sjordan2

Really like it. What paint did you use?

I can't wait until this is finished and it's time to leap up and cheer. Just killer.

I agree. Even if it had a motor, I wouldn't have used it. But an experience RC modeler might have some fun with it. Nothing like seeing those wire wheels turning to evoke a sense of the real car.

Yeah, I found this page confusing since there was no motor and I couldn't tell which parts were accurate to the 1:1 and which ones existed only for propelling the kit.

One more thing... When Airfix originally introduced this kit, it was motorized. You can see the battery box under the rear seat. Over the years, I have only seen one of them on eBay. Just found this from one current listing: "can be motorized using a 3 volt electric motor that was separately available from Airfix in the 1970s - part number 2010M."

Not a bad idea about the tires. However, my kit has been sitting on shelves for about 30 years (I'm looking at it right now) with no flattening of the tires. Plus I'm a little more optimistic about the mesh available for hobbyists. A replacement metal filter for a coffeemaker seems to have the right scale look for the finest mesh required.

I would say that's at least double what you ought to pay. Just keep lurking and you'll eventually find a cheaper one. There are many wonderful things about this kit, including very realistic molded plug wires, textured seat bottoms that look like they've been sat in, etc. My only caveats, which are easily improved by a somewhat experienced modeler (which I wasn't at the time), include the thick gauge glass that Matt mentioned, extremely fragile mounting brackets for the cycle fenders and headlights, and many areas that should have real wire mesh have it molded onto clear parts – headlight stone guards, mesh screen in front of the Brooklands racing screens and mesh around the bottom of the fuel tank. I added flyscreen to the radiator and it looks really good. There is a very exhaustive downloadable journal on how to super-detail this kit and I think it goes for about $70. Gerald Wingrove also has a very detailed journal on his site about how he built a 1/15 entirely from scratch.

Yes. I built the MPC version. (It had a General Mills logo on the box and I thought I'd find corn flakes inside.)

This shot of the 1:1 shows you what a great job Airfix and Matt did on the dash part. When I built mine, I thought the wrapping on the steering wheel was leather instead of this, which appears to be twine, very nicely replicated by Matt. One of these days I'll fix that, too.

Cool article on "Rusty cars that could be worth millions" – Bugatti Atalante, Tucker, AC Cobra, Ford GT540, etc. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/autos/1105/gallery.barn_finds/index.html

Great job on my all-time favorite kit. My cleaning lady picked up mine to dust a shelf and snapped off two of the cycle fenders flush at the chassis mounting points. I'm trying to figure out how to fix that so it doesn't look like a fix. When I built it over 25 years ago, I only had three reference photos of this now-famous car (currently in Ralph Lauren's collection), and there is now so much more information available, thanks to the Internet. One very clever thing about the kit is that they printed the gauge face decals backward to apply on the clear gauge lenses, resulting in gauges with clear lenses in one step. You can create this method for any model but you need to paint over the back of the gauge decal.

Revell also issued a 1/32 version of this kit, don't know if it's the same tooling. I do know that the Revival kit is an earlier Type C. And you're quite right about the 1/32 Aston Martin Ulster. If these pictures are any indication, it builds into a very nice model.

So does he exit from the passenger side? After a run, those pipes look like they could cause a bit of pain getting out on that side.(The side pipes on my cousin's C3 Corvette have left a lasting mark on my shin.)

Are you going to build it stocK? Got any ideas on the paint color?

Is this groundhog day? I just wanted to add a point for Keviny's absorption: My post was intended to sympathize with you and say "been there, done that" in terms of thinking I'd created something new and hadn't. But ya doesn't has hafta call me "Skippy."

I wish this forum had animated smilies rolling around on the floor. Good one.

What I did in that circumstance was to get the clear plastic display cases, put them over the bottom models and set another model on top. As long as everything is consistent, it looks fine to me.

What you said is my point exactly.

About the "invented" part. I "invented" the use of washes consisting of thinned black paint for grilles back in the 60s. (Hah.) I even "invented" the use of fingernail polish for body paint (double "Hah.") That was without the benefit of good model magazines or the Internet at that time; without question, many other modelers were doing exactly the same thing then, but I wasn't aware of it, which doesn't mean that I was some kind of genius (my school transcript will prove that). Necessity (and lack of resources) is often the mother of re-invention, and I think it's nice that the discovery of the spoon thing was shared with us and that it could stimulate our members to share their means of using it. I only say this because there were a couple of posts that I thought were unnecessarily derisive of the OP's claim to have invented the spoon test, and I don't think he meant it that way at all.

Wonderful detail, especially at 1/32 on a Pyro kit.

Stunning all around. Perfect use of washes in all the right places. Did you darken the window channels on the vent window? If so, nice touch.

Really nice, with excellent engine detail and an appealing color choice. Are those directional wheels? Looks like the front wheel should go on the other side.

Superb work! Excellent all around, and maybe the most realistic wiring and hoses I've ever seen at this scale. The whole thing just pops.

PS: One of the signature elements of the SS/SSK, 500K and 540K is the use of wheel weight cylinders which contain a number of washer-like weights inside. These wheels will look killer if you add them; you can use bits of sprue for them. Typically, there are seven evenly spaced weight cylinders around the rim, with a valve stem between two of them. Also note something that others overlook: the brake drums seen behind the spokes are clad in copper (usually reasonably shiny) to reduce heat. The picture below doesn't show that to its best advantage.