Ken

Don't worry John, I kind of got sidetracked by life myself the last few weeks. I hope to get back on the bike in the next couple of weeks. I too will post updates when they occur

I didn't buy this kit when it first came out. Years later I regretted it... Low and behold, R/M decided to re-issue it in the SSP deal they had going for a while. I snapped up two of the bad boys. Now, I just need to find the time. You look like you have a really good start on this one!!

Lets see, went to hobby lobby after dropping the wife off at work on friday, I picked up four of the new testor's colors and a Tamiya V-spec Skyline on clearance. Saturday, I went to the local Hobbytown and got both the latest Model Cars mag and the new Revell 70 Mustang. Saturday evening, the wife needed to go to hobby lobby again and asked me to go with her. On that trip I got three more colors of the new testor's colors and the Revell Coronet street machine on clearance. Needless to say the hobby budget is blown for the month... not to mention the year... I just did our taxes

Lately, the Aoshima offerings seem to be on par with Fujimi and close to Tamiya in engraving fidelity. I will say that Tamiya still wins hands down on compareable offerings. The Bugel 20 inch rims look really nice, but I have no idea what I would use them on... yet!

I 'discovered' this on the way out to interview a WW2 vet. His farm was a veritable paradise of old farm trucks. Just a cursory glance around revealed; a 41 chevy pick up, a mid fifties stude pick up, an mid fifties GMC commericial truck and a mid sixties lincoln. As for this car it is in fact sunk or rather the sand has been blown in around it. I don't think that it will be too rotted if I ever exhume the remains. The panhandle receives 18 inches or less of precip a year. Most cars left outside here last forever. What metal I could see was still intact and quite good for the situation. I too thought it was a chevy. It does have a trunk sticking out the back you can barely see it in the pic. Also, most of the wood framing was still there and intact as well. The top insert is still partially there as well... it would definitely need replacing though. I guess I could dig down and see what type of frame is under it. If I ever get motivated enough, it is a 4 hour drive or so to get it.

Driving back from the panhandle of Oklahoma, I stumbled across this... I am thinking mid-30s Ford four door sedan. Anybody got a definite guess. I thought that if I just added a cowl section it would make a neat rod. Plus, the door would already be suicide

Hey, I just thought of this. If you have this kit or others like it and want door panels with correct stamping and such I stumbled across this in the salvage yard yesterday... This is the passenger's door from an AE86 corolla. Shouldn't be too hard to fab something up out of sheet plastic. If you want the original pic let me know. It is much bigger and has a bit better resolution.

Yeah, this is a recycler type place. The prices are not that bad. Taillight assembly with wire harness cost me 15 bucks. EGR valve set me back 5. Most parts are pretty reasonable. When the wife had an LTD, the used rack I bought there cost me 20$. The Dart and stuff were in the 'classics' section. They did have a 68 mustang that ran with title for sale at 1900$ and a four door covair, that I didn't get the price of. I also saw a couple of 240Zs, an Opel GT, that somebody made worse in their efforts to 'restore'. They had 5 240SXs sitting around as well. I thought about asking how much to buy one of them. The body was in great shape and all the glass was as well. The engine and tranny were in the back seat area... I may just keep an eye on it and see what happens. Maybe they will take 200$ for the whole thing. The gravel is to keep down the mud. The parts yard is right next to the river and gets quite wet at times. Grass would just turn to mud and never really grow well. The rail yard is right next door as well, so I think that they get a good deal on gravel

Next, wanna do something different with your Dart? Well, this is a 70-72, but the changes were only cosmetic. These details were the same from 67-75ish. That is all for today kiddos!!

went to the local pull-a-part yard to get some stuff for the wife's camry. I always prowl around looking at what is in the yard. This time I struck paydirt. Found this little gem in the very back row. Still has the engine in place... Anybody know if this is a stromberg? I don't think so If you are like me and bought one of the Aoshima Trueno boy racer cars and found that while the bare interior is nice, lamented the lack of door panels, you are in luck. I found the appropriate year sitting in the yard as well. No driver's door, but it did still have a passenger's door. A couple of minutes with a screwdriver and voila! The interior door panel should look like this!

