Snake45

I feel ya, mah brothah. This has happened to me at least five or six times on this kit so far.

You mentioned lengthening the wheelbase but I don't think you told us how you did that. Did you lengthen the whole frame?

Possibly the least known song of a very well known act. I've never heard this on any radio, not even for Halloween: You can make a big impression or Go through life unseen You might wind up restricted and over seventeen It's so hard to be careful, so easy to be lead Somewhere beyond the pavement You'll find the living dead

I've seen more than one built model that looked kinda like that first picture. Though not lately, Thank The Lord.

Got it in one! Best line from that fabulous episode: Cam: "We'll just say we're not going to any more weddings until the gays can get married." Mitch: "Oh, we're political now? We leave town during Gay Pride Weekend because we can't stand the traffic."

Fabulous topic! I pumped gas parttime for three years in high school and I remember having to find most of those. Wonderful stuff!

Pretty cool! I think I'm about to start a Freddy Flameout pretty soon myself. Bought the thing a decade ago, and then decided I just couldn't live with the head, which doesn't look much like the box art (which actually looks kinda cool). But just today, in the Halloween section at Walmart, I found something I think will make a much better head for Freddy....

I too would MUCH rather bring an old glue bomb, especially a rare one, back from the dead than work on the latest brand-new Wonderkit. Here's two more of mine. Flea market find, a dirty, slightly damaged '66 Barracuda promo (too far gone for a pure restoration): And a Monogram '68 GTO:

And it follows Snake's Law: If a song title has "Blues" in it, it's probably not really 12-bar blues.

I think I'm going to be getting two and a half models out of my copy. The Fruit Wagon, a rat-ish rod based on the stock T frame, and a new T body for the old T I just finished restoring.

Back in 1969, I bought and built the AMT '69 Chevelle in orange with a black vinyl top. Later in the year, I won a second copy of the same kit in a contest, so I built it as a Modified Production dragster. I scratchbuilt a tunnel ram manifold from balsa, added aluminum tubing collectors to the kit headers, and scrounged up open wheels and legal-sized slicks from the parts box, but otherwise it's pretty much box-stock. Paint is AMT Surf Green, a pretty good match for Pontiac Verdoro Green, which I liked a LOT back in those days (and still do, come to think of it). I hand-lettered it—the only decals on it are the Air Lift and Champion sparkplug decals in the windows. Everything else is hand-painted. Over the decades, both Chevelles deteriorated until they looked like this: Couple years ago I restored the orange streeter. At the same time I cleaned up all the racer's parts, but every time I started to put it back together, I'd hit some kind of snag and my ADD would kick in and I'd throw it all back in the box. Yesterday I dug it out again, determined to Git Er Done. Took four hours yesterday and four today, but it's finished. This is a true resoration, not a rebuild. I changed nothing (except the back bumper and taillights), I added nothing. I borrowed the original bumper and taillights from this one for the new '69 Chevelle build I recently completed, because the ones in the reissue kits are whack. I tried fixing the new taillights but they still didn't fit or look right so I didn't want them on the new build. Till I can get some replacement repops of the originals from Modelhaus, this one is wearing those. The Ratman name was originally hand-painted with Testor Chrome Silver. It looked pretty bad after 45 years. Didn't want to hand-paint all that again, so I just went over it with silver Sharpie. The Surf Green paint had a few chips, so I mixed up something close with Turn Signal Amber and a military dark green, FS 34079. I didn't get a perfect match but I got close enough that you have to go looking for the dings to spot them. Oh well, it is what it is. I also polished a lot of scratches out of the windshield with some Walmart fingernail polishing sticks. I did make one minor change. Apparently enamored of the red front inner fenders of certain Oldmobiles and Pontiacs, I originally painted the front fender inners of this one a bright yellow—and also the entire front suspension and sway bar (!)--basically the whole front 20% of the chassis. This time I went back and hand-painted the front suspension and all the chassis parts except the inner fenders themselves Black Chrome Trim. Looks better now. Here it is with its 45-year-old shelfmate, my original restored steet terror Chevelle. This is pretty much the way they looked sitting on my dresser all through high school (back during the Nixon administration).

If you want THE paint, you can order '68 Ford Highland Green from Model Car World. Model Master British Green is a bit dark, but might be acceptable, depending on how close you need to be. Here are two Bullitt Mustangs I've built. The darker one in the foreground is a Mini Exotics resin painted with MM Brit Green. The lighter one is a Revell diecast kit with the out-of-the-box paint. I think it's closer to the real color. If you're airbrushing, you can start with the MM Brit Green and add a little Turn Signal Amber to lighten it. I don't have a formula for this--just do it by eye. ETA: Just realized you might also want to look at Model Master Fathom Green lacquer. This is a '69 Chevy color but also might work if you can't get anything better. The '69 Nova in the foreground of this pic is painted MM Fathom Green:

I'm Snake-slapping together a '69 Camaro, Pro-Touring-"ish" style. This is just a curbside/shelf model, not an A-lister or contest quality, but I don't want it to look stupid (or maybe I should say, "even more stupid"). These are the wheels/tires I'm using, from the AMT (ex-MPC) "Resto Rod" '69 Mustang. They scale out to 17.785" so I guess they're supposed to be 18". Now I would prefer to just have black showing through the spokes but I gather that with modern big wheels like this, the brakes usually or always show. I have the disk brakes shown available, from the Revell '66 Chevelle wagon. They will go into the wheels, but they take up all the space (i.e., no air showing around them. So my questions are: 1. Can I just go with basic black wheel backs (inner) and not worry about the brakes at all, or would that just look stupid? 2. The Revell Chev wagon brakes measure 13.875" in diameter (are they supposed to be 14"?). Are they actually too big for 18" wheels? If not, what diameter am I looking for? (Maybe I can find some simple washers at the hardware store that would look the part.) 3. What's a good color for disk brake rotors? Kit chrome doesn't look right to me. I'm thinking maybe the dull side of aluminum foil might be close? 4. I gather that red is a common color for the caliper portion of the brakes? Are they all red, or is that just associated with a particular brand? What other colors, if any, are applicable? 5. What position should the calipers be in, any particular spot? Speaking of a clock face, are they usually at 1:00, 3:00, or whatever? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer this "living in the past" kinda guy.

It really does. Back in the day I built an AMT annual and painted it AMT Candy Tangerine. I still have it but some years ago I got the urge to rebuild it stock, in white, and I stripped the paint off it. I didn't know at that time that AMT would be coming out with a new '66 Riv kit or I'd have left it alone. I believe back in the day, George Barris's daily driver was a Candy Tangerine '66 Riv with white vinyl top.

Great pic! I love stuff like that!

Get Smart?

One of them should be on the label of Rolling Rock beer.

Masking tape, double-sided tape, white (Elmer's) glue, yellow (carpenter's) glue, or as Plowboy said, a very small bit of superglue. Whatever works.

You need it to say Edelbrock, right? Because otherwise that's very close to the open-element air cleaner in several kits with big block Chevies that I know of. Of course they don't say Edelbrock.

Not crazy about the wheels or grille, but LOVE the color, paint, interior, engine, and everything else about it. Especially the front license plate. Sat Cong!

That looks pretty sweet!

HAHAHAHAHAHA, that was a great scene for at least two reasons. "Loooook, she was just trying to get her squeaky weiner!" (Channeling Dave Barry here, "Squeaky Weiner" would be a great name for a rock band.)

Very interesting and cool! I'd never heard of this airplane before. It reminds me a little of a Mooney. Keep us posted on your progress!

Very, VERY nice! Not many people actually get that model built. You did, and good for you! Model on!

And speaking of which: