oldcarfan

I always liked Chip Foose. He comes off as a decent guy unlike a lot of the other builders who had a show. And most of his designs I like, which is rare for me.

I have one each of the AMT 1960 and 1963 Ford F-100s that I bought and built 10 years ago. They used to be rare! I also have two of the 1/24th Otaki Porsche 911s waiting to be built.

I used Duplicolor's Hot Rod Primer as it is a dark gray, almost black. It seemed to work well.

I'd say go with the AMT Camaro and use the chassis from the MPC Grumpy's Vega kit that was rereleased last year. If I remember right the wheelbases are close. Those kits should get you most of what you need.

No pictures, but I stopped at HobbyTown in Austin Tx and got one of AMT's redone 93 Chevy Silverados and the Revell Chevy Luv kit.

That's a shame! Maybe they can pull a Round 2 and clone the tooling?

We bought a 2018 Outlander new and never liked it. Put 40k miles on it and it was nice inside, but the CVT always felt unsettled. A friend had a similar 2016 and the transmission went out at 65k miles just after the warranty expired. The dealer quoted $6500 to replace it. We ended up trading our Outlander for a 2019 Frontier truck and haven't regretted it.

This summer my old Lexus R350 went over 220k miles. She still runs great but we wanted something with lower miles to take a road trip. We ended up with another RX350, a late model, low mileage one with some warranty left. It's a great car and we put 4800 miles on it in 2 weeks going from central Texas to the Florida Keys and back.

I've heard Revell and some other chrome finishes take a long time to dry and can be delicate to touch. Has anyone tried a dehydrator to speed the paint drying? I need to rechrome some parts but I'm pretty bad about handling parts and would like something a little less easily damaged.

I have some older chrome trees that did the same. It was the clear coat they put over the chrome finish.

Great save!

I'm declaring my entry done. She crossed the finish line last night. There are some parts I'd like to redo, but then I'd get stuck in a loop and never get finished. So, the concept for me was of two young talented motorhead guys wanting to do something other than hang out with their buddies. They set their eyes on winning the Cannonball and wanted something lowkey to do it in. They bought a solid but well-used 99 Expedition off MarketPlace and a wrecked Coyote Mustang from CoPart. Since this generation is electronically inclined, they also set up a full suite of surveillance equipment that they could run off an iPad. I didn't do a very good job with my build page, but here it is.

