peteski

Yes, this is a lovely part of the U.S. My favorite season is Autumn where the leaves on trees turn all sorts of wonderful colors. But the Summers and Winters have been getting more and more unbearable in the last several years. We are currently going through a lengthy bout of tropical heat and humidity. Not pleasant at all. And winters have also been weird. I wouldn't mind cold temperatures and lots of fluffy snow which is easy to clean up, but for a while now the snow storms are usually a mixtures of rain,, sleet, heavy snow, and freezing rain which crusts up on top of the snow. Really difficult to deal with, and also very destructive (broken trees and power lines, collapsed roofs, deep potholes in roads and many other unpleasant things to deal with). But regardless, I'm sticking around.

I didn't realize that there are whitewall tries available for 7" diameter rims.

That's the one. Black marble-looking box. While the car looks good in black I will likely do it in red (like my original build), or yellow. I like the contrast of the black grilles and window frames against the body color. With black body, it all just blends together.

Well, there were some photoetched parts available, but not many, and nothing for this specific model. Plus, I was still a beginner when it came to building models. At the time what I thought was really cool was the fact that this model seemed super-detailed when compared to other models. It came with working suspension, spark plug wires, and even illuminated lights! I mail-ordered it from Model Expo (I was getting their catalog in the mail). They also ran full-page magazine ads (in FineScale Modeler Magazine) and one of those was specifically about this model and how close it was to the real thing. It enticed me to buy the kit, even though it was quite pricey to me. The unbuilt model I swapped for, which I own now, is the Testors reboxing of the OTAKI model. It features a black car (the OTAKI box had a red car on the box).

Thanks Jeff! The Paystar ones (without the sprue frame) look like what I'm looking for. I'll owe you one! PM sent.

Yes, sellers were always trying to maximize their profit. But the current eBay pricing structure is enabling all those unreasonably (IMO) priced items to be offered for sale for extended period of time. Yes, it is all good - capitalism at work.

This was before digital cameras. I do have some photos/negatives. I snapped some photos on a 35mm film with my trusty Nikon FG SLR camera. I send few to Scale Auto Magazine and those got published, but I have others. I would have to see if I can dig them out and scan them. The model was built with no aftermarket parts (they weren't available back then).

Make that unanimous 1:2 scale! Or at least a 3rd vote. Like it has been said, looking at the size of the car as compared to an adult parson they look to be half the size of 1:1 cars.

Thanks guys! I'm not a regular truck builder and I won't buy a complete kit just for the air horns (which is what I only need). But if one of you truck guys has a spare set of uncapped air horns, I would be interested. Otherwise, I might give those at http://aitruckmodels.com/ a try.

There was a lengthy thread about him, his models, and the eBay listings. I don't recall, but I think some are resin and some plastic kit build-ups. Those built-ups are selling, so they must go over the reserve price. I agree that even at those seemingly high prices, with the amount of time he spent on building,he is not getting rich, but he is enjoying his hobby and is generating some extra income which he can easily use to buy more kits. Some people might just enjoy building models and they have no need to keep them. So, they sell them as complete models. If their build quality is good, the will get decent price for their models. The point I was simply making (in response to your post) was that there is a market for build models (resin and plastic) where the selling price is more than a price of the unbuilt kit. I know it is an exception rather than a rule, but it is real.

But someone here will always come back saying that what you consider "stupid crazy prices" is simply just your opinion and that the seller has a right to charge whatever price he wants. You can beat this thing to death and you wont win. This is capitalism at is finest. BTW, I agree with your thinking of which prices are reasonable, and which are stupid crazy. As I said it time and time again, the current eBay listing price structure enables sellers to list things for months or years for what you and me consider stupid crazy prices. They can list and re-list with no fees. In the early days of eBay (been on it since 1999), you had to pay a insertion fee and the percentage of the starting bit price, whether the item sold or not. If you priced an item outrageously high and kept on re-listing over and over (because it would likely not sell anytime soon), you would go broke. Back then, many listings started at 1 or 99 cents. No Buy-it-Now either. Those were the days when eBay was actually usable.

I know those are annoying (as are all ads to me), but while you say you're fine, some men might need some extra perking-up. According to the ads, the problem effects a good portion of the aging males. There is an ad for one of those drugs where at the end they show a silhouette of the couple in bathtubs. One wonders why . . .

