Darin Bastedo
-
Posts
1,631 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Posts posted by Darin Bastedo
-
-
It's not a shame George... it is what it is!
Just because you two guys do not like the current popular trend of "Rat Rodding" does not mean it's wrong.
I suffered through the Pro-Street/Pro-touring trend with out saying anything and those cars were waaaayyy less driveable than any of the Rat Rods I show in the article.
In fact! While cleaning up the "Rat Hole Customs" booth at the latest Salem Rod & Custom show... most of the overbuilt and overchromed machinery could hardly get out the door once the show was over. SOME HAD TO BE PUSHED they were so un-driveable!
While guys like my son-in-law drive rods that are logical, start immediately and are very driveable!
In fact Jeremy and I took his truck on a poker run last summer. Never overheated, started flawlessly and was very comfortable to ride around in for 6 hours!
Just because it has rust don't mean it don't work!
Now don't lump me in with George. I didn't say I didn't like them, but more was wondering why there seems to be a need to define exactly what a rat rod is and what it isn't. why can't they simply be just another crayon in the box. Not everything needs to be dissected until you can fit it into a nice comfortable box. why can't we just say they are another variation on the hot rod theme?
-
The recent article in Model cars has got me wondering, For what reason do we feel the need to keep dividing and sub-dividing both models and real cars into such narrow definitions. This is especially divicive in the rod and custom catagories. Nobody can seem to agree on what is and is not a "Rat Rod" especially those who build suede or primer cars who take offence to the rat rod name. Why can't a model just be what it is, and be judged on it's own merits.
I remember when years ago I build "Barely 'Cuda" a highly modified Pymouth 'Cuda speedster. There was a debate on whether it was a custom, a street machine, a pro-touring build etc. To me it was what it was, A styling exercice to push the envelope of muscle car styling. In the same way the Rat Rod is simply people pushing the envelope of Hot Rod styling in the attempt to do something different. To me these are simply Hot Rods, much in the same way the billet rods pushed the envelope in the eighties. Eventually the excesses that are displayed with in the rat rod builds will become part of the main stream, just as elements of the extreme billet rods have become almost standard fare.
The irony here is that both the billet and the rat rod movements started in an attempt to make low budget hot rods. John Buttera was quoted as saying he carved parts out of billet because it was cheaper than repro parts. now in rat rods the disire for legitamaciy has caused builders to seek out actual vintage speed parts that cost many times more than the high tech speed parts available over the counter.
-
And the question is this, (& I'm not being mean or sarcastic, this is a serious question);
After the ten or so people that even remember some of these cars mentioned buy kits tooled up of them, what do the manufacturers do with the other 49,990 left of each one from the initial tooling run?
Risks are one thing, but some of these ideas being floated are sheer commercial suicide.
There's a reason that for the most part, replica stock models have by & large tanked in the marketplace, & bringing out a kit of a Willys Aero will not change that for the better.
I understand the daring to be different & taking risks, but some things are simply too obscure to even warrant a first thought of producing, let alone a second.
Replica stock models by and large have not tanked in the market place. The Monogram muscle cars of the eighties did quite well for them (1970 Boss 429, Challenger T/A, 1971 Hemi Cuda etc) all of them were stock only kits. Same thing with the AMT 1967 Impalas, 1971 duster, 1967 Mustang etc were all stock only releases. All of limbergs new tools were all replica stock models and well recieved by modelers
Being a replica stock offering will not doom a model to commercial failure. aside from that, the market place today is not looking at trying to make a profit selling 100k units to walmart at $2.00 each. They are looking at lower volume sales at higher margins making the risk lower. The average modeler is getting older and starting to enjoy the hobby of their youth. many of them are kids who grew up in the 50s and 60's who will remember the cars mentioned here.
-
some of the paint I'm using is over 15-20 years old and it is still fine.
-
I am probably in the minority here as I like MCM better than Scale Auto mainly because of the fact that it has the enthusiasm that Scale Auto used to. If you want to see better content in the magazine feel free to write an article and submit it? I've got a couple submitted and a few more in the works. If you don't feel like writing, or are not knowledgable on the subject you want to see, how about contacting one of the people one the forum who write articles and suggest it.
one of the problems with writing a model car magazines is coming up with fresh new content. Many of the great models they would feature have been seen on several forums and multiple shows before it hits print, How-to articles are great but you have to find a builder/writer who can do the how-to and has the time to photograph and write about it. The one I did on wheels took about a week because I had to stop at each and wvery step, take several photos, and then go on to the next step. The wheel that would usually take an evening to build took a week.
Kit reviews are great, but again, these days the manufacturers are handing out review samples to be reviewed on the forums months before the can go to print. I have to hand it to Gregg though, he managed to get the Kurtis Midget into the mag, a full month before SA.
