tim boyd

See this link for a photo album picturing each and every entry in the 2017 NNL Nats Cult Theme, with builders identified and additional commentary. Pictured above...one of several photos of Tom Woodruff's Vintage Beach Racer created this year specifically for this "Vintage Beach Racing" Cult theme...thanks for looking.....TIM

Builder names will be added tomorrow. Lead photo is Jim Drew's "Daytona Finish" - 135 more images at this link. Thanks for looking....TIM

Tom's response here is spot-on with the situation as I understand it. Round 2's business approach for the model car hobby segment is primarily updating and reissuing old tools...and I for one think they are doing a fine job given their situation. Make no mistake, I'd love to see Round 2 do a new series of full-detail S550 Mustangs delivered with the same level of excellence as their recent full-detail current-gen Camaro kits, but I don't think that's in the cards for Round 2 right now. In the meantime, I'm also glad the Revell and Moebius ARE delivering all new tools (although I am anxiously awaiting any signs that Revell would get serious with some full detail S500 kits, and seeing no smoke signals on the horizon whatsoever) TIM

See September 30th update at top of this thread....thx Tim

AMT's Trophy Series Early Olds V8 was in the AMT "'39"/'40 Ford sedan.....with a Hilborn fuel injection option and a (from memory, correct me if I'm wrong) 3-2 barrel setup. TIM

Chris....great job! This one would be a great fit for our "Vintage Beach Racing" Cult Theme at the NNL Nats in Toledo, Ohio in a couple of weeks. Don't know where you live in Canada but if it's somewhere in Ontario that is commuting distance to Toledo/Sylvania....we'd love to have you join the fun. But whether that is feasible or not, really enjoyed seeing your work here....TIM

Richard you are correct...the AMT '67 'cuda DID become the MPC '68 and '69.....same tooling used for all. TIM

“We muscle car modelers ain't got that much more build time left in our hourglass of life.” Greg....so true, so true.....TIM

As Mark commented above, my guess is also that we will see a 1/25th 'cuda AAR at some point and I suspect that if it does happen, it will happen sooner than some of the speculation above suggests......TIM

I completely share Mark's view on this....back in the day, JoHan's first gen Logghe chassis was the best on the market. MPC's second gen Logghe chassis (such as the 1970 Cyclone "Cyclops" kit was the first MPC funny car chassis that was really competitive with JoHan's, primarily because the MPC tool replicated a much more up to date Logghe chassis design. IMHO, JoHan then re-established their funny car chassis "leadership" with their 1972 Mustang/Pinto funny car kits, as duly noted by Mike elsewhere above in this thread .....TIM

It's been at least a year and half since I last saw it....I'll check my notes and see if I documented anything that would answer your question.....TIM

This is getting really into trivia, but for 1970 1/2 Dodge also introduced painted racing style left/right rearview mirrors for the Charger; these are very rare and almost never seen on the real cars that are still left out there. For a model you could use the racing mirrors from the various 1970 Challenger or 1971 Charger kits (or their Plymouth equivalents) but you will need to kitbash the bottom of the mounts to the body as the Charger mirrors attached on the horizontal door surface next to the beltine, vs. the sloping door panels on the aforementioned Mopars. TIM

Me too.....these are factory correct, although seldom seen. I wouldn't have ordered them on a real 1/1 scale 1970 Charger R/T, but they are nice to have as a building option. For those of you not familiar with the 1970 Charger R/T, there was another factory side graphic option that could be ordered in place of the "Bumble Bee" stripes. It was an enlarged pintstripe type treatment that ran along both the upper and lower breaklines of the side "wedge" styling lines. TIM

