Model Carnage

Competent website coders don't leave behind 'trivial glitches'. And all the other people complaining in this thread and elsewhere are having a mass hallucination. Check

It's unfortunate that the slug who writes the code for this website obviously never tests his/her work in any other internet browser besides Edge, which by the way commands a whole 8% of the market. For the past couple weeks, in Google Chrome, in Mozilla Firefox, and in Apple Safari, which together have about 80% of the usage market, you cannot post pics using the URL embedding tool and text in the same forum post. There's also a message to the Admin in white text on a black background across the top of the page most of time saying "Run the support tool in AdminCP to restore the default theme." But since nobody in charge gives a care, neither do i because i have better things to do than struggle with a pos website.

Those pics are from a 1968-72 GM A-body. The all-orange bellhousing is correct. I say there should be a lot more body color over that red primer. Should be almost completely body color except the transmission tunnel and along the rocker panel sills where the sill threw a shadow. Somebody went to great pains to blow black paint on the backside of the rocker sills on the black & grey floorpan. What were they thinking? Self-proclaimed and clueless experts. The primer color was chosen by an engineer in each individual plant. I've seen a lot of dark grey, even under white topcoat. There were 2 painters in the paint booth, each blowing acrylic lacquer on their side of the body as is moved thru the paint booth. They intentionally blew paint under the body from both sides and behind. Even the floorpans under the carpet have a lot of body color on them. Oh, it's thin coverage but you see hardly any primer. So as a rule, GM cars and light trucks of the era had pretty good BODY COLOR coverage underneath. Even after they started painting them with robots. The firewalls got painted last. A big piece of plastic draped over the body around the cowl and the firewall painted semigloss black. The bottom of the firewall not masked so the black fades into the underbody color down there. The black firewalls ended about the same time they switched from lacquer to 2-stage urethane in the late 1980s.

The red and green floorpan is totally wrong. The one showing 90% grey primer underneath is wrong. Restorers who have never been inside an automobile factory IMAGINE that bodies came out of the paint shop with lots of primer showing underneath. In reality, GM vehicles of the 1960s right up through the 1990s have pretty good topcoat coverage underneath. Even the car bodies painted by robots. People who been under a lot of GM cars and light trucks know this. When the bodies were painted manually, the guys intentionally blew color under the body except on Corvettes. The paint bots were programmed to do the same. So GM cars & light trucks from the 1960s-up should have mostly body color underneath with the exception of the top of the transmission/driveshaft tunnel and places on unibody cars where the 'frame rails' threw a shadow. BTW, the half painted bellhousing and the unpainted bellhousing on the other is wrong. Bellhousings from iron-block Chevy engines at least from the mid-1960s-up were completely painted engine color, even the transmission face, while the bellhousing was attached to the engine. Again, ask someone who has lived working on original cars. Incorrectly restoring a car like these pretend experts does not change history.

Went out and bought a couple pre-built Jeepster junkyards for parts and was delighted to see that i could make 1 out of the 2. This is the MPC 1969 Jeepster that is being built as a 1967 because it came without side marker lights. BONUS: Since it was a new model for 1967, there is lots of reference material out there but kinda hard to find. We know that the MPC kit is a Sports Convertible and not a Commando Convertible by the paint divider moldings for 2 tone paint. The Sports Convertible also included a tailgate-mounted spare tire carrier with a special curved rear bumper. The MPC kit has these features ! The Custom option got you an upgraded interior. The MPC kit comes with an Odd-Fire Buick V-6 which was optional and a 3-speed manual gearbox. Optional on the real 1967-69 Jeepster was the GM 400 Turbohydramatic transmission. I robbed one from the AMT 1968 El Camino and already hacked off the tailhousing in order to mount the Jeepster 4WD transfer case. Paint on the Buick V-6 is Rustoleum Safety Green which looks to be a near-perfect match for Buick engine green, the correct color for a 1967 Jeepster V-6 Step 1 was to see if the windshield frame could be straightened. That required thick rubber gloves and boiling hot water. Kinda hard to put pressure where it needs to be with neoprene gloves but after about 8 pours of hot water followed by freezing it in place with cool water, this is where it ended up. The right hand A-pillar is a little too far forward but a relatively easy fix now. Gonna leave it alone for now and see if it creeps backwards on it's own. Then the project got stalled when i misplaced a bag of small parts. They miraculously turned up a week or so ago, so we're back on track. It took some trial & error to glue the hard shell roof together from the Jeepster kit. It will be used on something else - probably the 1972 Commando. Ended up taping the side sections to the body then taping the roof to the sides, with the rear door in place, then gluing the sides to the roof while the gaps on each side of the door were uniform. It came out a little better than it appears - the rear door is warped a little. An escape route was filed in the upper roof-to-sides joint so that the rear door can be removed and replaced for painting. A thin stringer was added to keep the sides from creeping apart at the bottom rear. Might cut it off later. Or maybe not. Still looking for some spoked wheelcovers exactly like those in the last pic. I have things to trade, including pics of dead presidents.

Let us not excite the FoMoCo gang by leaving out the SOHC 427 and Boss 429

The lower looks like 1956 Chevrolet Navajo Tan Metallic to me. I did not see anything in the Tamiya chart that is close. You might be able to get there by decanting Tamiya 89973 and adding decanted Tamiya 85090 until you reach the desired shade, then spray it out of a gun. You can also make brown by mixing purple and yellow; blue and orange; or red and green. The last 2 pairs you can make from Tamiya metallics.

Agree with Jehdir6 - it can work both ways. Free hint: warming it up to 100°-120° makes it work better and faster. And using non-abrasive powdered cleanser on the toothbrush for traction helps on stubborn flat blacks.

