Chuck Most

Nice one. Revell needs to reissue these. Like, right now-ish.

Starting to look a lot like the Transtars still in service in my area. Nice!

Gee, if I can count my father, uncle's and grandfather's vehicles as my own, I've got about 20.

My grandmother had a '62 Buick Skylark 2-door hardtop- white with a blue interior. Wait, what do I mean had... she STILL has it! She's one of those 'if it ain't broke don't fix or replace it" kind of people.

This one's got 'why didn't I think of that' written all over it. So obvious and effective... once somebody else points it out! Fantastic tip.

Awesome! So want one of these.

Just to clarify- only the most recent issues of the kit come with two engines- the earlier, separate stock and custom versions only come with one engine each- four bbl in the stocker and a choice of three twos or dual quads in the custom version.

More than likely- the front tires stick out past the fenders quite a bit more than I'd like, and it's high enough off the ground that running boards of some sort will be needed.

I think Moebius has the quality part down pretty well, so at this point, I'd have to say I'm also more worried about when it'll come out than how accurate it will be.

I actually stopped buying AMT kits during the twilight years of the RC2 regime, because I was so tired of the endless reissues of the same five kits and the ever-dwindling quality. I'm glad to see RC2 taking steps in the other direction- yeah, they're still reissuing some of the same kits, but they are actually making an attempt to repair or replace tooling when needed, box art quality is improved by leaps and bounds, and their curbside kits of late model kits show a lot of promise. Not only that but the kits they are reissuing now are kits that I'm sure RC2's management never even bothered to look around in the warehouse for- like the Phantom Ford van, the AMC Gremlin, and a few others soon to be released. Even if all they do from today forward are reissues- there's more than enough stuff in the AMT, MPC, and PL tooling banks that hasn't been seen in years (if not decades) to keep a lot of people happy for a long time.

Ever wonder what a Hudson medium-duty truck may have looked like? No? Well, uh... yeah. Anyway, here's my interpretation of how one may have looked. Hudson did in fact build pickups until 1947, and they did a 1/2 ton pickup prototype in 1948 based on a cut-down four-door car and a '47 Hudson bed. I built something similar with the '53 Moebius kit, but I still wanted to take it a little bit further as Hudson never did produce anything larger. So... I started out with the '52 kit, which is identical to the '53 Club Coupe with NASCAR specific parts- not that that'll matter for this project! The Step Down Hudson was a unibody car, so I did retain some of the stock frame and spliced in the rails from a '55 Chevy. Suspension parts were dredged up from the spares box. The car body was cut down and a new rear cab wall was cut from .030" styrene. I sprayed the body in Rustoleum Oregano, and robbed a set of 8-bolt dually wheels from everybody's favorite dually wheel donor- Monogram's '91 F-350. Here's the still in progress frame- you can see the Hudson's lower unibody frame in place. I figure if Hudson had really tried such a thing, they'd have tried to retain as much of the unibody structure as possible, to lower costs, and as a selling point for the truck. "Car-like comfort, structural rigidity, etc..." The majority of the car's brightwork was removed, and I added some fender-mounted signals from an AMT clear amber sprue. I'm still thinking of adding some cab clearance lights. Not sure what kind of body I plan to use- I'm thinking of a wrecker or dump body. I'm designing the truck to aproximate the specs of a 1-1/2 ton vehicle, so it won't have anything too extreme back there. The engine I may use is another what-if, it is an 'industrial' prototype Hudson six with an OHV cross-flow head.

Cool!

'Bent eight' is just a slang term for a V8. I think you might be reading a little too far into it... even though when you think about it your explaination makes sense.

Please tell me that you are reffering to the speedometer, not your driving apparel...

Remember that Matador? The paint is Rustoleum 'Lagoon', which is a suede. I'm kind of toying with the idea of leaving it in suede- guess I'll see if it grows on me.

Oddly, Captain Slow's Triumph actually worked pretty well- once you considered it was just an old roadster with a mast.

Well, hopefully there will be (another) Avanti in the works here shortly- I've got a few very untoward ideas in mind for one...

Yeah- I've seen that resin one, but I'm thinking reworking an AMT Cummins might be a bit more financially-feasible route for me! Thanks for the suggestions.

Nice!

I'd be up for a resin-body Airflow (cough, cough). I've never seen this Franklin model. I'll definitely be keeping an eye open for one now.

I'm looking for something that would be correct for a 1952/53-vintage truck in 1:25 scale, 1:24 if that won't pan out. Is there anything out there that would work? Could a fairly common kit engine be backdated?

If you wanted to go with something late model, you could also rob the Shebly-tuned Aurora 4.0 V8 from the Revell Shelby Series 1, though you might need to find a conventional gearbox as that car has the late Corvette type torque tube/rear-mounted transaxle.

I think Matt put it best- the Heller is like the big Airfix kit at half the size- very nicely done. I haven't built the Heller kit, but I've seen built and unbuilt examples of them in person and they're very nicely done. I do have the 1:12 MPC version of the Airfix kit- unfortunately it is VERY incomplete, so I'm building only the engine as a display piece.

There's a guy a few miles from me who has a '69 Mustang body on a late '70's F-250 frame. I get the burning desire to kill him every time I drive by. But at least the Charger looks halfway decent compared to that Mustang.

Not a GM product.