kurth

Remember back in say 2007 or 2008 Lindberg came back under a new owner and they pretty much re-issued everything all at once? Instead of one Crown Vic every few months, they issued Every Crown vic kit decal variation at once. I also remember the dodge cab over truck causing a bit of a stir when that was re-issued.

I am happy to use a check or money order. My bigger concern is getting the stuff I order. I am starting an extreme NASCAR build so I have been going over your website for some of the things I need. Since you have a good reputation I will gladly send payment in the mail. In some cases I have even gotten my stuff faster by mailing in payment, another vendor who does Ship fittings, gold medal models does not have online ordering, I sent a check and had my PE set in less than a week.

I have been trying to research "Street Freaks" from the 70s. I can not find that much info, but from what I can find they look pretty cool. I was born in '75 so I really do not remember seeing cars like that on the road. Actually in my area .. northern VA I never really saw a lot of modded cars. When I was 5 or 6 I could identify any car on the road, and by the time I was old enough to buy my own Hot Rod magazines in the mid 80s it was the age of monochrome and pastel colored cars with a different look, and later on Pro-Street My question is, does the front end have to be raised up to be considered a Street Freak? The common denominator seems to be a 60s or 70s car with a wild forced induction system, Big rear tires, Cragars, Daisy wheels, or Centerlines, and Flames or Yellow/Orange Grpahics, or almost lowrider-esqe panel graphics. What generally happens to a customized car once the trend is no longer fashionable? Do people generally try to turn it into something else? or are there garages full of Pro-street, pastel colored hot rods just waiting for it to be cool again? What will happen to all the pro touring cars people built? Where do all the out of style wheels end up? What happened to all those Billet wheels from the 80s and 90s ? Would the The good old Monogram Camaro z/28 be a street freak right out of the box? (yeah I know the kit has issues but it is just plain fun to build)

Nice save, that must have felt great to finish after 30 years. That is a neat idea to use airliner decals to replicate those kind of graphics. Thanks for the link to your Fotki, there is some neat stuff there. - I bookmarked it.

Depends on the award .... If I won people's choice at the NNL east then I would be thrilled ... and be in magazines.

Great Ideas. I look through almost all the covers of Hot Rod magazine from the 70s, and Cragars definitely look like the way to go along with Yellow/Orange graphics. There is a seller on eBay with several 1/16th wheels. So a street freak will be a fun project. It is fun to see the mild to wild factory combinations, you could get an SE with a half vinyl top, white wall tires and the same hubcaps that came on a Dart, to the R/T . it would be fun to try and make a SE ... The wheels would be the issue. This is where I think 3D printing will be really useful for modelers, making wheels and hub caps.

I have always wanted one of the 1/16th street chargers since seeing one at K-B toys back in the 80s. I never bought it then later it was gone. So when they were re-issued I bought several. I have a few 1/16th scale kits, and I have been surveying them to see what kind of parts are available for kit bashing. The older issues of the 1957 Corvette have a nice set of Eagle GTs, as well as BBS wheels. (the 90s issue of the 57 vette only has skinny firestones) The DOH charger has Vector wheels and what appear to be 70s racing tires Still not sure quite what to do with my Street Chargers, but I am getting the urge to build one. Back in the 70s where there cars running around as depicted in the kit with a super charger and those wild rear tires sticking out several inches from the fender? Were BBS three piece golden lace wheels commonly seen on cars like a Charger back in the 70s? Anyone else planning to build one of these? Have any ideas? Not a huge aftermarket for 1/16th but there dare a few wheels out there. I will keep researching and see if anything strikes me.

In some cases people get lucky with a given car. some people have had horrid luck with Grand cherokees, and others have gone 300,000+ with minimum fuss. I am glad you had a good experience. I love the stories from Automotive Technicians. Any other wild stories from auto techs about Lemons?

You can make a case for the ford Tempo, as many of those had a tendency to just stop and not restart for several hours. I also remember a local call-in as the mechanic show and for many years there was always someone calling in describing on 80s GM cars the steering box failing. There were lots of Quality issues with all American makes in the 80s. Big changes in a short amount of time and a huge learning curve. My least favorite? Most cars designed with sealed beam headlights but switched over to composite head lights, they usually look weird.

