MrObsessive

At this past NNL East, I spoke to Ed Sexton directly about that car. I mentioned to him that they have the basic "bones" of the car with their Starsky and Hutch Torino. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in agreement, and it was one of the cars mentioned several times on "The Most Wanted List" that I posted here a while back that Revell had available. I told him that I wouldn't care if it's a snapper...........all the better if it means we can at least get a KIT of the car. Doing it the way of the Monte Carlo would be a good idea------that era T-Bird is popular with the lowrider crowd.

I would get one of these not so much for a police car, but for the fact that it's a four door, and four doors are woefully lacking in today's model world. Vinyl roof and all, and you gotta have whitewalls on it! Dave, I'm with you 100%! Another one of my '70's favorites.........takes me back to high school when this car was new. Now throw in a '77-'79 T-Bird?? You just made the rest of the decade for me!

I feel the same way. .................And the countdown to this getting locked started the moment it was posted.

James, I kinda doubt they fix that. It would involve quite a bit of tooling change to redo those window channels, not to mention new tooling for glass as you'd have to change the trim, depth, etc. It's a bit tedious, but if you've never seen it-------I did a tutorial here on how to get the glass to fit and definitely improve the overall appearance of it. Looks like on the Mercury Comet kit the glass fits better with the method they're using. I guess they read the complaints here and made that step not so hair pulling.

Hmmm Ron, I dunno about that but I'll take the compliment! Not after the Shelby (I'm gonna attempt another "box stock" build) but the model following that one I'm gonna do an all out assault on the '58 Plymouth kit. Namely, try to correct as much of the body on that as possible from nose to tail, and from road to roof. I've collected many, many pics of '58 Furys over the years, so I've got plenty of reference to go by. Over the weekend, particularly by Sunday, I'll probably be done with this engine as far as I can go with it. It'll be back to the Shelby at that point which there's engine work to be finished with that. Certainly enough I have to keep busy through the end of the year!

My time off is winding down (back to work on Monday) so I'm trying to move along on this one. Just a small update here for now...... I went ahead and made the tiny "glass" bowl fuel filter that is seen on most engines of this era. If I'm not mistaken, I think that in some areas (my own state of PA might be one of them), this type of filter is no longer allowed in street use for a regularly driven passenger car. However I've seen cars with this that are driven, but if memory serves me the car had antique plates so it's not subject to the yearly vehicle inspections that we have here. I made this by first turning some clear plastic sprue into a cone shape in my Dremel Moto-Tool, and then scored a slight groove in it with my Exacto blade. I then rolled the sprue back and forth with the blade on the cutting mat, so as to have a clean straight edge on the flat side of it for mounting the cap later on. The cap is just some scrap plastic I had laying around with some .30" tubing on the top of that. I drilled through that tubing with a #76 drill bit and then was able to run .015" silver bead wire through it to represent the fuel lines. To represent tiny fittings on the ends of the lines, I sliced some 1/64" I.D. brass tubing (Special Shapes) so that the lines didn't look like they just run into the carbs without some kind of fitting. I wanted to use the brass hex nuts I have, but I'm short on those as I used a lot of them on my Shelby Green Hornet engine............something that I'll be getting back to after I finish this. The bowl was very lightly painted with some Tamiya clear orange to represent the orange like appearance I notice whenever I see one of these. More than likely, that's the filter inside the bowl and there's no way I could duplicate that! I hate the sepia look that my camera gives sometimes, but I can't complain. It is 13 years old and it still takes decent pictures most of the time. Nevertheless, I'm due for an upgrade, and down the road I'm going to bite the bullet and get a new digicam. Now it's on to the exhaust manifolds.........from there I'll be able to mount the pulleys and then the generator which sits on the passenger side manifold and has a molded in bracket. Some small details after that, and she's all done! Thanks for lookin'!

Now I LIKE that!! I had one of those too as a kid, and in fact I remember having all 16 1968 release Hot Wheels. Especially by that Christmas when I got my first set (Supercharger Sprint Set??) is when I believe I had all 16. Seeing that really brings back some memories!

Either the '70 Monte, or the snapper '77........they were all built on the same platform back in those days.

Welcome Jason! Those models you mentioned, I have a number of them as I do like to collect them if they're especially nice.

OK, I read on eBay how those live auctions work............must be something relatively new as I've not seen that before. I'm gonna tune in just to see how this goes!

When I clicked on one of the auctions on my phone, it mentioned that this is a "live auction". I take that to mean that you have to be there in person, or eBay's letting folks bid in real time for a period of time? Yeah, those are some real gems I see there, but I need more models like a hole in the head right now! I've got enough models now (like many others) that for sure will outlive me as far as ever getting built! Some of those unbuilt (sealed) kits I see are going to go for an absolutely outrageous sum of coin!

Well, as they say Lee.........."Three times the charm!" Let's hope their third attempt is a home run this time. While the new tool 'Cuda is not perfect, it's nowhere near the mess that the first two attempts were. Give 'em time...........I'm sure Revell will release one sooner or later. There is a thread where someone (AFX) is taking the new tool 'Cuda and kitbashing it with the old 1/24 one. Mixing scales can be troublesome at times, but this one so far is coming along pretty well.

Just to show an example of clear vs. no clear........ This Magnum was clear coated due to the metallic paint. This Impala was rubbed out as the red is solid. BTW, I use Meguiar's Car Cleaner Wax and a chamois cloth for all of my polishing. For the rubbing out portion, I'll use Detail Master's polishing cloths--------3600-12,000 grit...........then polish out.

