Joe Handley

Looks like our club’s 2023 Christmas party build projects are to be “Cars You Have Owned” and I have a problem that Dad does not. Dad has owned a ‘70 Charger 440 Six Pack, 4-Speed, Super Track Pack as well as a long bed ‘76 Dodge Truck, which we have starting points for and and just need a few resin conversion parts and some kit bashing for him to build and if we wanted to drop the money on a JoHan ‘62 Plymouth Fury Hardtop kit, we could even do that too. Myself, on the other hand, of the 5 vehicles I’ve owned if the last 27 years, only one has been kitted, the early ZJ Grand Cherokee, by both Lindberg in 1/20 and Tamiya in 1/24. I have both the glue and snap Lindberg kits and someplace, not sure where, I have a Tamiya one too. I bought both Lindberg kits in the 90’s and I think I bought the Tamiya in the early 00’s and was able to find the partially started Lindberg kits with parts missing and/or damaged parts in both, but enough for 1 whole truck! We’re supposed to start with new kits, but there aren’t many out there and I will need to do some paint stripping before getting started as well be kit bashing the glue kit’s far better interior into the snapper’s body and chassis. To Start, I don’t know where the pictures I took of mine went to, but other than the bug shield and smaller tires on the same style wheels, this one looks more or less like mine. Besides missing parts that the glue and snap kits shares, I also found these tire burns from when I was going to use the red one to make a 1/20 scale R/C ZJ similar to mine. but to show just the difference in the interior tubs, these seats are completely different and the side panels are different as well as having the handles for the transmission, transfer case, and hand brake molded separately from the console. The seats in those kits are for a Limited vs the Laredo like I had and are almost completely different, so this will be the most difficult part of the build, trying to make the kit seats that are made to look like the Limited’s leather seats vs the Laredo’s cloth seats. I will need to strip the primer off the body and the small pieces that I had painted two decades prior. Luckily the body will be the easy part once stripped since it’s just the same basic Chrysler black that Dad’s afore mentioned ‘76 Dodge truck as well and the ‘85 Lebaron GTS I also once had and the ‘12 Chrysler 200 I currently own have all been painted with textured matte grey plastic rockers that any matte grey paint should replicate nicely……I just need to get rid of that primer first. The only real problems that can’t be easily fixed will be the rolling stock and graphics, since mine had different color stripes and lettering, beside being a Laredo vs Limted and mine 245/70R15 Wranglers on it when I bought it instead of the 215/75R15’s they had from the factory as well as the directional 5 spoke wheels from that first exterior pic I posted instead of the kit supplied mesh style wheels l, which were the same ones my XJ had, only these had the insets of the spokes painted gunmetal on the XJ vs hold like the ZJ versions were. If anybody knows what might be available for this kit for fix the rolling stock and graphics, I’m all ears!

Got my 3 Street Fury’s ready for primer once the weather improves as well as have started digging into a Christine kit I bought some years back to make into a custom. Got all of the trim sanded off the passenger side by hand, think I’m going to just use my Dremel on the driver’s side when I get that started. And here’s the 3 chassis waiting to get their bodies back and the original build from the late 90’s looking over them with the Concords that are also waiting on weather for primer.

I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max 256GB and my Dad just replaced his 6 with a 14 Pro Max 256GB, both have phenomenal cameras and I have used mine to take pictures of my models and R/C stuff as well as video of the R/Cs over the last 2 years and have no complaints. Dad loves how his pictures turn out, He's mostly used it while babysitting my niece (his grand daughter), but also took those pics that I posted about a month ago of the Kitten that decided to see what he was up to over in the Cat thread. One thing I did with mine and then he followed suit on is to not get one from a cell carrier store. I got mine through Best Buy and he went through one of the Apple Stores, the advantage of that is that you can get one set up for your cell service provider (Verizon, in our case), but also not have all of the bloatware that comes with a phone purchased through one of their stores or websites, There some features I had on the Galaxies that proceeded my phone that were never used by me (I had Sprint with my S2, then switched to Verizon for my S5), but couldn't be removed without rooting or jailbreaking the phone, just blocked, and with these, we don't even have such programs on the phones.

yup, those or the 20” Sensi, they both just seem to fit the EV heritage of the car better to me.

Holes are filled, waiting at the cement to cure so I can start sanding them smooth.

Went and grabbed the latest Street Fury from the van tonight, stuck the Chrysler Atlantic style wheels and Goodyear Eagle GS-C tires from the ‘41 Plymouth kit I was hammering through last week. Gotta admit, I dig how these look on this too! I’m going to try and get the blower holes filled tonight too.

Got some of the Pegasus 23” T’s over the weekend to try on a second current issue of the kit, plus found my 25 year old, out of the box build of an early issue Street Fury! Oh, and I gave a 3rd current issue sitting in Dad’s Caravan right now that I picked up from the raffle at the club meeting/Christmas party Saturday!

The Axials are listed as 1/24, though they are closer to 1/20, so the Lindberg/AMT/MPC 1/20 trucks and vans are a much closer fit than the 1/24-1/25 kits from everyone else unless you want to build a truggy or trail rig. This past spring I built one of the Deadbolts with a 3D Printed truggy kit that included a Suzuki Samurai/Jimny styled hood and grill.

The Lexus V8s from the LS400 sedans seem to be a popular swap choice now and sound pretty good too!

Yup, very true!

Seeing as we’re doing Orphans this year for the club project, that would have been the perfect kit for tonight!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the popularity of the RadWood shows had some influence in this as well. I’m kinda thinking of getting one the next time Hobby Lobby has their 40% off on kits. Think for wheels, I’d be looking at the aftermarket wheels from the Japanese manufacturers, plenty of period and modern options out there!

The Plymouth and Dad’s Maxwell made it to the table tonight! they’re both going to see revisions later on, but that Maxwell was almost all done in the last week and you’ve all seen what I did on mine this week. I’m going to try and get outside pics of mine on my 200 and post those in the finished section once we get some daylight on a weekend.

I love it, nice touch with the pistol grip shifter too!

One last for now.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it, though I couldn’t even find that last night either?! Checked a Jewel/OSCO near the Italian place Dad and I had dinner at as well as a Target we passed on the way home without luck. Maybe I’ll find it at HyVee today or should check the Jewel/OSCO Mom and I used to work for as well.

Thanks! I’m just wishing I had given myself more time, especially when it was warm out, to do this. Cold winter weather in Chicago and doing most of this on my lunch breaks and after work the last week before it needed to be done really affected the paint.

I’m not toooo thrilled with it, but I’ll finish it tomorrow morning. There’s some oops in here that’s too late to fix at this point, so I’ll assemble it for now then go back over it later.

Has Pledge with Future gone out of production?! I was looking for some tonight after work and couldn’t find any.

That is planned! just not tonight.

And now for a quick mock up before a color touch up?

The paint fogged a bit, I’m going to try and wet sand it to see if that will clear that up also did the chrome on the dash, column, and wheels then tried to flock the tub……. I need to work on that though I will put the interior together and probably be able to finish assembly tomorrow night after work.

Body and top side of hood are now painted to match the dash, column and steering wheel! need to see how these look after work then just need to clear them!

Thanks?

The color is going down ? That green will look fantastic on this!