samdiego

I've wanted a bullet bird for a long time. The kit is pretty fair, both bumpers were a little warped. Engraving was excellent everywhere but the emblems on the hood and trunk, which were a little light. Box stock, lowered a little

The kit prices I remember from central Ohio in '70 hovered at the $2-$2.25 level for a bit. I'd already established the kit a week pace I still pretty much maintain. With a can of spray at $.59 - $.69, for 6 bucks you could get two kits and two cans of paint. Now that's closer to $70. I can't think of much state of the art stuff from the 90s that maintains that status today. To me the 90s represent companies taking the cheapest way whenever possible. Conversely, they were obviously capable of amazing tooling back in the 60s. The AMT Double Dragster is a milestone in my book. Terrific engraving and one of the most value packed kits ever. Especially if you can catch them on clearance at Hobby Lobby. $13 I think. The Tom Daniel kits were chunky but razor sharp. Revell's early 60's dragsters like the Tony Nancy and Mickey Thompson cars are still impressive. But when I see 90s features like random hashmarks instead of legible gauges and blobs for carbs, I gotta question throwing down for that era of tooling.

I've seen new stuff at Hobby Lobby closing in on the $30 mark. It may be worth it for the new kits, but how does the non-expert tell the difference? I think they need to start indicating the tooling vintage. I paid more than $25 for the Grumpy Jenkins release of the '66 Nova not knowing that the kit itself represented everything wrong with '90s tooling and then the decals were bad. They needed to have a white underprint for the yellow and this wasn't done. Round 2 offered a replacement sheet but they haven't and won't correct the problem I saw this coming when Walmart picked up the HOK paint line. A three or four part system that took the model car paint job into the $25-$30 arena. Add that to a thirty dollar kit and you've completely killed the "lawn mowing money" fueled hobby that I loved as a kid. So the manufacturers cry the blues over the decline in kid participation and still keep hiking up the price.

I'd love to see the '67 Fairlane two door wagon done and of course that would lead to a '67 Ranchero

I've used the Microscale stuff and it seems to work just fine. It is super thin though.

Greg, I hope your hatches are battened and you still have power.

I've been hoping for decades for the early Corvair to be done, redone or whatever. I suppose redone would be a lot to ask for. As for the 1:1, My Dad had two first gens and two 2nd gens when they were new, I had two second gens in the 70's. I always thought that the new rear suspension debuted under the '64, the year before the redesign. One of the problems with the early models is that most owners ignored the tire pressures (bias-plys) called out in the manual. Mine were both fitted with radials which radically changed things handling wise.

I've encountered a huge problem with the decal sheet. The decal printer didn't print a white underlay for the smallest gold lettering. It completely vanishes over the red doors. RC2 is sending two sheets to me although we both doubt that doubling up will cure the issue. They appeared to be unaware of the error and may or may not print corrected sheets. This isn't a problem with the white car but I'll be checking the aftermarket for my red one. Considering that the Grump stuff was the reason that I finally threw down for this bit of a pile after resisting for how many years, it's fairly disappointing.

Thanks for the link to here, Niko. Somehow I missed it when I searched for Grumpy. And perfect timing as I've just finished an orange small block with lovely little silver alternator vanes. I'm not going overboard with mine, box stock mostly. I did want to be accurate on the intake though. I've seen two photos of Grumpy with black blocks, 1 with Alu heads, but they looked later than '66 to me so I ignored them. Great info here, I'll be checking back.

I'm haing a time finding underhood shots of just what the Grump had going on. The instructions don't give that info. How stock was A/S? I know there weren't hood scoops and tunnel rams, so would it have been the single 4bbl on an alu intake with a velocity stack? Or were they required to have the air cleaner iin place?

I guess I wasn't paying attention because it was a pantsloading moment when I caught sight of the vintage end panel art on the shelf at the LHS. I can't believe they saw fit to retool this gem in proper scale. I would have been just as happy with the orig but this is awsome. I'll be buying more, also. Mine was $19.95 at Discount Hobby in San Diego. Great price, comparatively.

