Mr. Metallic

Thanks for sharing Tim. I always forget about the Miss Deal wheels and tires and how good they can look. Now I'm off to find another Hull Raiser so I can have a pair of Interceptor valve covers for my next Ford-in-a-Ford project. ?

The extra time and attention you paid to the wheels really paid off. Nice clean build

Very clean build. You nailed your tribute. Nicely done.

I fixed my original post, of course that's a Falcon Thank you both for the info.

I feel like I could dive into that purple paint. Great build on another tough little Revell kit.

@magicmustang shared this pic elsewhere and it raised a few questions for me, so I thought I'd ask here in a new thread. These kits share a box art style, and that they all (possibly) used race-specific chassis (not based on stock). So, by my estimation the kits X'd out have been released in the last 20 years in a form near to the versions in these boxes (possibly with different box art). Am I correct in the ones that remain to be re-released? Unreal Edsel- Could be done since they just redid the frame for the Chevelle. Would probably require a new body and other unique parts since the original kit apparently used the 58 annual body Mr. Speed- I could have sworn this one came back but I'm not certain. it uses the Pirahna chassis, no? edit- they reissued the 53 Stude with Mr.Speed decals but it's still the venerable 3n1, not this racer. you could combine the body with the Pirahna chassis to get you there though. C2 Vette- don't remember ever seeing this one before. is it based on the stock kit? Details appreciated. Streaker- everyone is assuming that this will come out eventually now that the Time Machine Chevelle made it back. We know the body and other parts exist because they were in the famous "hanger shot" from a few years ago.

Agreed, love the box art. I've never seen them all collected together in one pic before. I was going to ask a question about these but I think I'll start a new thread so I don't derail this one.

Thank you, I seem to recall you raising that as an issue when you were building yours, and that's why I revisited your posts before I embarked on mine. Thanks for all your help and advice behind the scenes as well.

Just a couple helpful tips with regards to the good old Testors bottles. 1- Make sure you wipe any paint off the top of the jar and the threads before closing it up. 2- when you open the jar take the lid and put it on your bench so the interior part with the paint on it is facing down (sorry, couldn't figure out a better way to word that) We naturally put it face up, but doing that allows gravity to spread out the pool of paint so when you put the cap back on it acts like glue to seal the jar which then often requires a wrench to open it again (as you obviously are familiar with. 3- another thing you can do it rip a small piece of aluminum foil and place it on the mouth of the jar before you apply the cap. I always have a roll of cheap aluminum foil at my bench for various purposes, this is one.

Back in the thread where you were asking about these i was really hoping you would do something like this, and a couple weeks later here we are. So cool.

The version of this kit with the green-on-green 1:1 is the original issue, and I thought I remembered that Revell redid the valance for later issues. Can anyone confirm that?

Progress. I was kind of in a little bit of a holding pattern for a couple reasons, one of which was overcome last night. I needed to find/mix some paint to match the color of the plastic so I could get the seat painted and also use it to detail paint a few things. Well, I was able to stop by my LHS and grab a bottle of Tamiya orange and yellow and get to mixing. It took a few tries, but I think I nailed it. I checked this morning after I let it fully dry overnight and the final attempt is almost imperceptible against the plastic color. Here is the parts tree with my 3rd, 4th and 5th mixes. In real life the differences between these attempts are more obvious, but I feel attempt 5 just about nails it. I grabbed a spare seat from a glue bombed Little T that I parted out. Like I explained earlier, this was done so I could more closely match the box art by painting the seat, and trying to paint yellow over black plastic isn't any fun. So, I had to remove the chunks of the interior tub that came with the seats so it would sit in the new tub where it belonged. I also grabbed a steering wheel from a Monogram 32 Ford because I felt it was more period appropriate to what a builder in 1970 would have put in this rather than the wheel that came in the kit. Got it mounted to the kit supplied column. On the fence about whether to add a turn signal lever or not. In real life that would just be something for the driver to hit their knee on in this tight passenger compartment. A feature that I have been thinking about for awhile is that the Little T and SweeTee come with a short pickup box, a turtle deck and a big cylindrical fuel tank. I really like the look of the turtle deck and pickup bed, so rather than having to pick which one to use I decided to devise a way to switch them out at will. Thanks to some small rare earth magnets this is a possibility. Got the turtle deck done first. The other issue that has me treading water is that I may have found a solution to my thin-whitewall-slick issue. Someone offered to design and print me a set that meet my specs. Hope to have them in my hands by the end of the week. So, I can keep working on other things for now, but the rear suspension fitment is paused because I may need to modify the ride height once I get the tires. We'll see.

Just for some possible clarification, Burnt Copper is different than straight up copper. It typically has a slightly mottled or tarnished appearance which I think the production sample shown by Atlantis simulates well.

There are thin whitewall tires available in lots of kits, and Round2 has done a nice job of doing some pad printed ones in their kits, even doing some red stripes, and even blue and redline slicks. However, has anyone come up with a good method for adding thin whitewalls (or other colors) to their tires? It was suggested to buy some Gelly Roll gel pens and a circle template, but I am not getting a consistent stripe with them after trying about 30 different times. I have heard of some builders using a compas loaded with paint, wondering if I should try that? Has anyone come up with a good method for simulating them? The reason I am asking specifically is I am trying to get the look of these tires from the late 60's/early 70's. The ones that Round2 put in some kits, and their excellent "gasser" wheel/tire pack are smaller than what i need for my SweeTee project in both height and width.

