papajohn97

I feel bad for Moebius and other equally hard working entrepreneurial small companies that are the foundation of our economy and are now caught in the middle of this &#%. Interesting reading the responses here. In the coming months, model kit prices and availability will probably be the least of our problems, economic and otherwise. Hope I'm wrong! Buckle-up! Model on!

That is very cool. The pics with the salt flats and racing activity in the background are amazing. Well done!!!

I've never had any luck applying tape over Tamiya gloss acrylic paint. The flat (XF) Tamiya acrylics are rarely an issue with any masking tape. When I spray two-tone auto models, I use lacquer based auto base paints such as Scale Finishes/ Zero Paints/ MCW Paints and an airbrush. Hot lacquers such as Tamiya lacquer rattle can paints tend to bleed through masking tape edges, no mater what brand of tape I use. Once the two-tone matte base paint scheme is cured, you can use whatever clear coat to produce a gloss finish without worrying about mask edge bleeding.

No pics of my first ride but I did build and post a model of it a few years back. A '56 210 post coupe with a tired 265 V8 and two-speed PowerGlide. I think I paid $465 in 1971 to a really old couple (OMG! They must have been in their late 40's?) who lived down the street and were original owners. The car looked this good but needed new hoses and belts, a radiator flush, oil change and my Dad helped me extract and replace corroded carb-to-manifold bolts that was the cause for an intake manifold leak. I remember Dad putting an old rag in the manifold carb hole to prevent Easy-Out drill chips getting into the cylinders. I miss the simplicity and joy of working on old cars. Ran like a top without one damn integrated circuit! I drove the car to college for several years until the first oil embargo (late '73?) which prompted me to sell it to my brother and buy a 10 speed racing bicycle to commute to school. If I only knew then what we all know now, I should'a could'a would'a kept it!!!!

Love it!!!! Nice fade paint work, the green/ white with the B&W decals all work together well to make this model pop. Sometimes these simple classic old kits can provide a lot of nostalgic fun. The CO2 cartridge and Jetex engine references really brings back warm childhood memories of juvenile garage mayhem! I feel so lucky to have been a boy back in the minimally regulated mid-twentieth century. Also lucky to have survived those times with all my fingers and both eyes still intact!

The engine bay is my favorite part. An amazing job on the dual carb throttle linkage and fuel lines, one of the best detailed hemi's I've seen posted in this forum. Sweet!

Really nice job Hugh on this less-than-perfect kit. I've built a fair number of Trumpeter aircraft and ship kits and the quality varies all over the place. Our next door neighbor had one of these '61's in a white hardtop back in the days when middle class folks would upgrade every 1-2 years. I like your green one better.

Scalefinishes website says Tamiya’s primers made after 2022 are not compatible with their base paints. I’ve been using Mr. Surfacer (Gunze) spray lacquer primers (1200, 1500) with Scalefinishes base paints and they seem to work fine. For clearcoats over the Scalefinishes base paints, I’ve had the best results and minimal decal compatibility issues by airbrushing Mr Color (Gunze) GX-100 Super Clear III lacquer clear coat thinned 50/50 with Mr Color Leveling Thinner. I previously used Tamiya’s TS-13 rattle-can lacquer clear coat but found it occasionally “too hot” for the Scalefinishes metallics (reacting in spots causing uneven splotching of the metallic) as well as eating the decals when a wet coat is applied (even after multiple thin dry coats). Hope this helps! Those greens look cool - good luck!

Great job making a silk purse out of pig’s ear kit. Love the wide-white slicks and the giddy-up giddy-up 409, very cool 60’s drag strip look & vibe. Nice!

Look’s like it’s gone again ☹️!, hopefully not forever! Thank you robdebie for the link you posted above last year. This site has been a goldmine for 60’s doorslammer drag car modeling inspirations!

Nice! Love this car in the box art red and the sleeper look with the stock steel wheels and dog dish hub caps. I have this kit in my queue for when the weather warms (for painting shiny lacquer) and hope to build a drag S/S car with it. Other than the hood fit issue, this build came out really neat & tiddy. You might be able to adjust the hood fit by sanding the paint and excess plastic off the side edges of the hood until it fully seats and then covering any exposed white styrene on the hood side edges with a black sharpie or thin coat of FB paint.

Thanks Tim, hope that’s still the case. I would love to make Doug Nash’s B/FX with this kit and some aftermarket or home-printed decals.

Just saw this “coming soon” notice on my local hobby shop website (Burbank House of Hobbies): What surprised me when I saw this notice is that it describes the kit as “including authentic A/FX 427 SOHC engine”. I thought all the Bill Stroppe B/FX Comets utilized 289 small block engines with a single Holly four barrel or the Webber four carb set-up (as used on Cobras). I believe these B/FX’s also retained the stock Comet front shock towers (vs. modified widened engine bay on the A/FX’s). Unless I’m missing something, this new kit look’s like this is just the existing Moebius Comet A/FX kit with B/FX decals??? Hoping that this description is incorrect or also includes the 289 engine and stock engine bay shock towers, otherwise an accurate B/FX build will likely require kit-bashing with a stock Moebius Comet kit for these corrects. Anyone else here have any insight as to what’s actually included in this kit??? Despite these questions, thank you Moebius for continuing to pump out great auto kits!

This one’s really nice Mike. I love that you took a relatively rare ($) kit, did some ingenious kit & parts bashing and came out with yet another beautiful build of a rarely seen funny car. I also love that you built a Hayden Proffitt car, one of my childhood drag racing heros. Cool that he switched to racing “Ramblers” (sorry, that’s what we all called them back then!) along with Drag-On-Lady Shirley Shahan. Car Model Mag should run an article someday on your 430 car collection with lots of photos, it would be an awesome sight!

I’ve been ordering a number of AFV kits/ accessories recently from China (yes I also like to build tanks, planes & ships along with cars) and wanted to pass on an observation/ tip to my fellow modelers here. I have ordered from Chinese sellers on eBay recently because they sometimes have kits that are out of production, unavailable from domestic dealers and eBay sellers and are reasonably priced. While the shipping can also be cheap (and sometimes even free!), the trade-off is that it can take 1 to 4 months or even longer to receive the item(s). One of my concerns since January was that I might also be charged an additional tariff fee to get a few of my pending orders delivered but thankfully the US gov’t extended the “de minimus provision” for shipments under $800 USD in early February. I believe/ hope that the $800 tariff exclusion will still apply even with the Chinese tariffs being increased from 10% to 20% for any of us placing small orders from China. Interestingly, the last few kits I ordered from Chinese eBay suppliers were shipped and received within 1-2 weeks (!)….maybe my Chinese eBay sellers have been expediting shipping (airfreight vs. shipping container?) to avoid tariff paperwork/ delays???? My thought: The majority of model kits are molded/ kitted in China these days. If there are any kits that you want from a US dealer, order them immediately! US hobby dealers likely place orders from the manufacturers greater than $800 so expect a 20% on model kits sold in the US by hobby dealers soon. This will also likely crank-up prices on eBay from everyone/ everywhere (even directly from China on eBay) due to market forces. I guess the silver-lining is that my stash will finally stop growing and I’ll have more cash to pay for those eggs! 😁