MrObsessive

It wouldn't hurt to ask how much he's willing to handle. IIRC, he asks that you don't mount the parts.....he does the mounting. I thought he said that he does send the parts to a plater that does the actual work. I don't know who that would be.......this is the first I've sent things out to be chromed in a number of years actually.

Steve, I sent the chrome parts to him sometime in July. I believe it was during the week of the fourth as I was on vacation that week. I got them back I think around a couple months ago. I was in no hurry as I have waaaaay plenty to do while I wait on chrome or whatever else I'm wanting. As far as I know, he's not doing this on a major full time basis............I had never heard of him until a friend of mine mentioned him about six months ago.

I'm finally on the home stretch of this one fellas! A while back I got the chrome redone by a fellow (Bob Dahl) who's on Facebook. I'm happy with the results, and I'll definitely be keeping him in mind for future items. Since I got the 1/8 Agora Cobra done (pics of that one later....gotta find space to get decent pics), I want to get back to finishing this one up for good. Here are a few quick cell phone pics of what's up. I have to scratchbuild some sort of rear apron to get the rear bumper to have more of a positive location. Also, the trunk trim I made years ago, that'll have to be redone as it's gotten so brittle over the years since it was never mounted permanently on the car. I tried to BMF it on a hard surface and then mount it, and it broke in several places. Oh well, such as what happens when you've got a project that's FIFTEEN YEARS in the making. ?

Bill, posting those two bodies, I can see a MAJOR difference between two. I agree the Heller body definitely has the edge over the Revell Jag. I have the Heller kit and it's definitely on my to-do list to build in the not too distance future. I got Fernando Pinto's wire wheels to go with it..........very nice and it appears the wheels on your model look like his. ?

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I'll echo what everyone else is saying. There are waaaay, waaaay too many variables in what happens with any one given paint job. Everything from paint type, color, subject prep (paint does NOT hide shoddy prep).......I could go on. As Snake said, experience is the best teacher and that reinforces why one should perhaps test out their paint before putting it on a pet project. I will say that I'm a big believer in clear coating metallic paints with maybe very few exceptions. It's been my case where I did try to rub out a metallic paint job, and the paint while smooth, the metallic flakes ended up looking "swirly" and "mottled".

I get the question from time to time if I sell my models. I always answer them no, and it's mainly because it's very hard for me to sell something I spent so much time on. I'm also not a fan of building for others as it would very quickly become "work" and I already have a job with too much stress at times. I can think of only one builder that posts here from time to time that gets VERY good money for the models he builds, and that's Paul Hettick whose handle on eBay is Robbbbbb57. Now Paul has been doing this for many years, and I can imagine he's got a customer base that will buy from him and willing to pay the price. Still, looking at what he does and the amount of effort that goes into it, what he gets in return IMO should be worth MUCH more.

I do believe it's the same as this one............... Pic courtesy of eBay. I built one a loooong time ago. Not a bad kit at all and I can't remember any big issues with it. I can tell you that prices for those according to what I just saw on the 'Bay are outta sight! I have this kit unbuilt and I had no idea those are getting big dollars for them now.

Tom, I'm glad my tutorial was of some help..............your windows are fitting very well! ? That was one of the first things that jumped out at me as a potential problem. I had seen some that were built, and having seen the 1:1's quite a bit over the years and having tons of reference pics, I knew the glass should fit much more flush. Keep up the great work! Edit: Unfortunately, the original thread got locked due to a killjoy that had some rather not so nice things to say about Moebius. No kit is perfect........not even Tamiya's as good as they are. With just a bit of work, these can be made into real gems.

Hosting sites for certain pics might have changed since this was posted. This goes back to 2007 and even as recently as a couple years ago, those pics may have migrated elsewhere.

Hi Mike! Welcome aboard and I'm just west of you in Perry County. There are a number of PA builders that post here on the board.

WOW! Now that is a NICE Turbine Car! I also built one of these years ago and it was no joke to get together. For its day, this kit was considered state of the art, but I can 'bout guarantee it left many a builder cursing under their breath, and I was one of them. Mine is here if you want to take a look. I ended up re-engineering the kit pretty much from bumper to bumper. ?

