Bernard Kron

Just got word of this. Pat Ganahl's blog post linked above is the first announcement that TRJ are shippng issue #85. The post offers some info but we still don't know much about the the 2 years or so they went dark. However it does give you a pretty thorough peak into the new issue and unequivocally states that existing subscribers can assume that the magazine is already en route to them. The TRJ website itself seems not to have been updated yet stating:

Thanks everyone! It took a heck of a lot of scratchn’ and bashin’ but I have a completed chassis, suspension, motor and driver’s compartment to show for my efforts. Amazingly everything fits inside the ’31 Ford Tudor body shell as I hoped it would. The front and rear suspension are both made 100% from Revell ’32 Ford kit parts except for front friction shocks from a Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit. The cockpit details are all fabricated from various shapes of styrene and aluminum sheet, channel and rod with a seat and battery from my parts box. The fuel tank is from an AMT Phantom Vicky kit and the steering wheel from a Revell Miss Deal kit. Since the car has a simple in-out bar box it would need to be push started so I added a mounting bracket for a removable push bar which inserts through the rear bodywork. The chassis is painted in Tamiya TS-13 Camel Yellow. The motor is largely as described in my last update with headers fabricated from butyl covered wire. I fabricated a bellypan from styrene stock. It features a removable rear fairing to clean up the rear axle and shock absorber protrusions, and a fairing for the oil pan, bell housing and transmission. The rear panel is located by the bracket which also locates the push bar braces. The model is designed to have a removable body so that it can be displayed as a bare chassis as well. Below are photos showing a mockup with the body installed, photos of the rolling chassis, and detail photos of the front and rear suspension, cockpit, motor and bellypan. Now it’s time to focus on the bodywork, paint and decals. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Beautiful model of a handsome car. Bravo!

Sometimes when you do a largely scratch built and kit bashed project you have to go a pretty long way into the build before you know if it will actually work out. That’s certainly the case here. I’ve wanted to do a chopped ’31 Ford sedan from the venerable Revellogram ‘29/’31/RPU Sedan kits for quite a while. Those kits are important parts kits for me and as a result I have plenty of spare bodies lying around. A few years ago I started to chop a sedan but landed up wiping out a fair amount of the window and beltline molding during sanding and cleanup. This time I was more careful and the idea I have is to do a late 50’s/early 60’s dry lakes care, a period of time when these cars were becoming increasingly sophisticated while still preserving much of the traditional hot rod look of the mid-50’s. Safety was emerging as a major consideration as 200+ MPH speeds became more accessible to some of the lower performance categories. By the late 50’s, too, welded tubular frame construction was beginning to dominate competition machinery of all sorts, not just Grand Prix and sports cars, but circle track and straight line racing as well. So this is a ’31 sedan with a 3 ½ scale inch chop, lightweight space frame and a Putin blown V8. An attempt to push the decidedly “barn door” aerodynamics of the Model A sedan past the magic double century mark. The chassis is scratch built from .080 (2 scale inch diameter) styrene rod. The suspension, front and rear, is adapted from the Revell ’32 Ford street rod kits and the motor is cobbled together from parts box leftovers including a Plymouth 436 Wedge block and heads from the Revell Tony Nancy double dragster kits and the Potvin blower rig from the Revell 283 Chevy parts packs. It all just barely fits in this relatively diminutive sedan. The engine cover is Revell Deuce in origin. Below are initial mockup photos, the whole shebang barely held together with white glue. Now that I know it will work it’s time to get real about finishing things out and adding some believable detail. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thank you everyone! I'm glad you all like it.

Beautiful. Gorgeous execution and an important lesson in how subject matter trumps everything else.

Mildly Customized 1950 Jaguar XK120 Coupe (More photos below) This is a mildly customized Bburago die-cast Jaguar XK120 coupe. I wanted to simplify and clean up the details, much as custom shops would do in the early 50’s for clients who wanted a cleaner, more streamlined look to their cars. Clark Gable was a big Jaguar enthusiast and George Barris actually customized the third of the three XK120 roadsters he owned (he actually owned the 1st XK120 to be imported into the US). Barris smoothed the rear deck, gave it a custom metallic gold paint job and equipped it with a Carson Top. In my case I lowered the car 4 scale inches all around, made factory style flush fitting fender skirts (the Bburago. which comes with very funky wire wheels, has open rear wheel wells), shaved the hood and front fenders, smoothed the rear deck by removing the rectangular license plate plinth, sank the license plate into the rear deck and substituted tear drop taillights for the big chrome factory lights. The terrible Bburago wheels and modern wide tires were replaced at the front with Borrani wire wheels from an Academy Ferrari 250LM with AMT Firestone blackwalls adapted to fit. The stock Bburago rear wheels and tires are buried under the skirts. The bumpers were deleted and the mounting holes filled and fog lights installed. The paint is Tamiya TS-11 Maroon over red oxide primer. Thanx for lookin’, B.

