Chuck Most

It's the charcoal color from the Testors One Coat line... I don't recall the actual name and I'm too lazy to look. I did use Tamiya Gunmetal to touch it up in a few areas though. It's a pretty close match.

A while back I picked up a nasty old built up '62 Continental convertible. Since many of the stock parts were missing I opted to rebuild it as a period custom. The engine is from a '65, an F-100 Wild Kat grille was modified to fit, and I used the triple-stripe tires and wire wheels from the recent '65 Riv reissue. The first two pics show how it looked when I got it, and the others depict it now.

This is an old custom that was recently unearthed and is being driven and slowly restored. I chopped the windshield, lowered it, and fitted some US Royal Masers from an old Revell parts pack. The stock V12 remains but it's been fitted with a "slingshot" adaptor to fit two Stromberg carbs.

Love the detail on the tracks! That guy must take recovering vintage auto parts very seriously if he's going out in weather where skis and tracks are requirements to make the journey. ?

About eight to twelve years ago, I got an old "Sisco Sizzler" issue of the AMT '53 F100. I swapped in the dropped front axle from a Revell '56, and the wheels, tires, and rear axle from a '60 Starliner. And there the project sat until a few weeks back, when I cobbled together a Lincoln 462 from spares and slid it into the chassis. I went "barn find" style with the body, added some '65 Mustang tail lights, and made the little C-shaped deluxe trim pieces for the hood emblems.

First, a recap on the backstory.... Continuing from there.... After a few months of running the sightseeing tour, Jerry found himself with a problem. Business was a little too good, and the five-passenger capacity of The Sightseer just wasn't cutting it. Adding full bench seats to the second and third row would only bring the car up to seven passengers and hardly seemed worth the effort. There were a number of 15 passenger vans for sale in the area, but Jerry felt a van lacked the kind of pizzaz his operation needed. Then, surfing the web one evening, he stumbled across another '65 Lincoln Continental. Originally built as a convertible limo, the car had been a near clone of The Sightseer at one point. At some time during the '80's the limo had been converted into a tandem axle, and a hot tub had been installed in the rear deck. Even though the car was in Indiana, Jerry went to have a look at it. The owner had a ton of documentation and photos of the car- at one point it had been painted hot pink, and served a casino with gold plated bull horns over the grille and a rather questionable custom grille treatment. The present owner had repainted it in it's original charcoal hue and reinstalled the original grille, but had opted to leave the later tandem axle conversion because he'd grown fond of the look, and it would have been too much work to convert it back to a single axle. He had made a tonneau cover to enclose the area where the hot tub had been, and there the project had stalled. A few hours and a couple grand lighter in the wallet later, Jerry had the tandem limo in his shop ready for surgery. It turned out being the easiest conversion Jerry had done to date. The car actually ran and drove perfectly when he bought it, after all! Jerry fashioned a passenger platform to fit over the former hot tub location. Fashioned from steel and padding purchased from a company that makes those super-comfy fiberglass fast food benches, it was sprayed in glossy black paint and bolted onto the car using a Jerry-engineered system of brackets and supports. A local vinyl shop printed out some signs for the side. Jerry had toyed with the idea of painting it to match Sightseer 1, but even though the older paint job was far from perfect, he liked the color (even if it was a bit somber for his tastes) and the nice appearance of the car, Jerry felt, elevated his business and gave it just a bit more credibility. At full capacity, Sightseer II could seat up to 17 in it's original seats and the seating platform Jerry had fashioned. Sightseer I was relegated to "overflow" duty at first, then after Jerry had hired a couple of other drivers, two tours would go concurrently, as Sightseer I would begin on one side of the county and II would start on the other, and each limo would meet up at Jerry's house for the customary BBQ dinner at the end of the tour.

That was the first thing I thought- "Let's do an updated version of the base '04-'05 base halogen grille and slap it on this thing." I didn't know the first gen Colorado was "retro" enough to be a design influence. Don't worry guys, with a design this ugly... they'll sell a bunch of them. Pickups have to be in your face to sell these days, it seems. We're living in strange times when the Ram is the tamest looking pickup design...

I like it! Sorry if I missed it in the text, but the bumpers... are they weathered intentionally, or has some of the chrome worn off to expose that classy late '80's tan AMT plastic? Because either way I like the "used" look it gives to the old Goat.

