MrObsessive

Chuck, you said exactly what I'd like to do with this kit. Take the AMT kit and swap the chassis and interior with the Revell kit, AFTER I swap the roof from the AMT kit with Revell's '64. Neither the AMT kit or the Revell '63 roof is correct to my eyes. The '63 Revell lower body while it has some questionable proportions, the creases are not as defined and sharp as AMT's '63 which to my sight is exactly right.

Paul, in your defense I can certainly understand doing it this way. When you're a one man show, you have to do what's in your best interests and what's physically possible. I look at your recent releases of the '59 Chevy wagon and '59 Imperial sedan. While they were getting very good prices on eBay at the beginning, there have been times I've seen them either go unsold, or there was just one bidder that got it at the end. Another example is the caster that was making a '71 Olds Delta 88. Very much wanted in the beginning, but later on was collecting dust on eBay. I eventually got one for the original asking price which I believe at the time was $90. I definitely want to get your '77-'79 T-Bird when it's available, but I can wait for six months or so when the initial frenzy dies down. God only knows I've got more than enough to build now! This also reinforces why certain kits will never be done by the major kit makers. While those of us out here in the lunatic fringe have been clamoring for these esoteric offerings, one need only look at that actual numbers to see that they would be committing financial suicide if they spent the big bucks on such tooling, only to see very little in return. As that old saying goes................."Patience is a virtue".

Yeah, I would be devastated if I had a cat pass away that young. Nearly 10 years ago, I had one go.....he wasn't quite 10. Tore me up for weeks. He had liver failure and by the time I discovered what was wrong with him it was too late. My Dad had a cat that lived to be 23. She was a tiny thing, but it wasn't dwarfism as far as I know. I didn't know about Peggy Lipton till a couple days ago. I too am of that 'certain age' and remember her very well from "The Mod Squad".

Sorry I missed it this year again fellas! Looks like it was a good show! Wasn't feeling quite well, so I thought it best I not try to drive down there. Hopefully next year and then there's the Super September Showdown coming up before we know it. I gotta put in for time off for that Sunday night though. No way could I get to the show and them make it back home in time to get enough sleep for work that night.

It's obvious those 'youths' weren't raised right. No way in the world would I have survived the absolute beat down from my Mom or Dad or Grandparents if they found out I did something like that! Of course, the thought would have never crossed my mind as I knew better than to touch anything that wasn't mine. Yeah, lets hope that these idiots are SEVERELY punished, but that won't replace what more than likely is irreplaceable in a lot of those displays.

Two actually..............this one..... This BMW 850i is one of my all time favorite kits to be done by Tamiya, only to have NUMEROUS fit difficulties getting it together! I've ran into more problems with this one that I have before in many years and I doubt I'll ever build another. In Tamiya's defense, this was a reboxed Revell kit and had I known what a pain in the tush this would have been to get together, I may have thought twice. And then this one which I've all but given up on.................. After THREE tries with the hood warping, I gave up and put in its box where it sits. A while back I did get an original plastic hood for it so I may attempt to get this one together, but I don't have the ambition right now to fool with it.

It's hard to pick a favorite............1957, '61, '67. If I had to pick a year that was the most interesting, I'd have to say 1965. If you were a full size car shopper that year you literally had all the major carmakers (Big Three) totally redesign all their models. It was definitely new car overload that year as that's the first year I can think of when all of them redesigned their models at once. They would do it again in 1968 with their intermediates so that's an interesting year too.

Sorry it's taken a bit to get back to you. Sometimes I can read the forum at work and reply...........this was not one of those weeks! When i get home in the morning depending on how the night went, I browse the board to see what's up. This was one of those weeks I hope doesn't repeat itself for a loooong time and I was so glad when Friday at 7:30 AM rolled around! OK...........I don't have pics to show what was done, but I'll try to explain what I did. This will involve a bit of computer work so for those of you out there that are the faint of heart when it comes to computers and manipulating pics, this may not be for you. On the 'net I tried to find the highest resolution pic I could find of the '55 Ford's "Burtex" type pattern. I don't remember where I found it, but I came across a very large pic of that pattern and saved it. I then went into my pic program (an old Paint Shop Pro) and resized the pic down to maybe 85-100 pixels or so. I then put the pic on my desktop and had it displayed as 'tiled' so that all you saw on the desktop was that pattern. I hit the print screen button and then opened up my Wordpad program. Hit Ctrl/V and the image showed up there. I then saved the image as a .jpg file on my hard disc. I turned on my printer and then printed out that pattern on regular paper to what I had and SHAZAM!.............. I had the pattern I needed. Now this took several tries to get the look I wanted and as I said, your results will vary. This will depend on how good your printer, paper and how sharp a resolution you were able to get the pic in the first place. Hope this helps! Many times I don't express in detail what I do, I just go ahead and do it and I don't always translate that well into thought.

