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Those'll be great, thanks Izzy

I can't for the life of me find my reference material for the fuel and brake line routing for my '69 Vette project and need some good pics of the underside of any Shark. TIA

2003 Dodge Durango. Optioned similiarly to the 2wd 5.9L R/T just doesn't have the body color grille and 17" wheels. Future mods are possibly a Hotchkis full vehicle system, wheels/tires and even more remotely a supercharger. Right now my wife drives it more than I do as it'll haul all three kids and the requisite gear that goes with them.

I've been a quality inspector for most of my adult life, currently for a tool and die shop. I'm infinitely more comfortable measuring and doing the math than eyeballing and experimenting. I have a really hard time accepting "close enough," especially with the tools I have at my disposal. Someday, I'll experiment with working with brass. I've been so amped that I'm finally making some progress on this car after four years that I've just been going with the flow using styrene.

I had some fun after work with the Bridgeport and made a little fixture for bending up a full cage for the Vette. It really all started because I didn't feel like modifying the hoop from the S&S kit so I could have a place to mount the 5-points. The bars from the S&S kit are fine for a period-era roadster but that's not what I'm building. I didn't want to waste alot of time and styrene trying to get everything even so I started measuring and drawing on Xara and remeasuring and drawing. Finally, I got a hole pattern with every bend I'll need and hopefully it'll produce a cage that'll fit very snugly in the interior and wouldn't interfere with functionality if it were a 1:1. Here on the fixture is the main hoop cooling off. I ran the rod through the pins, put tension of it, then heated the whole fixture up to around 170 degrees to relax the plastic. The pins headed the opposite way are for the roof hoop. More pics to come and thanks for looking.

Thanks for the heads-up Darin.

I'm looking to find one for parts if the suspension is well done. I'm doing a suspension conversion on my '69 Vette to C4 gear. The AMT C4 'batwing' is the right width but horribly detailed elsewise. The pumpkin and transaxles are a joke. I was planning on using the Dana 44 out of the Revell Viper, the batwing and trailing arms from the AMT 96 Vette and scratching out everything else. The front suspension of the AMT C4's is basically nonexistant and unusuable so I am looking at Revell C5/C6 pieces. I know that Chezoom had a full C4 suspension front and rear and I could have sworn I've seen the pieces used on some other killer builds. It could have been another of the Testors Boyds rides though. There's gonna be a lot of scratchbuilding and I'm just looking for the best starting place.

Looks to be another killer build Marc, I'll be looking for it at the Heartland Nats.

It probably does in the first couple of hours as it helps the paint flash a lot quicker. The Vette was in the dehydrator for months only 'cause life got too busy for me to get back to it any sooner. In addition, I run my downdraft paint booth out the window of my hobby room pretty much 24/7. This keeps the room under a constant vacuum which, I believe, helps prevent dust from settling as badly and also from dust being stirred up by the vacuum created everytime the booth is turned on. My wife goes through a lot of Shout laundry stain remover spray with our three kids' clothes. Everytime she kills a bottle, I grab it, fill it with water and use it to spray the inside of my booth and the stage. I wet down the booth between coats of paint and the Shout seems to help thicken up the water and keep the booth a little wetter longer. If I get a booger in my paint jobs it's usually my own impatience. I usually leave the room for about 5-10 minutes between coats so that I don't stir up dust or have lint or dust come off my clothes and into the wet paint.

Specifically, I'm interested in pics of the front and rear suspensions and underside. TIA

I had originally planned on a Baldwin-Motion style stripe but after getting it taped off I changed my mind and went with the same type as my Z06. Unfortunately, I've got to sand out and re-shoot the red hashes in the morning. I got a big ole finger print in them while I was unmasking her. A piece of tape got hung up on my thumb and rather than drop the whole thing I got a hold of her by the front wheel wells while the red was still a bit soft. My Z06 before it had an unfortunate run in with a kiddo or cat (I can't remember now but the paint was horribly scratched up). These two Vettes are my "lottery" cars, the two gotta haves if I ever hit the big one. The '69 of course is Tamiya gunmetal with Tamiya black stripe and wheels. The Z06 when I get back to it will be Tamiya black with a gunmetal stripe and wheels. More pics to come and thanks for looking.

I have a sickness for Vettes with red interiors. I can only remember one Vette that I built as a kid that had any other color. Anyways, here's a teaser pic of the seats, the rest of the pieces are drying so I can mask off and detail paint and dull coat tomorrow. Color is Tamiya Italian Red over Duplicolor gray filler primer on Revell '02 Camaro seats. More pics to come and thanks for looking

The regular shade, TS-38 I believe.

On the project table for sure, may be finished by June but that will depend on the length of my honey-do list between now and then.

No matter what the subject is, your work always amazes me Izzy.