Overall, I'm still pretty stoked just that Revell took the time to do a rare single car subject that doesn't have numbers on the side. I'm not in love with this particular rod, but I like it enough to have picked one up. My issues are more with the tooling quality. Twenty years ago it would have been great but it pales slightly compared to the recent Revell stuff. The bigger problem was that my chrome was awful. Warped trees, white shadows and a blotchy topcoat. Replacements are still a few weeks away, so plan B turned out to be this, a car with numbers on the side. This is a WIP shot of Sgt. Rat, box stock except for the decals and the shifter. I had clearance trouble with the fan motor also

I wonder what kind of numbers the publicity from this will generate. You don't see a lot of model car stuff on TV, I hope this stirs up some positive sales for the LHSs. I'm still a little upset with Mr. David over all the insulting of the Miata during the Banshee build but his promotion of our hobbie tempers that a bit. I want one.

All of 'em

Page 42, April '12 issue of MCM. My literary pinnacle

When the kit was new, I remember seeing a display model of Tom Daniel's Garbage Truck. I must have been about 6. It was perfectly painted, assembled and housed under a dome in a Monogram promotional piece. Nothing fancy, just super clean. My Dad had already perked my interest in styrene and then there was Dink, the neighbor. 4 years older than I, and his brother, Randy about 3 years older than Dink. They were my earliest model infuences.

Joe Martin's place is in Carlsbad now. A bigger facility built just about where the tower used to be for the Carlsbad Drag Strip. An impressive collection of work indeed.

The sign industry has been through some radical changes over the last few decades, tech wise. I've adapted as well as I can. My phone is still attached to the house with the trad springy cord, I like it that way. As mentioned, the new tech can be time saving and precise, but that leaves bosses wanting more filling of the idle time spent waiting for the technology to do its job. That lends entirely new aspect to being "busy" as we are assigned a weekload of work that needs to be done today. The downside to most of this is that two machines rarely share software and the different programs rarely resemble each other. That means you have to expunge one from the frontal lobe and replace it with another as you move from one task to another. Complicated.

Bikini Beach. Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Tommy Ivo was the Tech Advisor so the chase scene involves his hot rod buddies chasing the bad guy on a twin engine kart. They also have two runs of the Showboat 4 engine dragster that are miked. Silly beach movie but a fun car chase.

called back to duty in sign world plus a special project

After some diversions, this is where I stand with mine, about 95% done I figure. I was able to find one Moon disc with enough bubble to clear the stock hubcaps. It's an old one that I foiled. The thruster pods were removed from the front fenders. I going to leave the garnish through the rocker panels like you see it. One chrome spear and the rest in body color. I still need to foil the side windows and may refoil the windshield.

I'm gonna have to say that the term junk is a little too harsh for the cars that I grew up on. They were what they were. Build quality may have suffered and, yes, finding the right path to adhere to Federal changes was awkward. There are the planned obsolescence rumors as well. But we bought them, we drove them, and I loved many of them even the ones not on the usual list of collector cars of the 70's. They may not be my favorites but they served their duty well and left many icons. They did fade in the half life of today's imports but so do the radical hyperbikes of today. Find a GSX with 150,00+. They aren't considered junk, It's just a different scale.

Uh huh, still looks like Spectraflame Antifreeze to me. I'm hoping they throw in the matching guitar.

The choice of a new tool 50 Olds kinda baffles me, but so do a lot of other things. Difficult to appreciate the demographics that called out for that one. In My Opinion: The renaissance in styrene lies more in the technology being used than the variety in subject matter. While both seem like natural evolutions, different cars being tooled was an inevitability. The revolution is in the rendering of the 1:1. While I'm still not finding dipsticks, what comes in boxes today is generally of a higher quality, dontcha think? They are not without missteps but between the reissues, resurrections, and new stuff, we are riding a pretty nice wave right now. I think my biggest complaint today is the inconsistency of the decal sheets.

I saw Gears this morning with a segment featuring a "photo shoot" of Rat Roaster detail shots for the kit development. They also announced the winners of the model contest. Congrats to them, didn't catch the names however. i think the green is from a Hot Wheels Spectraflame line from one of the major paint companies.