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Yeah, I knew about the R &C "Highboy of the Month" cars but what I was pretty much referring to was that many of the high aerial acts were never refeferred to as "Gassers". Which your post further proves, magazines and writers went out of their way to not call those cars Gassers, because they weren't. Just like the hi-jacked cars posing as pseudo-gassers are being called Gassers by ill-informed people who weren't around when the real Gassers rumbled! Which is why I rather like the descriptive term "Street Freaks". Then again, I remember seeing (in print), this kind of car referred to as a "Street Funny Car", whip that term around and see how many guffaws and outright laughter that one generates!! By the way, some of them pipes are pretty laughable when you look back at them now! They must be in the magazines that the rat rodders are reading, every once in a while you see a rat rod sporting something similar. Thankfully just like rat rods those long upward straight pipes (I remember them referred to as "Organ Pipes) were the exception to the rule!!! Just think, 50 or 60 years from now some kid is going to build a rat rod, thinking that's what every one was running in the 2K's because he has two or three rat rod magazines with "cars" with bizarre looking straight pipes!! Just sayin' , kinda the same...

Interesting tidbit on the length of the zoomie headers. I would have thought the individual exhaust pipe lengths would have been determined by track and dyno testing. I remember reading several sources where the rear pipe on right and left were angled and cut many times so they shot the hot exhaust onto the slicks to help warm up and or keep the rubber hot and sticky. The other function of the exhaust angle was an attempt to gain the advantage of needed downforce at full throttle, top fuel cars were starting to sprout wings as weed burners gave way to zoomies. Don't remember them being referred to as zoomies in print then either, they were just headers. If you go back and dig up the Hot Rod issue with Ohio George's Mustang Gasser, I seriously doubt they were referred to as zoomies as it was well understood what zoomies were and were not! The whole thing is like a lot of the terms used to describe styles of cars like gassers for example, which were understood to be jacked up no higher than 24 inches from the center of the crankshaft to the pavement per the NHRA Rulebook. Then came the jacked way beyond ridiculousness Street Freaks as dubbed by Car Craft Magazine around 1972 - 1975 timeframe (give or take a few years). A few of which were legitimate Gassers recycled back to the street, where they came from in the first place. Street Freaks were all about getting the widest rear tire under the car, no matter how high it had to be raised to do it, (this was before rear axles narrowing became common). So now you have a whole generation of younger people who weren't around then who call anything that's loud, jacked up, running a straight axle a Gasser, fast or not! By their definition a Jeep could be a Gasser too!!

I've had two occasions to use Revell's Part Replacement service. First bought a sealed New Beetle Tuner off of eBay, the entire glass spruce was missing, (I think Revell hadn't even produced it for a couple of years then). Explained issue, where I bought it, received glass a couple weeks later. Second was just after the Slingster came out, bought it from the local hobby shop. Got home opened the box to find the front axle was bent in the center at nearly a 45* angle! LHS told me they didn't want to exchange the kit, which I wasn't happy about in the least. Though I saw their point, they'd have to sell it at a loss on their defective /close out shelf; when Revell would replace the axle. Contacted Revell, I got the entire chrome tree, less than two weeks after requesting the new axle. There was a note explaining one of their molds had an ejector pin issue within the first 500 - 1000 runs through the molds. They though they had caught most of the defective pieces, they hoped the chrome tree made up for any inconvenience! It sure did!!

Oh, I thought that was the model for anything Kia or Hyundai!! Maybe just their quality model!! They both make really ugly cheap "cars". Father in law had a Kia that 99.9% of its miles were on a tow dolly behind a motor home, it was falling apart from vibration alone, electrical issues, loudest vehicle I've ever rode in (once only), didn't even feel romately safe in it. You'd have to pay me to have either in my driveway!

Perusing through EvilBay looking at 1/43 kits I found a few subjects which might be of interest, however some of the prices!! Ouch! I notice that prices range from around a reasonable $9 to a jaw dropping $300 and up. Totally blows me away, some of these offerings range from amazing to not bad the pricing doesn't seem to follow the amazement factor either. Being that I've never built or collected anything 1/43 Scale I am pretty much sticker shocked for mostly what we would consider "Curb Side" models. I know some of these are products of the cottage industry, but what's up with the prices for kits?

