Snake45

It's obviously a photoshop job. Look around the rear fender.

Thanks for all the kind words and comments, everyone!

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I'm amazed that no Mopar fan has called me on it, but Hemi Orange wasn't available on '69 Charger. Didn't know that at the time I painted it. I was working from pics in a magazine of an orange Charger 500 and I just assumed it was Hemi Orange. Apparently this was a spring '69 special order color called Code 999 Omaha Orange. (I've seen one source that says this color became Go Mango in 1970. Maybe Tim Boyd would know more.) But as I said, I liked the color so much, I didn't want to strip it and start over.

I'd have to agree. The pics I've seen look pretty good. But Revell has been SO good at snatching Heartbreak from the jaws of Joy....

Only the new ones Revell will make. And you KNOW there will be some.

I believe so. And I just found a nit to pick. It rides on metal 1-piece axles. That's fine in the back, but of course there would be no through-axle in the front. And to add insult to injury, my kit is missing the metal axles! And the four assembly screws!!

Modern drag racing is missing a lot by the lack of the Gasser and Modified Production classes. How magnificent and colorful these homebuilt hot messes were! (And the early AWB funny cars, too.)

What he said!

I'm liking it so far, but haven't done any assembly yet, just working on the body. There's a very subtle parting line all around the body upper edge I've been working on removing and then will polish out. I think it's from the same era as the Copperhead, the Mako Shark I, the '53 Vette promo, and so forth. I'm not a huge Prowler fan, but kinda like them. I think it's gonna look just fine on my shelf. Hope to finish it this week. Oh, BTW, I didn't care for the metallic gray the wheels were molded in, so I hit them with some Krylon rattlecan silver. Looks like it crinkled or crazed the plastic in a very minor way. This must be that "hard to paint Chinese plastic" problem I've heard about, but hadn't personally experienced yet. I'm gonna give the wheels a dusting of Krylon Satin finish and drive on. The wheels don't look bad; the slightly flawed silver still looks better than the metallic gray plastic, which reminded me of the so-called "silver" plastic that many model airplanes of the '60 were molded in.

Started this one in the early '90s, when MCW paint first became available. I got MCW Hemi Orange paint for it and shot it, and it came out so nice I decided to do this as a full “A-list” build. The paint was Synthol, shot over MCW's primer, and it was so smooth and shiny that I could have just left it alone. And SHOULD have. But I routinely clear-coated everything in those days, and in this case I got the bright idea to do all the chrome trim and decals before clear coating, so they'd all be nice and shiny, too. BAD idea! The clear coat melted into the silver paint in a number of places, just dissolving it some places and in others, causing it to run and give a “silver halo” around several of the lower edges. Disgusted, I threw the whole mess back into the box. Every few years I'd dig it out and take a look at it to see if there were any way to fix it that didn't involve stripping it and starting over, which I didn't want to do for two reasons: One, 98% of the finish was spectacular, and Two, I didn't have another black tail stripe decal. There were other problems along the way, too. The box was the victim of a basement flood some years ago, and many of the kit pieces turned up in random odd corners of the basement for years. Last year when I got in the mood to take it out for its periodical inspection, I couldn't find the box (with the kit in it) at all! And then a couple weeks later it magically reappeared, more or less exactly where it should have been the whole time. (I gather I'm not the only one this happens to.) This time around, I looked at it in a different way. With about a dozen “glue bomb rescues” of Other Builders' less-than-stellar work in my Win Column, I decided to approach this model with the same “rescue” eye. Perfection be damned, just fix it up to the level of “marginally presentable” and get the stupid thing on the shelf. I discovered several nasty runs in the clearcoat that were bad enough to require wet-sanding with #1200 before I could even begin polishing. But that all worked out. I re-did all the chrome trim with my beloved Silver Sharpie, and covered up the areas where the clearcoat had melted and run the silver chrome paint with decanted Model Master Hemi Orange and a brush. So, it ain't perfect, but it is DONE! As always, comments welcome. And here it is with the '69 DOH Glue Bomb I rescued last year. Oh yeah, sorry as it is, mine's better.

First thing that engine reminded me of was the one in the old MPC '68 Camaro.

Re the Prowler: It's molded in metallic/pearl(ish) purple, black, light gray, darker metallic-ish gray (wheels), chrome, and clear. Seems to be the original concept car, not a production car. Just spent some time google-imaging and I couldn't find an interior photo where the dashboard matches what's in the box. Oh well, I'll polish the body and have fun with it. Should look good on the shelf with my Copperhead, Aluma-Coupe, Sting Ray III, and that sort of thing.

