Don Sikora II

The SMP '58 Chevy Bel Air 4-door is the hardtop, not the sedan. Product Miniature (PMC) made a '58 Bel Air 4-door hardtop too. SMP also made '57 Chevy Bel Air 4-door hardtop and 4-door wagon promos, along with a '61 Corvair 4-door sedan promo.

No, the Cheverra was an AMT kit. Lindberg did have a snap-together Camaro of the same vintage that was originally released by USAirfix. USAirfix released a version of it called the Ultra Z that had a Porsche-style whale tail but it's not the same as the AMT kit. Don't know if any of the Lindberg issues included the whale tail.

Thanks for posting the link to that 1:1 boat, and that does look like an early AMC V-8. Hope this is a nice kit.

The Lindberg 1959 Century Coronado boat is probably the old Palmer kit. I've never seen that kit in person, does anyone have one they could post photos of?

Yes, you can use softeners on decals that have dried. I've successfully done it more than once on 1/43-scale diecast cars to improve the fit of factory-applied waterslide decals that were likely applied months or even years earlier.

If anyone has one, could you please post a picture of the decal sheet? Yes, I'm pretty sure this is an old Lindberg kit.

That kit also has locator holes above the top corners of the windshield. They fit to pins on the newly tooled visor piece.

In the last year or two I've bought quite a few 1950s and '60s car magazines at a kit/toy show in Milwaukee and at area antique malls. It's pretty unbelievable but the going rate seems to be about 50 cents apiece. That's asking price, not me making low-ball offers. I'm happy to get the ones I want, but it makes me wonder how the sellers find it worth the effort.

Fujimi's Cobra is their own tooling and not a reboxed Monogram kit.

Have had some like that too, but where the blob stayed much closer to the can. Couple years ago I had a can of the Testors high-gloss clear that actually started spraying out of one of the can's seams. Made quite a mess even though I think I smelled it (and could hear it when I started trying to find what was causing the smell) within a short period of time. Pretty dangerous if you ask me, would be careful not to store any cans too near a possible ignition source.

+1

Tim, looks good!

The tubular pieces you are talking about are lifter knock outs. They are purposely created when the knock out pins are located close to the part, rather than actually on it. The resulting piece of plastic gives the knock out a place to push on and eject the part from the mold. At the same time, these "lifters" double as a overflow tab which helps make sure the part fills completely and that it doesn't have a weld or knit line where the plastic meets as it fills from both side of the part. It's very important on a part like that, because even it it was fully molded the weld line would be a natural weak spot that would easily break, probably as the part was removed from the tree.

Ron's Mundelein Hobbies is more of a train shop, but I was in the area and stopped in last week. It had been a while but I was pleasantly surprised how many car kits he had in stock and he seemed to have a lot of supplies too. The Hobby Town USA off Waukegan Road in Northbrook is decent too.

It is the '82 Mustang annual, but MPC really seemed to start downplaying the annual angle after 1978. They started giving most, but not all, the annuals "names" in 1979, like in this case Wild Breed. At least the first production run would have come with a plastic band around the box indicating it was a 1982 kit. My kit still has this. Presumably retailers could remove that 1982 band when the '83 kits came out, leaving a shrink-wrapped kit that people wouldn't expect to be discounted because it was last-year's model.

Revell also made the Mysterion, Beatnik Bandit, Beatnik Bandit II, and Road Agent. MPC made a 1/25-scale kit of his Mail Box Chopper trike.

I think Brian is right that the SS badges were a from a pre-production plan, and the hottest '82 Mustangs ended up being GTs with 5.0 badges. I'm old enough to have built the kit when new, and I remember reading about the proposed Mustang SS somewhere and being surprised to see those emblems on the kit instead of the 5.0 markings. The '82 Mustang doesn't seem like much now, but I remember being pretty excited about it back then. Not as exciting as the '82 Z28 and Trans Am were, but it was still a cool car.

Nichimo supposedly went out of business in September 2013. Haven't heard if their molds were sold to another company.

The hardtop version of the original came with one of the removable stock hardtops. It was one piece and the whole thing was molded in clear plastic. Kinda a neat piece, but it wasn't included in any of the reissues.

I remember being mighty excited about buying the Prestige Series 63 1/2 Ford Galaxie hardtop though. Sure it's been run a bunch of times since, but that first reissue was a pretty big deal at the time.

The last issue of the kit that came with putty and the original custom wheel covers is the first-issue "Pepper Shaker" that was released in late '68 or 1969. It's at the link posted above as kit T-280:200 with the illustration of the green drag car on the box. I have two of them that are unbuilt, but neither of mine has red/white line tires like you describe. Doesn't mean they never made any with redlines though. Both Gasser issues from '67-'68 or so should both have the original kit's custom wheel covers too. Does your kit have the rear drag wheels on the chrome tree? If so what are they? They changed in the late Sixties, so they might help ID your kit.

The car silhouettes didn't come on the original-issue Street Shaker decal sheet. There were silhouettes on at least one AMT sheet in the mid-1960s though. Was nice they added them, along with a bunch of stuff, to the sheet in the new reissue though.

The custom Silverado with the personal watercraft did not include stock parts.

Yes, the body in the AMT/MPC Daytona is the same as the Charger 500 and the front fenders weren't changed so the MPC/Modelhaus bumper should fit....AMT made glue-on filler pieces to help make the Daytona nose cone fit. Not sure if the hood is different or not.

It's bare fiberglas that's glossy brown. The entire chassis tub should be that color.