Art Anderson

For all his great products, the vast majority of which are exceptionally nice and accurately done, the only straight 8 engine I've seen Norm offer is NOT an accurately done Buick straight 8, but rather a stretched Chevrolet 216 inline 6, not at all the same as the Buick straight 8 as offered by Ken Kitchen. Art

One thing to keep in mind here, it seems to me: While someone else's practices when marketing old kits on say, eBay, may disappoint, even anger others, whatever it is that person is offering up is his/her property. When last I looked, anything that I own (or you all own!) is your's to do with as I (and you) wish, with no questions optional (barring anything illegal or immoral). And, that goes with such things as the model car kits and related stuff we all want to enjoy. If that means that someone is willing to "part out" a kit, even to the disgust or down right anger of others, it seems to me that is that seller's right to do so; and thus not really worthy of criticism based on the premise that someone else has been deprived of the opportunity to buy that kit (or old builtup) intact for themselves. In short, I am reminded of that old and trite cliche' from my boyhood years, which while probably not quite correct, goes "Possession is 9-points of the Law"--which old schoolboy pronouncement does seem to support what I said immediately above. I may well be as disappointed that someone else is parting out a desirable old model car kit that I'd love to have to build--but it's his, not mine, and it's his decision as how best to dispose of it for cash. Art

Simple--the image has to be posted on a website for Google's Search Engine to find it. Many of the photo's I have on Fotki, for example, show up in a Google Image Search if I "Google" under the same car name. Art

Yes, Little Joe Weatherly's Nascar Grand National '61 Catalina (for those who never followed "dark side" NASCAR, "Grand National" back before 1972 denoted NASCAR's top level series). Art

Perfect references, Harry! Art

I ordered some paint from Jameston back in May: He shipped it out, sent me confirmation of that, and 3 weeks later, it had not arrived. Emailed him, he responded very quickly, with a confirmation number to track it. I went to USPS website, entered the tracking number, and that d----d package had gone from his hometown, to Denver, then BACK to Salt Lake City, where it sat for Memorial Day weekend, then back to Denver, where it sat for a day or two, then on to Memphis TN, and a week after that, finally to me here in Lafayette IN. Turns out that if you ship something the cheapest way on USPS, it goes by FEDEX, who apparently could care less that it gets to the customer in anything like a reasonable time frame. Art

Phineas T. Barnum (yeah, that was his real first name!) said it quite well: "There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him!" EOS Art

Andy, I believe you have the answer here. Depending upon the factory that iinjection-molds the caps, their tooling may or may not need to have some vent in the finished caps to enable them to release quickly from the mold, more than likely the "female" part of the tooling. Without say, an ejector pin in that female mold, it could be a serious production problem to have those caps sticking inside the tooling, necessitating the mold press being shut down, possibly having to have a tooling teck come over, remove the offending piece. Art

That's probably how the AMT '61 Continental came to be as you have it. Bear in mind, those AMT "Annual" 3in1 Customizing kits were spun off of promotional model cars that the company had to have ready at, or within a week or two after new car introduction time. That meant their working with pictures of the clay mockups, such basic loft drawings as the automakers' styling departments could let them have, along with pictures of pre-production sample cars built well before the actual car went onto the assembly lines. More than likely, such information became available no sooner than say, 10-12 months ahead of the actual production models being available in dealer showrooms, as it takes, AT A MINIMUM, that long a lead time to develop a model car to production. Art

For me, it all depends on the era of the car, the taillights: While today, taillights are molded plastic inside and out, with a bright reflector surface inside, that wasn't the case decades ago (think 1970's on back here), and lenses have changed as well--what are red or amber lenses today, were glass until the late 1940's or early 1950's. So, when considering taillights from years ago, think a darker appearance than what we see on the street today, with modern cars, when they aren't lit up. With all this in mind, for models of cars of the early 70's on back, particularly those kits having plated taillight details, I prefer Testors Stoplight Red, which I tend to lay on rather thickly, as the thicker the coat, the darker red it becomes. Tamiya clear red on such plated lens detail winds up looking very unrealistic to my eyes, more like the look of a colored glass Christmas tree ball than a taillight lens. The same thing, for me at least, is true of amber front turn signals molded into a plated bumper--clear yellow has that tinsel look, but Turn Signal Amber (Testors) gives me a much closer to real appearance. With modern taillights, I foil an unplated backdrop surface, then use clear red and clear yellow on the lenses, again something that is far more real looking in those cases, than Stoplight Red or Turn Signal Amber. Art

The material (plastic) thickness of model car kit bodies has been somewhat "all over the map" over the years folks. Depending on the era that a particular kit was tooled and produced, thickness does vary. Also, an ordinary micrometer has a matching pair of flat, round contact surfaces which are meant for measuring flat surfaces, as well as the convex surfaces of round material--but to try and use one on a model kit body means one contact of the mike will be on a convex (outside) curved surface, while the other will touch the inside, or concave surface--no way to get any accurate reading that way. Early model car kits from say, AMT or JoHan, if models of then-currently new cars, were molded from body tooling originally (created for promotional model/toy cars--hence the material thicknesses of those body shells can, in places, be as much as .070" thick, with the thinnest being perhaps .050". This was due to the need to mold promotional models in a "shatterproof" plastic for toy safety (early styrene plastics were hard and brittle, could break into shards sharp enough to cut your finger!). The plastics intended for those molds was first acetate, then ABS, both of which are happiest when molded thicker. Modern model kit bodies tend to use thicknesses in the .040-.050" (1mm to 1.25mm) range, with perhaps some .030" areas along the way, with a rew areas as thin as .025", due to the softer, more flexible modern polystyrene plastic blends, and tend to be a lot more uniformly done than was possible before digital technology came along. So, a bit of a variety of thicknesses of Evergreen or Plastruct styrene plastic really makes a lot of sense to lay in here. Art