I have to give the nod to Monogram as to my sight theirs is a bit better proportioned. AMT's at least the ones I've seen, never seem to 'sit' right.......just a bit too high. A turnoff for some may be that the Monogram is 1/24 while AMT's is 1/25 scale. I built one of these years ago, and found the detail to be adequate. I do like the raised top the kit gives you although I believe you get one in the AMT kit also. I don't fret about scale as long as it looks right. Of course, this is subjective and others POV's will differ.

Wow! Good looking car! Perfect stance! Bumperless is a nice touch too............looks better without 'em!

Just saw this on my Twitter news feed............. https://apnews.com/b9a04d9ab2ce4276b2f6bdb6b39af585?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP

Ooooh............VERY, VERY sharp! That color sure suits that and it's so "early '60's"! I tried your decal trick with a stillborn '55 Ford Victoria for the trunk pattern years ago and yes, that works quite well if you can get the resolution sharp enough.

Well what's collectible can be subjective from one person to the next and also from era to era. Remember, we used to sniff at the '70's cars even when they were new, but from what I've seen at the car shows, they are turning up now------with crowds around them. Who'da thought?? That collection of cars while not as valuable as some of the '60's stuff.........give it 10-15 years.

Aaaah........I had one of these when I was a kid. This would have been circa 1968-69 time frame. I'd LOVE to have a kit of this if indeed it makes it to the shelves! It's crazy how much money the 1:1's can go for these days!

I believe Ferrari's had carbs that were more 'siamesed' than what we see here. It would make for nice detailed engine parts though if one wanted to use them.

Thanks for posting this Matt! I've got a number of those EM 356 Porsche kits so this will come in handy.

I could NOT resist picking up a set of these at NNL East..............Absolutely TERRIFIC! I should've also got the manifold, but I'll get that one later. Keep up the terrific work!

Time flies! Hard to believe I've been here since nearly the beginning, which was in March of 2006. I think I was member #53 or something like that. I'll have to look later on so to see what my first post was, but I think it was some kind of intro or something. Edit: Well, I stand corrected......it was this!

Randy, that is simply BEAUTIFUL and your patience paid off! Yes, these kits are NOT for the faint of heart and I wouldn't recommend them except for those that have some patience and skill to pull them off. I'd like to tackle one of these again but I've got so many projects rolling around in my head, heaven knows when that'll be.

Randy, your tip about checking bodies often is a VERY good one, especially for those of us that like to do opening panels such as doors and whatnot. Years, ago when I was building my '63 Ferrari 250 GTO, I put the body in the dehydrator to speed things up a bit. I had opened the doors on it and thank goodness I checked the body when I did! I could see where there was a slight warp beginning to start on the body right at the door jambs (the weakest part) and fortunately, I was able to straighten things back out. This was despite having the thermostat set at 105º which is about ideal for drying. Certain plastics may warp sooner than others so yeah.......you want to keep an eye on any bodies you put in there, especially if anything is opened up.

I've always liked these and you hardly EVER see these on the roads anymore!

Oh yeah! Just before I saw your post, I just put some primer (light coat) on the '68 'Vette I'm restoring. Now, I'll let this sit for a day despite the light coat, then I'll go back and put on the BIN Zinsser sealer on top of that. Another primer coat will follow, then color coats. So yeah, we're talking probably a several day process which doesn't bother me as that's how 1:1's are done. In this case I'm in no hurry as I've got plenty of other things to do (1/8 scale '67 Shelby for instance) while the paint is drying. I like to treat my paint jobs on bodies just as if they're real cars..............they're just 25 times smaller!

BEAUTIFUL Speedster! I too built one of these years ago, but it got ruined by a BIG 20 lbs cat I had that knocked it off the shelf. I may have tossed it during a move as I can't find it anymore, but I since got a few more of those EM 356 Porsches including another Speedster. Yes, they can be mighty fiddly (I restored a '63 I originally built a couple years ago here), but as was said with patience they can be very nice models when done.

They shared C pillars but not A pillars. AMT IMO got the roofline better for their annual '62 than they did for the '63. Although to be fair I never liked how AMT modeled the A pillars on their '62 Impala hardtop annual. Just doesn't look right to me. We can see that the A pillars are different between those years, so when AMT had to update their tooling for the new model year, they may have simply goofed on the shape. I don't have a pic (eBay's aren't enough of a close up), but from what I did see, the '62 to my eyes doesn't have that 'thinness' of the C pillar the way the AMT '63's and '64's do.

All these years I've been seeing '63 Chevys and that's the first I've noticed that! That would be hard to get right in scale except for what Rob said...........some sort of decal. You might be able to fudge it a bit by using a pattern cut out of silver cake decorating foil which is very close. The next issue would be would it appear in scale or not.