Chuck Most

Barn-fresh old pickup + a mechanical refresh + torched springs = this. Love it.

Think it looks bad now? Most of them will end up fitted with plastic flares (with fake fasteners), clown-car tires and wheels (with fake bead locks), and a 50,000 watt LED light bar across the grille.

Updated with a fresh "facelift" pic. The '53 also went under the knife again last weekend. Post to come when that nasty 404 error is fixed.

I had a similar problem earlier in the Light Commercial Under Glass section. Fortunately the forum saved the text so I copied it to a Word document and it's ready to go for the next attempt.

The idea for this was a car with some of the traditional mild custom touches, but with some 21st century updates. The wheels and tires came from the AMT '62 Thunderbird and are fitted to a modified suspension. A 2014 Mustang GT coughed up it's 5.0 engine and six speed manual, along with it's dashboard, center console, steering wheel and seats. I made an intercooler-like open element air filter which is fed by the molded hood scoop, which is fitted with matching mesh to the grille. The frenched headlights came from the Foose Cadillac, and the car was painted with Testors Lime Ice and Mystic Emerald. I'll let you decide if I ripped off the name from the 1988 Antonio Climati movie (aka Cannibal Holocaust 2) or the 2013 Eli Roth movie.

You can't go wrong with Jerry. I've bought more truck decals from him than anyplace else.

Years ago I bought the AMT Autocar dump from TL Model Trucks, and it just sat around untouched until a few weeks ago. I wanted to finish the 9964 before Round 2 decided to reissue it. Rather than a dump truck, I opted to do it as a tractor. I cut about a scale foot and a half out of the wheelbase, and added a deck plate, fifth wheel, and some fenders, the latter of which were nabbed from an MPC Mack DM 600. I converted the engine to an NTC with the spare parts supplied in the box and an air intake borrowed from a White Western Star, and sprayed it in "remanufactured red". I also may have gotten the position of the oil filter and power steering reservoir mixed up but that's an easy enough fix. I also used the way out-of-scale kit supplied mirror frames. If I do another one of these I might make my own. I also added a radiator cap and used the Autocar radiator emblem decal from the A64B reissue. This is a kit I'd love to see come back- my favorite A-cars have pit fenders and spoke wheels.

This box would like a word with you...

This kit is like the ultimate blank canvas. It blows my mind that Ertl pulled out all the stops on their International heavy truck kits, then phoned it in for the Scout II kits. The body isn't bad other than some missing panel gaps, the missing hood peak, and the curved front edge of the hood and grille. Years ago I built one with a detailed engine bay and corrected body- one of these days I'll have to take some new photos. I've always wondered about cutting away the molded chassis to make it separate- nice to see someone do something other than wonder about it!

Love them both! There's a guy near me who has a Beat, it stands out even in it's rather bland silver paint.

I'm not usually a fan of LS swaps, but it's a clean and tastefully done car, and I love that intake setup, so I can live with it here.

YES. Few cars go through as drastic a Jekyll-to-Hyde-like transformation as the first gen Falcon given the gasser treatment.

1. How can it be both 1:24 and 1:25 scale. 2. Cord? I'm no expert on '30's luxury cars, but it looks like a Benz to me.

Nice seeing this kit done as a plain-Jane Dodge pickup.

Salt and sanding- I've never had the best results with the hairspray trick.

Yes indeed. Other than the smokestack the truck itself is built straight out of the box.

This is the recent reissue of the MPC kit, fitted with the tanker body from a modified Lindberg trailer kit. The various water pipes and caps were made from various plastic rod, and the whole mess was weathered. This isn't a replica of a particular truck but kind of a "composite" of some of the crusty old water trucks I've seen in use in the area, and in online photos.

I've seen the Dan Models offerings and there are a few things on the "gotta get it" list. Motor City Resin Casters also has a pretty nice curbside N series I need to get.

I believe this was originally an old Jim Etter piece. I'm guessing the hood and grille are molded in place to ease in molding and to reduce the number of molds needed for the package, same reason the dash is molded into the interior. The seat is as well, but I think the original AMT F100 kit had the seat molded into place as well. One of these days I'd like to find a junk AMT '61-'63 F100 annual and combine it with this to make a medium duty F-Series with full engine detail. I'd probably put it in the big-rig section, that's where the medium duty models end up. I put mine in the pickups section because it has a pickup bed.

I love it! I also need to know where you got the Iron Maiden decal.

Perfect! I have a 1:1 '34 Ford truck (cab and radiator shell) I plan to do up in a similar style one of these days.

This might be the nicest model of a Mack B I've ever seen. Looks appropriately burly on that DM chassis.

I built the tractor a few years back- it's the AMT kit, back dated to a '59 model but retrofitted with a later style Cat V8. The idea I always kept coming back to for it was to have it hooked up to a short flat bed hauling another old Ford. I piddled around with a Lindberg trailer over the course of a couple years, and got it wrapped up a few weeks back, so I had my trailer. Then the problem became what to stick on the back. After trying a few existing models and giving some thoughts to building something especially as a trailer load, I finally opted to put a '69 Ford F350 wrecker on the back. Since Mr. Jim Wolfe seems to be fond of old Fords with some backyard engineered modifications, we can assume the '69 will be his next side project.

Nice! Big metal flake is perfect for a Manx.

That's a '55.... but it would look pretty cool with a stake bed. Or if you really want to go nuts, you could make up a period service body for it.