The other thing I remember about Keystones was that J.C. Penny's sold a mag wheel that looked similar to the Keystone wheel. They may have been Keystone seconds or just made by Keystone for J.C.P. branded as Scat Trac or something like that. They also were a sharp lined wheel when most other wheels were smooth and flowing which the Cragar definitely is. The chrome plated Cragar SS wheels from '60's to mid-70's were not wavy or over polished as described, I remember the set I had on my GTO being very smooth without any hint of waviness which was typical for the Cragar SS wheels I saw on other guys cars. I do remember seeing Cragar SS wheels in the 80's and later with the waves chrome finish on them, most people had moved on to polished American's by then though. Another factor might have been price or perceived value, I remember the Cragar SS wheel costing more than the Keystone wheel. Here in the Rainbelt (Pacific Northwest) the chrome on Keystone and J.C.P. wheels didn't hold up very well, which is one reason we run a lot of alloy wheels. Chrome reverse wheels start pitting and rusting after a couple years if run year round on a daily driver, so word gets around what holds up and what doesn't.

Cragar's were the wheel to have when I was in high school. Had them on my '65 GTO, many cars and sets of mags later. I remember that they were an easy wheel to keep clean, the classic look complemented my Goat quite well. The pictures of the two mags illustrate what I remember being wrong with the Keystone wheel, the lug bolt holes were slotted versus non-slotted on the Cragar wheel. I remember hearing stories about Keystone and other slotted lug bolt mag wheels cracking or fracturing around the slots. I never saw it in person, but there is almost always someone who swears they have or it happened to them! Musta happened to somebody or else Cragar made the story up to sell wheels!!!

The two Revell Custom Car Parts T Bodies that I have are exactly like the Tweedy Pie's body in my stash. Notching I would have to check, they are molded in battleship gray, I'm 99% sure it is the same body, even the truck bed is the same.

I'll toss my hat in on the Comet / Ajax cleanser on full size and model paint jobs. The trick to testing cleanliness used to be water beading on the just cleaned surface, I still use it to this day. After cleaning and testing, the bodywork is blown dry with filtered compressed air so I'm not putting any oil or moisture back on the bodywork. The next time I touch the bodywork my hands are covered with nitrile gloves which I wear up until the paintwork is laid down. We used to use a trick (still do) when doing pinstriping or custom paint work over fiberglass and plastic body panels to kill the static by spraying the back of the panel with a spray bottle of plain old tap water, worked every time! I've read where Ed Roth used to spit on the car in the area he was striping to kill the static; always wondered what the look on his customer's face was after Ed spit on their pride and joy! I used to polish model paint jobs with Crest and then Pearl Drops when I was a kid too, worked really well. That might be why a lot of us seasoned guys have more than our share of caps on our teeth!! (Still got'em!!). I remember if you weren't careful you could burn right through two coats of Testers enamel pretty quick!!

Two ways I've used to produce Faux-Tina primer showing through the topcoat are both done with airbrush for academic and a detail gun for full size. 1. Prime + Topcoat, try to apply the topcoat thinner in the areas you intend to burn through later. Next use either a polishing pad running up and to toe finest grits burning through to the primer where you want the primer showing. 2. Prime + Topcoat + Primer in the areas you want it to show. Use either a Polishing Compound or Polishing Pads to burn back the primer to thin coated areas over the topcoat where it would normally burn through with age. Again progress through the finer grits of polishing pads (skip the rough stuff) you want to polish to the primer if the effect you are going for is paint that has been waxed and polished so much that it has thinned and the primer is showing through the topcoat. This applies to both techniques. The final step would be to use a past wax to wax over the whole area that you've thinned. This will protect the effect and keep the paint and primer from oxidizing to the point you may have t o polish it again. Don't go all crazy and make the thinned paint so shiny that it's not believable to the eye, you're trying to trick the eye into recognizing worn paint. Observe real worn paint and try to duplicate the areas that normally wear thin with age, crowned areas, sharp transitions and creases. If you've ever burned through the paint when you were trying to polish, you've already got some experience with this technique!

