Spex84

Cool! Looking forward to seeing more :)

I really dig the way those Rambler marker lights were used! Now I'm trying to imagine what other cars they'd look good on.

I've had good luck slathering the inside of the tire/outside of the wheel with a skim coat of 5-minute epoxy, so the wheel is isolated from the tire. But time will tell!

You betcha!

Holy smokes! Thanks guys, I had no idea the brand name had been changed, nor did I know that Canadian Tire was selling it.

Pat, I'm so happy to see some MLM parts out in the wild! That 6x2 Buick mill looks great, and the standing figure complements the scene so well! With those tapered leather shoes and narrow pant-legs, he even looks '60s. Nice work kitbashing and resin-casting to get the exact look you were going for.

My only airbrush is an old Aztek that my parents got me when I was a kid, haha. I've been nursing it along for years. Every time it clogs up or starts leaking paint, I tear it apart and clean it up, even though it's supposed to be "un-serviceable". I can't say it's the greatest...but it mostly works, more or less. The interchangeable tips were cool, but I only ever owned 1 of 'em, so that defeated the purpose somewhat. End of an era, I suppose. I recently searched for Testors One Coat Lacquer clearcoat online, and was shocked to find almost nothing. Those few cans I did find were in the $40 range (Canadian dollars). What!!

Wow. I mostly picked up the occasional SA just for TIm Boyd's articles and builds, and some contest coverage Street Rodder, Hot Rod Deluxe, Scale Auto, all toast...there isn't much left out there that I actually want to read. Even National Geographic ain't what it was.

Looks good so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more! Lots of good tips and tricks (and things to avoid!) mentioned in your posts above. I tend to use epoxy to install interiors, but had never thought about the possibility of glue damaging the exterior paint finish...I guess I just got lucky, and will continue using epoxy!! Nice work getting the frame in shape. Nailing the stance on a channeled car with all the conflict between frame, driveline, and suspension parts can be tricky.

Loving the paint so far! I was looking through some pics of the Oakland Roadster Show in the late 60s/early 70s recently, and you're nailing the aesthetic for sure. The only thing missing now is some rainbow-hued shading!

I don't see anything low profile about the tires pictured! Do you mean thinner whitewalls? If you want tires that feel "fatter" than the AMT pad-printed whitewalls from Round 2, the Revell tires with white plastic inserts might be what you're looking for. They can be found in the '50 Ford pickup, the '59 Impala, and others. If you want a tire with thinner whitewalls (but thicker than a pinstripe "pinner" whitewall), the BF Goodrich Silvertowns in the AMT '57 Chrysler 300 might do the trick (not sure what other kits include these tires). They're a little on the large-diameter side though. Here's a model I started a while ago that uses both of the above-mentioned tires (Revell in front, AMT Silvertowns from the '57 Chrysler out back): Other kits that include whitewalls with inserts that are perhaps thinner than the AMT pad-printed whitewalls are the AMT '62 T-bird convertible and the Lindberg '53 Ford.

I can definitely spot the 1980s and the early 2000s versions of "traditional custom", haha. Maybe I'll look back and the past decade's worth will look super obvious too. I don't know...lots of traditional rods and customs are being built now as if they just rolled out of the '50s and '60s, sometimes as literal clones of those early cars. In that sense, they're timeless and more difficult to pin down than a "1980s trad" car with the triple lake pipes, fuzzy dice and other "glorified 50s nostalgia" accessories.

I was going to post the Ken Block Hooni-vehicles but skipped 'em because they're race-only, but yes, they're a reflection of some of those trends! Another funny thing....because '80s/90s styling is coming back in the drift/stance/tuner world (apparently; I don't know much and judge purely on the visuals), some weird time-loops start to happen. Here's a contemporary neo-80s Corvette and a stanced Testarossa (I know, I know). Remember when every Fiero owner was trying to turn his car into a Testarossa? So now if we imagine taking supercar styling and merging it with traditional hot rod forms, then slather on a thick coat of '80s "Hi Tech" nostalgia, we get... ...the California Star, built 1981-83. Throw some LED lights on it, and lettered low-profile tires big wheels, and boom. Everything old is new again! I photoshopped a version that spoofs some of these trends (or celebrates them??), just for fun:

And you've just described exactly why I love that Firebird, Snake! I'd take it over a cookie-cutter 'bird any day.

