Force

Nice.

Looking good.

I have the original issues from 1997-98 and they were the blue and white kit# 8315, the blue street machine kit# 8319 and the yellow and white pro shop kit# 8455 and they came out pretty much at the same time within a year or so, all before RC2 bought AMT/ERTL. Except for the original issues of the new tool kits they haven't been out that often, I count to four for the regular kit and once for the kit with photo etch (the tin 100 year anniversary version), the street machine has maybe been re-issued once as I have seen it with different size boxes with the same boxart and kit number, while the original tooling from the early 60's has been out numerous times even after the new tool kits were released. If I remember right there were some issue with the tooling for these kits when everything was moved from Mexico to China. As for the Coca Cola stuff I don't mind at all...you are free to choose if you want to use it or not, I don't collect boxart nor collecting Coca Cola stuff so it doesn't matter to me...if it's a good kit I'll buy it.

The 57 Chevy is the latest tool from late 1990's, not the early tool from the 60's...so it's not that common as it hasn't been out that much. I have suspected that is the case for some time now....they are issuing almost everything with the Coca Cola brand lately, almost so much that it almost get's ridiculous. Coca Cola is one of the companies who spends the highest percentage of revenue for advertising so I don't find it unlikely. I don't care if the kits have Coca Cola decals and stuff, it's a free World so you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

Yes as far as I know it's a straight re-issue of the later 1100 cab version of the wrecker so it will have the Cummins NTC 6 cylinder and the later Air Trac suspension with the bigger air bags, so it's not the same as the recent re-issue of the California Hauler or the first version of the wrecker wich was based on the California Hauler. The "twin doghnut" air bag suspension was called Stabilaire originally made by Western Unit Suspension and was offered by Peterbilt from the factory from 1964, this suspension was in the original small window Unilite cab 359 and the 352 kits, but Peterbilt stopped using it after some years and went over to the Air Trac wich appearently gave a smoother ride than the Stabilaire did. After Peterbilt stopped using the Stabilaire Freightliner started to use it and called it Air Liner, and this suspension is in most of the Italeri US truck kits except for the Peterbilts.

I'm looking forward to see what you will do with this.

Yes I fully understand.

Futurattraction has these, CNC machined aluminum. And there are a couple 3D printed versions available at Shapeways.

Nice to see that you're at it again Rickard.

If the engine is mounted low this is a much better choice than a deep sump pan as it's not much deeper than a stock pan. I'm using one of these for my 390/445 stroker I'm putting together for my 63½ Galaxie right now, the car is so low that I don't dare using a deeper pan but with this I get the additional oil volume anyway as it holds 8 quarts. They are not that hard to scratch build.

Yep...you can't argue with that.

Except for the headlights I also have a hard time coming to terms with the look of the front fenders...they are a bit oversized and bulky for my taste and sits too high.

Yes it's a nice model...but haven't anyone noticed that this topic is over 12 years old and the guy haven't been on here since July 2015.

Looks perfect KJ, I like your work a lot.

Maybe it would look better if the lights were mounted lower.

Looks good. But I see one thing that bothers me...the fuel, speedometer and temp gauge faces are silver on a 1964 Fairlane and also the Thunderbolt, not black. I had a 64 Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe for 12 years but sold it 3 years ago when I bought the 1963½ Galaxie 500 XL I have now.

The CTM lights are very nice and they have them both in red and orange and a couple of styles, I have bought a couple of sets for future builds but haven't used them yet but I intend to on the right build. But it do add up if you want to do something like the truck above (we call them "cristmas trees" over here), I counted the ones I see on the side to 38 just on the tractor alone and I have for sure missed a couple, so that's at least 76-78 lights for both sides, 11-12 under the bumper, and god knows how many there are on the back wall of the sleeper as it looks to be more than a few if you look at the reflection on the front of the trailer, and then you have all the lights on the trailer on top of that. Lets say you need around 100 lights total (a nice round figure) to do a similar tractor-trailer combination, that's 65 bucks just on lights, 50 lights is half of that, you can of course use less lights but you don't get the "christmas tree" feeling if you use too few. The combination in your picture above certainly have a lot more than 100 lights and is as you say a bit overkill...but not that uncommon. So that's probably one reason, I think another reason is what style the build is as it decides what lights you use and how many, because old trucks from the late 60's and 70's as most of the kits we have now are doesn't have lots of accessory lights on them although there are exceptions.

Yeah, he didn't route the wires to the right place and didn't even put in a distributor, if he had the oversized wires wouldn't have room on it anyway.

Well that would be quite expensive if you are going to do that with the CTM light kits, there are only 10 lamps in the kit and Jamie at Moluminum takes $6.50 each. So count how many lamps you need, divide with 10 so you get how many sets you need and take that number times 6.50.

1:25 as most of the AMT kits are.

As I also live in Sweden I have to say yes, but that configuration is more for the central European countries where they mostly use 2 axle tractors, the ones we have here are mostly 3 or more axles. Nice work Mattias.

Yes, I know they are not exacty right but they are the closest Joseph has right now, the vacuum diaphragm housing for the secondarys can be carefully removed to make it look like it's mechanical and the choke housing can be cut down slightly to more resemble the carbs "Grumpy" used, but it's harder to fix the secondary metering block as the secondary side doesn't have any on these carburetors...the regular 4160 series carbs don't have a metering block on the secondary side so what Joseph has is right...but the ones used in racing was modified. The carburetors are very visible on a race car model as many race cars don't use air cleaners (at least for drag racing) so they need to be very detailed to look right on the model. IMHO Joseph has the best detailed carburetors out there, but most of the ones he offers today are not really suited for race car use were the carbs are out in the open as the choke butterfies are closed on many of the carbs he has now. Race cars don't have chokes and it's the first thing to go when you adapt a carb for racing use, so if the choke butterfly on his carbs had been open it could be cut off and the venturi detail inside the choke housing can be shown, but the best option is to leave the choke butterfly off alltogether on a racing version, in that case you can keep the choke housing as is or it can be cut down and/or shaved off if you want to. Today Holley and others offer carburetors for racing use off the shelf without any choke housing what so ever, but it was another thing back then when you had to modify regular units. Many of the racing carbs are also all mechanical with no vacuum housings. So I wish Joseph did more racing versions of his carburetors and I also wish that he would do detailed versions of the Holley 4500 Dominator, because the Dominators in the Revell/Monogram Pro Stock kits are awful and the best I have seen so far is the ones Futurattraction has with resin body and photo etched venturi detail but they are a bit fiddly to put together: The best model kit versions I have seen so far are from Jo-Han, they are definately not perfect but decent.

Nice work. I like the Lola T-70 Mk III a lot but I wish someone did it in 1:24-1:25 scale...I don't have room for big scale kits.

My thoughts exactly.