Dave Metzner

Is that the famous watched pot that never boils????LOL! Kits are "on the boat"! Dave

Hi Chad, 10-12 years ago is a long time ago, while working at Hobbyland I knew just enough about RC flying to be dangerous - other than steering newbies away from advanced models to simple trainers and pointing them toward our local RC flying clubs so they could get some dual control instruction and find a good place to fly safely I tried to let the guys who flew RC take care of RC customers I tried to stick to working with plastic model customers. I probably met you and your dad but that's a looooong time ago.... these days I have a tough time remebering what I did 12 days ago let alone anything that happened 12 years ago. I just know that I sure miss having a real Hobbyshop within a 5 minute drive! Best regards, Dave

Man, The mid 1980's - seems like that's an awfully long time ago! Hobbyland closed the doors last summer... I've been going thru hobbyshop withdrawl since then - there's nothing left locally that I'd consider a hobbyshop - can't even find a decent selection of paints around the area... I've been reduced to buying supplies via e-mail recently..

Hudson body has been revised - we've had a second mock-up of the body and new 3D files to chew on... green light was given to redo the tooling about a week or so ago - probably looking at a mid June ship date from the orient now if everything comes out of the molds looking like the approved 3D files. Just finished up on C300 revised 3D's this afternoon - probably going to get a second mock-up of that body before we revise that set of tools... It looks 100% better now...I'd guess best case scenario for the 300 is 45-60 days after the Hudson... Dave

Chuckyr, Nope I'm not Hobbyland funny you should ask... I worked for Hobbyland part time or full time for about 25 years. The owners of Hobbyland are very good friends. Unfortunately Hobbyland went out of business several months ago.. Kostas, Thanks, I'll be in touch. Latest word is that the first continer is still on schedule to depart the factorey on or about 4/5... Thanks again to everyone. Dave

It's been a while since I last posted here. Just got another inquiry regarding release dates for the LoneStar. The kit is being produced now. We have a Ship Date of 4/5 for the first container of kits... That date is an approximate date and it could be a day or two later before the container actually gets on a boat.. Allowing for transit time to the US west coast and reasonable time for it to clear U.S.Customs first avaialability at retail around the end of April is possible. Please remember that there are always possible hiccuops and hold-ups that can occur - we have had shipments held up in Customs for over a week in the past...Kits arriving in the first container should be reaching retailers not much later than Mid may under worst circumstances and by end of April if there is no unplanned delay... Thanks to everyone for your patience... Dave

To be honest I'm not familiar with our distribution in Europe, My job here is product development... I know that we have a distributor in the UK however time between kits arriving here and getting to Europe is hard to answer, often it is several weeks or longer... Best answer I can give if you want the kit promptly is to watch for it to become available thru Internet sources... There are many good e-sellers out there Including several large firms that ship kits worldwide and many of them will have the kit right away. Dave

Sorry, I've been kinda busy lately, but here's the latest as I know it. We've had the second test shot and reviewed it - there are a few more little things to be fixed. I expect to see the last of those fixes early next week, If there are no bad surprises then we start mass injection of parts and Hopefully shipment will be around the end of March. If that happens, and I have no rason to believe that it won't, and customs cooperates when the container hits the port - then kits should start showing up on store shelves by late April. In the mean time here are a few pics of a second test shot that I whacked together - color inspired by Roush Racing's new hauler for the #17 Cup car... Roush has new LoneStars for all his race haulers! I'll add box art to the gallery too. http://dmetzner.smugmug.com/Trucks/More-Lonestar/15962954_MeYAN Thanks, Dave

NO!

Looks like Cat's new on highway truck is being built in co-operation with Navistar. From what I read The truck will be built by Navistar with Cat's cab design and marketed by Cat.. also it appears that this new truck is aimed at the "Vocational" truck market - Logging, hevy equipment hauling construction related work.... Not really a long haul over the road vehicle like LoneStar or ProStar.. sounds like Engines will come from Navistar as well even though they ma be labeled as Cat engines and may be painted cat yellow... Navistar and Caterpillar are partners in this... Cat has announced some time ago that it will no longer provide engines to OTR truck manufacturers... their new truck is supposed to be unveiled in March 2011... Dave

The Navistar MaxxForce 15 is based on the Cat C-15. When Cat decided to get out of the business of building engines for OTR trucks Navistar acquired that product line. The MaxxForce 15 is based on a big 6 cylinder Cat engine with all new fuel management and cylinder head design as well as Navistar's new EGR polution control system...this is kinda like a Cat block and crank with new everything else - that makes it pretty much an all new piece Navistar has chosen to use Exhaust Gas Recirculation technology to meet new federal polution comntrol standards...they are the only OTR Truck builder to use that technology - the other engine builders are using a chemical catalyst additive system for polution control... The EGR system adds a lot of new plumbing so this engine package as installed in the truck really doesn't look like any other.. Dave

Engine is a Navistar MaxxForce 15..