I subscribe to Model Cars mainly because I have to drive an hour round trip to get it on the stands. I don't subscibe to Scale auto because;
a. there is no discout for subscribing.
b. they often include bonus material in newstand copies that aren't available to subsribers.
c. too many of my friends and fellow modelers have been snubbed by it's editor.
-
Model shows and 1:1 car shaows have nothing in common but the shape of the entries. they are judged entirely differently. in a model contest the primary focus is not the design of the entry but how well the builder made a replica look like the real thing. the plstic seats have to look like leather or cloth, the plastic engine has to look like a painted metal one etc.
1:1 car shows the cars already are the real thing. It's how original or restored they are or how creatively they are modified. In the top ranks of copetition such as the ridler award, their can be as many as 100-200 people involved in the design and building of the car. while both deal with cars the differences are more than the scale.
-
Hmm. the coolest huh?
I've been lucky in that i've had a very fun life with a lot of cool friends and family who have exposed me to a lot of things. as far as cool things I've gotten to do, I would have to break it down by catagory.
Celebrity encounters...
1. lived up the street from Roberta Flack
2. was able to meet and befriend Ed Roth at age 12 and maintain that freindship until his death in 2001
3. met Paul Newman, Rick Mears, Danny Ongias, and Johnny Rutherford all on the same day when I was 13 at the Kent oil 150 at watkins glen in 1979
Cool Cars I've driven...
1. 289 & 427 cobras
2. Lamborghini Countach
3. 1988 Ferrari Testarossa
4. Delorean DMC12
5. 1967 427 corvette roadster
6. Aston Martin DB4
Places I've gone...
1. London England
2. Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Stuttgart Germany
But the coolest thing in my book, and what makes me feel good about myself and what I think about when I drift off to sleep, is meeting my sweetie, and falling in love with her, being a good husband to her, and a good father to our daughter. to quote the framed sign on my desk, "A hundred Years from now it will not matter what my bank account balance was, The sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child."
That I love my family and they love me is the coolest thing in my life.
-
I heard that Gregg's ethernet started leaking ether, and he passed out. they had to download some java to bring him to.
-
My thoughts and prayers will be with you also. I too will be in your shoes much sooner than I would hope. but even 100 years would be too soon.
-
Looks really nice. I'm guessing that your issue with the kit is the way the hood fits, or doesn't fit. I have to ask, did you add plug wires to the engine ??? I know when I built this kit I did and that's where I traced the hood fit problems. This kit has some really tight tollerances and adding wires made the engine cover sit a few thousandsths too high, which didn't allow the hood to close. Hope that helps. Oh yeah, the worst part ??? You can't even see the wires after the engine cover is on anyway..........
Another thing that greatly effects the fit of the hood is the placement of the radiator and the positioning of the chassis under the body. if either of these are off even a half millimeter the hood will not fit well. If both are off you can almost forget the hood ever fitting.
-
Generally when I say i would "buy a case of them" usually i mean over time, since I would get bored building the same kit 6 times in a row, it would be wastefull to buy them all at once. there are exceptions though especially with the limited run kits like;
12x AMT Model King Open road camper
6x AMT Model King 59 Imperial
6x Revell SSP 41 willys pick-up gasser
Then over the years there have been many kits I've bought more than a case worth over the years.
Revell 1993 Camaro pace car
AMT 1972 Nova "Old Pro"
Revell / Monogram 427 cobra
AMT 289 Cobra
Monogram T-bird and Camaro Pro stock kits from the 80's
AMT 1949 Merc
AMT 1932 fords (all variations)
Revell 1932 Fords (all variations)
Revell 1968 -69 vettes (all variations)
There are many more but you get my point. will I buy a case of the new Hudson hornet? perhaps but not all at once. as far as disposable income goes I'm not rich but my hobby is cheap in comparison to others a new release DVD costs about the same as one model kit now.
-
The use of urethane paint, while in the right hands can produce remarkable results, isn't the only route to shiny paint. Any gloss paint can be made to shine, as the shine is a result of how smooth the finish is with proper polishing and waxing even regular solid colors can look miles deep. with metallic and pearls you must use a clear coat as the particles of pearl and metal flake will get exposed and look bad.
Urethane is simply a harder finish that polishes easier.
-
But then again it depends on the purpose of the build. If you are just building for your shelf, and you just want a long row of shiny models, by all means shine them up, but at the same time you shouldn't expect to get rewarded come trophy time for a model with an unrealistic finish. On customs, street machines, and street rods I love a miles deep shine, but on a factory stock, or traditional rod (not rat) i like just smooth and glossy.
but in the end it depends on how realistic some one wants to build their models. I say if you already have low-profile wheels and tires so big they wouldn't actually steer, an engine that wouldn't be streetable, or a top fuel engine hooked to the stock 4 cylinder radiator, an alternator attached by nothing but the fan belt, and front fenders with no visible means of support (all things I have seen on models even ones featured in the magazines) the shininess of the paint shouldn't make or break the realism of the build.