You'll have to shorten the wheelbase by 4 inches. Shouldn't be a big problem.

Got mine the other day, finally got around to looking at it yesterday. The good news: The '67 Comet Cyclone grille includes the insert that my glue bomb is missing. The bad news: They sent me a set of '65 Corvette wheel covers instead of the '66s I ordered. Oh well, I can probably use them, and if not, I'm sure I can swap them off for something else I need without too much trouble.

You found it before I did! Good for you!

Dave, when I first saw this, I thought it was a Mark Gustavson '70s build!

I guess it's almost too much to hope for the "parts pack" cars, i.e., the Fiat and Bantam.

Thank you! Yes, I could strip this thing and completely rebuild it MUCH better, but why bother? I'd have never painted it that purple to start with. But I've found that it's fun to see if I can make something semi-presentable out of the raw material. I try to stay as close to the OB's vision as I can stand, but there are sometimes things I can't live with, such as the original wheels and tires on this one. I think the first one of these I did was a Maverick Pro Stock I did two or three years ago. The OB had really captured the feel of the era well, the model just needed some love and some Snake-Fu. And I discovered that I really enjoy this kind of work. My goal on these jobs is not perfection, just improvement. If I can make it look like something I might have built in 1968, I'm happy. If I can make it look like something I built in 1969, I'm ecstatic.

Bill, one thing I've learned over the years on the net is that arguing with mods or trying to re-litigate some offense and punishment will get you into even more trouble than the original offense. Let it go, and move on, and try to stay out of trouble. We NEED you around here, old friend. (And don't forget to email me.)

Rear wheel openings are enlarged. Other than that, the body could probably be brought back to stock, or something close to it.

You're absolutely right. This isn't apparent in 3D but always seems to show up in flash photography. I gotta start routinely doing this.

New tool from the '90s. And it looks like a very nice kit. At least I didn't come across any issues or problems on this one--maybe the light name engraving on the roof is about the biggest glitch.

Got this one a few months ago at the local toy show for under $10. It was complete and looked like the paint might respond to a light polish. It would have been an easy Snake-fu job except for the hood. It doesn’t really show in the Before pics, but the hood was the most heavily orange-peeled thing I’ve ever tried to polish. I spent two evenings working on it, and just as I got the orange peel down to a marginally acceptable level (about like what’s on the roof now), I “burned through” in several spots, with gray primer of some sort distinctly showing. Fortunately, the thing seems to have been painted Model Master British Green, which I had on hand. By some miracle, the airbrush-ready batch I thinned at least seven years ago was still usable, needing only a good shaking, and there was just enough of it to get the job done. (We all complain about bad luck on projects. This was some uncommon and greatly appreciated GOOD luck for a change.) I stripped the hood, primed it with Walmart Flat Black, and shot several coats of new MM Brit Green over a weekend. The paint seems to be a good, possibly even perfect match. (If the paint had been close but not an exact match, Plan B would have been to paint the tops of the front fenders to match it. If it weren't even reasonably, close, Plan C was to paint the hood matte black.) The rest of the body did, as I expected, respond well to a light polish (Wright’s Silver Cream on a dampened cloth.) Not as good as one of my ground-up paint jobs, but not bad at all. Lower body trim is Walmart kitchen foil applied with Microscale Metal Foil Adhesive. This was one of those jobs where the cheap foil not only worked as well genuine expensive BMF, it might have actually worked better. The moldings were detailed with black paint with Turn Signal Amber for the front side markers and Red Sharpie for the rear ones. The headlight lenses had been glued in cockeyed. I was able to pry both of them loose (more rare Good Luck!), clean them up, and reinstall them straight. After that it was just straight-up Snake-fu—detailing the grille and wheels, Silver Sharpie window and wheel opening trim, and so forth. Not counting the time wasted trying to polish the hood, I have somewhere between 8 and 12 hours on this one—2 to 3 hours a day over 4 weekend days. From three feet out, it looks almost as good as one of my original builds. From two feet, it looks maybe 80-85% as good. Up close it’s only 70-75% as good as if I had built it from new. BUT I only have maybe 20 to 25 percent of the time in it than I’d have in a new build, and maybe half to a third of the money. It fills the Monte Carlo slot on my shelf nicely. Done! As always, comments welcomed.