Spex84

Spectacular! I love the grille treatment. Eagerly waiting part 2 of the custom tire tread tutorial

Thanks, all!

Gorgeous! Great parts-sourcing; everything looks bang-on for the era too. I'm a bit confused as to why the caddy caps appear to be rust-spotted but the rest is so clean...but it doesn't bother me that much. The nailhead looks just right in that engine bay...and the truck grille is an eccentric touch that gives the car some real personality. It looks like it could have been in Hot Rod or any of the other car mags back in the day. Striking paint job too! Excellent work

Beautiful work and inspirational technique with the home-made foil, textured sill plates, and home-cast tires with separate inserts. Not to mention a very clean and detailed build of the kit itself. Thanks for sharing your process as well as the finished model!

I like this...Nice work getting the car down low, and weathering it so convincingly. From the description I thought the header wrap might look out of scale, but it looks great...and the exposed welds on the roof are a cool touch. I like how the skeleton door panels are lighter on the lower areas and "highlighted" with a darker color--it almost fools the eye into thinking those details are recessed, which is appropriate considering Revell molded these panels with raised detail instead of the correct recessed stampings. The whitewalls look a bit like "el cheapo" painted-on whitewalls, again very appropriate for a rat rod. I've suffered the mistake of painting tires with oil-based paint in the past, but it never occurred to me that the resulting mess might be a desirable effect! The exposed transmission is cool too...a detail I've seen on a number of cars built in this style, and I've wondered how often somebody drops their iPhone and it falls straight through to the highway. Haha! I'd be happy to have this on my shelf...I miss building rat rods. It might be time to do another soon!

Wild! I like the concept drawing; judging by the finished product you had a vision and stuck to it! The interior mods would have gone unnoticed by me had you not pointed them out and shown close-ups of the dash etc. Must have taken a lot of fitting and testing, but in the end it looks surprisingly natural, well done! If it were mine...I'd put it on some black wheels

Just completed this one recently (it may get some light weathering in future, though. We'll see...). This is a project that was started in 2013, sat in the box for years, and then sat partially assembled for over a year before I decided to make a few changes and finish it up. Some notes: -AMT 29 roadster, AMT '34 Ford flathead with aluminum intake stacks and scratchbuilt wire looms. Headers modified from Revell '32 Tudor kit, AMT '34 Ford wire wheels on Johan Mercedes 500k tires out back, and Revell '31 Woody wire wheels/tires in front. Firewall was modified with extra flanges to look more like the 1:1, and it has a flattened front crossmember and AMT '34 Ford coupe front axle to get the front end down. Cut-down steering wheel, '31 Woody door handles, and the windshield frame was chopped and removed from the stanchions then attached to the chopped-down roadster roof--so they can be removed as a unit for that stripped-down racer appearance. The headlights and taillight/license plate are held on with wire clips and are also removeable. Thanks for looking!

I thought this was pretty cool when you started it, with the paneling and so on, but now I love it...the machine-gun headlight domes, oil/exhaust staining and judiciously applied decals really bring it home!

I like this treatment a lot. Red and blue can be too extreme a contrast sometimes, but the dark blue and red combo is quite subtle. The car looks darned tough! And certainly a huge improvement over what comes in the box. Well done.

Dang, wish I'd thought of that myself; thanks for sharing your technique! I just completed a flathead recently and swore that I would not wire any flatheads again in the near future...but your trick could help make it less frustrating. My process was similar and involved using hex rod for the nut and white gel pen for the spark plug, but unfortunately the white plugs were scuffed during installation.

This is so cool; I almost mistook it for a black and white photo at first! Awesome wiring job--I love the curve of the matching fuel lines to the fuel block on the firewall, and the little white spark plugs with boots and terminals...how did you make those plugs??

Fantastic!! This is a perfect representation of that early 2000s style of hi-tech rod, complete with the 2-tone paintjob split at the beltline. It looks bang-on like a 1:1 'glass body from Rat's Glass. I like the re-positioned taillights as well. The cross-ram intake is ideal for this style and generation of street rod and really completes the package. Beautiful work. I've been wanting to build something like this for a long time (convert the Vicky into a Rat's Glass-style body) but have had trouble assessing whether or not the stock roof would be a worthwhile starting point. Now I can see that it certainly is! Did you patch in a windshield surround and A-pillars from something else, or was it all scratchbuilt?

