chepp

Sure! Until I retired about 3-1/2 years ago, I was the H-D guy in the new products department at the Maisto U.S. office. There are several ways parts are attached -- and they are not intended to be disassembled so some damage may occur when they are taken apart. The axles are a soft metal with a head (like a small nail) on one end. Carefully grab the end with serrated long nose pliers and gently rotate it to loosen it from the frame/fork plastic on the far side of the wheel. Go slowly and work the axle with back-and-forth and in-and-out movements. When it's loose pull it out and the wheel will drop out. The tire can be "rolled" off the wheel -- it isn't glued on. Most plastic details are a tight press fit or are glued in place. Because of toy safety regulations they have to withstand a fair amount of force to keep them from coming off and being swallowed/choked on by children. Using the sharp edge of a hobby knife (say, a #11 X-acto blade) carefully work it between the parts. Gently twist the knife to use it like a tiny pry bar. If you can, work your way around the parts to pry them from different places. Chances are that one or more parts will break during removal. Generally, the mounting post will break and won't be seen when you glue the parts back together later. You might want to get two or more of the same bike, though, so if something goes wrong you can try again on another one. The gas tank is probably attached by being heat sealed. A pin molded to the bike's frame will extend through a hole then the exposed area of the plastic pin is melted a little to hold the tank on. You can carefully cut through the melted pin to release the parts. Later, the only way to reattach them will be to use glue. Other bikes might have the tank attached by being "sandwiched" with the frame and fork parts. If so, you'll need to just use the hobby knife to gently work the parts apart. To reattach, I usually used gap filling CA. When using any CA glue you have to be careful because vapors from it can leave a whitish coating on plated parts that is virtually impossible to remove. One way to prevent this is to have a fan blowing air away from the plated parts (and away from you, too) while glueing. Please be very careful. It is possible to be injured while taking things apart. Work slowly and carefully. When using knives and tools use them in such as way that if you slip you won't be harmed.

The slicks from the Beatnik Bandit are engraved as 7.10 x 15 M&H Racemaster Dragster on the sidewalls. Like Don said, I wouldn't be surprised if they are the ones in the Revell parts pack that Ace-Garageguy posted. In another post on the thread, Casey showed this tire in his pic #4. I've been doing some research to see if this slick would be era-correct for a late '50s car. I can't prove it but I'm pretty sure that it would be. I might add a couple of grooves to make street legal cheater slicks. Does anyone know for sure?

Your're going in the right direction with cotton balls for tire smoke. If you keep pulling them apart until they're really wispy it can make them look more realistic. Here's one I did 50 years ago.

I can quit building stuff anytime...in fact, I've quit a thousand times. Seriously, alexis, I understand the good feeling of freedom and relief. All the best to you.

That's a clever idea, Michelle, and you've done a pretty good job. I should have looked at this five months ago! Like one person wrote, you might take more photos of it outdoors without the harsh shadows and post them here, too. That show has a lot of possibilties for more scratchbuilding. I think that there was even a sort-of vehicle that was probably made of bamboo. Keep up the good work!

I didn't see anybody commenting on my post a couple of months ago. Chip Foose just made a drawing of a customized Pacer: In my opinion he made it look pretty good, but I still don't find it appealing. Maybe this is part of the future of customizing despite what I think. How about you? Here's a pic of the Gremlin at the Grand National Roadster Show that I mentioned in my March post. It's swiped from https://journal.classiccars.com/2020/01/31/32-ford-takes-americas-most-beautiful-roadster-honors/ .

Cool idea — keep posting!

I'm just thinking out loud, but maybe there will be an anti-car angle for some car collectors/customizers. As an example that I'm trying to repress the thought of, there was an especially hideously modified gold '70s AMC (Gremlin, Pacer?) in the main building near the pinstripers at the Grand National Roadster Show last month. Maybe cars like that will be part of the future of car culture. A new Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is being filmed -- if they include the flamed Pacer from the previous one it might be an indicator of interest in that sort of thing.

"... that is 15.00 a month..." I agree. Nobody wants to hear it, but this is right in line with my fool proof real world way to reduce the cost of the hobby: If you want spend half as much then take twice as long for each build. To spend a third as much then take three times as long.

Here's one from one of my high school teachers: "Everyone brings joy to this classroom. Some by entering, others by leaving." ...and from another teacher after a student answered his question: "No, Ace, that's not the right answer." [then, in a stage whisper] "You know, 'Ace' is spelled with two s's."