Ok... some of you may vaguely remember this guy. Some of you may not. Either way it's been nearly a decade since ol Jerry has haunted this forum. So here's a quick recap... The Mobile Pork Incinerator After losing his job at a metal fabrication shop, Jerry found himself looking for work. He ended up getting a deal he couldn't pass up... an old restaurant on the outskirts of town that had been closed down due to numerous failed health inspections and possibly one or two unexplained disappearances of kitchen staff. After spending a few weeks cleaning up dead cockroaches and giving the building a pretty extensive remodel, he was ready to open "Scary Jerry's International House Of Pork". Some type of rolling business card seemed appropriate. He figured an mobile pig roaster would be just the ticket, so surveying his backyard for raw materials, he dug up enough cast-off junk to build this '53 Ford, powered by a hopped up old Lincoln 430 that Jerry just happened to have laying around for some reason. Over the next several months, Jerry promoted the restaurant by going to various fairs and festivals across the state. The Ice Box Sadly, Jerry spent a bit too much time giving away free food at events and not nearly enough time charging people money for it at the restaurant, so he closed up shop. Since he fished a lot, he thought why not sell fresh fish and bait right there at the dock? Needing a vehicle, he once again dipped into his backyard junkpile and produced a refrigerated Lincoln...A '65 Lincoln Continental with a special, Jerry-fabricated extendo-trunk, with a blue tarp and a belly full of ice to keep his fresh catches fresh. When you boast about having the Pine River's Best Catches*, you've got to back up your claim. Jerry won the car in a poker game when a buddy was short 20 bucks. The friend said the car was worth at least that much in scrap at the time, and Jerry agreed. A few years later Jerry sold the grille and front bumper to a local man restoring a '65 Continental limo for fifty bucks... a tidy 30 dollar profit. The revived old Connie became a mobile ice box and Jerry was a fixture at the local rivers and lakes during the summer months. BUT... after a summer of that, Jerry thought sitting out in the sun all day drinking beer wasn't much good for his health, and besides, winter was coming. So, Jerry once again pooled and retooled his resources. *= The Pine River's Fish are great... compared to fish caught in and around the area of the Chernobyl disaster. The Portable Sawmill Jerry had an old Freuhauf flat bed trailer laying around because, well... why wouldn't a guy like Jerry have an old 40 foot flat bed trailer laying around? He converted the trailer into a makeshift sawmill, and purchased a junky but running old Dodge L700 from a local junkyard. As it turned out, Jerry was a little TOO good at being a lumberjack. After nearly de-foresting all of Gratiot County, Jerry was tied up in the infamous "Lumbergate" scandal. He decided to do the noble thing and step down, but knew he'd not only need a new occupation, but to win back the respect of his neighbors. The Crop Duster A new pest was invading the gardens and fields of Jerry's hometown, and nothing could stop it. No pesticide worked, and remedies which DID kill the pests also killed the plants. After some experimentation in his kitchen, Jerry found a mixture of regular pesticide, salt water, and the liquid wrung from his own dirty gym socks would kill the bugs without hurting the plants. Now, he needed a vehicle to deploy his miracle concoction. I think you can guess what happened next... The truck itself was a hodge-podge of Ford F-150 and 250, which Jerry purchased from the local junkyard. Nobody was more surprised than Jerry that he didn't already have a late '80's F-Series out behind the barn to begin with. The tank is Jerry's old septic tank. (Rid-X is no match for the remnants of Jerry's Taco-Bell-heavy diet!) Jerry made his own boom for spraying fields, and the spray gun is an old power washer part, cloaked in a fake plastic rifle simply because, well, Jerry has a flair for the dramatic. An old lawnmower engine powers the boom nozzles, spray gun, and pressurizes the roof-mounted marker foam barrel. And, of course, the whole thing is soaked in Jerry-caliber rust, dust, and crust. Rumor has it Jerry has no idea what paint looks like... Once again, Jerry did his job a bit too well. He had all but completely exterminated the Gratiot County Soybean Borer. Since 2009, only sporadic sightings of the voracious creature had been reported... at one point the insect was featured on an episode of MonsterQuest. To this day Alex Jones claims that Gratiot County Soybean Borers are being dispersed by the via chemtrails by the government. But in reality, the once-dangerous pest has been kept in check. While this was good news for the farmers of Gratiot County, it was bad news for Jerry, as he now needed to find a new source of income, yet again. And that's where the series of builds ended for almost a decade, until.... The Sightseer The Gratiot County area has a rich history, if you are into the history of farming, alcoholism, and poverty, mostly. Even so, there are a number of points of interest in the area, so Jerry thought why not give people guided tours? Since Jerry had become something of a local legend in his own right, and he knew many of these areas pretty well, who better than him to be the tour guide? Remember how Jerry sold the front bumper and grille off of what became his Ice Box Lincoln, to a restorer who was working on a '65 limo? Well, turns out the limo restoration stalled for many years, and Jerry was able to purchase the hulk for a reasonable sum. It was rough, but mostly solid and complete. From past experience with the 430 engines in both the Mobile Pork Incinerator and Ice Box, as well as his very first car, a '61 Continental, Jerry had no problems getting the old MEL big block to run. Once the car was running and mechanically refurbished enough to be reliable and safe to carry passengers, Jerry thought it could use a bit of an appearance makeover. A friend said that Jerry seemed bewildered by the idea of paint. That being said, he did happen to have some generic yellow paint laying around, and applied that using a borrowed spray gun. Lettering was done by hand with some One-Shot that Jerry picked up at a hobby shop. With all that done, The Sightseer was ready to do it's thing... shuttling five passengers to the various historic sites in the county. Each tour would conclude at Jerry's house, where the Mobile Pork Incinerator was on hand to treat the tourists to a BBQ dinner.

