stavanzer

Beautiful Carb Shield! I too, vote to leave the scoop. Bill has the right of it.

Sharp Build.

This whole thing is just silly. You can make a clock run on potatoes or lemons for a science fair, but you'd never use one on daily basis. This is the automotive equivalent.Flashy? Yes! Neat? Yes! Tech Showcase? Yes! Practical? Never! All electric cars come with built in limitations due the unchangeable physics of batteries and storage capacity. Will batteries get better? Undoubtedly. But energy storage by volume is just an 'ergs x cubic centimeter' equation ultimately, and fossil fuels beat electricity every time. Not to say that this will never change. Just to say that if you don't live in one of the twenty or so, major cities that are both compact and relative flat, electric cars will never be anything but an expensive, Gov't subsidized toy.

Art Anderson did a complete build review in the "Other Magazine" a few years ago. I did read the review you saw. As a former Model T Speedster owner, let me share my 2 cents. ICM has tooled a decent(but not great) kit of the Early T. My Favorites are the pre-1914 Brass Era' Model T's. However, for whatever reasons, ICM made some rookie mistakes in this tooling. The Tree with the radiator and headlights was brass plated in earlier versions of this kit. Due to complaints about poor plating, flaking and falling off, ICM listened to their customers, and stopped plating these parts. The headlights are (as usual), molded in two halves. This leaves a hard to fill seam right on top of the light. Sad. The radiator is molded to the shell. The prominent filler neck is molded to the shell. This leaves a large parting line around the perimeter of the shell, and right up the sides of the filler neck. On the plated parts, removing this seam removed the plating. Now, You just have to sand the seam smooth and plate the parts your self. The Large Ford Script on the center of the Radiator is on only about half the real T's I have seen. Would have been better as a PE piece, with the part left blank. Lastly, molding the shell and radiator together was, IMHO, a truly bad move, cheapening out for no reason. Just lazy tooling. Many other T kits render ti assembly as two separate parts. For a kit tooled in the 21st century there is simply no excuse for this. Especially when you see the other tiny details ICM tooled in other parts of this kit. Art's build showed that many assemblies were not well thought out from a tooling standpoint. Meaning that many smaller parts, that will have to be painted in many different colours, have to be put together in order to move forward, making it harder to assemble then airbrush. It is almost as if the kit is meant to be built, and then brush painted. Odd, considering that ICM is primarily a 1/35 Scale Armour company. The rear axle assembly is just weird. Not bad, just a really unusual way of molding. Lastly, the reviewer got so many things wrong about Speedsters in his write up, I don't know where to start. The wiki excerpt he cites is bad for starters. And, sadly, much of the description he writes just doesn't apply to the kit, as molded. I'll be getting one of these myself after Christmas, and I'll try to give further comments then.

Thanks for posting that link Casey. That seems to be THE definitive answer to the "Trainwreck & Lost Tools" questions. (Or at least the best we'll ever get some 40 years later)

That Billet Air Cleaner is the only Nit I can find. Not Period at all. The rest of the car Rocks! Superb Build!

Not sure where they are. They are simple kits, and would be considered very 'toy-like' these days. Not sure if they would retain any value to the general modeling public. I suspect that the market for 75-90 year old Indy Cars is small. It saddens me to say these things, as I too, would be pleased to have the back. There was a great article in S.A.E. (back when it was SAE) on these kits.

Re: The '22 T-Bucket Hot Rod. I remember reading somewhere, that the kit represents an East Coast style rod, rather than the more common West Coast style as seen in the Revell and AMT kits. Without access to a bunch of the "Little" Hot Rod mags from the early 1950's, I cannot confirm this in any way. However, It does make sense. Aurora were East Coast based, and isolated from the trends from the West Coast. They may well have modeled the Rod after an actual car, but who will ever know after almost 60 years.

Quite a bit really. Mahindra is an authorized Licensee of the Jeep Name. As Tom mentions, since the late 1940's. They have never let it lapse, and have been building them ever since. These new ones are NOT street legal. Off Road only. I still want one.

I had the Artoo and paramedic. They got lost sometime over the last 30 years. Not much to them, IIRC.

Man, I'd drive that! What a cool statement car.

Great Build, Chris!

So, Denis. Did you ever finish this? It looks outstanding!

S.Co.T. / Italmeccanica Superchargers SCoT Superchargers were a favourite of the salt lake racers of the ’50s and ’60s, they could be easily fitted to a flathead V8 for a significant boost in power. SCoT stands for Superchargers of Turin, the kits provided by the company saw widespread use in motorsport applications in North America, Europe and further afield in New Zealand and Australia. Of course anything that makes a car faster is going to be popular with those seeking to make their road cars faster too, and the majority of kits built by SCoT are thought to have been fitted to road cars. The supercharger you see here is an all-original model.

Thanks! I thought so.......

So? Did the SixPac Carbs make it into the kit?

Just Too Cool!

I will say a prayer for him as well. My son is 22, and trying out life. Turns out THIS is the hardest age to parent them. Keep the Faith, Brother!

Espo, Best choice you could have made. You'd have regretted getting either of those.

This and the 4x4 will be combined by me next year.

Nice Clean Build, R. Scott! Blue is a great colour for that rod.

Either Way, I've gotten about 4 sets of them now, as the "bonus" in new Round2 kits. I'm beginning to have too many of them. It feels like they are becoming less of an extra, and more like just another option. I have mixed feelings about them. They are well done, and I'm glad of the 'value added' they represent, but they are not a style I particularly care for, or will ever use. So in that sense, they are of no value in getting me to purchase a kit. I buy kits based on what I like, and these wheels have no influence on the pros & cons of that decision. I'd much prefer a great set of Cragar Rims instead.

Thank You both for your thoughts. They give me ideas on how to proceed,

Thank You, Bill. I may give it a try.

I have an "almost" complete AMT 1950 Chevy kit. It lacks only the Frame. Can I use the Chassis from the AMT 1955 Chevy Cameo as a donor frame? Or, are they too different to swap? If not, I'll need to go hunting the '50 kit frame. TIA, Alan