.

Aint it the truth! I just picked up a couple great projects that would be easy builds if I could get new bumpers & grilles for them. Without Modelhaus, I'll have to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Grumpy was well known for painting his engines black, but I don't know if he was still doing this in 1974. Will have to look in the book tonight.

Two that I commonly use are Model Master Clear Top Coat and Testor Wet Look Clear. I've also used Krylon Crystal Clear. Others have other favorites. I'm hearing good things about Duplicolor Clear and hope to try it soon.

Beautiful work, great save! Well done and model on!

I've been using it since 2013 with few if any issues. I have no plans to update it until I absolutely have to, or have to get a new computer. I had Vista from 2006 to 2013 and didn't have any problems with that, either.

Weird? Hells no, I like it a lot, right down to the color. Only thing I'd do to it is put black Torq-Thrusts on it.

I don't often use Future on cars--there are many, MUCH better products available for a good shine--but on those rare occasions when I have to for one reason or another, this is exactly how I do it. Stay shiny, my friends.

FOUR separate Engine ID threads?

And some stuff from my eBay Bender of a couple weeks ago. Wrote a long post, but it got 404ed. Let's see if I can just upload some of the pictures. ETA: Okay, gonna go back and try to add the descriptions one at a time till I find out what the 404 problem is. Here goes. JoHan ’75 Cutlass promo: Been looking for one of these because I need to sili-clone the headlights and bezels for a Chevelle project. Lucked into this one for less than I’d have expected to pay for a barely usable glue bomb. After I’ve pulled the molds I need, I might just clean it up and restore it to “new,” or maybe build a phantom ’75 4-4-2 out of it. ’65 Mustang 2+2 promo: Scored this for not much more than a current new kit would cost me at AC Moore. It’s in remarkably good shape—almost perfect, in fact, except for some “dings” along the front edge of the hood. I think I can massage the plastic back into place on most of them. It’s so nice that again, I’m tempted to just leave it alone, at least for a while. In came in what looks like the original mailer box, too. ’65 Mustang 2+2 custom: I’ve managed to collect a few vintage, original, never-reissued AMT ’65 and ’66 Mustang parts and have been thinking about building up a period custom ‘60s Mustang around them. And then I happened on this one. It looked like a clean, restorable builtup, and then I noticed that it had been skillfully photographed so you couldn’t see either the front or rear end, but I could just make out what appeared to be the custom pan on the front. At that point I HAD to have it! When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that the O.B. had, just as instructed, cut the rear taillight panel so the custom ’65 T-Bird taillights could be installed from behind—something I wouldn’t have had the guts to do if the body were intact, but since it’s been done, I’ll happily take advantage of it. One of the taillights was missing but that wasn’t a deal-breaker, I can always sili-clone it. And then I took the thing apart and found the missing taillight hiding between the firewall and the interior tub. At that point I did a great impression of the kid on the 2nd floor of the house during the parade scene at the end of Animal House. I’m gonna restore this one, just cleaning it up and maybe giving the pretty teal paint (less green than it looks in these pics) a light polish, and display it proudly on my Survivors shelf. It is a thing of beauty and makes me very, very happy just to own it. It’s already risen to near the top of my To-Do List. ’65 Impala Convertible mild custom: A pretty clean buildup of an AMT original annual. Gonna try to just clean it up and restore it as the proud survivor that it is, maybe lay a little minor Snake-Fu on it. ’65 Impala project: This one was being sold as “65 Impala Parts,” not even a complete model, but I could see body, hood, interior, grille, and rear bumper in the pic, along with most of a chassis and a bunch of other parts, so I bid and got it for about what a current kit would cost me at Hobby Lobby with a coupon. Someone went to the trouble to procure a resin (Modelhaus?) instrument panel and bucket seats for it, too. It’s missing windshield, convertible boot, and taillights, and the windshield frame needs some careful repair, but these aren’t insurmountable problems—I’ve started with much less and ended up with a nice model. Looks like fun. ETA: Huh. And now it's loaded up all the pics of the original post in a weird order. Oh well, not gonna risk losing it all again; will just deal with it.

Here’s the highlights of my Local Toy Show haul from last weekend. First up, ’68 Lincoln. I looked at the Drastic Plastic instructions (’67) and it seems to be built as the “Town Car” version with half top, cut-down windshield, custom rear end and what seems to be a padded cover on the trunk area. Never painted, except for the blue interior and custom area as shown. Too cool NOT to pay $5 for. If a ’66-’69 AMT Lincoln Town Car custom is on your Holy Grail Kit list, drop me a line at SnakeACP45 at aol dot com. Most of a Tom Daniel California Street Vette. No wheels/tires, the rear window louver is broken, and the windshield is roached, but still enough here to work with—again, well worth $5. I’m now on the lookout for a Monogram ’78 Vette glue bomb for a usable windshield. I’m not a huge fan of the Daniel “snake belly” louvers on roof, hood, and fenders, so I might take all that junk off and do it as a nice mild custom ’73 Vette, my way. MPC ’76 Vette Coupe (also $5)—all I need here is the body to build up a nice ’75 or ’76 Vette Coupe using one of the several cheap MPC ’75 roadsters I bought last year just for parts.

It actually looks better in your new pictures than in your initial ones.

The US Government tried to shut Joel Rosen down for MUCH less!

What a coincidence! After watching this week's episode of Gas Monkeys, I was trying to imagine what this very thing would look like. IMHO, it's not an improvement over the original '66 roofline, but please don't take that as a knock on your work, which is as always spectacular, and I'm very glad you took the risk. Thanks for thinking outside the box for the rest of us who can't (or are simply afraid to). Well done and model on!

I used to work with a guy who had crewed on a Willys gasser in the '60s. I asked him once if they sat so high for "weight transfer," and he told me, "Naw, it was mainly so we could crawl around underneath 'em and work on 'em between rounds if we had to without having to jack 'em up."

They denied the charge, but only if I agreed to accept a new card, the logic being "Well, someone has hacked your number, they could run up other charges on it."

Something else not in the F&F reissues: a reasonably accurate model of a '69 Camaro.

Went to pay my credit card today, noticed I had a $5.95 charge from Motor Trend On Demand. I've never bought or ordered anything from Motor Trend or Motor Trend On Demand although I get emails from them almost every day. Called the CC company to have the charge removed. They told me it's on there as a recurring charge and has already been billed for next month, too. Tried to call MT, no way to communicate with them--they want me to go the website, when I do, I'm supposed to log into my account but I don't HAVE an account with them. Only way to get this off my card is to cancel the credit card and let them send me another one--which means I now have to go put the new card number with paypal, amazon, and everyone else I do legit bidness with. THANKS Motor Trend, you exhaust holes. I will NEVER read your rag again.

Hot Rod ran a feature article on one of the restored Penske Camaros back in the '90s, with lots of great color. The gray interior paint had a slight sky-blue cast to it, and reminded me a LOT of FS 16473 gray, the standard color of many USAF aircraft in the '60s and '70s. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that Penske had actually used government-spec 16473 paint for this. The color is available from Testor Model Master, among others.

Looking good! Drive on!

Looks more like a PhotoCob job to me.

A similar rule stipulated that a line running from the bottom edge of the body should run no higher than the centerline of each axle, nor no lower than the lower edge of the wheel rim. Many cars seem to have fudged the upper limit a slight bit, but if you stay in those guidelines, you can achieve "the look" quite nicely.

Here are some pics of the thing in all its matte un-glory. I tried to take a couple showing the racing seats and roll bar; the rest of the interior seems to be stock.

This, mainly. Some exceptions, but for the most part.