Snake45

Bill, Good to see you back! Email me sometime soon: SnakeACP45 at AOL dot com. I've been having trouble with the PM system here. I've got an item you might be interested in trying to trade me out of.

To be honest, I always thought the '68 Chevelle was weird looking, even when new, and thought Chevy REALLY cleaned it up and made it beautiful for '69. But I'll be buying at least one of these just because, Chevy. But am looking forward to retiring my modified Testor diecast....

Not sure what to call this project. Not really a "restoration" because I didn't really restore it to a previous state. Not really a full rebuild, as I didn't strip and repaint it. Much more than one of my typical "glue bomb rescues," though. How about "Survivior Rehab?" Let's see how that works. Got this one in an ebay “Corvette junkyard” about 10 years ago, along with some other stuff I really wanted. It sat unloved until about 2015, when I dug it out and took a look at it. Kind of a hot mess. At first glance, it's a drag gasser, with blown engine, parachute, and push bar, but then why does it have the stock grille and front bumper and factory side pipes? Did the Original builder have a hot street freak in mind? The factory alloy knock-off wheels on the front and the slim pie-crust slicks seem out of place either way. If the rare '65-'66 big block hood hadn't been cut for the blower, I'd have stripped the thing without a second thought and rebuilt it from the ground up as a stocker. But the more I looked at it, it began to grow on me. Was there anything I could do with it? I broke it down to see what I had to work with. Just for grins, I tried polishing up the existing paint, which to my amazement shined up magnificently. Well, 90% of it. I think the paint was Pactra purple metalflake, overcoated with their “Diamond Flake” clearcoat with gold flakes in it . (There's some of this on the black parachute, which gave me the clue.) I polished through on a couple of sharp edges, but discovered that Testor has a purple pearl in their line (available at Hobby Lobby) that's very, very close to the original color—good enough for minor touchups. However, the paint on the left door was very rough. By the time I'd gotten it leveled out and shiny, I'd polished off all the Diamond Flake overcoat and a bit of the color, too, leaving it the door very blotchy looking. I could have airbrushed the whole door with the Testor purple, but it still wouldn't have matched because of the missing Diamond Flake stuff. So the body went on the Shelf of Doom until I could come up with a solution. I finally decided if I could come up with (or make) some kind of name decal for the thing, it would go a long way toward camouflaging the bad paint on the door. Didn't have anything suitable in my stash. Meanwhile, I drove on with the chassis and interior. On projects like this, I usually try to use as many original parts as possible, or as many as I can stand. I'd have used the chassis and engine, but all four of those wheels and tires had to go. But this whole chassis is glued up SOLID, including the tires to the wheels. I couldn't even get the tires off without risking breaking the whole fidgety MPC chassis into several discouraging pieces. So I just left it alone and cobbled together an AMT one-piece chassis and new 427 engine from my big box of AMT Sting Ray spare parts. The wheels and tires came from there, too. Worked with the interior as best I could. Not 100% happy with how it looks, but it looks better than it did. Oh well I can always squirt it Krylon Satin Black sometime if the mood strikes me. Okay, let's see where we are. Starting to come together a little, maybe. Need to make some rocker panels, and come up with SOME way to hide that blotchy left door. (The whole model looks blotchy in these pics due to the flash photography, but it doesn't look too bad in real life, except for the left side.)

That's now officially the SECOND worst looking Corvette I've ever seen. (I have a '66 Palmer.)

HL just got the AMT reissue Prowler, so picked one up with coupon to add to my Polished Plastic collection.

I like! When can we start seeing some Workbench pics? You're making me want to get started on one. I think I'll build up the AMT '66 pro street chassis first, and then build the body around it, setting the wheel openings back to where the front edge matches up with whatever bigass tires I decide to use, and then extending the openings rearward. Planning to just use the '66 PS interior for that one, modifying as necessary. I also have a nice resin copy of the AMT Craftsman hardtop body. And I believe I have a complete Modelhaus interior for it. I'll put that one on a stock AMT '66 Nova chassis and do it as either a nice late '60s cruiser or a high school hot rod.

Got a Revell 2008 Bullitt Mustang. Didn't realize till the other day that this kit existed, and I'd missed it at the time, and it had been TEN YEARS and I better be hitting ePay for one. And then yesterday I ran into one locally for what I considered a good price (a little under Full Metal Retail for current kits at Hobby Lobby). So I got THAT box checked off.

Very, very nice! Model on!

I've never heard of them. Do you have links to examples, or anything else helpful to figure out what you're talking about?