-
Merry Christmas right back at you.
Beej, Morgan and I appreciate you friendship and support all year long, and hope this year is a better year for everyone..
-
Nope, Not at all. I build everything from 1/87 - 1/8
-
That is insane.
BTW, the famed Carol Shelby Cobra CX1001 is going to auction block, just thought if you didn't already know you'd like to.
CSX1001 really doesn't interest me as its just a completion car, not an original cobra. want to get my attention, have Carroll Shelby run CSX2000 across the block. reportedly he's turned down offers of $16 million for it.
-
**WARNING THOSE WITHOUT A SENSE OF HUMOR DON'T READ THIS POST!**
let me see if I get the point of this thread. The hudson is incorrect because communists don't know what hudsons look like , but capitalists do, and it stayed flawed because the members of this board in particular missed a few minor issues with it back in the mock up stage, and now us mamby-pamby commie lovin' blind as a bat car nuts are making things worse by showing our enthusiasm for a kit that we will actually buy and enjoy, instead of raking Dave, Art, and some very talented but nameless model maker, with better scratch building talents than almost all of us, over the coals, and boycotting Mobius until they wise up and make a perfect model for us.
next thing you know the grammer police will come after me for my intentional use of a very long run-on sentence which was used to emphasize the sensation of ranting. Then the Rule police will get mad at me for ranting because this is the New kit Review section not the rants and raves section. next someone from the "must correct everyone crowd" will remind that poster that the rants and raves section was deleted. That poster taking it as personal attack will report that post while at the same time say the the lack of a rants and raves section means that nobody should ever rant on this board and that it justifies his previous attempt at correcting me for ranting.
But while he composes that clever retort, some "obviously biased" mod will have deleted the reported post causing someone else to misinterpret that portion of the thread, but that won't keep him from posting something that sets everybody off (probably something about superglueing someones fingers together so the can't type such dribble) and results in the locking of the thread after which the whole she-bang will move down to Art's "postman" thread and start all over again.
or I could be wrong.
either way, I like the Mobius Hudson Hornet kit, will probably buy several, and don't care that it has flaws. if they are bad enough to bother me I'll fix them, if not I'll leave them there just so people will have something to talk about at the model contests.
-
And here is the point in which a contentious forum topic turns to abject sillness.
-
Guess it all depends on where you draw your line in the sand.
Having never saw a Hudson up close.... which would probably be true for 90% of all modelers reading this... I think the new Hudson is about as close as most of the other kits on the market are to their full sized versions.
Name 5 kits on the market today and I'll wager that a few persons with intimate knowledge of the real thing will tell you where the contour and proportions are off. And THAT is the problem with having Communist countries make molds of cars they have NEVER seen in person!
We get what we pay for.....
So I take it that if the Chinese were capitalists the kit would have been better? of course we have no way of knowing for sure if the guy who did the master was a communist or not. he could be a facist, or an anarchist. No strike that if he were an anarchist the car might look like this...
-
That's really cool. I think they need to rename it "death" though. I wonder how many were hurt before they got that far in design.
Anyone remember street luge? It was a national sport for a while till the top competitors kept getting paralyzed or killed.
What did they say about cliff diving? there are two levels..."Grand Master Champion", and "Stuff on a Rock".
-
Your orange-peeled paint, your clogged airbrush and your bad BMF have nothing to do with the design and manufacturing of the kit, though. What comes in the box and what you do to what comes in the box are two completely different things. The kit manufacturer controls what comes in the box, but they have no control over what happens to it.
This was my way of saying, that human error always creeps in, and stuff happens.
-
-
An equally good argument can be made that a scale model kit is supposed to be an accurate and realistic scale representation of the original straight from the box–and not needing the modeler to fix problems or inaccuracies found in the kit.
Just sayin'...
In a perfect world...yeah. But in a perfect world my BMF would always stick, my paint would never orange-peel, my plastic would never craze, the parts would always fit, and the airbrush would never clog.
-
The Step-down Hudsons came out in 1948 and to a lesser extent than the Cord, became an iconic car with an iconic shape. Of the 131,618 Hudson Hornets built, there are probably more than a few still around. In the absence of original drawings, there are actual cars that could be measured, photographed, eyeballed and otherwise surveyed. Now we have all seen thanks to the Trumpeter '60 Pontiac, that even having the real car around to measure and photograph, we can still get a model that has REAL fidelity issues.
But you don't need the real car, to do that. you simply need to hire the several people in this thread who can judge the accuracy of a kit by simply looking at photographs.
What is your dream model kit?
in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
Posted
That would make an awesome gasser!