I've build one of these kits decades ago. Its photo was published in the Scale Auto Enthusiast 1993 Gallery (and to my surprise made the cover too). Few years later I actually made a swap with one of my model club's buddies: I gave him my built model and he gave me a complete unbuilt kit. My plan was/is to build this kit one more time. My building techniques have improved over the last few decades, so this build should be even better. Reference photos always help, and your photos (both the model and the 1:1 car) will be great reference for when I decide to build mine. Thanks!

How about the guy on eBay regularly selling his well-built kits for thousands of dollars? There is a market out there for everything.

Great shots! Thanks for uploading them to the forum. That way they'll be around for as long as the forum is around.

Not really. He just likes getting paid for them using his name and likeness in those ads. Celebrity endorsements are popular and create nice additional income for those celebrities. Those endorsements don't really mean that those celebrities actually use those products.

So you're implying that only Fords are considered fast cars? Sorry - couldn't resist.

Is there an aftermarket source for 1:24/25 scale air horns? I'm looking for horns with a standard round "trumpet". If not, if someone has couple spares, I would be interested in a swap/purchase/PIF.

Looking good! I wonder how much shrinkage there is (as compared to the original master pattern) when you make a copy of a copy? Don't both RTV and urethane resins shrink as they set?

If you are trying to build an accurate model then that wire (0.016" diameter) is a bit too large for factory stock wires. Bu it is a good representation of some high-performance wires used in hot rods, pro-street cars and such.

Sure, but you chose to live there. I'm in Northeast US - if I wanted tropical heat and humidity I would have moved to Florida. I didn't sign up to have to deal with this unrelenting tropical weather in the Boston area! You can have back, thank you!

Skelzie caps? So that's what they're called here. Sounds like you guys did a bit more advanced stuff than we did. But to sum it up, no matter in which part of the world you grow up, kids find similar ways to entertain themselves. Or should I say "did"? Kids nowadays keep themselves busy other ways. And just like any old fart would say, I think that we had more fun back then. We also didn't have to worry about being politically correct, or getting in trouble in school for making gun gestures with our hands or using a stick as a gun prop. But I don't really want to start anything here - let's go back to talking about having fun when we were kids. As any self-respecting kid, I installed a "motor simulator" on my bicycle (a folded piece of cardboard rubbing against the spokes. it was on a string attached to the handlebar. BY pulling on the string I was able to change the sound. Then one time I needed new rubber brake pads. I think I had no money to buy a new set so I just sliced up an eraser into a brake pad shape and installed them in the holders. Well,, they sort of worked but they also shredded very quickly, covering my pants with eraser shreds. They wore down in no time. Ah, those fun memories. . .

Cool story Joe! Growing up in Poland my cousin and I, along with his buddies caused all sorts of mischief. Some of my favorites were getting a bag of saltpeter, mixing it with sugar and then pouring a small pile of it on cement stairs of one of the neighborhood tenements. We would stick a lit match in it and it would become a smoke bomb! And it also left sticky mess on the step. We also use the same mixture for making flying bottle-caps. We would take those metal screw-top caps from vodka bottles (plenty of those around ) and pick out their cardboard seal using a pocket knife. Then pour the saltpeter mixture into the cap, about two thirds full. Then we would cover it with the seal and crimp the metal cap around the seal. Then take a pocket knife and drill a small hole in the top of the cap (just big enough for a match head to fit into. We would then light a match and stick it in the hole, igniting the mixture, then quickly throw it up in the air. Those things would fly like miniature jet engines, leaving a smoke trail behind it. Those were the days! Then there was the time I was trying to leap over bushes I thin we were running after igniting one of those staircase smoke bombs. Unfortunately I didn't realize that in the middle of that bush was a post made of steel railroad rail. My shin ended up slamming into that rail - still have a scar from it. We also used to climb a walnut tree in one of the kid's backyards and pick the not-quite-ripe walnuts off the tree. They had a thick green skin over their shells and we used scrape it of by rubbing them on cement pavement. We would end up with brown-stained fingers, but the delicate flavor of those unripened young walnuts more than made up for the stained fingers.

Funny that we have lots of correct answers and no comments here. It was a "silent auto quiz".

Alcohol is a good solvent for Sharpies. Hand sanitizer is guess what? Alcohol-based. I often use 99% IPA (Ispropanol, a.k.a. isopropyl Alcohol) in gallon cans from my local hardware store. I find it in the paint thinners section. But like Bill said, it is possible that the dye penetrated into plastic and it will be impossible to fully remove it. The other thing that has me worried is that the solvent used in Sharpies might slightly craze polystyrene. If that happened then the only way to fix it would be to sand and polish the piece.