This project is now completed. I’ll take the final “beauty shots” once I do the final cleanup. In the meantime here are some detail shots. The first picture chows the final “customized” version compared to an original Bburago die cast in a front ¾ view. The second panel show various detail, including the smoothed rear deck with the molded in license plate and teardrop taillights from a Revell ’32 Ford 3-window coupe mounted on Model Car Garage photo-etch backings. as shown in the cleaned up front end. The fog lamps are the small hot rod headlamps that come in the various Revell Deuce kits. Also shown are the final engine detail and an assembled interior shot. The Bburago model is engineered to snap together. In fact the plastic parts are made of some mysterious substance that resists styrene glue and even adheres poorly to epoxy. Fortunately this is a pretty mild custom, so the need to glue parts down was kept to a minimum. This was a fun project with an extremely low parts count and an emphasis on finish and execution and a vision of simplifying and cleaning up the stock version to emphasize the beauty of the original design. Lowering it was part of that strategy, as was adding back the flush skirts. Much appreciation to all of you for your comments and for following along. Thanx for lookin', B.

With, sadly, only the Flintstone version generally available there's a crying need for one of these. I guess the '27 had always been just a bit infra-dig for the plastic (or even die-cast) model kit companies to make. And sourcing the necessary accessories (like a proper windshield frame, for example) borders on the impossible/impracticle. So just a decent dashboard blank, a wraparound bolster for the upper body edge and the aforementioned (and already present on your initial work) windshield would go a very long way to unleashing the potential of this classic hot rod archetype.

Now this is something the hot rod modeling world is crying out for, a proper modern tech and accurate '27 T body shell. And don't forget not only the windshield but the basis for an interior bucket as well.

Thanks for the interest, guys. I’ve made good progress on this project. The bodywork was completed. I filled and smoothed the front fender mounted turn signal mounting holes, the outer front bumper mounting holes, the hood badge indentation, the taillight mounting holes and indentations and closed and filled the side vents just in front of the door. As mentioned last time, the rear deck had the rectangular license plaint plinth shaved off to create a continuous rear deck line. I have switched out the front wire wheels for a set of Borranis from the Academy Ferrari 250 LM kit with AMT Firestones adapted to fit. The rear tires and wheels are the Bburagos from the die cast, but they are completely hidden by the fender skirts. The skirts themselves have changed from my initial idea to use the AMT ’36 Ford bubble skirts. After some reflection I decided they conflicted a little with the purity of the XK120’s fender lines and so I fabricated a set of flush skirts from styrene sheet. They are much like the stock skirts that came with the car when you ordered steel wheels rather than wire wheels. The body has been painted Tamiya TS-11 Maroon over red oxide primer. The interior has been painted in Testors Acryl Leather. I still have to polish out the paint, complete and detail the motor and mount the lighting, glass, windshield wipers, etc. as well as foil the trim around the windows. Thanx for lookin;, B.

