Joe Handley

I’d rather have the EV or wait for a Hemi.

What style are you looking for? Pegasus has a variety that might look right.

A car you would have to drive from the back seat.

I’ve known Brian for a while now but from him fairly regularly, both at that shop as well as at the hobby shows in the area. I would also recommend Leisure Hours in Plainfield on Rt. 30 and Walt’s in either Plainfield or Joliet, he’s just a few miles east of Leisure Hours and also on Rt. 30. Both have a decent selection of plastic and a lot of R/C, plus Walt’s has a lot model railroad stuff too.

Got this handle through Great Planes about 20 years ago when I was still working for a HobbyTown and it was intended for tight spaces like inside the fuselage of R/C aircraft where the space is limited and the saw blades sometime in the late 90’s when I was still at Toys R Us, but at the same HTU I later went to work for. Found it worked really well went paired with the X-Acto saw blades made to fit their #1 handles when working in tight spaces as well as for using them to clean out door, trunk, and hood (where applicable) openings. Here it is with an Excel #1 handle and #11 blade on my more transportable model tool box, that also has room to transport some 1/24 and smaller “domestic” Kit boxes in it. Does anybody know if it’s still possible to buy a handle like that or will I have to buy a normal #1 handle and somehow cut it down to match that one since what is left of Great Planes no longer sells that and I can’t find a comparable product? Second, the saw blade is maybe 1.5”-2” long and made to fit right in the #1 style handles and this particular one was made by X-Acto, but can’t find anything close other than the #13 blades from Excel, which are more like 3” long.

To be honest, I think Denise Haliki May have done a lot to hurt any prospects for interest in Elenor kits outside if any dedicated fans of the movies. If there any chance she might get any licensing money from it, I won’t buy one.

Got to thinking about it this weekend and I remembered that Aoshima has sets of more vintage aftermarket wheels for older Japanese cars, including Cragar 5 spoke style and Ansen 5 Slot style wheels, with the latter being licensed from Enkei Wheels. So Dad and I took a ride out to a little hobby shop that I was pretty sure would have what I was looking for (he’s a regular bender at a lot of the local shows too and has had them at those) and sure enough he had multiple sets of both styles. Now because they’re of the Big and Little variety and they were going to go on the Corvair I recently posted, I bought 2 set of the 5 Slot Enkei’s to get the little fronts and they are the perfect size for the AMT Corvair kit! The first 2 are similar pics to what I posted last weekend, but on those wheels followed by a slightly angled profile shot. Then the final pic here is of the stock Michelins and optional Firestones in the kit plus the Aoshima Firestone tire from left to right. I really like the appearance of the Aoshima 1/24 15’s vs the kit’s 1/25 13’s, they seem to fit the body and stance far better, also give the car more of the attitude I’m going for with it.

Yup, they even have some sort of office or warehouse facility that is maybe about 10 minutes from me in the Chicago Suburbs! Did a double take when I saw the sign for the first time either last year or earlier this year.

Was playing around with an AMT ‘69 Corvair this weekend, going to be Yenko Stinger inspired too!

Happy to hear that you’re healing up, I slipped and fell back on February, landing hard on my chest. Didn’t break anything but I hurt like a S.O.B for a month, so I can only imagine what you have to be feeling!

Was able to take my old Losi Night Crawler out for a run today, it’s only the successful run since 2021. the original speed control died back then and I finally replaced that with a new speed control/receiver 2n1 unit only to find that both batteries I had were also bad. Got a new one and the axles started to squeak on me, so I tore those down last weekend and regreased the worms and spools in both axles. Planned on running it Memorial Day, but all the places I like to take these trucks were either busy with people or had somebody getting a traffic ticket, so we gave up and tried again Thursday night, only for me to discover that the front drive shaft was not in the output on the transmission and was late enough that I couldn’t fix it before sun down that night.

I just watched Speedtrap with him and Tyne Daly this past January, remember his character Jack Wade from the later Pierce Brosnan Bond movies too.

I’m more impressed with my new R/C rig, it shouldn’t really be going what it is in this video, especially with how little actual money and work was done to mod it so far!

Took my new Traxxas TRX-4 Sport High Trail out on 4/30 to try it out box stock then again today after some body trimming, paint work, then softer springs, a gear down and forward mounted batteries vs the more rearward placement from earlier in the week. The first 2 pics are two different climbs on the same rock while the 3rd is after the final climb today that was not possible on the 30th. Kinda kicking myself for not buying some wheel balancing putty for race/speed run vehicles. Got a few parts still on order for this and Dad’s truck and will pick that up at the LHS once those arrive. Think I’m going to fully pack the inside of the spokes on the front wheels and and partially on the rears to help with traction on the climbs, especially the steep, as tall as if not taller than the truck climbs!

I updated my post now that I’m home and they’re out of their boxes. They’re both the Sports, so it was the generic pickup bodies, mine is red and Dad’s is blue. I eventually want to ditch the RTR body for the version of it with a topper on the bed, should be a lot less top heavy than the stockers with the cages on them. Only thing that would suck is that they don’t have a clipless version of that yet.