Chuck Kourouklis

Painting the drip moldings and door frames black does minimize the problem somewhat. Looks pretty much the same to me, straight down to the 5.0 badge pre-correction, if that ain't a decal - but hey, I'm ready and willing to be surprised and delighted, and I'll be hollering A T T A B O O Y Y! from the rafters if they have indeed fixed it. But an apology? I've dropped more than fifty bucks on a pair I don't know if I've got the time to make acceptable, and I ain't lookin' for an apology! An apology to Revell is appropriate if the criticism is off-base and incorrect, but Mike Schnur - though he doesn't like to make a big deal of it - has demonstrated conclusively with his vastly improved body shell that the criticism is bang on-target (the upper-echelon's apparent attempts at whitewashing it all to the contrary). So the very concept of an apology to Revell for getting around to what they should have done in the first place is "are-you-putting-me-on??" LAUGHABLE. But with all due respect, that mentality once again demonstrates that what really needs to be "gotten over" is this same old allergy to kit criticism that like it or not, is entirely topical to the subject at hand. When a model has visual deviations from the prototype, it fails to live up to its very reason for existence. I'm going to borrow somebody's notion of "reasonable expectation", except that I'm actually going to be more REASONABLE about it: while this chimerical, straw man diversion of the "perfect kit" is anything BUT reasonable to hope for, a roof height without a clearly visible variance from true scale IS a reasonable expectation. Now let's try another angle: just how exactly does a discussion thread pointing this out, asking if there's been any progress from one release to the next, fail to meet the reader's expectation? Long as there are no personal attacks, that too-low roof IS on topic, and what's more, some folks actually come in with the objective of FINDING OUT about problems like this. So not only is the "don't like it, don't participate" approach just as apt here, it is in fact MORE appropriate. After all, it's not as if any of you has been waiting over two decades to drop your cold cashish on some sunshine-and-ponies Stepford thread about a problem kit. In the case of the model, it plainly does not live up to its own stated mandate of being 1/25 the size of the subject in all dimensions, so discussion of that in a thread about the very kit is not only logical and on-topic, it's inevitable. That a truly topical discussion should somehow be muted in pointing out all these problems is the expectation that's actually irrational. It's really the people with that expectation who need to "get over" the fact that a topical discussion will include pointing out problems with the kit. And If you don't like it, don't read it. Btw, notice how THAT suggestion doesn't nick Revell's bottom line.

I just wanna know at what point the dead-horse-gifs themselves become blows against a dead horse of their own. Think we crossed that line a few states back, actually....

Oh man. That's a problem. I'd rather just raid the x-brace from a '55 hardtop, long as Revell used the delay to fix that issue. You might guess Revell hacked a sedan just to mock something up, but it looks like we have new door panels inside that match the beltline...

And at this point, one might very well ask which December. Guess it's just theoretical till it shows in the catalogue...

Thanks, Peter

Ah, just might have been you, then, Del. Thanks for the added info. Good stuff!

Thanks, Charlie! Pretty sure I picked up that vinyl dye suggestion online some place, just can't remember if it was here or another forum...

'Preciate that, Bill, and that's right - the tampo whites are a notably narrower pattern than the decals. Here one sits to the left of a tire I airbrushed thru a compass-cut card stock stencil: I used white Duplicolor vinyl dye to absorb the flexing of getting the wheel in, but I suspect a hobby-grade acrylic white might also be able to cut it.

Why thank you, Lee!

This one has the exact replacement tires from Revell, in case anybody else wanted further clarification:

Did a red street stock back 'round '90, very nice I thought - till the side view mirror broke off at a show and my superglue bottle puked up CA all over the driver's door in my misguided attempt to fix it. Should really grab another body shell and restore it... The latest reissue with the Grumpy Jenkins markings has those desirable added parts - steel wheels, and a bench seat with a new rear seat to match the upholstery pattern - and as far as I can tell, there isn't much it gives up in molding quality for the age of the tool. If by droopy you mean the sink marks on the top fender surfaces just adjacent to the taillight openings, that's a characteristic going all the way back to the very first release, and it's variable from model to model. Also, the windshield was corrected mid-run with the '88 release, so there are some '88 boxes out there without any scat molded in the mirror region. Far as hood fit goes, I don't recall huge issues with my original, but I'd need to dig it out of storage to jog my memory on that one. One characteristic of many builds I've seen that's entirely logical, but not optimal, is that the molded detents on the tops of the inner fender aprons are used as the forward locating stops at the cowl for the body shell. This tends to position the body too far forward on the wheelbase, and there is room to fudge the body backward a bit for better wheel centering in the fender arches. Also, you might want to fill and re-drill the mounting holes for the front suspension uprights; they tend to go in with too much negative camber, otherwise.