The original owner traded it in on an SC.

Here we have an old EV conversion, based on the venerable Ford Ranger bones. In this case I started with the AMT Ranger STX kit, and fitted it with a scratchbuilt EV drivetrain. It also has a few subtle aero tricks, like the grille filler panel and smooth bumper. Over the years a couple of the Moon wheel discs fell off, so they were replaced with some old Lincoln full wheel covers the owner had around. The battery pack in the bed, which powers the old-tech anvil of a DC motor up front, has started taking it's toll on the rear springs. I borrowed the Republic name from a long-defunct local truck manufacturer, and REV stands for 'Republic Electric Vehicle', because it's a '90's EV and it needs to have a cutesy name.

Once sucked into the engine, the snow powder is heated in a special magical boiler to produce steam pressure, which then drives the engine. There- mystery solved

This is an old AMT dealer promo that was redone to resemble what a 1991 Storm would look like today, if there were any 1991 Storms left today. It's hard to see through the dirty tinted windows, but there's a case of Molson Ice in the trunk and several cassettes strewn across the top of the dash.

I'm in the process of turning a '91 Geo Storm promo into a hypermiler.

I think I remember seeing the rebuild of this one- or maybe the original finished photos where you mentioned it's slot car origins. They way things are going I wonder if this will ever be reissued, or at the very least if the '69 version will make a comeback.

Love it! Maybe this sounds weird (It's OK, I'm used to it), but it has a kind of "pulled from a shipwreck" feel to it. Maybe it's the rust, shades of green, and the copper items.

Anybody who'd be offended by this masterful Mini is an idiot. I love it.

Well if they're rare, craigslist logic dictates they're also worth at least 500 bucks a pop.

At one point, somebody wanted to build this old luxury yacht as a pro touring car- so the interior was redone with grippy Recaro seats. That guy realized he was in over his head, so it was sold. The next guy had more of a lowrider idea in mind, so he nabbed some gold spoke wheels off of craigslist. Then the old 430 engine gave out, so it was sold. Which brings us to the current owner, a high school auto shop student who swapped in a 460 from a '91 F-250 and has no big plans for now aside from driving the wheels off of it until he can afford a paint job and a few other things.

Those of you who were in high school around 1985 or so, and you remember the beater muscle cars from that time... think of this as the equivalent of a '70 Duster or Maverick Grabber from that time. A little rough and tattered, but still getting the job done. The idea here was an early 2000's tuner show car that was wrecked and neglected, and is in the process of being repaired and put back to stock. A stock rear bumper cover is stuffed into the back seat area, along with a cardboard box we can assume contains the missing exhaust header and other doodads. The car still needs that and a little rear suspension work to be a reliable driver but it's in way better shape than it was when the present owner got ahold of it.

This is an old Lincoln Touring car that was converted into a pickup in the mid '40's. The 1945 plate on the front is there to kind of represent when the conversion was done, while the '57 plate on back denotes the last time it was registered for regular street use. The bed was scratch built while the cab was pirated from a '34 Ford. The Lincoln also got a bit of a power upgrade with a home made manifold housing two Stromberg 97 carbs. This is how it looks today after 60 years of spending most of it's time in a shed and only being used for parades and such. This was the first model where I used a Molotow chrome pen, believe it or not.

Love it.

Didn't Monogram immediately scrap a large percentage of the Aurora molds shortly after purchasing them?

The Revell '70 Torino Cobra has pretty much the best version you'll find in anything.

Mike and Jay are great guys. When I took in my VCR for repair, they stole my credit card and ran me $75,000 in the red. After holding onto my VCR for over a year, it was in worse condition than when I left it. When I finally came in to pick it up, Jay smashed it on the floor and Mike poured beer on it, and they both laughed maniacally. I tried to voice my concerns but Mike kept interrupting me with Star Trek trivia. Every time I go in the lobby smells bad, like there is a dead body in the back or something. When I told Lighting Fast's corporate office about how Mike and Jay treated me, they promoted them to district managers. All I wanted to do was watch my Night Court tapes. Lightning Fast is the best VCR repair shop in the world and I'd recommend them to anyone. http://www.lightningfastvcrrepair.com/