W-409

Great job as always, Joe! As I said in other thread, I like your color combinations. Green fits perfectly together with Gold, and that paint job looks good too. I like it, thanks for sharing.

Great work so far with the Charger Daytona. I like seeing these Factory Stock builds, too, especially when they are done as cleanly as this one. I like the color a lot and your paint job turned out very good as well. Sharp BMF work and nice engine detailing make this one really stand out! Two minor things that I'd do differently that would make this model even better. Removing those Copyright and Manufacturer texts from the chassis, as real cars never had those. And add a little black wash to those holes on steel wheels. It will make them look much better. But as I said, those are very small things and this build is looking very good already. Keep it coming.

Great thing mentioned here so far! One thing that comes to my mind is.... Lack of Research. Maybe the best example is when I see Drag Cars being built... There are lots of "Pro Stocks" that have really nothing to do with real Pro Stock Drag Cars. Same thing with many different categories, like Gassers, Super Stockers, Altereds, Factory Experimental cars etc. People spend a lot of time to build their model, but they can't spend 15 minutes to find out what class their car would go in.

Nice work with the Funny Car! Nice, clean job building this kit overall, but my favorite part is the engine. It looks so good that I could swear it was an 1:1 scale piece. Great job with the paint and decals, too.

Thanks for the information! I'll give those a try.

Very good looking Poncho! Nice to see you building these GM cars, too (There's nothing wrong with Fords, though). This is maybe the best Catalina I've ever seen as a scale model. The wheel and tire choice is perfect, those fit spot on to the look and your paint job is excellent, too. Also great job painting part of the grille with body color.

That's Fantastic looking Barracuda! Just like I'd like to have it in 1:1 scale. Your color choice is simply perfect and I like body colored steelies a lot. They fit on almost every car, and this is definitely one of them. This is one of the best builds of this kit that I've seen, makes me wanting to buy one! I might have missed it, but what color did you use?

Thanks Guys, I highly appreciate your kind comments ! Yep, it will be painted blue. Actually my paint arrived yesterday, it's Tamiya's TS-23 Light Blue. It's really close to the interior color, at least when looking at the bottle top. The other color will be white, so I'm planning to go with Two Tone paint job, just like in the interior. Thanks Again!

That's a very neat Corvair. Corvair body with Rat Packer chassis seems to work nicely and I have to agree, I prefer the front engine version. Very nice job.

As I promised, here are a couple of pictures of the front axle. The axle that comes with the kit has one problem: The wheels could not steer with that axle, as it has no spindles (Or whatever they are called in English?). To make them, I took a piece of the kit's roll bar that is way too thick and some silver that I bent to shape. The spindles are really simple, made out of three pieces and glued together. Tomorrow I will modify the front axle to fit those spindles on place, add a couple of bolts and paint everything. It should look better once it's done than the original kit's axle... I had to remove the chrome plating, too. The axle had mold seams in it so the chrome would flake off anyway, but even without those seams, I would have wanted to paint the axle...

Glenn: Thank You! I believe the problem was in the new tires. Mickey Thompsons maybe just don't fit under that car...Maybe. There is another Drag / Street Race event at Pori Airport next Saturday, so we'll go there and do more runs with those tires to see how they work. I will have to try different burnouts and different air pressures to have enough traction. I did some work and I have an update. I said I'd work with the engine or chassis, but I worked with both of them instead! Jason: Thanks! That Reaction Time was by far the best one I have ever had in my time slip. And I must say that this was the correct place to get it, otherwise I would have lost because I wasn't that close to my dial in, as I had traction problems at the start. I had 12.37 dial in and I ran 12.42. But adjusting the dial in is hard. But I like to set the dial in so that it's a bit slower than what the car might run. Then I can hit the brakes before crossing the finishing line... So as I said I made some progress with the engine and chassis. I started from the engine by installing the spark plug wires. They are made from Scale Dreams' material, which works great. Someone might notice the little holes where valve covers' bolts are. Yes, I have Pro Tech's T-Bolts for them... I must repaint the transmission, the silver paint is coming off because of handling... I also worked with the chassis. Some modifications were required in front and rear suspensions. On the back, only thing I had to do was to modify the inner wheels / wheel backs to fit with the rear axle. Originally, there were kind of "tubings" (Hey, now I used correct word !) where metal axle would go into. With the rear axle from this kit, those wouldn't work so I cut them away and drilled new, bigger holes to the inner wheels. Now they fit perfectly with the rear axle. Unfortunately though, I was too exited to work with these, as I forgot to take pictures of them. Only picture is from the finished parts that still need paint. Front brakes (or inner wheels) are taken from AMT '70 Camaro. That will be built as a Stock Eliminator car that could race nowadays, so I must install disk brakes on it. Anyway those brakes were too wide for these tires, but I narrowed them by sanding the excess material off. Now they fit nicely to the front tires. Narrowed brake assembly on left, original one on right. Finished brakes test fitted on tires: Now it was time to do a first Mock Up to see if the stance was what I was looking for. I installed the axles and tires on place and everything looked good! Ride height was just correct and tires were on correct position, too. Now when the car looked good, I could move on to the front axle, but more on that in the next post.

