papajohn97

Very cool build Ron. If you don't yet have decals, Fremont Racing Specialties ("paintinjoe" Joe Curtis on eBay) offers a nice set at a very reasonable $5 + shipping. His listing also features some pics of a nice built model of this car. I forgot how fast these supercharged gassers were (9.79 -144 mph, WOW!). Looking forward to seeing this one posted in 'under glass'!

Very cool project Eric. One the big challenges in reproducing scale models of these early funny cars is finding reference photos of the engine/ chassis/ interior details. It seems most of the mags at the time mainly published exterior photos of the cars at the staging area or launching and rarely showed details of them in the pits or under fabrication. Anybody out there have any magazine articles about this car??? (MW Elky???) Looking forward to watching this one come together!

Saw this '63 Galaxie drag car with a monster 427 engine and tear-drop hood at a "cars & no coffee" event at King Harbor in Redondo Beach, CA. TASCA emblem, Holman & Moody decals, sleeper black with black steelies. Probably a handful to drive on city streets but I'd love to see it parked on my driveway so that I could just look at it for hours. What a bad-ass car! Wish there was a decent kit of a '63 Galaxie to make a nice 1/25 version of this one.

Great job so far Elliot on upgrading this AMT AWB Falcon kit. The work you have done to improve the crude kit-supplied cammer is particularly impressive. I built and posted my attempt on Dick Brannan's "Bronco" A/FX AWB Mustang using AMT's Mustang "Funny Car" kit four years ago and swore "never again" but your Falcon is inspiring me to copy what you're doing here. If I did, I think I might cheat and replace the kit engine with the Moebius 1/25 427 SOHC out of one of their Comet A/FX kits along with a modified or scratch-built injector manifold and metal velocity stacks. Looking forward to watching this beauty come together! (PS: Please-please-please Moebius!!!: Make us some new state-of-the-art '65 Falcon & Mustang AWB A/FX kits!!!!!!)

Thanks for posting this excellent WIP Bill, cool to see so many other guys here share our love of these 60's door slammers. So far your S&M Paper Tiger is coming out sweet! Kudos to Moebius for issuing these AWB Mopar A/FX kits, hoping someday they produce an accurate Holman & Moody '65 A/FX Mustang (with that beautiful 427 cammer from their Comet kit so that's a few less mold cavities they'd have to EDM!) I attempted to include 0.5 mm solder wire fuel lines on my S&M Paper Tiger build two years ago with less than perfect results (hard to see much down between those velocity stacks). In hindsight, it was probably not worth the frustration.... I used this image I found on the web for a reference (sorry, can't recall the source). Hope this helps! Correction: Ooops! Look's like my ref. pic above is late! I just saw your fuel line plumbing after I posted the above, it looks fabulous!!!!

Thanks Bill for the MAD link. Interesting stuff at very reasonable prices. Good to know if I screw up one of the resin 727 engine mods. $4 is amazing these days, I think I paid $10 -$12 for the resin ones I bought a year or two ago.

Ooohhhh...at the risk of starting a 1/25 TorqueFlite 727 transmission supply chain crisis, could you please pass on the info for these? Are they actual 3D printed or resin casting parts or just 3D STL files? Thanks Bill!

Thank you Bill (gtx6970)! I got lucky on my build of Grumpy's Black Arrow car and included a column shifter with the automatic. It's tough to find much in the way of interior photos of these old door slammers and so it's usually a WAG as to the interior config./ color. Funny on your timing on pulling up and commenting on my old (2 yrs ago) posting on my Plymouth builds, I just finished a "dry-run" build of the new release Moebius's '65 Dodge AWB A/FX Strick car, it builds as nice as the Plymouths: I have three more of these Dodge AWB kits with the plans to build reproductions of the Landry, Mr. Norm (Gary Dyer), and Harrop cars, ALL AUTOMATIC TORQUEFLITE 727's cars. Unfortunately, Moebius only supplies the manual transmission version of the 426 Hemi in this new Dodge kit. Fortunately I purchased three resin 727's over the last few years that I can graft onto the engines supplied with these AWB Dodges. Strangely, Moebius supplied their AWB A/FX Golden Commando Plymouth kit with hemi blocks with both transmission types and the automatics were much much more common on these AWB Hemi's. Makes me wonder why they didn't include an automatic option on these new Dodge kits??? Looking forward to seeing your two '65 Plymouth A990's come together! cheers, John

Yes and IIRC I enlarged the holes in the Moebius kit supplied pie crust slicks to accept these larger Revell mags using an X-acto knife with repeated radial inside diameter cuts & tries. I believe these rear wheels that S&M used on this car were made by Keystone (early "Kustomag Klassic" wheels?) (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'm finally starting to build a few of the Dodge AWB A/FX cars using the new Moebius release and decals I've collected over the years. The Gary Dyer Mr. Norm's Grand-Spaulding supercharged match race car (drag racing's fastest door slammer back in the day!) look's to be the most challenging and will require a straight axle front end, anyone here build one yet that I can see & copy? 😁

Sad news yesterday, Shunsaki Tamiya, CEO of Tamiya, passed away at the age of 90. A link to the obit is here. It sounds like he was the primary reason that Tamiya kits have been so excellent for so many decades. The image described in the obit of him greeting all the children entering the Japanese hobby show conveys the image of a joyous man whose life work involved much more than just making money. Thank you Tamiya San! RIP. Maybe we can all honor Mr. Tamiya by building one of his wonderful kits or, better yet, gift one to an adult friend or a child we know and get them "hooked" on our wonderful hobby!

Fabulous job Bill on this build, especially the paint & decal work and all the little things (AT, wheels, side window frame colors & un-chromed rain gutters) to match the period photos. I'm loving all these builds being posted of this excellent new Moebius kit, keep them coming! I need to get off the stick and build and post one and join the AWB A/FX Mopar fanboy club.

Ooooh! Sweeeeeeeet!!!!!!! Time to order yet another kit to add to my morbidly obese stash! Thank you Justin!

I noticed this kit is now available at a number of dealers. If anyone out there has already grabbed one (or has seen a review posted), I would love to see photo(s) of the available engine part runners (is a 289 with the webers included or is it just the 427 cammer from the A/FX kit?).

1962 Austin Healy 3000 Mk II. Not because it was the greatest sports car of all time but because it was my dad's mid-life crises "new" used car in 1964 (in Florida Green). I remember riding shot-gun cruising around town and watching my dad row through the gears and thinking I was the coolest and luckiest 11 year old in Lakewood. CA. The sound and shake of that tri-carb straight six, the smell of the worn leather seats and occasional wisps of motor oil and brake fluid. When I see one of these I think about my wonderful childhood and the incredible father (and mother) that I was blessed to be raised by. Mid-60's in America....sweet spot in time!

Fabulous job on this "rarely built stock" classic. I'm particularly impressed with the work you did on the interior tub re-build/ door panels/ window cranks. Too bad it's a hard top and not a convertible! It's amazing how good some of these old tooled AMT kits are. The molds for this Merc were built in 1963, the equally excellent AMT shoebox '49 Ford molds were made in 1962. Makes one wonder how many products are manufactured for +60 years off of the original tooling!