I've been wondering for a while now why we aren't seeing knockoffs kits for sale online...so this intrigues me. How do they create the knockoff? If there is an obvious decline in quality, is that because of the technique they're using to duplicate the parts, or simply poorer quality plastics? Are they laser-scanning entire parts trees (flash and all) and then creating new tooling based on those scans? Or some cheaper, faster method?? I consider the Lindberg '40 Ford a knockoff of the AMT kit. It's SO close, but not identical. And that would have been done with old technology. Seems like now there would be more options for engineering imitation kits. Looking forward to seeing some more photos of this kit...and it would be educational to see a comparison with original Tamiya parts!

This is incredibly cool. Beautiful work. I love the layout, the integration of the new frame with the engine block, the seat and suspension scratchbuilding...Very clever and nicely packaged; I love the proportions and paint scheme. I've never built a motorcycle before, but seeing things like this makes me think I should give it a whirl someday!

Absolutely spectacular. Wow. Thanks for the WIP shots showing how it all came together!

I'd say this could be a great opportunity to depict aged fiberglass (it has a distinctive appearance, just google "abandoned corvette derelict" or similar) and maybe some brackets and bolts to hold on the pieces that are attached to the body. In reality, it would probably have holes cut in the body so any heavy metal additions could be welded to the frame. Or, just don't worry about it...many people won't even know that 60s Corvettes aren't steel!

I'm thinking someone must have written a program that strips photos and descriptions from listings, automatically creates user profiles (hence the profile made up of strings of numbers), populates new listings with the "borrowed" photos and text, and offers the "item" for sale for a low price and free shipping. Heck, they could probably even pay some mouth-breathers to do that work. Then, if they are doing this across a wide enough swath of product categories, they could potentially reel in enough suckers that they'd make hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per day. And they're pretty much untouchable because they're overseas. Nice! You really have to be careful these days. If it looks too good to be true...well, it probably is.

Wow, beautiful work! I'm so glad to see this project has been revived

I could have sworn I saw a thread on here about scam listings. Couldn't find it, so I'm starting a new one. I just saw a listing for thirteen 1990s Revell/AMT kits, all of american subjects, for sale for a "buy it now" of about $24 bucks, with free shipping. Location: China Riiiight. Just a reminder, practice safe shopping; don't click "buy it now" and fund these jerks!

*Dollar valve Hahaha. Good typo.

I think I understand both sides of this...I do track my spending, but I don't tally up what each individual project cost. The dollar valve of the hours I've sunk into any model far exceed the cost of the kit and parts. I try to avoid buying online when shipping prices are nuts, go easy on the paint purchases (paint seems to east cash very quickly), and find craft supplies at the dollar store/from salvage rather than purchasing new kits. I'll put in the time to clean up a glue-bomb or strip paint from a partially started garage-sale kit rather than buy new. I don't buy photo-etch and other expensive aftermarket parts (much). My big indulgence recently has been 3D printing some small items and trying to make molds and cast then in resin. The $$$ this has required in failed experimentation is starting to bother me, but I told myself going in that I was going to just spend the money for the sake of the experience, regardless of the results. It's all about the experience...It feels good to complete a project and know that not only was it enjoyable, it was also cheap. Thriftiness has an especially delicious feeling for some people (including me). On the other hand, maybe someday I'll go nuts and load a model with aftermarket parts, just to glory in its shiny expensive excess. I just don't really get my kicks that way

I knew the parts were interchangeable, but I'm still sort of surprised to see they swapped the '30 coupe's mag wheels and blown engine into the '29. Interesting. Does this mean later we'll get a '30 coupe kit with the nailhead? That would be cool. *on second thought, I think it's the '29 BODY that has been swapped onto the frame/engine/etc from the '30 kit. Or perhaps the '30 coupe kit will get a new engine, inspiring us poor suckers to buy it so we can swap the new mill into the '29 roadsters we purchased previously. A guy can dream

Wild! I love the asymmetry. It might be in early stages yet, but it already has a certain monolithic sculptural beauty

Cool, for a long time now I've been thinking that one of these Mercedes would make a great hot rod...it looks like a blend between '32 and '34 Ford, just larger. Glad to see someone else actually building it!

Yep, it's a treat to just sit here and watch. I love those boxed suspension links. Can't wait to see what you do with the bike.