I haven't been building much in the last few years due to work, health and the needs of rehabbing an old house. Who would have thought that buying a 110 year old stone house would be so time consuming? LOL. At the start of the year, my resolutions were to lose weight and to spend more time in the shop. I managed one of my resolutions and it wasn't losing weight. As for the health, it's holding steady, but I did take early retirement as I just can't handle the high inside temperatures like I used to. I haven't figured out how to put my pictures into the text so they're all at the bottom. Sorry. But enough of that, here is my entry for this year's Cannonball, the Night Train Expedition. If you don't care for back stories, skip the red part. 'If I win the lottery, I won't tell anybody, but there will be signs.' You've probably heard that. Well, the story for my entry starts with two talented gear heads raised on Cannonball Run and Fast and Furious who are stuck in a dead end small Texas town. The gear heads are Bob and Doug, best friends for life, not long out of High School and wondering what life holds for them. One fateful Saturday night they ran into Gas N Go to get party supplies and on a whim bought a couple of Lottery tickets. After that they headed to the bonfire down at old man Johnson's farm, (Don't mess with the bull he can get pretty mean, don't forget to shut the gate and stay out of the beans.) then slept it off all day Sunday. Monday morning they were on the way to work at the Buy4Less and heard the DJ at KBUB give out the big winning lottery numbers. The numbers sounded familiar so the boys stopped and did a panic search for their tickets. Sure enough they won. Being smart and conscientious, the boys first called in sick and then called one of their moms who is an accountant. Soon enough they collected their winnings and had more than enough to live the rest of their lives. To save on taxes, they bought an abandoned warehouse and some old store fronts on the main drag and started some businesses. This gave them some write offs. They named the named the warehouse Garage 62, and turned it into their dream shop. The warehouse was soon filled with tools, toys, and dream cars but still the boys wanted something more. Someone mentioned the Cannonball was still around so Bob and Doug decided to give it a try. The boys bought a non-running 97 Expedition off the old lady down the street and a wrecked Coyote Mustang from CoPart up in Dallas for the engine. They then set about building a stealth rocket. Using all the skills they learned from YouTube the engine was soon twin turbo'd and the suspension was lowered with an airbag system. They redid the whoa power with brakes and wheels from a wrecked CoPart Porsche GT2 RS. They also pirated the seats and steering wheel from the Porsche. They got the the cop seat console, some trim parts, and the rear passenger divider, off a totaled State Trooper Expedition down at Clem's U-Pull. The divider would keep all the stuff in the back from coming to the front in case of emergency. They added a 44 and a 17 gallon fuel cell in the rear to supplement the stock 17 gallon tank which is where the airbag suspension comes in handy. Doug, being a gamer, went crazy in the electronic department ePay, adding a night vision camera, CB, scanner, radios, and four different kinds of radar detectors/jammers. Everything was handily designed to operate off his iPad. In the front bumper the boys added an intercooler and a set each of 9 inch Night Piercer 5000 driving lights and fog lights from Joe Don's Auto Parts over on Main, just past the Dairy Queen on your right. To keep as low a profile as possible, they painted the truck a nice Audi Nardo Gray. They then set about testing the truck's speed and endurance in west Texas. There are hundreds of miles of straight empty roads with very little official presence to cover them. To assist in this part of the build they added a Mustang pre-runner to their fleet. And there you have their story. Now to the build. The base kit is an original issue Revell Rolling Wheels 1997 Expedition curbside kit. You can tell how old it is by the Hobby Lobby price tag of $8.88. When's the last time you saw that price? The original plan was to keep it simple and use only this kit, but then I found some parts in the junk box from a Lindberg F-150 so I added the hood and frame from that kit. (I hear Round 2 may be reissuing the Lindberg F-150 and I may just have to get one. It builds up well until you drop it like I did with mine years ago.) The hood was a pretty close match to the one I cut out of the Expedition, being just a little narrower. The Coyote twin turbo engine came from Texas 3D and it was great! The parts were clean, exactly to scale, and ready to assemble. The engine arrived quickly and the service was great. The only problem I had was making the engine bay a bit too narrow, but that's on me. Should've built that after getting the engine. The interior base was box stock except I added the seats and steering wheel from a Maisto or Welly Porsche GT2RS. I got a good deal on a bunch of damaged diecasts from the pharmacy in town for cheap for parts. I also had interior parts from a Lindberg police Crown Vic and the Revell police Expedition so they got tossed in along with parts box fuel tanks and such. Don't know where I got the dash mounted iPad, but it worked for the project. The Porsche seats were boring so I printed some Mexican style blankets and used those to reupholster the seats. There are two fuel cells in back, giving the truck a total of 78 gallons of fuel. To the right is a tool box and wedged alongside is a fire suppression system. I tried to give it a little sag to simulate the weight. The brakes and wheels came from that same GT2RS, but I eventually swapped out the front wheels for some smaller ones because the Maisto front wheels and tires were too big. The paint is Rustoleum Gloss Dark Gray which turned out to be a close match for Audi's Nardo Gray. I was hesitant to use Rustoleum because I don't always have luck with the brand, but it came out well sprayed over Duplicolor primer. It helped that I painted it early in the summer and then it sat in the 110 degree shop for a couple months to dry. The kit headlights were modified to a projector style with integrated turn signals. The front bumper was from the Lindberg kit. I split it horizontally, adding an 1/8th of an inch, then cut openings for the lights and intercooler. The driving and fog lights are scratch built. Medicine blister packs provided the lens covers and the lights themselves were from various home cast parts. To support the electronics, the roof has a night vision camera on the left front modeled after one I saw on a Border patrol truck. The ground radar dome is modeled after one from a tornado chasing truck and the other antennas loosely match the ones from the Florida trooper car we were stuck behind for 30 miles on the Everglades highway. The antenna with the big ball on it is supposed to be a cell phone booster. My neighbor works part time out in Big Bend and has one on his truck for where the cell towers don't reach. Just realized I left off the CB whip antenna, it's still on the table. To keep the top as clean as possible, the roof rails were removed and a wing was added at the back to smooth air flow. The wing came from a cheap Walmart 1/43rd Toyota Supra racing diecast. The rest of the pictures are various views of the truck the boys took before before they leave for the Red Ball Garage and a couple of the Mustang they built to pre-run the route. I guess that's all I have to say for the moment. Here's to all those contenders, hope to see you at the finish line. May your highways be clear and may the traffic always be in your favor!

Glad to hear that! Japanese culture seems to be big in this country, maybe model car building will filter in too. My son loves anime and all things Japan when it comes to food. He's built some Gundam but now he's in college and has no room in his dorm, so that ended that.

Can't believe it taken so long. It's now mid-October and we've finally got some cooler temperatures. There's a cold front coming in and this coming week it'll only be in the 80s! I went into the shop and got some work done, mostly just straightening up and finding all the parts I left laying around in July. I did manage to do a little assembly work on my entry and hope to have it finished soon.

Here's hoping these kits sell well enough to inspire them to do a certain other Toyota truck!

Quick question, I started a build page for my project way back when. Do I need to start a finished page or just add on to the original build one?

I'd like that! Maybe a short bed to go with it.

I finally went out to the shop and dug through the kits. I have one red issue still with a damaged box and two green ones missing some parts. I may have to do something with those when I finally get finished with my Cannonball entry.

I'm not too keen on these new releases, but I do have fond memories of the 76 Nova kit. It looks really nice lowered as a small town small town oval track Street Stock racer.

Probably a silly question, but I opened a couple of my 90s issue Ford Rangers and they are in the grey plastic AMT used to use. I haven't opened or built a new AMT kit in a while and wondered if they still use that. I always preferred that to the Revell harder plastic. It felt easier to work with and it was easier to see any mistakes I made in prepping the parts.

Really nice build!

I found one of these at a HobbyTown and passed it up. Now I'm regretting it. Looks like you're doing a great job.

Another for me, any of the cars used in Ronin!

There's some older guy in this small town who has a collection of exotics. I've seen him in a Porsche 911 a few times, in a Gallardo and a Huracan, once in an Aston Martin, and three different top of the line Mercedes Benzes. No one seems to know who I'm talking about when I ask. You remember in American Graffiti how Curt is always seeing the blonde in the T-Bird but never catching her? That's me trying to get a picture of one of those cars driving by.