Last month I finished my first non-plastic model, the metal bodied 1/24th scale Monogram Jaguar XK120 Roadster. It’s a great kit that I can highly recommend. The parts fit, kit engineering and accurate details carried me a long way, despite my apprehension over doing a metal kit. Of course the vast majority of the kit is plastic, except for the body so it was really about body prep as much as anything, since I built it stock and out-of-the-box with only minor modifications. The success of that project got me thinking about doing some additional XK120s, this time with more modifications. I bought an additional Monogram Roadster ,which I’ll be doing as a sports racer. But I also wanted to do a coupe if I could find one in 1/24th or 1/25th. It turns out that the only one I could find is the Bburago die cast. I was able to score one cheaply on eBay so I wasn’t too concerned about the quality of the model. It turns out the fit and detail of the Bburago isn’t too bad, certainly good enough that, with some care in detailing and painting, it should make a pretty nice model. While researching this project I discovered a couple of modern Resto-mod customized coupes that I thought were especially nice: the Justin Hills and Thornley Kelham. The Justin Hills coupe is more like a radical custom with its aggressively chopped top, smoothly shaved body and slammed stance. The Thornley Kelham car is a true modernization of the XK120 coupe while still preserving much of the original DNA. To my eyes it’s everything that’s right about a successfully done Resto-Mod. Each of these cars have elements that inspired me for my customized XK120 coupe. The Justin Hills XK120 custom coupe The Thornley Kelham XK120 “European” series resto-mod After receiving the Bburago die-cast I blew it apart, which was quite easy because everything is either snapped or screwed together and the parts count is quite low. Despite this it’s surprisingly well detailed and should respond well to paint detailing. Next up was to lower the stance some 4+ scale inches and do a mockup of the overall look I’m going after. Here are some pics of that stage: Then I stripped the paint off and began the body work. The wheels and tires are pretty awful, being modern wide tires and decidedly one-dimensional wire wheels. They will have to go although I’m debating what kit to pilfer for this project. It will have to be a true 1/24th kit because the Bburago is on the large end of the 1/24th world. The pictures below show that I’ve removed the flat plinth that mounts the license at the rear of the original XK120 and filled in the tail light and turn signal holes and the outer front bumper holes. The rear bumperette mounting holes will be used to mount taillights. The square hole at the rear will become a sunken license plate mount. Chopping a metal body is wayyyyyyy beyond my pay grade so this will be a slammed “East-Coast” style custom with a stock height top. In keeping with the retro theme I’m using AMT ’36 Ford skirts. The color will be a darker metallic red with maroon wire wheels. Thanx for lookin’ B.

Thanks again to all of you for the kind words. The was a very satisfying model to build. The beauty of the XK120 itself inspired me to give it my best effort. This is really a very nice kit so that helped, too. I've decided to continue on and build the two other versions I want to do. Right now I've started the Bburago coupe I mentioned above. I've posted a W.I.P. on it. If all goes well I'll follow up with a competition style roadster.

Thanks Phil. This is definitely an instance of where the subject will carry the model an awful long way. Especially since this kit turned out to be as good as it was. Thank you Helmut. I chose to do this first version as essentially stock in its initial alloy bodied version with the steel wheels and skirts. It's the purest evocation o those gorgeous lines. I have a second Monogram kit which I plan to do as a sports racing special with the little aero windscreens, probably a tonneau cover if I can pull it off, fog lights and perhaps louvers. That version won't have the skirts and will most likely have wire wheels. As I mentioned earlier I have a Bburago die cast fixed head coupe coming, and if it looks OK I plan to do that as a smoothed-out custom, kind of a bargain-basement Bugatti Atlantique . That one, if I do it, will have bubble skirts to emphasize the curves and also to provide clearance for the wire wheels.

Thanks Chris. Thanks Emre. The outdoor lighting seems to highlight the depth and shine on the paint a bit better, it's true.

Thanks Bill. As I said earlier, I was surprised by how uncomplicated the body prep turned out to be. And I swear the paint lays down better than I've experienced with styrene. Certainly the solidity and heft make rubbing out and polishing the paint easier. In any case die cast opens up a whole other world of modeling possibilities. And of course the vast majority of this kit, and indeed many "die cast" models, is plastic, LOL. And several people have commented that this, and others of the Monogram metal series, are among their favorite kits. It certainly went together extremely well for me, and is well detailed vis-a-vis the 1:1, IMHO.

I know some people don't care for the dark background artificially lit studio style of photos - you know, the kind you sometimes see in car magazines. I like doing them but I get requests occasionally for more neutral outdoor lit photos. Those pictures have their own challenges but I can understand that folks might think they are more "objective" in their rendering of colors and textures. So today I took some outdoor shots against a neutral gray background. I was surprised, because I didn't use a white background, how much they resembled the studio shots. I didn't use a white background because it tends to throw a blue-white glare.

Thank you Carl.

Thanks Claude!

Thanks everyone. I'm glad you all like it. ? I was surprised on how straightforward prepping the metal body turned out to be. Much less drama than I had feared. Now I'm looking into the world of (relatively inexpensive) die casts for future projects. There's so much more range in subject matter than in styrene models. The photos seem to work OK for me. I tried both my laptop and my smart phone, using various ISPs and also 4G and the photos all showed up without any issues.