Pete, I hear you on the cruddy eBay changes! I surfed eBay a lot on my phone.....one of the categories I had listed that they totally messed up was "Vintage Model Kits". I noticed a HUGE change after I got the last update from them (a few days ago) that nowhere near the number of listings were showing up like before. It was not unusual to have at least several hundred listings pop up within a few hours. It's now down to a couple dozen which I know is not how it was previously. I'm at the point where I'll only look for something on an "as needed/wanted" basis and not keep fooling with their screwed up system. ?

One other thought..........knowing how "obsessive" I am about rooflines and such, I'd want to keep the '59 roof as a parts donor as that can be used for another swap later. In fact, as I was typing my last post, a '58 Plymouth four door hardtop came to mind. Or perhaps, a '57 Desoto FireFlite four door hardtop? The rear part of the roof would need some subtle reshaping for '57-'58 (lower), but a number of cars could be done from that. One nice thing about those old Johan bodies is that they were pretty much right on the mark when it came to accuracy. In fact, I believe Johan is the only manufacturer to ever do that 1957-'59 Mopar four door hardtop roof style. ?

I've done a couple roof swaps and I can tell you that not all applications will apply. Each model will have (or need) its own way of doing a swap. It can depend on the manufacturer and how "true" to scale said car is. On that note, I'd strongly advise measuring out your roofs as best you can to see how much of a difference there is, if there's any at all. If these were two Johans, I'd say you may not need to worry about that at all. But, being that the '57 is an AMT kit, I'd not be surprised if it's a bit on the large/wide side for 1/25th scale. Johan was notorious for "undersizing" their models to suit whatever box they needed to go into. This was a store request kind of thing due to the fact that whatever outlet Johan wanted to sell their models in, the stores needed to have the model boxes fit in whatever space was available. In the '50's and '60's this was a widespread practice particularly with Johan kits. As far as your '59, I'd not cut the roof below the A pillars. Reason being is that the windshield frame A pillars are a bit different between 1957 and '59. I'd cut it along the windshield header and then graft the '57 roof on to that. On the rear part of the roof, I'd try to cut just outside of the C pillars and leave a bit of the tulip panel (the area between the rear glass and the trunk), so you'll have some play around room to sand/file for whatever is needed. If you take a look here, you'll see pics of a '59/'60 Chevy Impala roof swap I did years ago. I was able to do pretty much a direct transfer of the roofs as they're from the same maker and scale. In fact, the '60 (which had a MUCH better roofline IMO) was derived from the '59 as far as tooling. As far as your door lines, if I were building this, I'd try to keep as much of the original trim as possible. I'd start the scribing of the new lines on the trim, and work outwards from there. You might want to look into something called "Dymol Embossing Tape". This is the tape they use to stick on items in the store for pricing and such. Very nice and rigid, and just the thing to use when you want something sturdy to re-scribe new lines into plastic. One more word of caution............I don't know how old that X-EL Promo is, but be careful because as kit plastic ages, it can tend to get BRITTLE. I'd work carefully and slowly cutting the roof as you don't want any surprises. Hope this helps!

Oooh! Very nice! I'll be watching this one! ?

Wow, I'm so sorry to hear this. And yes, the 2019 NNL East would have been the last time I saw him in person. At one point a while back, he wanted to get together a club here in Central PA. These days though, I just flat didn't have the time to do that and sadly, that'll never happen now.

Aaaah! That looks soooo much better! The roofline was one of the reasons I never built this kit. I could see what the issues were, but building it was not a priority compared to other projects I've had in mind. Thanks for showing this..........just goes to show that it's the subtle things that CAN make or break a model.

Ray, I don't know if you're still interested, but there are full kits of this car coming very shortly. If you check the link here, Agora has all the details.

Wow Scott! VERY nice and clean! I have to say you work FAST! For me, just getting things together for references for example can take more time that not!