I have been using an airbrush over 20 years now, and I have yet to come up with a good way to clean metal color cups. For glass bottles and plastic bottle tops, Purple Pond works great, but Purple Stuff ruins metal. I use mostly enamel, so I have resorted to putting them in a jar of lacquer thinner and using paper towels and q-tips to try and get them clean. When I use Acrylics, I can get them clean with soap and water or at worst windex. any ideas on keeping color cups clean? Thanks

Nice work. One of my favorite cars. A lot of people forget to detail the tail lights.

So.. I am working on a 79ish camaro which is going to be a low buck bracket racer. The look I am going for with the front is new replacement parts in the black epoxy coat of new fenders, the hood will be a totally different color with Z-28 decals, as though it was picked from a junk yard, and the rest of the body is to depict a base model (presumably hit in the front at some point) I painted the body Burgundy, which was a factory color. The paint job came out better than expected. What is a good way to make it look faded and tired, as though this car was a 25 year old survivor? Ideas? The roof had some paint boogers so I was thinking of some gray paint to look like a primered spot Thanks

If the item is in stock, then you will have no problem. Sometimes they take a few days to ship. I had the Snowplow GMC truck on backorder, but it was on back order so long, the order was canceled, then a week later it was available. If you are involved in rocketry at all, they are the best place for motors, and rocket kits.

I shop at walmart frequently for stuff like catfood, cleaning supplies, etc, since they are open 24 hours. I work nights, and on nights off by the time I get ready to go any where, it is the only place open. Around christmas time this past year they had the Revell cardboard standup display with kits like the 56 chevy street machine, Malibu Street rat, etc. The prices were nothing too spectacualr so I did not get any. I usually take a quick run down the toy aisle in the off chance they put models up again, and look at GI Joes, Transformers, hotwheels and did not notice models last week. i will keep checking. The few kits I buy these days are from Tower, HobbyLinc or model roundup, there are two good hobby stores not too far away but I am rarely awake when they are open. It would be nice to see kits at walmart again to introduce people to the hobby, or to spark a return to hobby of dormant modelers. How many times have you heard the story of someone rediscovering the hobby from seeing kits in a place they did not expect? I still long for the days of the old Toys R us model section... a whole long aisle of an awesome selection. Large airplane kits, big rigs and lots of cars. those were the days!

I have those two kits also. I am really interested to see what you do here.

I can not add much to what others have said in this thread, other than this is probably the most inspirational thread I have seen in a thread on a forum anywhere. I do not know how you manage to cut such clean curves in sheet styrene, but this has proven to me that there is no excuse not to just get out there and make parts you need. You will never see me whine about not being able to find a flat hood or something like that again. Great work. Thank you for sharing so much detail.

Hello, I got my kit out and I will try to answer your questions. The kit does depict a 69 charger. the interior is mostly racing, with no interior bucket, it has stock looking seats, and interior door panels. This is because the kit started life as a Charger NASCAR stock car. the engine is a 426 hemi, with a 4 barrel carb, and a manual transmission. As far as wheels go, I do not know what to tell you. The only source I know of are from other 1/16th scale kits. I am not sure what kind of wheel you are looking for. Maybe you can steal rims from 1/18th diecasts. The recently re-issued Street charger is similar but has a mostly stock interior. It has slotted wheels somewhat similar to Nascar wheels of the era. The street charger has a large supercharger. If I ever get around to building a 1/16th scale General Lee I will probably use the interior from the street charger. it is probably not accurate but would look better than the stripped interior. I am not an expert on the charger by any means, but as I recall there was some criticism about the General Lee body, The front wheel openings are too big, and there is not chrome trim. I will let the experts address that issue. I do not know where you would find a racing seat. The Petty NASCAR charger will be reissued soon, that will have a 70s racing seat. If you are looking for something more modern, I do not know where to direct you. I hope this answers some of your questions.

