Justin Porter

The kit, if I'm not mistaken, dates back to the very well loved Gunze Sangyo High Tech series and while I doubt it has some of the white metal and photoetch parts that featured in those kits it ought to be a nice build all the same. Also, as an aside, the characters from that release are part of a very long running Japanese cartoon called Lupin the Third which is about a master thief and his accomplices who pull off daring heists across the globe. It's a VERY car heavy series including an episode where the titular Lupin enters the Monaco Gran Prix driving a privateer Tyrrell P34(!) in order to pull off a casino heist.

Granted, it wasn't helped by one of the worst "Pep Boys specials" sets of wheels included in a muscle car kit, but what's the best way to ensure that no one knows there's a beautifully done (possibly AMT's best) 426 Hemi sitting inside the box? Paint the box art model practically flat orange, build it with the tail end sagging like it's carrying bags of concrete with blown out shocks, and superimpose it on the first image that comes up on Shutterstock when you search "Rural Highway".

That's definitely a well turned out model to show off what everyone is in for with the new Revell kit.

Given the contents of the kit box alone, the sheer scope of what you've added and corrected is amazing.

Well, I'll say there's probably going to be someone grumpy if I ever get back to my 365GTB/4... lol

We carry the Trumpeter line of hobby bits at my shop after a few of our ship guys requested them and I've been pretty impressed.

My fiance has been on my case to do a car in blue, and because I actually hadn't really picked a color for the car I've started leaning towards Chiaro Blue.

Back to the "shelf of doom" to try and rescue a project from obscurity. This time it's the Testors issue of the 1/24th scale Fujimi Enthusiast series Dino 246GT. Last night I got the body into primer (Tamiya Fine Grey) and started doing some detail painting on the engine which in the way-back-when I had airbrushed with Testors Metalizer Aluminum.

Glad to be corrected and then I'll certainly look forward to seeing what Aoshima does with this tooling!

Unless I miss my guess, this kit is a stock variant produced out of the kit Aoshima did of the famous (in the drifting world) Blitz ER34 Skyline sedan that competed in the D1GP series for several years. That may explain the separate fenders.

Stupid question maybe, but were the tri-power carbs used on the W30 Olds 442's the same two barrels, because the AMT '66 442 has a beautiful set.

Because the decal somehow went walkabout from my bench-top. Haha. Eventually I'm sure it will turn up. For now I just keep it turned in the display case.

As a roundabout explanation, the Lake Erie chapter of the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society or AMPS meets at my shop the 3rd Sunday of every month. With a dedicated group of armor builders hanging around, I decided to try my hand at building armor just for fun and here's the result. The kit was actually a pretty fun build and I liked playing around with the weathering and pigments, but it's probably back to cars and airplanes for me for a while!

I am quite glad to have buttoned this project up after it languished in my stack for several years. It's the Hasegawa kit which was never the source of the build's issues, to which the Studio 27 photoetch fret has been added. The paint is Duplicolor Toreador Red with Vallejo Model Air "Chrome Silver" for the rockers.

Bit more accomplished on my Miura Jota. A little bit of time with my panel scriber cleared the molded mesh out of the fender vents so I could replace it with the PE from Studio 27, and a bit more wet sanding has helped the finish while I've masked and shot the silver for the rocker panels.

Snake's build actually reminded me of another one. See, MPC originally got this VERY right with a lovely illustration of a landmark concept car... Which they then torpedoed trying to get another go-around out of the tooling by releasing this...

This box art will ALWAYS stand out in my mind as one of the big goofs in the modern era. What do you see? A stock '57 Bel Air with some badly molded and undersized C4 Corvette wheels. Some "Street Machine". But what's in the box? A fantastic Art Morrison style frame with beautiful four-link. A unique floorpan with mini-tubs and new trunk floor complete with gorgeous fuel cell. A truly modern crate Chevy Big Block connected to a well-molded automatic transmission. Basically, this kit is EVERYTHING a modern fairground street rod Tri-Five wants to be, and nothing on the box top tells you that. Close runners up would be the same-period '68 El Camino and '71 Duster Street Machines. Again, beautiful modern performance parts NOT called out on the box top while a barely passable box top build-up with uninspired wheels makes you think it's the same sort of "2n1" kit that the '66 Olds W30 was.

Be particularly interested to see this built, actually. 0083 is likely my favorite UC Gundam chapter (tied likely with F91) and Albion always had such a great "White Base, but Hot Rodded" look to it.

Gladly welcome and honestly, the Vallejo Metal Color is super easy to work with. Lay down their Gloss Black Primer, wait a few hours, then coat with the metal of your choice. Biggest critical thing is use their Flow Improver to prevent tip drying in the airbrush but otherwise this was a first attempt with the stuff.

This was a project that was on the shelf of doom for a little while because of canopy fit issues. Originally I had planned to build it closed cockpit and had detailed the cockpit accordingly, but the canopy had no interest in being closed, so oh well and here it is. Overall though I am pretty pleased with my first attempt with using Vallejo Metal Color paints for the finish (the color is Duraluminum) and while the fuselage pieces took a bit of filler to line up it's still a jet I'm pleased with.

The red really pulls the curves out of the 959. This is a really great looking build.

Looks particularly good to me. This kit seemed like it was here and gone so quickly so it's great to see it being built.

Thanks all! The color is, if I remember right from when I painted this several years ago, a Duplicolor automotive lacquer (possibly Ford Toreador red but don't hold me to that) that has a strong metallic which unfortunately makes the orange peel look a lot worse than it is. My standing plan right now is an 8000 grit polishing pad and a hit of Tamiya Clear to try and correct it but since this is paint job #4 of the model's life I'm at the "on the shelf, off the stack" point with it. lol

This is an older project of mine that I pulled from the stack to try and get it wrapped up. It's the Hasegawa 1/24th scale Miura Jota kit to which I've been adding details from the Studio 27 PE fret for the kit. This project went back into the box after 3(!) trips into the brake fluid trying to get the paint to where I was happy with it. There's still some orange peel and a bunch more parts to attach, plus the A pillars were damaged at some point, but I'm glad to show that I'm working on making my stash smaller.

On the tire markings, my first instinct is honestly to go with a PE Tire Stencil like this one. https://www.bnamodelworld.com/model-cars-motorcycles-detail-up-sets-crazy-modeler-ep0027?zenid=31c51241fafb8d9cf60842c40a44e853