Must be you as I just uploaded a bunch of stuff. You might want to check your cookies and such

Lots of really cool ideas and stuff to gleam from that website. Some of those are just plain flat out cool!!!

I think that Tamiya is ahead. As far as price goes, if I can get the Tamiya cheaper (usually not hard to do) I get the Tamiya. In this instance, I believe that the Tamiya kit was cheaper by a couple of bucks, maybe... I will have to check the invoice before I commit to that though.

These are most of the suspension parts. There are alot of ejector pins, but not a lot of ejector pin marks. I appreciate this greatly, as the pins are easier to clean up than filling and sanding the marks. Also, there are two sets of side-rearview mirrors. I am not sure why as both sets look alot alike. Here are more of the interior parts. Again, plenty of ejector pins, but not a lot of marks. Kudos to Aoshima. Notice, that there is only a JDM dash Finally, the tail lights and such. Again, kudos to Aoshima as they molded the tail lights in three separate pieces. There are clear, red and orange parts that go together to make the tail lights and such. There are not chrome buckets though. The rims are TE-37 in 15 inches. I think they will look fine in this car. Lastly, the chrome. We have tiny rotors, mirror faces and two mufflers. In all, this looks like a great kit by Aoshima that should build into a fine replica. Now I will have to start the hunt for a color scheme....

Okay, I have been on a bit of a tuner bender lately. While looking over a japanese model website, I stumbled on this kit. I plunked my money down and so enough, it was on my table. I believe that this is just a different boxing of the Aoshima Trueno kit that usually comes with an engine. This one does not, but that is not a problem for me. Okay, on to the kit. Here is the box and the body parts for the kit. Not much to say here. The molding is nice and crisp and the details are delicate. I don't believe that they will be lost under paint though. Still, I will deepen the panel lines abit before painting. Here is the body. Notice that the front and rear are not molded to the body. This makes adding the aero package easier than Aoshima kits in the past. It looks like a corolla... Pardon me, Trueno. I will have to play with the side skirts a bit to get them to fit the body a bit tighter. Here are the interior parts. Nice roll cage that should assemble well. The tub is molded without a rear seat and such. There is though, molding replicating the steel stamping on the interior floor. Nice touch! Also, you will notice that Aoshima molded a thick protector ring around the steering wheel so that it was not damaged. Again, Nice touch! Here we go with the undercarriage. These are all the parts. First up is the actual chassis. Aoshima did a decent job here. There is not much detail as far as the bottom of the engine, but after checking the front pan, that is not much of an issue. Once the front suspension is in place, not much of the engine can be seen. Next the interior and suspension

Okay, the chassis parts break-down are about the same in both kits. Again, Tamiya gains the edge in fidelity and refinement of molding. Here is the Tamiya chassis. notice that the bottom of the turbo and such are present in the engine bay. Also, Tamiya molded the gas tank to the chassis. Fujimi chose not to. Notice that none of the turbo plumbing present in the Tamiya chassis is included in the Fujimi chassis. Also, as mentioned before the gas tank is a separate piece on the Fujimi chassis. Here are the remaining Fujimi undercarriage parts. Fujimi chose to mold the rear end as one solid piece while Tamiya chose to mold them separately. Fujimi, while molding the brakes to the struts, did a beautiful job with these. There are delicate holes drilled into the rotor faces, while the tamiya brake rotors are smooth. In the last photo, you can see the Tamiya dash. It is very nicely molded as are the rest of the interior parts. Interestingly enough, both manufacturers chose to include both left and right handed dashes and consoles. Here are the Fujimi dashes. Both make use of decals for instrumentation. Fujimi gives both dial and digital faced clusters, while Tamiya includes just dial faces. Okay, so there we go. Two kits representative of the time period of each company's work. I think that Fujimi has made large gains in equalling Tamiya quality. I believe that Tamiya has made even bigger gains in fidelity and engineering of their molds. I also think that it really depends on from what time frame the mold comes from. Some of the much older Tamiya stuff is no better than the Fujimi stuff of the same time frame. In all, Fujimi does have some good points as they tend to do kits that Tamiya does not. If you have a choice though, between a Tamiya kit and a Fujimi kit of the same offering, go with the Tamiya... Now treaded and winged thingies are a completely different story.