A couple of years in the making, I decided to jump over to this project after I found the body in the dehydrator when I put the Silverado in to cure. I opened up the front grilles for fine wire mesh, removed the scripts, and added the L88 hood and fender flares from the S&S Vette. Paint is Tamiya Gunmetal, 3 mist coats so far, it'll get a couple more wet coats after I get a few boogers out. Still to come a black Baldwin-Motion style stripe and red hashes on the driver's side front fender. More to come, thanks for looking.

Wow, I didn't even give these "Uptown" Caddies a secong look til I started seeing builds like yours. Very impressive

I thought about using MM Dark Bronze as a base coat but was worried it would come out way too dark. Hope ya don't mind, but I may have to borrow this combo from ya.

Gowjobs, in the words of Mater "Aww Dang", that's exactly the color I was planning for my truck. I picked up two cans of Tamiya Clear Orange Sunday and am waiting on the bottle of Alclad Copper to use as a base coat that I ordered. What paint or combo is that??

Thanks all, the more I look at her the more I'm leaning towards setting the ride height to just where the tires clear the fender openings. Not so high as to look like a 4x4 but not so low that it would be impractical in 1:1. According to the engraving on the sidewall of the tires these are 305/40/23's so that's quite a bit of meat to try to tuck up into the fenders. I'll have more pics once the "warts" that popped up in the primer coat are tended to. Thanks again.

Thanks for the compliments. These pics were with just a bare frame (no suspension) to line up the cab and bed. I haven't decided which suspension I'll use yet. I've got the lowered pieces from the custom Silverado, stock, been pondering swapping in the AWD Escalade setup w/ the transfer case from my spare Rubicon or air-bagging it to set it as low as possible. Of these, I think only the Escalade set-up would be a challenge to make steerable.

This is my second time around with this project. I fixed the warpage problems that destroyed the body work on the original by gluing spacers between the inner bed and the outer skin front and back to hold the bedsides in shape. Up front, I opened the grilles and valance, removed the center posts in the valance openings and filled the upper character line in the bumper to give it a pre-'03 SS look. I removed and filled all the door and tail gate handles and shaved the side trim and emblems. The hood and roll pan are out of the original Custom Silverado/WaveRider kit. Out back, the tail lights, tail gate and roll pan have been molded in and the rear whatever-it-is removed off the top on the tail gate. The rear tail light will be an LED-type strip between the bottom edge of the tail gate and the top of the roll pan. The molded-in exhaust tips were removed to make way for the aluminum tips from the Escalade kit. The wheels are also the 23" from the Escalade kit but the final version probably won't tuck them that deep. This is the first time I used the gel-type super glue to do bodywork and have to say I may not go back to using regular body-putty. I wanted a hard between-the-rails tonneau cover so I built a frame inside the bed with .040 x .080 strips, pulled it back out and skinned it with .015 sheet. I don't know yet if I'll hinge it so it can open and close or if I'll glue it shut but it's nice to have the option. Up next will be primer and finalizing any ghosting and/or other bodywork issues. Thanks for looking.

Ok, I know why Revell packs the pickup bed inside the cab of their '99 Silverado kit (space saving in the box). That being said it's still rather agravating that they would be building in a warpage issue by doing so. I pulled my project out of the drawer hoping to get back into finishing it. I had filled the taillights by gluing in the original lenses, puttying them in and priming. I had spread the bedsides out to the width of the lenses when I did this but over time the bedsides pulled back in and cracked the glue joints and body putty. What I'm looking for are ideas as to what has worked for you guys in similar situations. I was thinking about adding shims between the wall of the inner bed and outer bedsides or using a spreader plate and heat to take out the "memory" of the plastic. TIA

First off, I love the new C6 Vette especially the Z06. It looks great from every angle except (in my opinion) the dead-on face shot. It's almost as if GM stylists took the day off and the engineers took over. That rectangular slot for air intake has just hit me wrong since the first time I saw the new Vette. I started the Revell kit awhile back, got the body painted but just never could get over that snozz. The new Vette is a "bottom-breather" so I'm a little limited in my restyling efforts but here is my idea #1. Just after nasal surgery: Option #1: This is more of an evolutionary look from the C4 and C5 Vettes. It's hard to tell from the pic but the downward curve of the outer edges matches that of the headlights (I simply taped a couple of spare headlight covers from the snap kit to the back and cut the tape). The driving lights will be flush-mounted to the fascia in the outer corners of the opening (think the front turn signals from the '70-'72 Vettes) but I haven't mocked up the necessary buckets and lenses. I hope to have Option #2 mocked up tomorrow. It will be more in the style of the early C3's. Three openings (2 larger outside grills and a smaller center one) across the nose with the exception that the "bumper spars" will be slightly canted to follow the fender line down. This will also require that I raise the upper line of the opening to thin the leading edge of the nose and more closely match the proportions of the early C3's face. Opinions always welcome

Other than the stock grille and decals is this a straight re-issue of the WaveRider truck?? I haven't seen a picture of the kit other than the box-art shot so I can't see if they tooled up new wheels for it or not. Funny thing, this kit is listed out first with the stock truck re-issue to follow but the LHS has had the stock truck for a couple of weeks and none of these. TIA