I Finished the red truck this afternoon - added pics to my gallery this afternoon. Both Test shots were photographed under construction for use in the instruction sheet for the kit..click on the link below to see the added photos.. BTW. second test shots were sent to me this afternoon...I should see them in 4-6 days... If everything we needed to fix has been handled then it's on to mass production... http://dmetzner.smugmug.com/Trucks/LoneStar-3/15406316_QdjH4 Dave

I had a third Test shot in sub-assemblies which I had used in photographing pieces for our instruction sheet. no sense in just letting the unpainted assemvblies lay there.... Sooooo I grabbed my airbrush and some Guards Red and Gloss Black paint... This is the result - so far...I may get it finished by end of this week if i don't run out of ambition or other more pressing projects don't get in the way! Thanks for looking... Dave http://dmetzner.smugmug.com/Trucks/LoneStar-3/15406316_QdjH4

Most current schedule information is that we are making significant changes to the tooling and that we need to approve the final test shot by 2/25/11 then we can expect shipment from the Orient around 3/20/11. IF we get that done and everything clear customs without any snags........then you should start seeing kits on shelves around the end of April..... Stay tuned! Dave

This is an injection molded styrene kit with PVC tires - not resin... Dave

Most up-to-date information is shippment from the Orient on or about 3/20/2011...figure on store shelve about 30 days or so later...If the container goes through Customs without a hitch! After losing a couple little lenses on this test shot Build - I got the factory to add some extras of those little ones to the clear tree... Hopefully that will provide some margin of safety and save some frustration for builders... Dave

Here's a link to photos of the LoneStar test shot that I finally finished. This truck is painted tto represent the one that we got to crawl all over and photograph, when we started this project. http://dmetzner.smugmug.com/Trucks/finished-LoneStar-1-3-11/15318488_PNrC6 Thaks for looking. Dave

Just added some pics of a LoneStar build-up in progress - one of two I'm working on right now - part of the process of gathering photos for use in an instruction sheet...The new pics are on the last page of the gallery. http://dmetzner.smugmug.com/Trucks/Lonestar-1st-Test-Shot/14912935_EL8S9

At this point in time a Harley Davidson special edition doesn't look like it's very likely to happen anytime soon. We do have some other things planned... stay tuned... I Need to get this one done first! Looks like we have all the fixes worked out - hope to see a second test shot before too long... I have a bunch of sub assemblies ready to photograph... have another one that will be all painted and assembled over the next several days I need to sit down and write all the instruction sheet copy, and photshop notes onto subassembly photos I hope it gets done before the end of this week... then our grapics guy can put the instruction sheet together so it looks good.

Our LoneStar is intended to be 274 inch wheelbase that's 274 inches center line of front axle to centerline of space between drive axles. overall length of a truck with that wheelbase is 372 inches.. The test shots I have sitting here pretty well fit those dimensions @ 1/25 scale. Our Truck rides on Navistar's own rear suspension package which they refer to it as IROS... Not sure what the front suspension is, the truck my wife and I went down to photograph was an early development model and it had Hendrickson on both ends and had airbage under the front - the kit has leaf springs - a fairly standard heavy truck front end.. As for price range when we were there to shoot photos we were told that the target market for LoneStar was the owner operator... that this truck could be had with every luxury.. The one we got to crawl all over with a camera was loaded with goodies including a hardwood floor in the sleeper and if my memory serves me I want to think that price for one like it was north of 300,000.00 Dave

Tim, Thanks for posting the pics and the video of your build-up. That's an outstanding piece of work. I must say I'm very pleased with the kit we'll be putting on shelves!

I guess I ought to be careful how I say this: I appreciate the criticisms, I'll try to fix as much as can be fixed. HOWEVER once the kit gets to test shots some basic things just cannot be fixed, I posted pics of the mock up quite some time ago, If someone had pointed out that the shape of the roof isn't right or the hood is too tall, at that point, I would have had alot better chance to make changes. Now that I have tooling all cut in steel some things will remain as they are now, because I can't just scrap the body tool and start over. I might be able to adjust the hood (waiting to hear back on that one)- but I'm stuck with the roof - window corner shape - I can get that fixed - width of chrome molding - yeah, no real problem to fix... but basic body shape is pretty much a done deal now... Unfortunately today, when you set out to produce a model of a 57 ot 58 year old car all you can work with is photographs, since there are no CAD files, and you can't transport a real car to the model maker's location halfway around the world! The process is by it's nature inexact and all that you can hope for in the end is a model that looks like the subject.... I'm satisfied that we've done our best to produce a good representation of the '53 Hudson, sorry that we can't please everybody...... Dave

Laser scanning a full sized automobile is very do able and it will certainly produce an accurate set of digital files, however scanning a full size cars is still cost prohibitive for us.. we have investigated that possibility and the cost of scannig a car is in excess of 20K - that is before any files get converted to useable formats for ptotyping or tooling... We continue to explore the posibilities but are not encouraged to believe that we'll find an affordable way to do this anytime soon. The costs of these technologies are dropping at a fairly rapid rate but it looks like they've got along way to go before we'll be able to afford them for prototyping... We can scan small objects and digitize them fairly cheaply, and we are using that technology whenever it makes sense to do so. Whenever CAD files are available we can use them to produce kits, Loestar is a product of CAD files provided to us by Navistar. When we can lay hands on files in useable formats we heve rapid prototypes grown that technology is becoming quite affordable. As for the shape of the Hudson Body, we've been working with several well qualified modellers who have intimate knowledge of what a Hudson Hornet ought to look like, including two guys who've owned and driven them. Nobody's come up with any comparison to a shoebox Ford in the group of guys who've been involved in this project from the mock-up stage. I'm sure that this model isn't perfect, I am however satisfied that it does a good job of capturing the shape of the real car.