Leo64

Roy Sorenson, who use to own the magazine years ago then sold it to Gregg recently announced that he is retiring and just finished his last issue of Model Car Builder. That may be who he got confused about.

You might try contacting Jameston at Scalefinishes, he has been very helpful to me in matching colors for several projects. I recently picked up one of the Salvino Jr's 1979 Oldsmobile Busch NASCAR kits, and the Tamiya blue called out in the instructions was not right for the car from the pictures I found online of the real car. He was able to get the correct blue.

The gold Smokey used was a Chevy color called Granada Gold. You can sometimes find it in a spray can from Duplicolor, or if you have an airbrush you can order a small bottle of it from Scalefinishes. You can find it on his website under the first gen Camaro colors. I built this Curtis Turner '65 Impala using the Scalefinishes paint.

As an IBEW electrician for 20+ years I can tell you that you want to use a fan speed controller instead of a light dimmer switch. The basic electrical reason for this is that a light dimmer turns on the light low, then brightens the lights as you turn it up, and this is not good for a motor. A fan speed controller turns the motor on at full speed, then slows the motor down as you adjust the speed, this is better for a motor. I made a simple speed controller from parts you can get at most hardware stores. I used a fan speed control switch, 120V receptacle, a 6' power cord, a 4 sq galvanized electrical box, a 4 square box cover for a receptacle & light switch and a clamp for the power cord to the box. I think there are a few online instructions on building one from these parts.

There is the old line "It's so ugly it's cute", but I don't know if that can apply to that car. lol You did a great job with your build though John.

I tried checking a few websites I have saved, and I could not find anyone that has done the decals for that exact car. From what info I found, Mario Rossi built the car and Darel Deringer drove the car. If you check out the pics at this link you can see the car had a couple of versions of the numbers on it. I see some had gold numbers on the door with a white outline, and the car in your pic from Daytona shows gold with a red outline. http://mariorossi22.com/Photos.html I found that Powerslide made a decal sheet to do the #22 Bobby Allison '69 Dodge Charger blue car from Mario Rossi, and that will have most of the decals to do the '68 Roadrunner car. The only decals not on the sheet are the "Plymouth" across the rear fenders, the "Rossi Automotive Engineering" on the front fenders and the sponsor decals, but you can find the sponsor decals from several decal makers. I don't know where you can get the "Rossi Automotive" decals, and the "Plymouth" decals can be found in white from Keith Marks like in some versions of the car. Finding them in gold seem to be harder to find. So depending on if you want to replicate the car from a specific race, then you might be able to build something close.

I was an IBEW Electrician for over 20 years before I was injured, and a 3 way switch is actually used to turn a light fixture on from one of two locations, like at each end of a hallway. For the application you are wanting to do you can either add another on/off switch to the existing switch giving you one for the lights & one for the fan, or you could possible find a 3 position switch that one position would be off, next would turn the lights on and the 3rd would turn on the lights and fan. In your example of what you are wanting to do, flipping the switch to the 3rd position would turn the fan and lights on, and after you are done painting flipping the switch back to the 2nd position would turn the fan off but leave the lights on. I'm guessing that the paint booth you have uses a rocker type switch currently, and you can probably find a 3 position rocker switch close to the same size to fit into the existing opening. However, either way you decide to go, you will need to open the unit up and trace out the wires to find how they go from the switch to the lights and fan and see if it is possible to wire each separately. If you are not experienced with electrical work I would find someone more experienced to do the work, especially if there is any sort of printed circuit board inside. If the unit is still under a factory warranty, modifying it will void it. If you decide to try the 3 position switch, there are a few electronic supplier websites that you should be able to find it at, just make sure to get one rated for the voltage and amperage(current) needed.

One place you might want to look at for tires is to check out Scenes Unlimited. He has a lot of different sizes & styles of tires, including truck tires. He also has some really nice resin wheels, including some to replicate truck rims. Also, you might want to check out B-N-L Resins as he has several Chevy 4x4 conversion kits listed (he does other brands too) and has transfer cases too. I've bought from both of these vendors and had good experiences with both. I think the owner of B-N-L Resins recently had to shut his website for a little while for personal reasons, but I believe he is back up now.

Scalefinishes lists Coca Cola red under their "Racing/Fleet Colors" section. The owner is a great guy to deal with, and you can try contacting him about the USPS Blue color and I bet he can get some for you. Here is a website with the paint code info that he might need: https://usbrandcolors.com/usps-colors/ His paint needs to be airbrushed, you didn't mention if you wanted spray paints or if airbrushing would work.

Scenes Unlimited makes a really nice set of resin Torque Thrust wheels in a couple of offsets, and they are cheaper than buying a complete kit.

Nice build so far, one thing that AMT made a mistake with on the model is that a '77 Vette did not have the vents in the rear deck behind the rear window. I think that was a holdover from them turning the '76 into the '77. My dad bought a '77 brand new from the local Chevy dealer, so I know that they didn't have those vents. It's too bad that wasn't caught before paint. I have that AMT kit and planning to build a replica of my dad's Vette, and puttied over those vents first thing. It looks like yours will be nice when it is finished.