If the interior parts and chassis molds still exists, it might be worth Round 2's trouble to un-alter the Funny Car body and reissue this one. I know I'd buy at least half a dozen. I'm planning to un-alter the wheelbase of one of the funnies, and put it on the chassis and interior from a '66 Chevy II pro street. Just because I can.

Looks closer than at least two diecasts I can think of.

I think that's an original issue box. I have one in the late '60s or earlly '70s box with a VNAF A-1 pictured. Never got it finished, though I DID get the wing built with the amazing retracting landing gear that actually works as advertised, believe it or not. Used to did it out and run it through a few cycles every now and then, just for laughs. Main reason I never finished it is, it's in the oddball scale of 1:40.

Does that price include both buildings and the land they're sitting on? If so, might be a good deal. MIGHT.

But the post saying it would be the "first moden kit" of a '68-'72 A-body didn't specify Revell.

And I'd still call the AMT (originally sold under the MPC label) '69 4-4-2 a modern kit. Also the AMT '68 El Camino, though I'm not sure a '68-'72 Elky qualifies as an A body, as it was built on a longer chassis than the coupes. Wait, it was built on the same chassis as the 4-doors and wagons. Were they considered A-bodies? Then I guess the Elky would be, too.

I regret not stocking up on all the JoHan kits sitting on my LHS shelves back in the late '80s/early '90s when they were selling for, what $8? Less? I did get one of everything I REALLY wanted. I wish I'd bought three each of those, and at least one each of everything else.

I do. The accurate body shape and the crispness of the details. The less-than-state-of-the-art interior, chassis, and engine bother me not at all, but if they did, I'd just fix, modify, or replace them. That's what modelers do.

Never had it happen, and I've had styrene bodies soak in the stuff for days to remove lacquers. I hear it's bad on resin, though. Now, naphtha (lighter fluid) will soak into styrene and make it brittle, until it dries out again. Back in the day, the stripper of choice was model airplane fuel, the active ingredient of which was nitromethane IIRC. That could also make styrene brittle, though not as bad as naphtha.

Magnificent score! Congratulations!

No "new" models at my local Ollies, not one--just the dregs of the last blowout. But I'll keep checking them every week for a while--they're right on the way to Hobby Lobby anyway.

Just got back from my local Rite Aid. Some new and semi-interesting Wellys on the rack. *First gen Mercury Capri: Didn't look too bad, but didn't care for the Euro-spec headlights (rectangular) nor the color (very close to Ford Grabber Blue). It was okay, but I'm not that hard up for projects at the moment. Maybe another time. *'71 Chevelle SS convertible: I'm thinking of ordering one of these, so was glad to see one in person. This one was silver, which I wasn't crazy about (just built a Revell '70 snapper in silver; the one I'm looking at ordering is red or orange), but the deal breaker was the paint had several scratches in it. Ever try to touch up silver scratches? It ain't happening. Overall shape accuracy is kind of marginal on this one, and it seems to be a skosh undersized, but I think I can make it work. But I'll pop the extra $5 for the red one I had my eye on, I think. *2002 Camaro: Nice looking model, but I have a built snapper in dark metallic green and don't really NEED another one. Plus it had some funky tampoed graphics I couldn't live with. Maybe another day. *2007 Shelby Cobra Mustang: Red with white stripes. Also looked good. Came very close to pulling the trigger on this one, but I just built a Maisto (I think?) 2010 Boss 302 in red, so I let it pass. If it's still there two weeks from now, I might not be able to resist its call again. *VW Beetle convertible: Just not into VW ragtops. If it were a sedan, I'd have given it a closer look but what I saw didn't look bad. *Alfa Romeo 8C: In both red and black. Way cool looking car. Maybe another time. Ended up coming home with a Porsche 918 Spyder. I didn't even know what it was, and wouldn't if it weren't molded on the bottom of the chassis, but it was just too hella-cool looking to NOT get. I'll have to do some research to see what if anything it needs in the way of Snake-Fu, but it looks darn good as is. Might not have to do anything but sand the tires. Ten bucks, such a deal!

Wow, I thought at least some of them had been built Back In The Day. You've sure got the retro look down! Tell us more about the black T Altered. Something about that one really spoke to me for some reason.

VERY cool! You have WAY more patience than I do.

Diecastwarehouse.com has pretty good prices on Wellys, generally $15-20 on the type of things we're talking about here. I'm gonna order a '68 4-4-2 and '71 Chevelle SS from them very shortly. I think they have free shipping (or often do) and they ship fast. Have done two or three orders with them, always been happy.

Those are all just Too Cool for School! When did you build them, particularly the Altereds?