This is waaaay overdue for an update! I've had other things going on......chief of which was Eaglemoss's '55 Mercedes 300SL in 1/8 which I just finished up this morning. To make a long story short, I never started a thread on that one due to the real fact that getting parts from Eaglemoss was like pulling teeth.......and I know how much that hurts. It was over a YEAR since I got anything significant from them, so one day a few months ago, I saw the entire kit on eBay from a seller in France. I went ahead and bought the kit from him, called Eaglemoss to cancel everything, and went to work on it. I've got a TON of pics of the whole build and down the road I'll start a separate thread on it......pitfalls and all. Well, now that the Benz is out of the way, I can get my attention back to the Cobra. Last time I posted, I showed above the bare chassis of the kit. Since then, I do have the interior all built up. This will be just a few pics in this update..............more to come as I have packs #9 through 11 ready to build. #11 was a nice surprise as you'll see below. I have the dash done as well...............I'll show that one later on as the steering wheel has yet to be attached. A few days ago, I got this nice little surprise on my porch-----this was part of pack #11. I couldn't resist putting the body on the (not yet finished) chassis! Sooooo..........I got my work cut out for me for the forseeable future! Pack #9 from what I can see has a bit of fiddly small bits to get sorted out. I can also see some effort to get the windshield frame "chromed" as they painted that in aluminum for whatever reason. I'll have to take some time to strip it and polish it up as it is solid metal. I just downloaded the PDF instructions from Agora for the final pack #12. That should be here to my house any day, so I can get this one finished up and call 'er done. ? Thanks for tuning in to this quick update. More to come later on!

That was one of the issues I had with my last Saturn. The rod that connects to the back of the clutch pedal (also plastic) would no longer stay put and the dealer quoted me that exact figure to fix everything, as that was part of the clutch slave cylinder. In hindsight, I might have been able to replace just the pedal, but I was at a point that I wanted another car, so I let it go and went and bought the Challenger. It served me well........my Ion Coupe had 155,000 miles on it and the engine still ran like a brand new car. It used NO oil and no smoke out the back of the tailpipe at idle or at speed. With only 79,000 miles on the Vue so far as I write this, I'd like to hang on to it for a looooooong time.

LOL!!

Thomas, I thought about a new/newer vehicle for a quick minute, but I'm at a point in life where I really don't want to deal with any more car payments as BOTH vehicles are paid for and I have titles in hand. That was one of the criteria that was embedded on my mind when I wanted to get another car. VERY low or no car payments at all. I just hate that monthly bill staring at me with full coverage to boot for insurance. I don't know how folks do it with payments dragged out for six, seven, and now I'm hearing EIGHT years. That's simply INSANE! If the car had over 100,000 on it with its age, I probably would have passed on it. Since I've had Saturns before, I'm familiar with the quirks and other things that can go wrong with them at a certain point in mileage. That this one is a manual was also a MAJOR plus for me.

I'd take any Crossover or SUV over a Mini-Van! NEVER liked those from the beginning and they were once on my "Top Ten Warning Signs of Danger" list when it comes to driving. Years ago, practically each time I'd have a close call with someone driving dumb, they'd be in a BROWN mini-van. Absolutely don't like 'em! I took a peak underneath when I was first looking it over and all looks solid. Even the inner fenders on the chassis side look good as I see no surface rust starting. That wasn't the case with my Ion Coupe which was showing surface rust on the inner fenders and the car wasn't quite 10 years old at the time I had it. I suspect this one was owned by an older person judging by the miles on it, and may have been garage kept. As far as the car wash, the one I went to was the "rag type". They don't use the spinning bristles which I don't like in the least. Probably the antenna got snagged on one of the rags and it's the type you can't lower. I can easily take it off its base if I plan on going again.......or better yet, I'll be washing it and then there's no worries. ☺️ I'll admit it is a lot more convenient and practical to load large/heavy items in it. Every so often because I have three cats, I buy the industrial size litter for their litter box. It's MUCH nicer not having to lift that big, heavy box into the high liftover trunk in the Challenger.