If you can't get the Spaz Stix or Alclad techniques down some thing that's worked for me is to use Lowe's Valspar Primer + Valspar Gloss Black + Valspar Brite Metal Silver. (Valspar seems to work the best for me.) These are all enamel based paints so either accelerate drying with a hair dryer or dehydrator. Use your polishing pads on the gloss black you want the shiniest smoothest surface for the silver to lay down on. This won't give the chrome effect that Alclad or Spaz Stix will, close but not quite the same. Using this technique first out of the can, then decanting is going to help your learning curve and at $3 - 4 bucks a rattle can is cheaper to practice with too. (This technique goes way back before either Chrome Paint products ever came on the market, sign guys have been using it for eons.) this is basically the same base technique that airbrush artists used lacquers for to do headlights and chrome, tinted and highlighted with super-thinned blue.

Don't forget the Revell Custom Parts Pack T bucket body, it's the same one in all of the kits show, right down to the opening passenger door.

Since its light years out of my price range, it really doesn't bother me that it will be sold. What I prefer to see is that it is preserved as it should be, the fact that it will go for top dollar ensures that it will be preserved in its unmolested state, likely going to a very high profile museum (and hopefully not rat holed away in a private offshore collection). Agree that the Henry Ford Museum or Petersen Collection is the fitting place where it should be shared with those who will appreciate it. A Museum Collection in the U.K. To me wouldn't be as appropriate, only the "Raw Material" came from the U.K.. Likely no one but an American Hot Rodder (Shelby) would have developed it into anything remotely like the Cobra.

Appears to be a well executed high end, V8 Vega, looks like it could be right at home as a Street/Strip combo car. Your black paint looks good! Having built a couple V8 Vegas for my self and helped out on probably 5 or 6 other people's street/strip (bracket) Vega's, your stirs up a whole lot of memories, mostly good!! Like what you've done. If my memory serves me correctly, that Promo Body looks better than the (MPC or was it AMT (?) ) Vega.

is the new Revell '30 Model A Coupe out already or are eBay sellers trying to do pre sale auctions? I'm not going to post the auction information, but the auction I was looking at isn't mentioning that the auction is a pre sale for the '30 Ford Model A Coupe. Makes it sound like they have it in hand now.

Wouldn't doubt that Mr. Norm (Veber) is already thinking about a stock height greenhouse for this kit! I'd be willing to trade a few of those smallblock Ford motors from the Deuce kits for some smallblock Chevy motors, (that is if the quality of the SBC is anywhere as good as the little Ford motors)! Then again a whole lot of the early SBC engines from the '55 and up kits are really nice too, they beat the old AMT SBC any day of the week! Needless to say, I'm excited about this kit, I can see all sorts of possibilities from '60's Hot Rods, Dry Lakes and Saltflats Racers, Early Drag Cars, Y2K and later Hot Rods, Rusty rats... Hopefully they do get around to getting a Quick Change rear end going for this, there is always another possibility of kit bashing the new frame under the '29 Ford Pickup and the '29 P/U frame under the new coupe for the classic Ford suspension, same frame setup under a few of the Revell Model A based kits, even the possibility of a banger engine!

In real Mini circles the MINI is either called a BINI as in BMW-MINI or a BEON, (the first handful of MINIs used the same engine as the Neon because BMW couldn't meet production on the New MINI engines. We refer to our Minis as "Actual Size", RHD Minis often have an arrow pointing to "Driver Over Here". We have had handfuls of MINI owners try to crash the party with their German built Not-So-MINIs only to be pointed to a couple of Bimer MINI Clubs. Incidentally the New MINI is spelled with all capital letters, BMW bought the Mini Concept and only owns rights to the name MINI not the original Mini which only has one capital letter. The New MINI was actually of British design and intended to be built by Brits as a continuation of the Mini's legacy, when BMW bought the rights to that concept is where the milk curdled! I actually drove one of the first three 2001 MINIs, (not for sale Demos) in Western Washington, which was a Cooper S. When it plowed through a tight corner like a new Honda was when I sort of lost interest; it was tight, it was new but it just wasn't special because it didn't have a heritage of its own! I let the owner of the Tacoma MINI franchise drive my Mini; he was going through the tiny slalom course they had set up on their empty lot, so precise and gingerly that he almost freaked out when I shoved his knee down harder onto the gas as he was entering a tight corner! He thought he was going to spin or worse, he would have in his MINI! 1973 Mk III Mini up-rated to Cooper S Spec versus straight out of the box MINI Cooper S; it was a total hoot! Reminded me of when I heard once on a BBC soccer match one of the first times I visited the U.K. The announcer was talking about the crowd, "the crowd is absolutely going potty!". As a couple of U.S. high school kids in 1973, we thought that was the funniest things we ever heard on TV I know why the air cooled VW crowd holds the "New Beetle" with such distain, many of the NB owners thought they were going to fit into the Air Cooled VW clubs as well. (I own one, but never thought of horsing in on someone else's thing with my newer version.) Same goes with the PT Cruisers who tried to horn in on the Street Rod Events, only they were really met with rudeness!