Wow. There really is a lot more new tooling than one might have expected here. The suspension tree looks fresh for a rear end to accept a separate diff cover, so maybe the ride height's been tweaked a bit too. Fan shroud, anti-roll bars, shocks and suspension links all have new tree arrangements as compared to shots of a Revell '10. No idea why they 'd go with a completely new body shell, chassis pan, and interior, but I sure ain't ruling it out till I see it now...

Yeah! Adam's idea sounds so good, I might have to give it a try.

Sorry to hear about that, Carl. I can tell you that wherever possible, I prefer to cut straight lines directly on the foil sheet with a straight edge and then apply it to a body, rather than trimming right on the body after application. This requires you estimating the shape of the foil you need before you put it on, but that's a skill you might acquire more quickly than you'd expect. Doing it in this order might afford you the advantage of getting your hand something to steady it as you make the cut - think it would be practical to adapt your technique this way?

10'x10' field, huh? Man, they do somethin' that can scan a car for 'round $600, I am so there...

%100, strictly for the box art? Naw. Very nearly for the box art? Oh yeah. Round 2's been raking it in that way from me in recent years. Luckily, there's also usually some good content backdating to go with that box art.

It's true though. That Tamiya Mustang was almost refreshing in its howling stinkerhood. And OH YEAH, whether you jest or not, Lee, Fujimi really pi$$ed me off with that pimped-out 18" Boxer rolling stock with too-small tires. Those mags aren't identical front and rear; there's a deep-dish offset for the back ones, so it's not as if you can clap on the five-spokers from the Daytona and call it a day. What're we supposed to do to fix those, ruin a $90 Marui kit? Don't know what's up with those cats. Delivered us the best R35 in the world, then squeezed out that steaming pile of Pantera that makes me wanna run weeping with gratitude back to the wheels in the Boxer.

Tricky business, that credential-challenging. Minefields are wa-a-ayy safer. And then you come across the occasional clown who first demonstrates what blithering nonsense that challenge is, but then decides to blow it into pizza toppings by meeting it anyway. Got a nice little story out of that. Not that I want any of you to stop, mind. It's great for that step-on-a-rake entertainment value if nothing else.

We're just gonna skip how OBjective those very measurements you referred to in the correction are, and how difficult it is to sell something as "dreamed up" when there's empirical data to back it up. This "scream(ing) bloody murder and slander" business is what interests me. I've seen James fire off a brief round of all-caps after you've indirectly called him a loudmouth; otherwise, "screaming bloody murder" matches what your side of the argument is doing more closely than it does his content. And if you're gonna accuse him of slander - "a false statement damaging to (Revell's) reputation" - then the burden falls to YOU to prove the falsity of what he says. Where is that, exactly? In his all-cap claim? Do you KNOW for a fact that Revell was NOT alerted to other issues at the same time they were told about the oversize 5.0 badge? This is what I mean when I say all this drama is more about how you all react to the criticism than it is any of the root criticism itself. And as for Duff's lack of personal experience with the kit, maybe all he needs is pictures of the finished product - never mind the consensus of a significant number of us who owned FOX LX Mustangs, have bought multiple kits, and really wanted it to be right in a way that transcends murky notions of subjectivity (and before ANY of you even try, there's still a significant gulf between that basic level of "rightness" and a "perfect model"). Because look what else you have to do to make your position appear rational. You have to pretty much state that a dimensionally correct model is an "extraordinary" expectation, that a model kit which basically lives up to the mandate of a scale model is beyond "reasonable" expectations. Did I misread that last part?

Preach on, n.o.77. Thanks, Cato, and I'd hope so - it'd only be a sign I'd done something right.

Well and good - except that this thread started with someone who HAS that very point of view that allegedly doesn't produce nice models... and is doing it anyway. As have I, and who knows how many others in this thread and out, with the same viewpoint. Not trying to mosh you in with the crowd I was addressing, Andrew - I know you're more thoughtful than that - but what you said kinda begs this exception.

Yup. Right in line with something I've asked before: Just what is wrong with preferring to spend your time and skill ​augmenting a kit rather than correcting it?

