Justin Porter

Welcome from Elyria!

Welcome from Elyria.

Got the front inner fenders in place and that meant finally an opportunity for a true mock-up. After much deliberation, I decided that the Gunze Sangyo tires will be okay for the build particularly since the stance does look quite good. A little bit more sanding and on will go the next coat of primer.

Even dream projects using highly collectible kits aren't immune from bodywork. In this case Gunze Sangyo saw fit to bless the builder with a good host of fine but noticeable mold lines which were difficult to see before a coat of Tamiya Fine Gray Primer. On top of that, there's some genuinely awful sink marks around the rear license plate. Out came the Mr Dissolved Putty to fill in those!

Not lugs, bolts where the hub of the wheel attaches to the spokes on the centre-lock style Minilites as opposed to four lug Minilites. I am really enjoying seeing the Sebring fender MGC go together. The C1 transkits are really first rate and I had nothing but a positive experience building my BGT from them.

Just posted to Stevens International, Revell kit #4537. No additional information yet but this is certainly a bit of a surprise.

Chassis is all together. It's kind of a shame that the chassis is missing so much in terms of detail. The kit front suspension has no front sway bar, no steering linkage, no steering gearbox, just a representation of control arms, some spindles that exist solely to give the wheels somewhere to attach, and some admittedly very nice metal coil springs. The rear suspension comes off much better which is good since the stance of the car means it'll be much more visible. I masked off the floorboards and airbrushed the frame and suspension with semi-gloss black, then picked out the differential in C28 Steel and the control arms in C8 Silver. I chose to leave the brake rotors bare metal, with the calipers picked out in Vallejo Metal Color Gold. The Fujimi 250GTO Avon tires really do look so much nicer than the kit tires as shown in the mock-up, BUT they're at least a scale inch larger in diameter than the Gunze Sangyo wheels so I'm either going to have to wrap the rims in sheet styrene to bulk them up OR wave the white flag and use the Gunze tires. What a predicament!

So got a bit of time at the bench and decided to tackle this kit's signature: those gorgeous photoetch wire wheels. Fortunately, they're not nearly so tricky as could be expected. The combination of my AK Photoetch Scissors, a good fine sanding stick, and Bob Smith purple cap CA meant that they genuinely went together well!

I've been wanting to start on this kit for a while as it's one of those "once in a lifetime" builds. It's the Gunze Sangyo "High Tech" series Ferrari 250GT SWB and it's a really amazing kit with most of its components in white metal as well as a huge photoetch fret including the wire wheels. I plan to build it box-stock except for replacing the admittedly awful tires with nicer ones from a Fujimi 250GTO. Last night I started the process by building up the chassis and getting it into Mr Surfacer Black primer.

You'd laugh, but I've sold a TON of the Bandai 1/1 scale Cup Noodle kits.

So by the description the GTO will be analogous to the old AMT '69 Chevelle kit in terms of detail level and parts breakdown?

Spotted the GTO today on Stevens as an upcoming with a TBA arrival. "AMT Kit #1411, 1/25 1968 Pontiac GTO Hardtop Craftsman Plus Series"

I do love how consistently exciting NuNu is when it comes to their kit offerings. It'll be good to have another run of the Brabham BT-52B and the Porsche 935's rarely hang around too long for me.

As promised, the '32 Ford Roadsters have arrived. Anyone who has been anticipating them should check your LHS because they've probably come in there too!

Honestly, the 1/25th scale of the kit is what put me off from purchasing resin upgrades that would have significantly improved the finished model or doing work to fix some of its more glaring issues like the absolutely cartoonish upper rear suspension links. We did just get in the Ebbro Lotus 33 at my shop and it really is chalk and chocolate to compare the two kits. The Ebbro even has separate rear coil springs for the rear coil overs, a very nice photoetch fret, and turned aluminum exhaust tips and velocity stacks included in the box! And thank you to EVERYONE for your kind words on this build!

Wrapped up another build this year. This time it's the reissue of the AMT 1963 Lotus-Ford 29 as driven that year in the Indy 500 by Dan Gurney. The kit was built box stock, painted Tamiya TS-7 Racing White with a selection of AK and Mr Color paints for the details. Not the best detailed or nicest kit, but I'm about 80% satisfied with the results.

The Rat Trap and Ridge Runner fairly generically represent pavement modifieds like you would have seen in the North East at tracks like Fulton, Lancaster, and so forth. Their frames are nominally that of a Tri-Five Chevy with some additional bracing and their engines are a reasonable if unremarkable representation of a big block Chevy. The wheels and tires tend to be a bit of a weak point, and as most modifieds of the time were homebrew vehicles it really comes down to the builder to make the modifications to represent a specific race car.

Happy to say that the Roadsters will at least be arriving on shelves in Elyria, Ohio by tomorrow.

I hugely dislike that the nicely molded separate electric fan piece was replaced with whatever THAT is on the radiator! I like the new transmission molding, but no separate oil pan? But those are small complaints about what generally is a very good looking kit in my eyes.

According to at least one of my distributors, expected arrival date is September 30th so provided they get their shipment on time we should have them here on the shelves in Elyria that week!

These cars are dedicated pavement cars. Salvinos already had said they were taking a very "general" approach with the chassis as opposed to reflecting small variations between various chassis suppliers (Troyer vs LFR and so on) so I would imagine they'll offer small variations but nothing too radical as the cars in a field of Tour modifieds are all quite similar to each other. IMCA style modifieds (sometimes called economy modifieds or e-mods) run dirt or asphalt and have a bit more variation between each other, but even in those cases dirt and asphalt cars have become quite specialized in terms of chassis and bodywork. As far as the dirt side of things, I would absolutely LOVE a kit of a modern big block dirt modified but I realize that's even more niche than an asphalt Tour modified.

http://images32.fotki.com/v1088/photos/5/504634/4411891/DSCF6440-vi.jpg Found this picture of a build-up online and you can see the rear suspension with its SN-95 Mustang rear axle and stamped lower trailing arms. It's a novel design and certainly a counterpoint to radius rods and coilovers, but the SN-95 Mustangs also have fairly obvious stamped upper trailing arms and the kit has neither representation of these arms OR of a crossmember to which they would attach.

Some very cool releases there. Naturally the new Toyota 91C-V is awesome but I think I'm actually most excited by the 2000GT-X model Skyline given how sweet the GT-R version of that kit is.

I would imagine so as far as aftermarket updates to capture some of the variations in roof and window cutout. The box art cars show two different roofs and two different noses and while nothing has been shown as far as the finished plastic I wouldn't imagine that Salvinos is going to go to those lengths to capture such subtle things. More critically, I am hoping that it won't be long before we get some New England schemes in decal form for these kits. I know I'd be inclined to build Jon McKennedy's car.

Wait wait wait. So you're saying a domestic kit company is capitalizing on the value of its licensing to create new sales opportunities that are getting their products into the hands of new customers? Surely you jest!