Okay, there is always a question of who is better. I recently purchased two 180/240SX kits one Tamiya and one Fujimi. I thought that I would use this as an opportunity to compare the two manufacturers on similar kits. I believe that both kits came out around the same time frame. So I think that they are a decent judge of the quality of molding and such. First the boxes The Tamiya box is a bit smaller than the Fujimi box. Also the Tamiya box uses an artist's illustration where the Fujimi box uses a picture of the real car. here are the respective bodies so far. Both look decently molded. The Tamiya has smaller mold lines as will be evident later. The wheelbases seem to match along with the actual lengths in scale. Here are the front ends side by side. Already evident is the delicate engraving and molding that Tamiya is know for. The Fujimi kit is well molded, but the details are not as refined. Here are some close ups to show the differences. Both Tamiya and Fujimi mold the front vents and such open. You can see the heavy mold lines on the driver's side fender of the Fujimi kit. The mold lines on the Tamiya kit are placed better and almost imperceptable. Also, the open vents and such just show a bit more refinement on the Tamiya Kit. Next post on to the chassis and such

What does it say if I can remember when Slipknot and others such as Korn were garage-ish bands. Heck, I even saw Rage Against the Machine before anybody, myself included, knew who they were. Truck looks awesome so far man

You might want to look for the MM 'Guards Red' it is closer for a newer model Ferrari. The 'Italian Red' is a bit more orange that is better suited to the older Ferrari models. Now this is how it used to be. I don't know if Testors changed the formulas or not. Both are available in the Acryl range. One other hint... If you think you will only need two bottles, buy four. Double your paint amount, trust me, it is better to have too much than not enough

Where did the camper come from? Looks like you got a good start on this one.

Absolutely stunning!! The transkit looks solid. I am just hoping when I get to the Revell kit that it comes out a tenth that good. Yours looks absolutely killer!!!

Okay, this morning I got everything back together and snapped some quick pics. After staring at the mock up for a day or so, I concluded that I was happy with the ride height. The handlebars needed some bending and some handgrips. I got that done. The handlebars are 3/32 tube with wire threaded through for stiffness. I then took some 1/16th metal tubing and drilled it out a bit wide so it would slip over the wire hanging out of the handlebars. I then superglued the metal tubing inside the hand grips. I then started cleaning up mold lines and such. The wife got home and that stopped most of the work. So here she is I like the aggressive look from this angle. Here are the handgrips installed on the handlebars. You can see some of the wire I used to attach the handlebars to the upper tree. They just slide on and off right now(both the hand grips and the handle bars) Eventually, when it comes to final assembly it will all be glued together. The white stuff you see sticking out of places in clay. I am using it as a mock up helper. I was a little too eager with the sanding and so the fit between some of the pieces is a little too loose to allow dry fitting. Hopefully, this weekend will see a bit more work accomplished. I plan to get the upper engine mount in place and finalize the rear fender bob and placement set as well. Then it is on to a seat.

I don't think that you are too crazy I do have an extra set of the wires that you were looking for. PM me and I will mail 'um to you.

Yeah, I figured that I needed to leave the seam in some parts, but I don't think the starter and such should have a seam down the middle. Anyway, another late day at work. I didn't get to the bench till almost 9 PM. I did get some engineering worked out. I figured out how I was going to attach the handgrips. I also had to take apart the rear swing arm and adjust it as it was a bit off side to side. So no pics tonight, but there was some work done.

Try www.hwjapan.com or www.hlj.com either place will most likely still have them in stock. Of course with the drop in the dollar, a 25.00$ kit just jumped up to 30 or so bucks. All this before shipping.