FM3 Panther Pink/Moulin Rouge was a factory 1970 1/2 color, introduced around February of 1970. At that point in the 1970 model year the muscle car market was tanking big time, so dealers did not order much fresh factory production with the new mid-year features, which is one of the reasons these were so rare when new. FM3 was only available as a regular production order for the remainder of the 1970 model year only. It was listed as an option for all A, B, and E-body Mopars, so that includes Dodge Darts, Coronets, Chargers, and Plymouth Dusters, Satellite/Road Runner/GTX's, and Barracuda/'cuda. As mentioned elsewhere in this this thread there were just a few factory-produced 1971 Mopars that were special ordered with FM3 paint; these are pretty well documented by now to the point that if you wanted to paint a 1971 Mopar muscle car in Panther Pink, go ahead and do so and say that it could have been built in 1/1 scale using the same special order process. By the way, years ago I fully documented the factory correct applications of all those "Muscle Era" special paint colors from Ford, GM, AMC, and of course the Chrysler High Impact paint line; it is available as a downloadable .pdf for a minimal price. If any of you are interested, PM me and I will send you the link to order it TIM

I probably mentioned this earlier here somewhere, but I got a detailed look at an early test shot version of this kit some time ago; it is very well done - there is a quite a bit of new tooling in this kit a real effort to accurately capture the A/FX revisions on the real car. TIM

Good point on those wheel covers. The MPC 1965 Dodge Coronet 500 engine and chassis tooling (marketed as a q965 AMT annual kit) was largely reused for the 1966 MPC Charger annual kit, and its subsequent evolutions. Not clear what happened, if anything, to the body and interior, but they have never been reissued in any form that I am aware of. Others jump in if you know anything different.....TIM .

On my kits, both had windshield pillar issues. The first one had the driver's side pillar pretty well bent backwards; not sure if it can be returned to original intent with just bending. The other body had the passenger side A-pillar moderatelybbent back, but that one I could return to original condition with a minute or so of gentle persuasion. TIM

Rick... I did a full buildup of this one in the other magazine, circa 2002 or so, with a second follow-up article in their then-annual magazine. There are some front suspension/wheel placement issues with the original kit that I showed how to fix, but I do not know if these were corrected in the current release. (I presume these mags are still available in their back issue dept.) One issue with the original kit that was corrected in the Dirty Donny reissue is the R/T decals. The original kit had an incorrect "hump" in the R/T side stripes, it was missing the R/T door "gill" decal inserts, and the hood decal had a too-large cutout for R/T hood insert. All these decal issues are resolved in the Dirty Donny reissue. A couple of other heads-up - the kit's front split bench with armrest was available on the '71 Super Bee, but not the '71 R/T. The R/T was factory equipped only with bucket seats, with either the center (separate) seat with armrest, or console with floor shift. You can make the buckets from the split bench, and use a console from your other Mopar kits (this was also shown in the article). Second, the kit comes with the standard equipment manual outside driver's side mirror. This was the standard spec for an R/t, but 99% of the ones that came out of the factory door that year had the dual remote racing mirror option, either in chrome or (selected) body color paints. Again, your Mopar parts bin can help here. Other than those comments, it's a good kit - well worth your effort. Good luck and enjoy the build....TIM

Jonathon....that came out great! Thanks for sharing your build with us....TIM

Reminder.....reposting above notification as the 2017 NNL Nats is two months from this weekend....2017 Cult Theme is "Vintage Beach Racing", inspired by the Race of Gentlemen and other vintage hot rod racing events here in the States and oversea.... One update from the above - we're relaxing the 1/1 scale stipulation about no headlamps.....if you have headlamps, no need to bust them off your model. If you want to put scale tape or screens on them, cool but not required either. IE Let's have FUN with this Cult Theme. See you in October! TIM

That's the way the original tooling was designed.....engines and other parts can be shared across different kits. Don't worry about the Coupe body, it will be produced again as Revell announced a few months ago. TIM ;

Yep. the SBC is in the Roadster kit this time. The Nailhead will return too. Both engines were engineered to be used in both body styles. I am told that the Deuce grill doesn't mate with the '29 version for some reason, but it's a very easy kitbash conversion. TIM

FWIW, I don't think that this the issue in this particular case, but I could be wrong.....TB

Steve, I thought you were wrong on this, but The Directory of Model Car Kits, Seventh Edition confirms your statement. Thanks for the correction! TIM

The MEL was first introduced for the 1958 model year. In addition to the applications above, it was also an optional engine for the Thunderbird in 1959 and 1960 only IIRC.