Yeah, and I'm one of the vocal guys who's pestered Greg twice for one and is about to go yank his sleeve again via pm. So? This "point" is really no point at all. And that's true of all the "points" made by that noisy faction in this hobby who can't get over the fact that some of us, anyway, expect a scale model to do its main job of looking like the subject. I have asked you guys time and time again, I've pled with you to offer some vague description of just what it is that gets YOU ALL soooo defensive about something you had no part in designing. Several times I've done my level best not to pose it as a challenge, but I guess in the end, the challenge aspect is inevitable - because I'm asking you all to explain something that makes NO SENSE. Your own arguments have you shivering at the prospect of negative feedback driving a manufacturer to stop making new models, and then you turn and snap phrases like "DON'T BUY IT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT". Tell me, which of these approaches is really MORE likely to hurt a given manufacturer? 'Cause kit manufacturers have chugged along just fine through criticism (I mean you all DO realize that certain ebbs in the flow of new product really had more to do with the ECONOMY, right?), but I'm not at all keen about seeing how encouraging fellow hobbyists not to buy their products is gonna work out for the hobby. You "get your dander up" and you fairly demand to categorize something as "damnation with faint praise" whether the content actually supports that or not, simply to justify a reaction to that content that's totally hysterical and nonsensical - not to be mealy-mouthed about it or anything. You make broad statements about people taking their toys too seriously, and not having a life, or not enjoying life, and then you have the a s t o n i s h i n g brass to carp about name-calling when some of that scat heads back your way. You guys can't even bring math into it without it biting you. It's a fact established in INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL that mass is a function of volume, and that volume varies by the CUBE - so a replica half the size of the original is ONE-EIGHTH its volume. Third scale is 1/27th the volume, and so on, down to a 1/25 scale model having 1/15,625 of the volume and weighing 1/15,625 of the 1:1 as constructed in the same materials. Of course, even THIS observation is negated by the fact that at this point, you guys have long veered into PRECISION rather than the ACCURACY that's really the topic. Let's get back to BRASS for a minute. With a total absence of irony, you all carp about the "fire" that "Harry started", when all that's really demonstrated here is that you all can't even handle it when we're not talking about a specific subject! Harry gets deeper into a kit and finds problems obvious enough that no halfway-vigilant manufacturer in 1870 would have let them pass, let alone 1970, and oh lo and behold, the project gets stretched, more difficult than anticipated, more troublesome. Now before anybody offers one more pious trope about thriving on such challenges, I suggest for YOUR sake, not mine, that you go review what Harry's finished at "Big Boyz", because you run a serious risk of stepping on yourself otherwise. But there's a LOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCE to influence Harry's outlook one way or another on this project, to drive him to vent in a posting online in a forum about, *gasp*, CAR MODELS. And that post is topical to today's releases, no matter how some of you would appear to want to whitewash it all. There's no manufacturer listed. Maybe it's rhetorical, or maybe the Dave Metzners, Sean Svensons, and Steve Goldmans of the hobby are meant to pipe in. But WHAT exactly IS the "fire"? I'll tell you what it is. It is a fire of YOUR OWN MAKING. You KNOW it is. Because there is NO RATIONAL BASIS for all the interrogation, the cross-examination, the fatuous credential-challenging that followed, and all the other personal focus that YOU ALL introduced into this discussion about an inanimate object, just as you have done time and time immemorial. YOUR INABILITY to handle a frank discussion about kit issues in a forum inviting such discussion is the constantly recurring problem, and it's YOUR PROBLEM. NOBODY'S. BUT. YOUR. OWN. What impact does such a post have on any project you're doing at the time? What effect can such a post possibly have on you but the one YOU CHOOSE to LET it have? And all the dime store psychoanalysis here is doubly rich in light of that. But hey, please don't read me as not appreciating and loving you all. My latest major project had a prime impetus in demonstrating concretely and completely the utter brute folly in those sad old devices you all constantly regurgitate, most particularly that champion of logical ineptitude, "REAL modelers vs. kit-assemblers." And for the record, I DID hold my execution to a higher accuracy standard than what was in the box. So really, despite all this controversy that you lot are truly at the root of, this is actually my round-about "Thank you!" Because in your acceptance of mediocrity, in your inadvertent encouragement of it, you've actually driven me that much closer to excellence. Note: edited to correct the spelling of Steve Goldman's name.

Yup, and the Polyglas tires, the multi-stripe Firestones, most of the slicks - all debuted in Round 2 kits before being sold as parts packs. But you're dead right about Revell, Cliff. Their '70 'Cuda tires are very clearly patterned after the Polyglas, but have a look and you'll see no manufacturer logos on them. I wish Revell would have sprung for some 3D scanning on that kit, but I generally don't have a problem when they tell a tire manufacturer with its hand out to go pound sand.

Man, I just go where the conversation goes. It stays on topic, I will too. And in light of other content not deleted, I'm putting this pic BACK in the discussion - no inflammatory language this time, just letting it speak for itself. 'Cause in light of what was off-topic first, it's got a point that needs to be made: Think I'll simply reiterate that we seem to be treating the whole notion of the simplified pre-decorated glue kit with a bit more novelty than it's due, and I'll be very interested in seeing how Revell's latest approach evolves that 15-year-old concept. Of course, those plans for the '83 Cutlass that circulated a while back, while very retro-Monogram in their design approach, would also appear to fit right into this apparent strategy.