Yep that purple one is the one I was talking about. It is true that the Ed Roth version is a re-issue of that kit. I should get back to my Hot Rod series kit, but I've started it long time ago and I'm not happy with the quality of work I did back then, so basically I would have to start by unassembling everything.

This is interesting! I like GM H-Bodies a lot and this Vega is really rarely seen as a Scale Model. I can't wait how this turns out. What kit did you start with?

I bought Lindberg's '64 Dodge 330, The Ramchargers version. I will use it as a donor kit for Jo-Han '64 Dodge Polara Super Stock and some of those decals will be used on Ramchargers Dragster by MPC that doesn't have all of the decals the real car had. At the same time I visited in another Hobby Shop and bought AMT's '70 Chevrolet Camaro. I bet this will surprise no one when I say that it will be built as a Stock Eliminator Drag Car. I also bought some Dymo-Tape to scribe in panel lines. It works really nicely.

Wow, really? I have the same kit and so far I haven't found any big fit issues. I've finished the frame and engine is also almost completed. The doors fit a bit badly, and there is lots of flash, but otherwise I think it's a good kit. It has nice Custom parts as well. My biggest disappointment was AMT's version of MPC's old Twister Vega. I remember it was more expensive than other kits, but as it was a GM H-Body I had to get that one. I didn't know what was in the box or how good (Or bad) the kit actually was as I was younger then and I hadn't heard of Model Cars Magazine or anything like that. When I opened up the kit, I saw that the engine is way too small and the chassis has everything molded as one piece. The kit was easy to build, everything went really well together, but it didn't made me feel much better anyway, because the kit was so simple. Though I remember building that one was a lot of fun and for sure I'll build another one in the future. Otherwise I think I haven't had any major disappointments. Nowadays it's much easier, when I know more things about different kits and I know roughly what's inside the box.

So I believe you airbrushed that Tamiya paint on the Hudson? How did it work? What did you use to make the paint thinner? I've been planning on trying those Tamiya Acrylics with an airbrush, but I I haven't tried them yet... Anyway that's a Fantastic looking Hudson! The color fits perfectly on it, and your BMF work is super sharp. I also like the engine, it looks like it could be fired up any moment. This is one of the best Hudson Hornets that I've seen, congrats!

Great job with the Oldsmobile, Yuri! This is a very nice body style and I like seeing these built. I've built one, too and I'm planning on building another one - especially after seeing this one! Fantastic job with the paint job and detailing. It looks very sharp and in some pictures I could swear that it is real car. Did you use the MCG Photo Etch set while building this one?