Now I can see Glenn's pic.........from my laptop...... Edit: No Scratch that...........it was Bruce's pic I can see..........the others still are among the missing.

Strange...........when I first saw this post on my desktop I could see Glenn's. But now I'm on my laptop and there's no pic. This was about an hour ago when I first saw Glenn's pic. Perhaps PB took it down??

Chris, this is my own personal opinion, but I'm of the big belief that solid colors need no clear coat to come out nice. There's enough hardener in the paint that if you spend the time to rub out and polish the paint, clear coat is wholly unnecessary. Some will disagree, but that's how I've been doing paint jobs for many years now. Metallic paint yes........solid colors, no clear coat. As far as the drying time...........that's a tough one as it'll depend on the climate you're experiencing right now. I tend to wait about a week before doing any rubbing out and polishing. Some may say that's a bit long, but my rule of thumb is if you can no longer smell the paint, then it should be sufficiently dry. Hope all this helps!

JC's car will be certainly ABOVE board than the abomination that Revell put out................twice! The first one they did was simply AWFUL! It looked like a caricature of the actual car------almost like they did the car from memory! The second one was only a trifle better, but still was woefully inaccurate. I don't intend to hijack this thread with these pics, but just to illustrate what JC's going to do to his car will come out 1000% better than the attempt that Revell made with their second try at this car 10 years ago. Some say the current one is not all that hot..........I disagree seeing what was foisted upon us before. Maybe the wheel flares are a little too pronounced............maybe. But the shape is 100% better than what I just posted here.

That's the way it always works! It's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to do certain conversions (ahem.........cough, cough, '57 Nomad.....ahem). As soon as I get halfway through it, just as sure as I'm sitting here, Revell will announce a kit!

Country pride Gregg? I believe that's where they are based. Could be something to do with their government too which mandates something like that be free. Interesting!........

Thanks John! Wow! I've GOT to see that!! You're planning on the upper half of the '59 to the lower half of the '58 with '57 bumpers and taillights?? That sounds as ambitious as what I have planned for my '58, 'cept mine will be pretty much a plastic makeover from nose to tail. Thanks everyone for all the nice words as well! As of now I'm working on the fuel filter, and getting the fuel lines put in once I'm satisfied the epoxy has fully cured with how I made the filter. If not today, certainly tomorrow I'll post pics as it should be put in by then.

Time to start working on the carburetor linkage. I wanted to make the arm that connects the primary carb to the secondary one. As you can see by the quarter, this is a tiny, tiny piece! The slider part on the one end, is actually part of a PE seat belt buckle that was CA glued into the end of some wire insulation. The other end is the PE bullet loop from a coil set...........the wire that hooks onto that. Here it is attached to the carbs...........it could have stood to be a little bit lower, but I didn't want to run the risk of separating the carbs (again!) by drilling in the wrong place, so I had to settle for this. Also, it gives me some clearance for when I want to install a return spring as you'll see in a bit. BTW, I painted the carbs Alclad Steel, and they came out a bit darker than I wanted. On the other hand, to my eyes it's a better contrast than having them nearly match the color of the block. Not so monochromatic looking! Making a return spring. One of the things I can remember about judging is that if there were items that were just woefully out of scale, to me that takes away from the appearance of the part as a whole, and sometimes it might be better to leave things off if an in scale appearance can't be done. It's one of the reasons I don't wanna be a judge any longer..............people get mad. As you see can here, I've taken shielding that can be found in coax cable and simply wrap a single strand of it around a #77 drill, but I also tried to hook the ends as this is a tension spring that's found on most carburetors of the era. The retainer that holds the spring on the manifold I made out of a tiny piece of stainless steel sheet, and was drilled with the appropriate size drill bit. I think I used a #76 bit for this. Here's the spring installed...........the throttle link on the primary carb is from an old Detail Master set I had laying around. Now it's on to the distributor. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment as I'm one that would rather make my own distributor, or use one of Norm Veber's 8 cyl. distributor caps. I super glued this onto its base, and started to insert the wires one at a time with CA glue. I wanted to make distributor boots for them..........I did this by cutting tiny pieces of wire insulation that would fit over the 30 gauge kynar wire. These were cut about 1/32" each. Here they are all inserted in............ Next, spark plug end boots I wanted to make. These were cut roughly 1/8". Here's the results of all the wires in now. I'll eventually make a coil which from pics I have of '58 318 Poly head engines, looks to mount on the intake manifold. Now I can move on to making the fuel lines for the carbs and its fittings, and making the "clear bowl" type fuel filter which I'll make out of clear sprue. Hopefully all done by this weekend-----------Thanks for tuning in!

For me it's much easier to open up the pic, right click on the pic, select copy image, and then paste it right here in the text box.......... No muss no fuss, just move on right along.......

Anthony, you want to right click on the full size pic, not just the thumbnail in the album. When I copied the URL of your pic, it took me to your Fotki page, and not the sole .JPG image of your truck.

Sure can Jim! Whenever I'm doing a WIP for a particular model here (and for other boards), I'll have those WIP's in a particular group or album. After I'm done and it's now "Under Glass" here, I can then move them to another group. For example, the '63 Porsche you saw me restoring a little bit ago was once grouped here. Now that I'm done with it, it's now in this group here. As I said, Fotki to me is much more user friendly than other image hosting sites, and for $24 a year you can't beat it!

Carl, she's absolutely GORGEOUS! Funny that I saw very, very few of these growing up during the '60's. I suppose a lot of them started to disappear by the time I would know what a car was (early '60's). I sure saw my fair share of Ramblers from that era though!