Are the tires truly rubber, or PVC (vinyl)? That would make a big difference! Art

In 1947, Nash offered the Ambassador as a "Woodie" 4-dr sedan: http://barthworks.com/cars/forneycars/woodies/photos/1947nashsuburban3.jpg Ford Motor Company produced the Sportsman convertible, a woodie convertible, as both a Ford and a Mercury, 1948-48. I'm not aware of any traditional coupes having been produced in woodie form though. Art

More than likely it's 1/32 scale. A Rolls Royce Silver Ghost is a HUGE car, even for its day. Art

I've seen a couple of pics of this Jeep before--it sticks in my mind that it was cobbled up with the cockpit roof and windshield from a wrecked B-17 at a US Army Air Forces base in the UK circa 1944. Art

Well, in real life, the '57 Chevrolet hardtop was exactly the same body shell as the convertible--with just a steel top welded on, in place of all the convertible top mechanisms and lock-down fittings on the wincshield header. So, if Revell did their homework correctly, basically the conversion you are asking about should be at least theoretically possible. Art

No. That "Hood Sceep" look of the '54 Hudson hoods was merely an appearance thing--it wasn't open. Art

One thing to always keep in mind here: Many modelers say a manufacturer should just take this part, or that part, from one kit and insert it in another kit. Frankly, that is impossible to do, unless the entire parts tree (sprue tree) was done in separate tooling, and has compatibility with another model car subject. That's just not at all possible--model kit tooling is a series of large, hardened steel mold blocks. Ar

Comets were all on the longer platform that was used for the Falcon station wagons, Sedan Deliveries, and Ranchero's. Falcon sedans, hardtops and convertibles were built on a shorter platform, IIRC>

Model kit boxes, certainly model car kit boxes have been pretty much standard-sized for years now. It's something that retailers (and I was in the retail hobby shop business, in one form or another for right at 30 years!) came to demand, in order to be able to maximize the use of necessarily limited shelf space. I still remember having to arrange model kits (all subjects, all manufacturers) as much by box size as by mfr. or subject area in order to do this. On the flip side, of course, was the problem of not so much box "damage", but kit damage inside due to too large (or fragile--remembering the original packaging for AMT's '59 El Camino kit--LOTS of returns on that kit, due to squashed roofs!) a body shell to fit inside with all the other parts. Also, bear in mind that kits from other countries (thinking RoG, Heller, Italeri, Tamiya, Fujimi et.al. here: Those model kits are produced primarily for their home market, where retail stores and customer/modeler preferences can be much different than here in the US. Couple the differences in expectations overseas (Europe, the UK, Japan etc.) with the necessity of shipping those kits long distance does necessitate different packaging (such as the cardboard dividers in the kit box, to prevent the box's being easily crushed, to the detriment of the body shell), along with the different style of parts sprues tooled up in other countries also dictates a different set of kit box proportions. In addition, there is a great deal of difference, say, from an AMT or JoHan kit of 1958-61 than most any model car kit produced in the US after that--those early 3in1 kits generally had fewer than 50 parts, as opposed to well over 100 parts in today's kits--AND those early model car kits had bodies with MUCH thicker material thickness, which made them far less prone to warpage or breaking when packed in a tight, small box. Things to bear in mind here Art

I bought one today, and frankly, the decals SUCK big time! What Revell did (dark yellow ochre) on the real car is a bright metallic gold. Shame on Hobbico bean counters for that one!

Incandescent light bulbs throw out an awful lot of infrared heat, which can (and WILL) warm up some areas of a paint job more than others, particularly with multicolor paint jobs. I learned that lesson way back in the spring of 1970, in my dorm room at college, when I had diligently masked and painted the black & white checkered paint scheme for a Bardahl sponsored 1968 Gurney Eagle (MPC kit). I put two study lamps on it, about 18" away, in open air--turned them on, came back about an hour later, only to find that several of the black checkers had softened, and warped irreparably. Food dehydrators won't do what those 75W light bulbs did. Art

The second one was called "Red Arrow" by Ford. "999" itself was so-named to associate it with the then land-speed recordholder, New York Centray & Hudson River's 4-4-0 steam locomotive, #999, which was the first man-made vehicle of any sort to clock a speed faster than 100mph, in the mid-1890's (#999 the locomotive exists in Chicago, Harry--in the Hall of Transportation of the Museum of Science & Industry, albeit with smaller driving wheels than were on it when it set that speed record). Art

Not only that, but the car still exists, in the General Motors Historical Collection.

ABSOLUTELY it still exists--permanent exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum. Art