Very nice Mk I Mini, I've seen that color or colour combination on a Mk I Mini at British car shows. Most of the Mk I mainline Mini's I've seen are either the light blue and Old English White top or light green and O.E. White top, the other red ones I've seen were the darker red single color paint scheme. Nice job on the dash looks like the Mk I center binical Mini's I've seen a time or two even has the correct speedometer only, Cooper and Cooper S had the three gauge binical plus the twin carbs which you addressed on yours. Looks like you either did your research or had a nice example of the real thing to refer to. Nice job!

- Ranchero Steve -There is a special fan for hot weather climates which moves more air than the standard (U.K.) fan. I had one on my Mini for a while here in Washington state, it ended up cooling things down too much in the early spring and late fall months, so they work. An interesting fact about the early Mini's shipped to some countries were that they were sent to Austrailia, New Zealand and South Africa in crates where they would be assembled into a Mini once they arrived into the foreign country from England. One of the guys in the Mini Club I belong to has a South African, "Crate Mini Mk. I". He has all the original paperwork from its existence in South Africa, plus the information from the Mini registery indicating that it was a crate mini. I think I read somewhere that the Crate Mini's were a way around some of the taxes. The Mini's that arrived here in the U.S. Until 1967 were fully built cars with very little fit up required by the U.S. Dealer. 1967 was the last year that the Mini and Mini Cooper were imported into the U.S. because of "safety" regulations. More likely whining from GM and Ford competing against the Corvair and Falcon; even though both were giant in comparison.

Nice work so far! Plausible modifications that you'd see on the real thing. Oh, yeah I like it too!!

I haven't entered any of my models in contest/shows in years, but I do enter a couple (2 - 4) car shows a year. My '73 Mini Cooper has won awards at each, including one at a West Coast all Mini event. At this point I really don't care if I win another piece of hardware. They're gathering dust on the wall of the den they'll go with the car when eventually sold. They belong to the car not me, I was never in it to win anyway. Winning is just a bonus for a nice car. One thing I've noticed though, the shows that I let the "little kid who was overheard to tell his Dad or Mom they could drive that car, it's my size!" then I ask the child if they'd like to sit in the driver's seat for a picture? Then allow a happy Mom and Dad to click away, that brings a bigger smile than any win ever did! The times I let kids do that, when they left sticky little handprints on the near perfect paint and crystal clear glass, were the times I won something!! Last year at one show, I heard my class winner announced, we were tired from the long day and left! Only to get home, get car in the garage and hear the phone ring. My "show buddy" on the other end, hey you too good to pick up a trophy? Our Mini won "Most Unique" award, I did hop back in and pick it up. It was a local Church "fun show" where the awards are random at times and shared amoung previous winners who deserve to win, usually to car old or new to the show that deserves to win its class. They told me I won because I loved sharing my car with the kiddos and their parents, that's my most treasured trophy to date!

If it's in the "On the Workbench" section, invited, then it's probably OK. I would ask permission first. If it's in the "Under Glass" section, unless it is invited, then it is in poor form, image or large signature image. The signature in discussion, in my opinion is in poor form due to the image's sheer size. It is so large that it competes with the original poster's pictures. If I remember correctly the builder had an under glass feature, if we wanted to see large pictures of the buildup then we could refer to them. I would have zero issue if it were reduced in size to say that of a normal avatar. It is on the minor irritant level for me, as are a few other posters constant negative "humor"; since I have no control over either I choose to ignore the posters bad taste or form.

Still Screams Badman! Hard to hide those roots. Nice job!

Excellent job, like the paint too! Nice flathead! '39 & '40 are two of my favorite years, you almost can't go wrong with them!!! incidentally, on those chassis colors, it was common in forties and fifties to paint suspension components with either a favorite color or usually just plain whatever you had laying around, sometimes that included plain old house paint. Painting frames and suspension under a full bodied car was a sign that the owner had worked on, modified the parts or just cleaned it up and painted it, then kept it clean afterwards.