Aha, now I understand the insight that inspires your "imagineering". Regarding Koolest Krusers, (go to Koolest Kruzers home page ), the French have their own unique perspective on American culture and Koolest is a group dedicated to all things regarding scale modeling American cars, trucks and motorcycles of all kinds. The technical level is generally exceptionally high and a true delight to the eye. And, as I say, the POV is refreshing and original. Highly recommended to all MCM members. The French members welcome the participation of Anglophone participants - it gives them an opportunity to exercise their English. And contemporary French social media is heavily populated with Franglais which will help get you started. Otherwise Google Translator is your friend, LOL!

1949 Jaguar XK120 Roadster (more photos below) This is the old Monogram 1/24th kit first introduced in 1977. It’s my first project involving a die-cast body. Despite the big leap into the unknown of working in metal I actually took this on as a slump-bluster, my goal being to do as clean a build as I could and sticking to the basic kit to make a luxury sports roadster as the XK120 was first presented in 1949. The color is Duplicolor Venetian Gold which resembles the stock “Bronze” color of the early years of the XK120. I chose a light hued metallic to show off the voluptuous lines of this gorgeous ground-breaking car which simultaneously encapsulated the final design elements of late 1930s luxury and race cars with the emerging theme of relatively affordable performance. With its DOHC in-line 3.4 liter 6 cylinder motor, dual carbs and 150 HP when first introduced at the end of 1948, it was offered for less than $4,000 USD, or about the same price as a fully optioned Cadillac convertible. Manufactured in the hundreds from the outset, as opposed to the dozens at best for most immediate post-war European luxury sports cars, whose manufacturers struggled to rebuild and start up their factories, Jaguar was able to tap into the hard-currency treasure trove that was the USA import market, no doubt helped by the fact that it delivered the goods in both performance and style. Backed up by an aggressive and innovative competition program highlighted by world speed records and rally and endurance success, this made the Jaguar XK120 the choice of movie stars, sports figures, industrialists and the social elite at the dawn of the WWII recovery boom. It was this spirit that I tried to capture with this model. Thanx for lookin, B.

I live in the People's Republic of Seattle where, for many years, Comcast had a monopoly and just kept raising the price. Like others here I gave up watching TV long ago and get virtually all my news and entertainment directly off the Internet. So I've used the cheapest acceptable high speed connection, upgrading my connection speeds as the technology required. At this point, because I'm not a gamer, the most I need is 50-100 Mbps. Video and audio just keep getting better with less data so I doubt I'll ever need more. For many years I was like Xingu's wife. Whenever we got a price hike I would call Comcast and argue my way into a low-price deal for whatever speed I figured I needed. It worked for a long time, but they were usually one-year deals and then I'd have to call them again and go through the same nonsense one more time. Finally about 7-8 years ago they figured out they had a monopoly and, as Bill said, they told me to pound sand. But by then we were all dropping cable because it was expensive and unwatchable. Here in Seattle the public was up in arms about bad service and ever-increasing rates. Comcast was still on copper wire, promising fiber to the home but delaying for as long as they could. As it happened, Comcast's monopoly was up for renewal and the city, which had been operating it's own municipal network for some time, threatened Comcast with Municipal ISP (which I think is the inevitable future). After massive lobbying by Comcast the city backed down on municipal internet. Instead it allowed Century Link to come in with full fiber to the home and true full-bandwidth high speed Internet which, at the time, we still didn't have in Seattle (home of Microsoft and Amazon - oh heaven's to Betsy!??). The competition killed the price escalator overnight and Comcast fast-tracked installing its own fiber. But it's still a duopoly so. While prices have stayed stable and low-ish (we pay $48.00/mo/ for 100 Mbps and saving $10.00/month would drop us down to 25), likes so many of us here in the USA, I feel we generally pay a lot for mediocre service, especially compared to what I've seen in Western Europe. . So I guess it depends on where you live and the competitive environment. But I would definitely recommend giving some thought to what you actually use your Internet connection for. The truth is that social networking and email require very little internet speed. If you stream video give some thought to how many services you actually use ($10-15/month each adds up fast) and shop accordingly. And as I said, these days 50+ Mbps is plenty, IMHO - unless you are into on-line gaming, of course.

La Maison de Claude - ça c'est sûr! Couturier du plastique par excellence. Love the true-to-sponsors theme, especially the SafePod and the elaborate Ride Tech system. Also the realistic goal setting - a mere 300MPH+ - definitely attainable with the Ferrari power. Brilliant!

Very fine modeling! Great imagineering.