Actual progress, and it feels so good. ? Drilled out the ends of the exhaust headers. Will be touched up with black and Molotow chrome. I also stripped the chrome off a couple parts, and dug up a spare molded in white seat to use instead of the molded in black kit piece. This is to aid the paint process, rather than trying to get yellow to successfully cover black plastic which would probably require several coats to reach full opacity, each coat risking a paint mishap on a rare part. I also secured a couple Gelly Roll gel pens to attempt the thin whitewall on the slicks, but so far the results are subpar. I used a circle template to get a consistent circle, but the coverage of the white is not great, and the blue and red are too dark to really show up on the black tire. Wish someone made some precut vinyl ones, or that Round2 offered some bigger slicks with the pad printed narrow white wall like the one in their awesome Gasser wheel/tire pack, just with slightly bigger slicks. Anyway, here's the pic. Next step is to blend up a good paint match for the Monogram plastic.

Glad to see you back, I love the enthusiasm you bring to the bench, and that you focus on hot rods (which aren't always bountiful around here)

Sadly I don't see evidence of the crossover and correct exhaust manifolds in my Roth version of the kit.

Edit- I changed the title of this thread because I figured it will be easier to just feature all of the builds I have planned in this series all in one thread since anyone that follows along with it will probably be interested in all the subjects I plan to tackle. I put true in quotes in the title because these kits are the ones (Son Of Ford/SweeTee/ Boss A Bone) with design updates by TD , but are based on the pre-existing Monogram tools in their Hot Rod only line (Little T/Little Deuce/Woody Wagon/Blue Beetle) meaning the kits never included a stock version like the 34 Ford/Model A Coupe/Model A phaeton and others did). TD partnered with Monogram to produce a ton of kits, but they are mostly show rods, so that's why I'm making the distinction. Now, lets get started: I have been in an extended build slump for the better part of the last 5 years, with little output since then, but especially the last 8 months. I had actual cobwebs all over my bench. The ideas are always churnning away in the brain but the desire and/or time just hasn't been there. I was able to wrap up the last of my outdoor projects for this year so I was able to carve out a little time over the weekend in my hobby room. First order of business was to clean off the bench. Of course, i'm still buying things, so first up was the pile of purchases to sort through and put away. it was like Christmas. All the old projects on my benches were just making me sad, so I needed a clean slate. That meant carefully gathering all the scattered parts for various projects of my one bench and putting them away. Once that was done and a little deep cleaning I was starting to feel better. Then I needed a project to work on. Something pretty straightforward and satisfying was what I needed. Not kitbashing, scratchbuilding or heavy detailing. The perfect kit in my mind ended up being this kit... Monograms SweeTee. Pay no attention to the second bench. This is what they both looked like before Operation Clean Slate For those of you not familiar with this kit it is the Little T tooling, with a sprinkling of Tom Daniel flavor to update it in 1970. The parts in this kit changed from the Little T are the wheel and tires, exhaust headers and the replacement of the 6 carb setup with a blower. Bob Spedding @TooOld did a great buildup of this kit here on MCM a few years ago, and it inspired me to do my own version. The plan is to do it mostly box stock with paint detailing, with a couple simple upgrades (most notably a pre-wired magneto from Morgan Automotive Details). I'm thinking about adding a thin "whitewall" to the slicks as was the style of the time in either blue or red. Haven't had much success using my Gelly Roll pen yet, but I'm going to do some more practice to see if I can make it happen.

Maybe this thread should focus on kits that were truly only issued one time and never re-released or modified into anything else? For example the Monogram Land Rover and AMT 1911 Chevy.

You are definitely the person to do that. I don't know that anyone has done that to completion.

Good to see this one back. I missed out on the fender work you performed. Stance is looking mighty fine, and that inspiration car is killer.

@tim boyd

Those tires would indicate these are originals. The "new" issue from a few years ago did not have plastic tires, but newly tooled rubber tires to match the 1:1 Black Widow showcar that was designed after the original model kit. It's all a big circle isn't it? Model kit inspires showcar, showcar inspires improvements to model kit ? Here's the showcar, complete with cool retro box art inspire display

The 49 Woody is actually an offshoot of the Revell chopped 49 Merc tooling. So those kits you mentioned are both part of the "version-ing" practice that Revell (and Moebius) does now where any new tool is created there are at least 1 or more additional versions planned. See also the Revell 57 Ford (sedan and wagon), 71 Mustang (BBoss and mach 1)and several others. Some versions are more extensive than others (like the complete new body and interior tooling for the Merc woody) but at least 50% of the kit is reused when making the next version. The exception to this practice would be the all new tooling Foose kits (Caddy and F-100 pickup). Both of which are still in the catalog 6-7 years after introduction. They are getting their moneys worth out of that investment.

Stunning paint, great stance.