A Big Thank You for You all ! Todd: I'll need to think about the name of this car. That would be a good one for sure, let's see what happens. Brett: Yep I was thinking about the white headers, but I decided to go with silver instead. But painting them white would have looked really good, too. Actually it's not that hard making these headers, and I bet your headers would turn out really expensive because of the shipping if you sent them here. Thanks for clearing out on making the collectors. I mixed up with the words again and you said exactly what I was trying to say. The collectors on my headers aren't perfect, but I learned a lot while making them. Next time I think I will end up with a bit better result when I have already experience on making them. Carl: Great! I'm always happy to help. Jesse: I'm a great fan of Rock 'n Roll and Rockabilly music as well. Some Psychobilly bands are really great too and I listen to music a lot. Link Wray has great stuff, especially I like his song "Rumble" that comes from local radio (Radio Golden Classics) from time to time as well. When I first heard it, I started immediately to search Google what could be the song, but as I didn't find anything, a friend told me it's Link Wray's Rumble. But as I said, he has other great songs too. Reverend Horton Heat is another great one. Again, Thanks everyone for the kind words! I really appreciate them very, very much! No new pics yet, as I spent last weekend at Kalajoki Airport where the fourth race at Finnish Drag Racing Championship Series was driven. We had new tires under the Chevelle, but I had traction problems during the whole weekend. On first Qualifying round I failed myself and the car crawled forward from Stage too early and the 60 FT was really horrible. On the second run the tires spun a little when I shifted to the 2nd gear. Anyway I ran 12,32 so I was really happy with that run especially when it was ran at an airport. The third Qualification run was not that good, I had major traction problems right away when I lifted the brakes. Fourth run was good without traction problems and I ran 12.33. On the Eliminator, my first round opponent was last year's Finnish Champion in his Pontiac Firebird. I took a .003 Reaction Time and even if I had traction problems, I crossed the finishing line first and won the race! The 2nd round was also a Semi Final, there I red lighted by -.007 and of course I lost because of that. But there it was really slippery and the car was drifting quite a lot at the start. Anyway I was able to run full throttle all the time without lifting. My plan is to get something done with the engine or chassis tomorrow. So Stay Tuned.

I agree with Ray, fantastic stuff! You build very clean models and it would be an impossible task to find mistakes from them. But I also like the color combinations, especially that Red & Gold combo on that '55 Chrysler works perfectly. Really nice work and keep these coming!

Great job on this GTX! Very nicely done overall, I think raising the rear end a little was a good thing... The stance looks spot on! Nice detailing in the engine bay as well.

Thanks Jonathan! Your GTX is looking really nice, too. That front fender looks actually pretty good just like that, I mean that on a Cannonball Run car it could be so that the fender has been crashed and then repainted. Great job on the Chevy, too! I like the Cowl Induction hood a lot and the wheel and tire combo works perfectly under that one. Now I need to make some progress with the Daytona so we'll get two cars from Finland to the starting line. But before that I'll watch the Cannonball Run movie to get some inspiration!

Jesse: Thanks, I appreciate it! That's The Go Getters' No Brakes DVD that has great live material. The Go Getters is my favorite Rockabilly band and it comes from Sweden. I recommend this for everyone who likes Rock 'n Roll or Rockabilly music. Here is a trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDxTRgI0uls Carl: Thanks for the kind words! My description wasn't the best possible, but let's see if I can say it a bit better. The ends are regular sheet styrene that I bent as round pieces and glued on place. I hope this makes better sense, but if not, I'll post pics how I did it.

Thanks so much, Glenn! Yep my plan is to go with a Two Tone paint job. I've already ordered some light blue from Tamiya and the other color will be white. And it will be a "Full Drag Car" so I'm not going to make it streetable at all, my idea was that this would be a car that could race in Nostalgia events, in Bakersfield Nostalgia Races, for example. I've made some more progress with this thing, actually the headers are now finished. After the last update, I continued by scratchbuilding the collectors for those headers. First thing to do was to find a proper size plastic tubing and gluing it on where the header pipes meet each others. I found some thick mold sprue that worked perfectly for this. Then I took some thin sheet styrene and glued it as round piece, around the mold spure I did on the pics above. After smoothing out the seam that came when I glued the styrene to round shape, I took a screwdriver and heated it hot with a candle. With that, I could push those little dents on it. It's very hard to say how I did this step, but I hope the pictures will talk themselves. Then I painted the headers with Revell's #91 Silver. I'm going to add heat staining on them later on, but otherwise they are done now. I also glued on the blower and valve covers, painted the magneto and drilled holes for the plug wires. And finally I found some Dymo Tape that I can use to re-scribe the panel lines on the body. It worked really nicely and now the panel lines are good to go. The body will need lots of bodywork, though before I can shoot some Primer on it...

You do great work! The roll cage looks really nice and the wheelie bars, too. When looking at your previous builds, the cages fit perfectly inside the body, too. That is a thing I always had some problems with. I can't wait to see how this turns out. It is a nice body, and I know some people think I'm crazy when I say this, but this older model with single headlights looks much better than the newer one with two headlights on both sides.

That Vega looks very cool! Good luck for your Racing, it's nice to see more young people on the Drag Strips. Do you know how much that Vega weights? I bet it's a lot lighter than our Race Car and that way much more fun to push forward at the pits.