Mr. Metallic

Ambitious project you have going here simply because you started with the Revell 56 pickup, a tough customer for sure. But the improvements you are making look great.

I know this thread is older Jim, but I'm hoping you were able to continue on with it. @OldNYJim

Are you going to use the blue glass? I think when i get around to mine I will use either Tamiya pearl blue or pearl white with the blue glass. If not going with the blue glass I would lean towards green

Elliot, I love what you're doing with this. I recently developed a fascination with this line of AMT AWB's. I think I have all of them now in one form or another. I wish they would bring back the Tempest again, this time with the tire upgrades and tinted glass like they've added to the others. I'll be following along with this build as a template for improvements to make. It makes it look better while still retaining the soul of the original kit. note on the collectors. i love your solution. My understanding is there used to be a part for this n the kits but they deleted it for some reason? 🤷‍♂️

Any further progress on this one? I always enjoy your fabrication work, so clean. I do have concerns about the location of the seat though. Not much legroom left in that already cramped interior.

Jealous that you've gotten to start this. I had an idea for the same thing pop into my head last year and bought a bunch of parts from 3D Scale Parts when they had their black friday sale. Who knows when I'll eer get to it, but I've got the parts at least. By the way, when you have STS make decals, do you have to provide the artwork, or do they do that too?

@Rocking Rodney Rat you out there my friend?

I've often thought of doing the same thing because I love the lines of the Laguna. Looks good so far.

The Revell 37 Ford pickup (and delivery) has some really nice artillery style wheels. There are lots of kits floating around out there that have stock flatheads in them. That same 37 pickup kit has a really nice one.

I went and was kinda disappointed. The sheer volume of kits was overwhelming (stacked floor to ceiling, several aisles wide and deep) but mostly very common older stock at full retail or higher. Like stuff that would struggle to sell for 1/2 what they have t marked at any any Chicagoland swap meet. Not many new kits, or supplies. Staff was very friendly.

I love your builds, so I know this one is in good hands. I will share one thing to look out for, not sure if any other builders have experienced this with this kit, but I do know of a couple in other collections of friends with the same issue. I built this kit when it first came out, and I noticed the last time I was moving that when I went to pack it up that the rear tires had split across the tread. Knowing your ability to 3D print things I was thinking you might want to make your own tires, since the wheels are awesome. That way you don't have to worry about the tires down the road (no pun intended)

I might have to check this one out. Looks like they have a ton of stuff in the pictures.

I see what you did there 😆

So very glad to se you back on this one and giving it the proper attention it has been waiting for. Love it!

Well, the actual Blue Beetle was only molded in 2 colors, a grey/blue and a bright blue. Then the tooling was changed to make the Tom Daniel designed Boss-A-Bone kit that was molded in red. Then the tooling was changed yet again in the 70's to make more of a street rod type. It's gone through minor revisions over the years until about 10 years ago when Revell retooled a bunch of the Blue Beetle parts and released it as the Blue Bandito.

When i saw they brought back the long roof for the Jeepster it piqued my interest, even though I have one with my older issue Jeepster already, and a MounT N Goat, but that boxart pushed me into I NEED IT territory. hopefully there's a cool decal sheet included too. And man, i never thought I would want another Xtreme pickup kit, but the revisions they've made and the sweet decal sheet might just make me get one if it hits HL. Anyone else think this is dying for an LS swap?

Trust me, I'm not a fan of undoing work that I felt was complete, it just strips any joy out of the project. So I understand your aversion to making the change. Thankfully it went pretty smoothly and the results look great.

Looking good. Glad you took the extra step with the lowering and fender mods. it was worth it.

Over the past 10 years or so I have developed a deep interest in the original Monogram hot rod kits from the early 60's, especially the Little T, Woody Wagon, Little Deuce, and of course, the Blue Beetle. You see tons of survivors out there built in the classic greyish-blue color of the first run and those are great, but i started to notice I was more intrigued by the survivors where the builder had painted the body, they looked so great in other colors too. Then I found out how many colors the Blue Beetle (and subsequent modifications to the basic tooling) that the kit had been molded in. With my current interest in building polished plastic builds I decided to try to build alternative colored Beetles. There are actually 8 molded colors in total including one rare one from Japan. But more on that later. The first one up was the Red Beetle. This was created by using the body parts from the quite rare Boss A bone version of this tooling. Don't worry collectors, i rescued a glue bomb to make this one. I combined it with real Blue Beetle parts to simulate a fictitious design proposal by Life cereal as a cross promotion between cereal and model kits, so I built alternate color versions of all 4 of the hot rod kits as if a marketing guy had run test shots of the tooling for a design proposal. It took me awhile to get back to this project after a couple false starts. I wanted to do the Yellow Beetle next, using the molded in yellow version of the tooling from the 90's. For this one I used many parts from the Blue Bandito retooling done by Revell/Monogram in the late 2010's where they recreated a lot of the parts from the Blue Beetle, with the exception of the Cadillac valve covers, and for some reason slightly smaller bucket seats. Started this a few years ago and then it sat dormant for a couple years. I decided to try my hand at a real wood bed using wood strips from the railroad department of the hobby shop, and a Morgan Automotive Detail pre-wired magneto. Otherwise it is all polished plastic with paint detailing. Not sure which one I will do next, but there's 6 more colors, and I have a unique idea planned for each version, while still remaining true to the Blue Beetle format. So stay tuned.

At first I wrote this off because you were adding the Malibu/chevelle wagon to the bigger Impala body. I'm like jeez, he should be using the 64 Malibu if he wants a malibu wagon. But now I see that wasn't your goal and I'm glad I kept reading because what you have done is ultracool, and looks great!

I'm digging the body color a lot. Loving the little fiddley details you're adding as well.

Unfortunately that was an issue with some of the initial runs. But I think it's still a current kit so you may be able to get a replacement. You can adapt the chopped stock-style windshield with a little judicious cutting and sanding on the cowl and the bottom of the windshield posts I chose to lay mine back a bit and used a now discontinued Drag City uptop.

You can bring the rear down by simply shaving the top off the airbags. You'll still have that heavy rake, but it will close up the gap. You may have to do a little massaging with the coilovers, but there's no attachment point for them on the chassis so you can let them land where they land. As far as the Monogram kits at ollies that had the Ollies tag UNDER the cellophane, I believe they were a contracted run just for Ollies, like they have recently done with some of the Atlantis stuff on their shelves now.

If you have a vehicle there's a great shop in Dekalb called Brians Pro Shop.

You know I have so many of your products. But the ones I miss most are the QC rear/crossmember combos. If I had know Shapeways was going to run into trouble I would have stocked up on those jus to have.