Lizard Racing

This is half of the AMT double kit of Porsche 910 and Ferrari 330 P4 Le Mans racers. It was initially built in the early '70s and has been in storage or on display since then. With all the time I have now, I decided to rebuild and (hopefully) restore this project to its former glory. The aim is to completely disassemble, strip and repaint. Anyone have any tips for dissolving 50-year-old glue?

Our daughter says her 4-year-old is acting out because he is not used to having older siblings home every day. Little kids and pets sometimes have a hard time adapting.

Great posts!! Is anyone else running low on stash projects due to being home all day every day? I've done about the last one that I have an idea for.

Wal-Mart had some of these kits on sale over a year ago, so I got one not knowing what it would build. I'm not really into street machines, but couldn't pass up a '68 Camaro. It's just what the box says, a street machine, with no stock option. There is a fair bit of flash and mold mismatch. Being molded in dark blue to match the box art didn't help either. The hole in the hood would be a problem. I thought of making it a Trans-Am runner, but didn't feel like going to the work of gutting the interior and fabricating a roll cage. Then I was thumbing through the excellent book Super Stock: Drag Racing the Family Sedan by Larry Davis. In 1968 Dave Strickler ran a Z-28 Camaro in Super Stock/F. I already built a replica of his '69 big-block Camaro, so I decided on a SS/F runner. I couldn't fill in the hole in the hood to stock contour, so I exercised some artistic license and built up a '69 style cowl induction hood. Since the car was supposed to be a Z-28 I made the dual quad manifold using the kit manifold and carbs with scratch-built upper manifold. I haven't made the oval air flilter for this installation yet. The stock Z-28 also had the cowl intake plenum, which would not be used with the hood bulge. Since a Strickler replica was not possible, I made up a fictional Chevy dealer in Salt Lake City as a sponsor. Homemade decals were made for the sponsor and class lettering by making a text box in red with white letters printed on white decal paper. The stripes were left over from the Fred Cady sheet used on the '69 project. Lots of Micro Sol helped them conform to the hood contour and the vent louvers. If the stripes couldn't be used, I was going to say that this car was originally purchased with the Z-28 option, but the owner was too cheap to spring for the stripes. Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that the sponsor name on this side is yellow instead of white, like on the left side. I tried a number of different color combinations for the sponsor name to show up on the red car ( I have enough white drag racers). But Dummy Me forgot to make two images for left and right. As long as you don't look at both sides, it should be OK. Thank you for looking and putting up with my story.

I always liked the look of the Martin flying boats. I read somewhere that the Mars was a true Navy plane. The commander did not fly the airplane and had his own cabin. There were two gallies; one for officers and one for the enlisted men. I visited the Hercules once while it was still in Long beach. Standing in the front, I couldn't see the back. It had an earthmover-size diesel engine as an APU.

Very good work. I still have the Hot Rod magazine with this car on the cover.

Or I could say the Lockheed Vega is a 1/24 half-scale RC model. (LOL) I have a number of Verlinden 1:48 figures I pose around my airplanes. I keep the cars in 1:24 or 1:25 scale and the aircraft 1:48 to keep consistency.

Thank you all for your useful replies.

His career was sadly cut short just when I began following the sport. It was remarkable he survived his era; he lost so many friends. He was retired from driving for 58 years!

I didn't really plan it this way. Back in the day I had a '72 Vega GT, yellow. It was a pretty good car, except for the engine wearing out. The aircraft is the AMT Shell Lockheed Vega shown in the "All the Rest" forum. The #4 Modified is a Rat Trap Vega, an old build. The Funny Car is the AMT kit that used to be green, which I didn't like (posted in the Drag Racer forum). I changed the color and went a bit crazy with the decals from various kits. This quarantine business is sure depleting my stash! I've completed about four projects in the last 6 weeks.