How about Smokey Yunick's alleged 7/8 scale '66 Chevelle? It wasn't actually 7/8, or 15/16 but it was unusual. There are lots of stories about it. Here's one: https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/the-truth-about-smokey-yunicks-78-scale-chevelle/ .

Thanks for shooting and posting these. An easy way to view these is, at the link, choose "roll" then use your ">" arrow key to advance through them.

Welcome, Chris. We're never too old to have a happy childhood. Consider getting a magnifier. I've had my Optivisor since I was in my 30s and wouldn't build without it. There are other brands and styles of magnifiers, too.

1914 Metz -- the car driven to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back. Read about it and see more pix at https://www.nps.gov/articles/metzcar.htm .

Mine arrived today, Wednesday, in ZIP 917xx east of Los Angeles, CA. It was great to see a pic of my model at the lower left corner of P. 56.

I hope that someone would have said "that's cool" if they were seeing this in the early 1960s: Today, I dunno. It's sort-of sleek and traditional but it's kind of goofy, too.

I'm not sure if he could be described as a concept artist, but Steve Swaja designed a lot of streamlined dragsters and Tex Smith's XR-6. See https://www.hotrod.com/articles/drag-racings-twilight-zone-streamline-dragsters/ . Read more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Swaja

If it wasn't a more-door, I could get interested in the '62 Dodge Dart but not the Lancer.

A little OT, but earlier posters praising the Revell Cadillac engine caused me to search one out. It just arrived and looks great! Seeing the old Revell tooling with the internal engine parts showing is nice. For $10.50 including shipping and tax from a seller on that famous auction site, it's a fair deal. The package is a Revell-Monogram with a 1998 copyright date. I've been building since a kid in the '60s but I never paid much attention to the parts packs then. I could barely afford a $1.49 kit and a can of $0.69 spray paint at the time. Sometimes I'd get kits as gifts and might rarely splurge on a $2 kit. Those $2 kits would usually include a separate engine and enough parts to spiff up a $1.49 kit if I wanted something different. As a current-day builder, I don't care about whether an out-of-catalog item gets re-released so I have no interest in trying to persuade a company to do that. There are so many on the secondary market that it just doesn't matter to me.

GSL = Greater Salt Lake (short for the big model car convention; originally annual, lately bi-annual and the next, final, one will be in three years). UFO = UnFinished Object SBC = Small Block Chevrolet (engine) BBC = Big Block Chevrolet (engine) SBF = Small Block Ford (engine) MEK = Methyl Ethyl Ketone (nasty solvent that is a very good styrene liquid cement but is/can be hazardous) AMT = Aluminum Model Toys, Authentic Model Turnpike, or? ET = (drag racing) Elapsed Time

That's true. I think that if I was going in that direction I'd make a phantom '66 2DW. Here's a link to a real one for sale: http://www.2040-cars.com/Chevrolet/Chevelle/1966-chevrolet-chevelle-2-door-wagon-w-454-fresh-engine-400-turbo-trans-427566/ I'm guessing that it was made from an El Camino.

Thanks for posting this. The Dean's Garage website has lots of good stuff. I was five years old when a neighbor across the street got a new '58 Olds in metallic gold. I don't recall which model or body style it was but it was probably a four-door hardtop. That thing was the gaudiest car on our street but I don't recall anybody commenting on it -- but I was just a little kid. In comparison, these were the cars at nearby homes at the time: 1. '55-'56 Ford wagon, '55-57 Chevy stepside pickup. 2. '55-'56 Ford wagon, '58-'59 Ford Thunderbird. 3. '51 Ford, '55 Buick (my parents). 4. Two '55-'57 Oldsmobiles. 5. Circa '54 Mercury, can't remember the other. 6. '57 Chevy, can't remember the other. I'm not much of a fan of the Harley Earl era styling although there were some outstanding ones here and there -- I much preferred the Bill Mitchell era designs. The purple on the wagon posted above reminds me of the same color on a '58 Buick of a family that I knew. Their house was lavender, too, as was their name.

But it's a more-door. It's nice to see what others have done with this and it's nice that it's being re-released. But it's a more-door. It would have been so cool if it had been tooled as the two-door wagon.

Wowee! Those realistic gray tones and polished metal look especially good.

Doh! You're right. Thanks for the correction -- it was new to me.