Baby steps: Buzz off the excess microballoons from the underside factory Vee with a flame-shape carbide bur in the 1/8" pencil grinder to expose the styrene. Bridge .045" styrene across the Vee to mechanically connect the new deck to the old body with something more reliable than microballoons. Short pieces will better follow the contour than 1 long piece, right? The black marks designate the edge of the styrene patches that were radiused on the opposite side to follow the curve in the underside of the body where it meets the side of the quarter panel. Then a piece of sprue was L-shaped to provide a landing spot for the broken rear lower valance and glued onto the inside of the 1/4 panel. After the valance is moved back into place with heat it will be glued to the L. Then the joint between valance and quarter can be Vee'd out and filled with a wedge of styrene. After that heals, the L can be whittled off with the pencil grinder. And the sloppy contact cement was picked off the remnants of the windshield frame to make it fully visible for eventual removal. Pics next time. Oh, and i dribbled some gel Original Superglue onto some scrap styrene like Snake45 advised. It took a couple days to get there but it hardened. Mighta been slow because the model factory is a little on the cool side this time of year. Okay, Carry on. P.S. If anyone wants to supply a pair of stock grills for this animal i have things to trade. The rear bumper filler is absent, too, but looks to be easily fabricated. PM plz if you have 1 or both grilles.

Do you think anyone else can tell i've never done this kinda thing before?

Whoa! Never would've thought of that one. Thank You! About the Superglue Gel: Will it harden if it's painted on and exposed to the air?

Pretty sure that's the air cleaner for the shaker hood & hood scoop. For either engine.

Got a little bit done: Carved off the old glue from the tops of the quarters with a nice sharp folding knife knife in order to have a surface to level the deck to. Fitted the replacement deck into the hole with the correct spacing from the cowl brace to the edge of the new deck, matching the dimension taken from an unbuilt 1969 conv. because the 1970 Bonne was a slightly different dim. Leveled the deck into the opening by taping, then gluing little tabs on top, over the gap between the 2 parts. Had to do it a little at a time because the new deck might've slightly changed shape after it got cut out of the other body. Or maybe the body moved a little. Filled the Vee underneath with superglue & microballoons. Tiny, hollow glass spheres for those unfamiliar with the product. Cut off the leveling tabs to check the mismatch between the new deck & old body by block sanding. Was all good except for the right rear corner which was about .010" high for about 3/8" long, right in the corner. It's true now. Next up: buzz off the excess microballoons underneath and then bridge the gap from styrene-to-styrene with some strip stock because microballoons & superglue is kinda brittle. Then stuck some rectangles on the bottom of the REMOVE brace on the windshield frame from the donor 1970 Bonneville. Some of you will figure out what that's all about. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Well, ya' gotta know that the only thing that makes disasters like this one doable are cheap and plentiful MPC 1970 Bonneville Convertible reissues. That, and the fact that i picked up an MPC 1969 Bonneville Convt junk box with the rear deck section cut out of another example. There's 2 ways i can fix this..... a: fit the 2 pieces together that are pictured, or b: cut the deck out of a 1970 Bonneville donor and make the side joints at the quarter panel top corners. I'm used to doing version b: but i'd give version a: a go if someone can suggest a non-shrinking filler to fill the flaws above the big Vee (on the underside) where the body was thinned to make cutting the deck out. I like microballoons & superglue but it's a little too grainy for the top side of something like this. What powders are you guys using with superglue? talcum? baking powder? Or ? I'd kinda like to fix the pictured deck into place from the top then fill the Vee on the underside first then level it and bridge the gap with some strip styrene over the Vee. Then fill the little gaps and scars on the top side with what?

Sometimes ya' gotta do whatcha gotta do. Especially when so many Midyear AMT Coupes have melted roofs where the kid piled the glue on the window connectors. This is an AMT 1965 Fuelie. Last year for mechanical Fuel Injection on a Corvette. The original fender got stepped on, bent, cracked, and wouldn't glue back together straight. That patched tire burn under the door handle was filled with scrap from an MPC 1966 Stingray Coupe. So far, there have been no signs of rejection at the transplant site.

I brush-paint the chassis on GM body-on-frame vehicles with some custom-mixed semi-gloss black, slightly thinned to be a little more runny than normal but still thick enough to cover in one pass. GM frames were dipped in large tanks of chassis black, an asphalt-based product. It's very normal to see runs and sags on new GM chassis. Just like my brush-painted chassis. GM light truck frames are still dipped in chassis black today. It only has to last long enough to sell the vehicle. I also open up the body mount holes in the bottom of the frame rails but that's not an answer to your question, either.

Thank You Mr. Persson

Hi Gang: Could use a little I.D. help on a partial kit that was mixed in with one of those famous eBay junkyards. Looks like either an AMT or an MPC product, 1/25 scale. These are the most distinctive pieces......... Looking for a kit name so i can hunt down a box top. Thank You!

That's definitely a match. Thanks, Casey!

The partial tree above is marked 5328 at upper left which is the AMT 1968 Cougar XR-7 The tree below is marked 5328 but has some changes for use in a different kit. Which kit did the below tree come from? Thank You!

Did the original AMT 1969 Chevelle SS396 annual come with Firestone Supreme tires having redlines on one side and blue streaks on the other? Thank You

OK, #3 is 1959 Pontiac I tried #6 on a 1958 Pontiac tub and the pins don't fit the hole pattern. Although you can see it has the dip in the middle of the boot to fit 1958 Pontiac & Chevrolet back seats

#4 IS very close to a 1960 Mercury but the wrinkles are not quite right. Maybe 1960 Ford Sunliner?