Has anyone else tried Krylon ColorMaxx Paint+Primer? It says for metal, wood, plastic an more. It doesn't seem to like styrene very much. Uneven finish and takes over 24 hours to completely dry tack-free. But seems to come out decent eventually. It's grocery store paint. With LHS, and Hobby Lobby closed and on-line takes a week or more, this stuff seemed worth a try.

My sincerest condolences. The loss of a pet is the loss of a family member, human or not. One of my big guilt trips is putting down our dog over a year ago.

Now you have inspired me to this long overdue task!!

Did you scratch-build the cage? Finish is outstanding! A good representation of a little-known racer. Too bad the MoPar entries (Gurney and Autodynamics) were overshadowed by the Ford and AMC efforts. 1970 was the pinnacle year for the Trans Am.

Here's my entry! Finished it over a year ago. Yours looks a lot more detailed than mine. Fred Cady decals sure are tricky, but yield good results.

I wanted an addition to my small aircraft collection that wasn't a military plane. Since I am a retired Lockheed Martin employee, I decided on the AMT Shell Lockheed Vega kit. It is easy to assemble as long as you don't want some super detail and you don't count the trim decals. I painted the trim around the wings and tail because I knew there was no way I was going to get them to lay down right. The landing gear can be a bit tricky to get right so the aircraft sits somewhere near level. The kit is a representation of the Shell Oil corporate plane; a precursor to biz jets. For a pilot, Shell hired a young hotshot named Jimmy Doolittle. This was "his" airplane.

In 1988 Johnny Rutherford, three-time winner, drove a Lola-Buick for Kenny Bernstein Racing at Indy. Unfortunately, he crashed out early in the race. Rutherford had rides for '89 and '90, but failed to qualify. This is the Monogram kit of which the put out a series of Indy cars in the '90s. There is a decent level of detail and the car goes together well. However since this is an original issue, the decals are VERY fragile and can come apart easily. This is nearing completion with the side pods and front wings to be attached. if you build one of these, make a copy of the decal sheet to use as a map for the color schemes. I did a dumb thing and got the colors backwards on the engine cover. So in the pond it went. As i was saying about the decals ... the numbers gave the most trouble. This looks worse because the engine cover is not fully on. This side came out slightly better. I beheaded the driver figure and used the helmet as a display piece. This is a good kit but be careful. I would assume the others in the series would have similar problems.

Wonderful result!

There are some really impressive facilities shown already! I am intimidated at some of the tool displays shown. I especially like the pegboard storage of the Evergreen plastic. I just have the collection of paper towel cores shown at lower left. My area also is almost between projects, so it's cleaner than usual.

I don't know who Haggerty asked and I would not put down someone's opinion, but if you want to find out the top 10 (out of thousands) model kits, right here is the place to go. I would agree about Ala-Kart, especially since it was half of a double kit of '29 Model A Ford.

Looks good! I tried to make a Model A sports car many years ago, but it still looked like a Ford.

Ours is black and tan. Don't know what they call it. Pictures to follow.

Add my name to those interested (number 3?). Haven't started my kit yet. I'm going to photograph the interior and exterior details for accuracy. I'm still looking for the right shade of red for the exterior. 2019 Limited. Your work looks good.

It hasn't been a big adjustment for us. It seems about the only places we go any more is to doctor appointments. Now most of those are cancelled. Wife had a foot surgery postponed (not essential). As a side note: my wife cannot drink tap water (indigestion). We have to buy bottled water and filter that. Thank you to all the people who saw fit to hoard bottled water when there is no threat to the water supply.

Still working on the 1988 Lola Buick that was Johnny Rutherford's last Indy start. It's coming together OK, but I was delayed by the paint. I had to do the engine cover again when I discovered I got the paint scheme backwards (duh). Yellow is supposed to be in the aft portion. I was in a hurry and didn't completely remove the old paint, so in the pond a second time. It's now ready for the yellow in the right place this time. OBTW, for anyone contemplating this kit: it is an original issue, so the decals are quite brittle and fragile. Just be careful. I hope everyone is staying safe during this crisis.