Casey

That image is lifted straight out of Hot Rod magazine, from one of their van-centric issues. I want to say it was a '75 or '76 issue, but the van appears to be a '73-'74, based on the Jr. West Coast mirrors which were only available until '75 or so IIRC. It's at least a '71, but it's hard to make out the door handle shape to rule out that year (or an early '72). It also appears to be a 109" (short wheelbse) Tradesman, too, so the MPC body would need shortening. The paint scheme would be easy, as the red area lies between the beltline and lower body trim bands, while the blue area falls below the drip rails and above the upper trim. You can even see how the A-pillar paint break falls on the factory joint, too. If someone decides to draw up and print some decals for this van, I would pitch in for a set.

Found this one from Marty after some Googling:

The Milwaukee NNL 21 is only a few months away, folks: Date: April 13, 2013 Hours: 3-9 pm Location : The Excellence Center Waukesha, N4 W22000 Bluemound Rd. Waukesha, WI 53186 (262) 521-0358 Nick or anyone else, can you confirm the time and location is the same as usual? I may even have something completed to display this year.

I went home with a bunch of stuff, too, much more than in November, but I usually don't have any trouble finding kits and parts I want to buy there. I even got some free display cases from on vendor. I guess is you go often enough, buy things from and make conversation with the vendors you're bound to get free stuff eventually. It's always interesting to see one vendor have a kit priced at $8.00, then another with the same kit priced at $30.00, or another vendor with a whole table full of the ex-Palmer Lindberg kits priced at $15.00 each. I did see a built up 1/12 Mako Trike there, and saw some good deals on JoHan kits (like a sealed '63 Olds Starfire for $40), too.

Nice comparison and pics, Jess, thanks. I hope you're not planning to drink that can of New Coke, though!

I kind of like the nose on the Falcon, so I would keep that and add the '67 Mustang's fastback to the Falcon's body.

That looks great, Pat. Very nice work so far.

They are little plastic pads which are supposed to prevent each individual leaf from rubbing against each other, like so:

Tower Hobbies has them all listed (except for the Demon), along with tentative releases dates.

Looks like a good save to me, Tomo.

Thanks, Mike, but I don't think we need to worry about that. I received the miniature hardware from RB Motion the other day, and as expected, it's fantastic stuff. Very small, but the quality is excellent. I drilled the bolt holes though the leaf spring eyes, so I could see if the bolts looked scale appropriate. I think I went a little too large with the front bolts, at least as far as head size is concerned. I may have to use the next smaller size bolts: Maybe the thickness of the bolt head is making it look even larger? It scales out to about a 1" head size, which, going on memory is a bit too big. I may end up redoing the front spring mounting brackets in brass to match the rear brackets, as they are about as good as they're going to get: The rear spring eyes were prepped for bolts, then both the shackles and bolts were mocked up with the springs. I had to trim the shackles to length (so easy with a pair of scissors), then round over the corners slightly, but these p/e pieces are a dream to work with, even taking their small size into account: I need to find some tiny black rubber-like punched out circles to use for the squished out rubber bushings, as my smallest punch is only 1/8" in diameter.

I don't think any of the AMT or MPC '70.5-'73 Camaro non-Z/28 kits have been reissued at all, Tye. Not sure if they were irreversibly modified into the next year's annual kits or not, though.

Nice job on the two-tone paint break, Bruno. I chickened out on the C-pillar area when I built the 1/16 scale version, but it looks like you got it just right. You've have a nice, clean box stock build.

Many of the Revell-AG kits of "American" subjects-- Shelby Mustang GT-500, Viper GTS, etc. are simply re-boxed Revell kits, and not kits specifically designed for European or Australian markets. I have seen some Japanese kits which include both RH and LH dashboards, but I don't think what you're asking for regarding an Aussie-spec Mustang is available, either in kit form nor from the aftermarket.

Ditto: I'd buy a few older kit boxes just because of the artwork, too:

Tom's right, this forum could use a FAQ. Whoever wants to volunteer to write, organize, and update it, please let me know and I'll try to help.

AMT '69 Dodge Daytona with the "recall" wheels pictured on the box art build, but not included with the kit.

A) I don't either, hence my cahoots comment. I just can't recall seeing this much borderline overlap between AMT and Revell kits before. I suspect that's what the reasoning was for reissuing the '56 Crown Victoria. I think more than one person who buys multiple copies of the Revell '57 Ford will combine many of the parts with AMT's '56 Crown Vic, so I guess it's a win-win for both companies.

I'm not going to suggest collusion, but there are some incredible similarities between Round2's and Revell's releases over the last 18 months or so: 1) AMT Chevy LWB van, Revell '77 Chevy SWB van 2) Revell '57 Ford Custom, AMT '57 Ford Fairlaine and '56 Crown Victoria 3) Revell '62 Corvette, AMT '62 Corvette 4) Revell '40 Willy Street Rod, AMT '40 Willys pickup 5) Revell '69 Camaro ZL-1, AMT '69 Camaro and new Camaro ZL-1 They're in cahoots, I tell ya! That Dodge Demon is really going to be a hot seller, too. I wonder if the tooling for it is still intact?

There is a small rear 3/4 shot of the built model, and an engine shot on one side panel.

I was under the assumption the most recent "Dirty Donny" version is the how the tooling for the second gen LWB Chevy van exists, so to backdate it (unless the body shell tooling is a separate insert?) to the original version with the separate filler panels would essentially make the DD version a "One Run of Fun" issue, which Round2 specifically didn't do nor advertise it as. I think Round2 will simply release the kit much the same as the DD version, but add in the Fire-sepcific parts, leaving the body as a cargo van, as pictured on the box art: Basically, I don't think they're going to provide the filler panel option, so this'll strictly be a very lightly modified reissue.

One more reference pic:

Looks good so far. How does it look with the hood in place?

Welcome to the forum, Joey, and back to the hobby, too. I think many people here have had a similar experience, and that's one of the nice things about this hobby. You can jump back in at any time and pick up where you left off.

Hobby shop, online, eBay, etc. Evergreen and Plastruct are the two main suppliers.