Snake45

Forgot to post last week, saw something I'd never seen before on NPK: A Chevelle vs Chevelle race (Disco Dean vs Mike Bowen). This week's main race was my least favorite. All the good people lost, all the bad people won. Oh well, at least poor old "Dominator" went one round last week and this. And the only high point last night was in Team Attack with Ryan spanking Swansong's butt in the final. Yah, looks like next week Jerry Bird (I'm liking him more all the time) and Pat Musi swap hands. I got the impression that it was over one of them accusing the other of jumping, but maybe it's about Kye in some way or another. I guess we'll see.

As I understand it, the 200 Z16s were intended to be sort of "flagship" cars for the line, and a preview of the coming '66 SS396. Many of them went to highrollers and celebrities such as TV's Dan Blocker. In all my looking, I think I've only turned up two Z16s that were seriously raced--one red one, and one yellow one with a Turbonique rear axle.

Death Proof made Kill Bill and even Inglorious Basterds look like Lawrence of Arabia. IMHO, his best movie is still Jackie Brown, a movie with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and even something of an actual plot.

Saw Death Proof on Showtime Anytime. It is a completely stupid, useless, wretched movie in every way. Even the music is bad. A complete waste of film, two hours, and three fairly nice cars for no reason whatsoever. I now have a lower opinion of Kurt Russel for being in it. I think Tarantino must have said, "Let's see just how bad a movie I can make and STILL have people call me a genius." If anything, it was even worse than Overlord, and I didn't think that was possible.

Those look great! Wish they did them in 1/24-25. Closest I've found is the Jada, which isn't horrible but also isn't great. (At least there we have the AMT kit, and I've also rescued a couple original promos.) I spent about 2 hours this morning Snake-Fu'ing the Welly '65. Mine had an unacceptable gap between the left headlights and the body, and much of the time was spent filing and scraping trying to get an acceptable-looking fit. (The black paint on yours helps hide this.) Started black-detailing the grille, and touching up the taillights. I originally thought this would be a quick, easy 2-3 hour Snake-Fu job; now it looks like it's gonna be three solid mornings of work, maybe four. Oh well, I'm motivated to gitter done. Oh, and I compared it with an AMT '66 promo body. The Welly is just a hair narrower, but maybe 3/8" shorter. It'll do--just barely.

MCW shows one, but currently shows it out of stock.

Magnificent! Great color and finish. Well done and model on!

Beautiful! VERY well done and model on!

Mike, after seeing how nice yours looked, I ordered one from Diecastmodelswholesale. Just gave it the once-over. Measured the wheelbase and it scales to about 1/25.9. Should look okay sitting on the shelf next to my Revell diecast 1/25 lowrider convertible (green with flames). If not, it'll look good with my other slightly undersized Wellys--'65 GTO, '65 Riviera, and '70 Buick GSX. Mine came with fair representations of '67 Rally Wheels. I like those wheels, so I'm gonna leave 'em alone (after detail painting, of course). Will probably lose the whitewalls, though--not a WW fan. I got the metallic gray one (darker than silver). Only other stock one in stock was beige, which didn't spin my windmill at all. Would have bought black if they'd had it--I've accidentally managed to collect something like 14 black diecast Chevies of various kinds--but they only had the lowrider in black, which didn't interest me. I like the color. The roof's not right, but it's not as bad as I'd remembered it from the ones I've seen before. I can live with it. I think this will be my very next Snake-Fu project. Mike, do you mind if I post photos in this thread, or would you prefer I start my own?

Very nice work! Great paint and finish. Well done and model on!

Also, do some research and see if the transmission mounts are the same for 1G Camaro and Firebird. If they are--and I suspect they are--then the engines have to meet the transmissions at the same place.

Might be easier than you think. 1/12 is common dollhouse scale and there are quite a few 1/12 pets made. The trick will be finding one in a "sitting" position, though you might get lucky. Run google searches for dollhouse accessories and parts.

JADA school, good one! I think JADA designs to fit models in their standard box, and it looks like a good rule of thumb for them is, the bigger the real car, the better the chance it'll be closer to actual 1/24 or even 1/25. The smaller the real car, the better the chance it'll be over-scale.

I'm finding that this isn't at all uncommon in lower-priced diecasts. "1/24" can be anywhere between 1/21 and 1/27. I'd be willing to bet that JL deliberately upsized the thing so it looked sized more like the other cars in their line, hence worth the same asking price. Other times I suspect a diecaster fudges the scale to avoid copyright problems with a 1/24 model that they're ripping off.

Happy Happy Joy Joy! The Universe has truly smiled on you today, Mike! Congratulations!

Your best bet might be to find someone here who has one and can either repro it or send it to another board member who has that skill who is willing to do it for you. Good luck.

Saw two classics in the last two days: Full Metal Jacket, probably the fifth or sixth time I've seen it. The late, great R. Lee Ermey is still a hoot, and the action is pretty good. I could swear that at least some of the Hue combat scenes were shot with live ammo. It's on HBO/MAX this month. Master and Commander, Far Side of the World (Showtime Anytime): Been wanting to see this one again for a while now, it finally showed up on Showtime streaming. Had only seen it once before when it was new almost 20 years ago. It's almost as good as Gladiator. The first 20 minutes and the last 20 or 30 are just outstanding; all that stuff in the middle, meh. Overall, great movie, though. And not a movie but I binge-watched all 3 seasons of Succession on HBO. It's the new Game of Thrones--no dragons or swords, but just as much conflict, ego, greed, scheming, manipulations, alliances, deceptions, deceit, debauchery, and depravity. Every character is more vile, contemptible and reprehensible than the next--there are no heroes here. Amazingly interesting considering that after 29 episodes, not that much has actually happened. But something "big" is always bubbling just beneath the surface. It's billed as a "black comedy."

I thought the first two pics were of a real car. That's about the highest compliment I know how to pay. Model on!

And here I thought pulling a P-47 off the bottom of a lake or a P-38 from the bowels of a glacier after 50 years and restoring them to flight were big jobs. At least those guys had something to START with!

Hopefully. My new airgun's made in Taiwan. I'm thinking that if it doesn't come through in the next few months, it will never come through....

I'm pretty sure my new airgun is in one of those containers. Latest estimated delivery date is February...

I simply cannot hear this song without thinking of this:

They can if you live close to one of their distribution centers, and you order something that they actually keep in stock and don't just "drop ship" or farm out to the real vendor. Not long ago I ordered two books from them at the same time. One arrived in two days, the other took almost three weeks.

Both kits came from the same engineering/masters, I believe.