Can-Con

Just playing Devil's Advocate there Rob. After all, it's a model and a bit of "creative engineering" is part of the fun of building customs and hot rods.

Looks really good But I'm gonna be that guy , with the intercooler mounted directly to the firewall, wouldn't that severely block airflow through it and make it useless? After all, it's just an air to air radiator, right?

You certainly can use toothpaste to polish out a model. I used to do it all the time back in the '80s. , , and I do mean "all the time" it used to take days to polish out a model with the stuff. If you don't think your time is worth much you can go that way. Now I use a set of micro mesh polishing cloths and Tamiya polishing compound. Takes a few hours to polish out a model with this. I't gonna cost you about what you'd pay for a model to buy the stuff but you can do at least a 1/2 dozen cars with it. Put it this way ,, would you rather cut a tree down with a steak knife or a power saw?

Same wheels I'm using on mine. I wanted to replicate the van I built back in the early '80s with those decals and the optional chrome wheels from the AMT '79 Bronco. Those wheels are the closest I have to the Bronco wheels so that's what I'm using. , , , Only 4 of them though, not 6

The one in Casey's original post is the "stock only" version with the only options of the porthole windows and a CB radio. Those stripes are a factory option. The only thing missing from the "Fantom" reissue to make that exact van are the hubcaps [Fantom has the flat stock hubcaps in it though] and the decals.

Man, I wish there were a kit of the '76 Free Spirit. My cousin Ron had one back in the mid '80s and I got to drive it. What a great car on the highway. You may already know this but the pic you posted there is quite dark. The red section on the decals should be almost orange. If you do the Skylark decals , you might also think about the rare Skyhawk version as there was an MPC kit that you could use the decals on.

Happy to help out.

This might be helpful with your headlights. Square headlights are actually pretty easy to make. All you need to do to make the reflectors is make some square boxes of the needed size and shape like so ,, Cover them with that thick aluminim foil they use for heating ducts and polish it with a Q-tip in a dremmell tool at low speed with a small amount of polishing compound. Going slowly with light pressure will work the foil into the square shape and form the reflector for the back of your headlight. I've done this to make reflectors for square and round headlights as well as oddly shaped tail lights a few times. Lenses can then easily be cut to shape from clear sheet and prism lines added with a ruler and the back of an x-acto knife. The lenses on my T/A below are supposed to represent the one-peice units of an '87-/90 Caprice but you get the idea.

Here's something to ponder also. Back in the '60s and IIRC, '70s a lot of the custom car contests would award points in accordance with the number of modifications done to the car. This would mean that a car what was bell balanced and tasteful stylewise would get additional modifications as it got a bit older in order to garner additional points at the contests in an effort to win the top prizes. So, a beautifully designed custom could become something that looks like a hot mess within a few months because the owner wouldn't stop when the car was about right and keep modifying it beyond all good taste in a quest for additional contest points.

Also made for inaccurate Capris too as the Revell bodys had both the larger flares of the Capri AND the smaller Mustang style flares on top of them. Very odd and wrong for both cars.

It's there, but it's very faint.

Snake, maybe you could cut the headlights and surrounding trim from the Welly and do the same with the lot front bumper and just swap the headlight sections? I was thinking about those tail lights and the poor fit. I wonder if you could just glue a thin peice of plastic to the top and bottom of the red lens and paint the strips black. Remember that black strip around the whole section of the tail lights and the peice between them? Wish I had thought of it when I was doing mine.

Tom, looks to me like what you got there is an AMT '50 convertible with the '51 grille, tail lights and hubcaps. Modelhaus did sell a conversion for the AMT kit and I think they also sold most, if not all of the pieces separately. That may be where the '51 parts came from. On a '51, the side trim wraps all the way around the rear. And the cut lines for the rear tires is a dead giveaway that it's the AMT body.

He did write the original story but it's a pretty common story that he was very upset with the way Roddenberry re-wrote and shot it.

And they could sell them in plastic bags to keep the costs down. Maybe put in some resin parts too to keep interest up. or was that to keep interest down and cost up? I can never keep that part strait.

Definitely one of the greatest from the great age of SF. And let's not forget "Terminator". which was kinda ripped off from a couple of his short stories.

Toys R us Canada is heavily advertising that they're not going anywhere for the last few months. They were sold to a different company and are not closing. Still no kits though.

Hope that post I made didn't sound too "snotty", it was meant to sound more "matter of fact" than it does when I read it back now ,, sorry about that. ANYWAY, Yup, Motor Wheel Corporation. The same company that made the Magnum 500. They sold the 500s as aftermarket as well as to the manufacturers.

Really? all the '70s GM pickup rally wheels I've seen in that style were 15". I've never seen them in 16. Chevy even put them on the '74 "Spirit of America" Impalas.

The small block 400 was also pretty common in the '70s fullsize Canadian Pontiacs. The '76 Perisienne 2 dr I used to own had a 400 4bbl small block in it. Pretty quick car too. I'd love to get a hold of another one to "warm up" a bit to put in my T/A.

Something to remember is that back in the late '60s and '70s "heavy" had another meaning besides a description of excess weight. The word was also used as slang for something or someone serious or to be taken seriously. With that in mind, it can also mean a Chevelle to be taken seriously.

It's been reissued 2 years ago and is still available now, what more could they do?

Like Russ said, was re-released less than two years ago in "Original Art Series" and regular version of the kit and are still currently available

Remember the original molds were hacked into a dirt track race car sometime in the '70s. Then is was "restored" in the '80s but not very well and then "restored" again in the '90s but still not back to 100%. The tail light lenses are really bad. To the point I had considered making a set from sheet plastic but I couldn't get the tiny chrome strips in to my satisfaction. They're not the same thickness all the way through, they get thinner at the back so they leave a noticeable gap when installed. I have an earlier rear bumper from before it was made into a race car and the lenses fit as poorly in that as they do the current part. One thing to remember is the chrome on the lenses of a GTO pretty well hide the red of the lens. I think this is one case where if AMT has of molded the lens in with the rest of the part it would have been better than a separate part. The strait red lenses were on the Tempests and lower level cars. Not really right for a GTO

His decals are quite nice but remember to put a coat of clear over them to protect them I pretty well ruined the white stripes on my '74 Duster trying to clean a smudge off it after it was applied to the car.