bobss396

What an inspiration. I think I have one in my stash plus a '57 Chrysler donor kit. I only have about 20+ stalled projects in front of it.

One of my LIARS club members gave me some pictures of Charlie Jarzombek's last Chevy coupe modified that I took pictures of. I wish I had more but the craftsmanship of the build is evident. Note the offset shown in the hood/air cleaner shot. The car was rumored to have had lots of machined parts that were made at the Grumman Aircraft plant in Calverton on the 3rd shift. We called those sources "silent sponsors". These were contributors who didn't know that they were contributors.

I save any leftover headlight parts I come across. I have made buckets from styrene and aluminum tubing. I do need a small lathe. At work I had access to a great lathe, I made all sorts of headlight parts quite easily.

I had some PLA paints with 5 cents marked on the lids. I recall Testors going for 10 cents back when brush painted everything.

I gave up on the Testors enamel decades ago. I made the leap to acrylics like Tamiya and Vallejo and have never looked back.

I also use shiny thin post card ads that come in the mail. I cut them into little squares, use once and chuck them. I keep an old paper coffee cup on the bench that I throw all scraps into. When it gets full, I toss that.

Fast Freddie. One of the best. He "retired" once from racing, tried a comeback with little success. The #28 Galaxie was one of my favorite rides.

I use beer bottle caps and toothpicks, seems to work well for me.

Southern Motorsports Hobby has a hardtop body in resin that looks pretty nice.

Iceman Collections has a nice one I want to get, zeed IIRC. I have a cleaned up one from Norm Veber as well, I'm not sure if he still makes them.

I do this too using double stick Scotch tape. I also will drill a small hole in the back side of the tire and impale it on a tooth pick. Or even in the tread.

I ordered one... $36-ish from House of Burbank Hobbies. This is a good eBay vendor I've dealt with in the past. I see others on eBay now, the one for $112 seems to be stagnant. Another is up for $79.99.

You have been chosen.

I was following the $112 auction yesterday. I'll go back and look in a bit.

I recall building one, it may have been the Flower Power series. I'm building a '62 hardtop that was a built-up I took apart. I have 2 ragtops in the pink and gray boxes, not started and 100% complete. One was missing the top which I have located.

I was watching another on eBay, this time an auction. It was up to $112 as of yesterday morning. My local hobby shop should have it eventually. Edit: Still holding at $112.50. I bet that the high bidder sobers up and backs on it.

We were down in Miami a few years back. I ran into someone from Long Island and he had the usual wise crack about the Long Island Expressway traffic. I asked him if he teleported or took a helicopter to the beach... all I got was crickets. I have never seen traffic as bad as South Florida has. Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach.. all 10x worse than any traffic outside of midtown Manhattan. My friends on the Florida west coast call the east coast the "insane" coast. They were always trying to get me to move down by them.

You are among the lucky. My job got 2x more stressful after I turned 60. Likely contributed to my heart attack in 2016. I got to the point where I KNEW it was time to plot my escape. You will know when you get there.

I tried to buy one on Model Roundup but it kept kicking my email address back. I take that as a sign that I have too many things going. I see them on eBay for $38 with $13 for shipping. I can wait to source one locally.

Look at local libraries. My son's girlfriend works at one that will do 3D printing for a very reasonable fee. She gives classes on 3D CAD as well. The one she uses is Tinker CAD. I may take up her offer on taking classes.

My buddy that I hang around with most has a good established shop. He does work on older cars, but under his own terns, for a select group of customers He cannot afford to have a garage bay tied up for days on end. Outside space is limited for cars to sit. He doesn't want to be chasing parts either. So all the planets have to line up for him to work on old cars. When we go to cruise nights or shows... mum is the word on him being a shop owner. I get requests to rewire old cars, I have even had sick $$ offered to me. I had a neighbor looking at a '54 Chevy and he described it. I told him to wait for a better car, as in 2x the money at least.

Road trip...

My son's ex girlfriend, her dad has a '65 Bird that is slowly sinking back into the earth, he is not mechanically inclined, the car is exposed to the elements. I ran into someone at a cruise night with a real nice baby blue '64 Bird. We were talking and he was floored that I work on my own cars. He was trying to get me to do work on his car. No thanks. Another Bird owner I met at a car show, he needed a "simple" dual master cylinder conversion done. The fly in the ointment with that is the driver-side fender strut that gets in the way. That got left off... the labor on the master and booster install alone was around $700. There is not a lot of room to fab/install new brake lines.

I'm not big on selling on eBay lately, but I do see bulk lots of parts for sale. I also see guys in my club that bring them in and give them away.

I built one, another BACK IN THE BOX dealie... I put the Talledega nose on it, that is the major difference AFAIK. I did the NASCAR version pretty much OOTB.