I use the thinner from the company that makes the paint, I find it works the best. One time I did use lacquer thinner with tamiya gloss paints and it worked pretty well. I have used 91%, and 70% isopropyl alcohol, tap water, distilled water, even water with a tiny drop of soap in it, but it just looses something, like making the paint dry too fast once it hits the plastic. I use Windex to clean the bottles/colorcup/needles. I generally prefer enamel and lacquer, but I will use Tamiya semi gloss black when painting parts, because some how I ended up with several bottles of it and, to my eye it is the "just right" semigloss finish. the other Tamiya color I use a lot is the metallic gray, it comes in handy in places where silver or aluminum paint just is not quite right. If you stick with the Thinner the company sells you just can not go wrong. You can make any of the others work well, but I am sure they spent a lot of time to develop the correct thinner. Experiment and see what works for you.

I hope it is true. It would be neat to see what they can do with modern tooling techniques. I like cars from 94 and earlier, but I would like to build a Dale Jr or Jimmie Johnson car. It will be tricky to pick a scheme for the new kits with so many different schemes per team per season.

My other hobby - rocketry. Building rockets is a little faster, thus more instant gratification, then they Fly! And my workflow has always been and issue. I usually have to wait on getting parts painted, and getting the airbrush all set up and the paint booth cleaned out always seems to sap my enthusiasm. It is just getting through all the grunt work of painting parts, cleaning up parts, etc that seems to stall projects. Then I end up with a million dirty color cups and bottles because i am too lazy to clean them after painting. I have been half tempted to glue bomb a model like I did when I was kid. Paint optional. With hundreds of Kits on hand I need to get motivated .... I am not getting any younger

Hello all I apologize to those who saw this on the Spotlightboard, I just figured I would try to get ideas from folks who may not watch that board., any way After my thrashing to finish the Revell 1/12 Mustang Cobra for the NNL East, and attending the NNL east, My interest in modeling has been revived. After a test n' tune session at a local drag strip this weekend, My interest in racing has been re-kindled. Any way, Racing is really beyond my budget, (and my driving skill) so the next best thing I figure is to build a bracket racer in scale. I have decided on the Dirty Donny Vantasy as my Tow vehicle, The trailer from the '76 caprice, but I still can not decide on the car. I found the cars below in my stash, I am trying to depict a guy, with a low budget, but lots of enthusiasm. I have more models, but they are 1/24th, here is what I have in 1/25th that I feel like building. I kinda want to do the Mustang, but the nose on that model is really odd looking. Thanks in advance for any tips and thoughts! I am thinking our hero is a guy in the early 90s, where cars of the 70s are just old castaways, not the classics that they have become today.

I stayed up late and got my 1/12th mustang Cobra done! If you see it, then you know who built it

Thanks everyone. I used to have an MPC datsun pickup that could have donated the grille and tires now that I think of it, but I sold it on the bay a couple years ago. I will keep an eye out at the NNL east vendor room maybe

One of my Co workers has a early 80s dodge Ram D50, the "four-eyed" version as depicted in the first picture below. the real truck It is a total beater, it is spray painted in flat tan, and has rust, dents, etc you would expect in a 27 year old survivor. I found the Dodge Ram d50 kit at a local hoby store and for fun and a challenge I figure it would be fun to build his truck. There are two show stoppers. The kit depicts the 2 head light grille like the second picture. One, is the wheels and tires, the kit comes with some big beefy tires that would actually be good for a different project, and the grille. Any thoughts on how to scratch build the 4 eye grille? And any ideas where to find the little wheels and tires? The wheels on my co workers truck look like the ones in the first picture. Thanks! -Kurt

That is one of my all time favorite kits. I built one a few years ago. Since it is a corvette, there is lots of good reference material out there. The only thing I can add is to take your time with the final assembly. When I got mine together I ended up with sagging front bumperettes. It looked terrible. I did a killer paint job but really messed up the chrome trim, and some little details. Take your time and it will be an awesome model. It is Challenging enough to be rewarding and fun, but not so hard it is frustrating. Here is an album documenting the build http://public.fotki.com/kurtains/models/amt-116th-1957-corvette/