"BLAH_BLAH up it's ears"?? Perk up its ears? I can't even imagine what other word could fit there, let alone a word that would be auto-censored. //// RE: trends...I've been noticing that lots of older trends and styles are being re-born and re-mixed, like 1970s vans and chopper bikes, '80s synthwave music, '90s styling (splash graphics, "Xtreme" everything) adopted in a tongue-in-cheek nostalgic fashion. It's all interesting to me! Street-rod specific trends, though? Hmm. I feel like the Rat Rod thing is played out, Traditional has turned into a hobby for the absolute 1% Rodders Journal/Pebble Beach crowd, and the Neo-Trad America's Most Beautiful Roadster trend is feeling a bit stale. The 80s had the easter-egg colored Pro Street builds, which morphed into 90s billet Hi-Tech. The 2000s were still Hi-Tech but Rat Rod and Traditional started creeping in. I feel like things have settled into a bit of a holding pattern, and the edgy stuff is happening in other branches of the car hobby. For instance, I'm kind of waiting for the skeletal, deconstructed, cyberpunk styling on recent supercar projects to make its way to hot rods. In a few cases it has, but hasn't become mainstream yet. I'm talking about the "folded planes" surfacing, cantilever and flying buttress forms, floating LED headlight and taillight clusters, exposed tube frames, etc. That, and the drift/time attack/stance design features that have been appearing on euro and tuner cars for years now. The funny thing is, the "half stripped" styling of some of these supercar projects was probably inspired by traditional hot rods in the first place! *edit* The yellow Firebird below is perhaps one of the better examples of hybrid trends that I've seen lately: It's a '70s car, with Rat Rod patina, huge splitter and fat lettered tires, AWD Nissan GTR system...but also some of that good old American hot-rod flavor in the form of a roots-blown V8...but the engine is set back in the frame to prioritize handling. Weird, and I love it.

Well that's just super cool! No pun intended! :D Love the design of those old coolers. The detail looks pretty sharp and the weathering really brings it out. I like how the internals are included, much more convincing than just a boxy lump.

Love the detailing on this one! The screen floors are a cool touch, really add depth to the model. At first I thought the tractor grille was one of my 3D printed pieces, but I see it has different proportions, interesting! The mesh screens on the injector stacks really do it for me

Beautiful! I love that shade of green, and the way the 2-tone green interior pops!

Wow, that's ambitious but seems to have worked out very well so far! Well done. I like seeing heavily customized '40s every now and then to balance out all the stock-bodied hot rods. It's a beautiful design and hard to modify safely, but your approach keeps the best features of the design and trims the fat out!

I started building a '40 several years ago and had the same problem! I put the project on the back-burner but concluded I'd probably have to cut the rear crossmember out and move it 2-3mm to fix the wheel placement. Phil--looking good so far! That's a beautiful interior, and I like the pale yellow color. Looking forward to seeing more!

Ultra clean and just enough detail to make it stand out in a crowd. Bravo! I also like that it has a hot rod stance and attitude. Those 41-48s are pretty tough looking when they have a more aggressive stance...which is an interesting contrast to the matte light green paint!

Love that oxidized paint effect!! I don't know if it's the paint or your lighting setup, but the black has that blue cast that 1:1 oxidized black hot rods develop.

I like the stance on this one! The tweaked rails look good and the blower adds much-needed visual mass to the engine, helps balance the 1/24 body. Looking forward to seeing more!

This thing is awesome so far! Love the concept.

Man, that 240-GTO Ferrari is actually pretty sweet!! And one of those Fiero-rrari conversions was nice, too. I'd drive 'em! The donk GT40 made me lol. There's one of those bodies in a field near me, on a 4x4 frame. It has potential, haha. Here's a Classic Reflection Coachworks Corvette. Saw one of these in person once, and didn't hate it! Much. I don't hate this Miata either! Here's a Viper-vette pinched from Jalopnik (via Craigslist). Woof! And to finish off, a Miata-stang. Yuck!