Aaronw

I like this kit, it is a beginner level kit, but it still offers a lot for a more experienced modeler who wants to make some changes or add detail. Jake, there have been a fair number of these posted over the past year or so since this kit came out. Good luck introducing your son to models, with a little adult supervision I think this is a nice kit for a young modeler. It is fairly complex for a snap kit so it will take a little time to get it done and it is tough enough to hold up to being played with when he is finished. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=93996&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=90730&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=88968&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=86363&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=86177&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=85168&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=81709&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79485&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79044&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=78208&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=77453&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=76512&hl=%2Bjeep+%2Brubicon

Smaller than most of yours, but this is mine. I don't get to drive it much though as I'm usually the bossy front seat passenger.

I'd like to see a modern medium size dozer, something like a high track CAT D6 with an environmental cab, U blade and rippers would be great. I think there is a lot of potential for a medium size 2 or 3 axle water truck. That would appeal to a wide range of interests, construction, logging, firefighting, racing and if they did a 28 foot tank trailer at the same time, it could be a fuel truck too.

That just goes to show you how much stronger the glue fumes were back in the 60s.

He has issued special versions of some Moebius and Revell kits. Some special versions of the Hudson Hornet, Chrysler 300, and '57 Ford Police car come to mind, along with the upcoming 1969 / 71 Ford truck.

I've got a Welly too. It's pretty nice and inexpensive but I would still like a plastic kit to play with. I don't mind diecast as a starting point but they are kind of unsatisfying to me just take out of the box to put on the shelf.

I'm going to guess 75% eventually get finished (even if it takes 10 years), and maybe 20% power through and get finished more or less without distraction (get finished within 12-18 months of starting them).

I share an attention span with my dog. I start working on something and... squirrel.

Not me, but it looks like it might be a good parts car for somebody? Looks like the bumpers, wheels, lights, and some of the trim look intact. $23 with shipping seems steep to me, but I don't follow promos and have no idea what this thing would be worth in good condition. If this is a realistic price then $23 to restore a damaged promo seems pretty fair. http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMT-1951-Pontiac-4dr-Sedan-Starmist-Blue-Promo-1-25-Scale-No-Box-/181452789437?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item2a3f6dd6bd

I like MM Acryl, but except for rattle cans I use Acrylics almost exclusively so am used to them. Acrylics take some adjusting to, and they don't all work the same as you found with Tamiya. Personally my favorite paint for using with a brush is made by Games Workshop. It is marketed towards figure painters and has funny color names but it is great paint. I don't have many photos showing the use of brush painted acrylics on car stuff as it tends to be interiors, engines et which I don't typically get good photos of, but I brush paint a lot of the aircraft I build. The body shell was Tamiya rattle can, but the engine compartment is brush painted with acrylics. The wheels and fog lights were also brush painted. All of the following was brush painted with Model Master Acryl, Polyscale, or Games Workshop acrylic paints.

TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) is available in most hardware stores, generally in the paint department. It is a cleaner degreaser that comes as a powder or premixed liquid. It used to be the active ingredient in many cleaners including Westley's but environmental laws have caused many to replace it with other chemicals. If you buy the powder form you can adjust the concentration. It is cheap, a 1/2lb box is around $3. Spic and Span is a common household cleaner that includes TSP and I've heard it works as well as Westleys. Simple Green is another common resin cleaner. Several resin casters have recommended prep-sol but I've never had any luck finding it. I did find a knock off and it seemed to work as well as anything else I've used. I've not had an issue with it, but I have been warned that the purple cleaners can cause resin to soften or even turn to goo. I've not used any for cleaning resin since I heard some had bad experiences so don't know if I was lucky or there is no merit to the claims. Another technique I've had good luck with it putting on a very light coat of primer. There is often some very minor fish eye with this coat. Once it dries I come back and prime it again and it rarely has an issue adhering to the resin, even the spots where it didn't stick the first time.

I thought that was the market the current Rubicon was aimed at. Oh, well guess I'll just have to wait and see what they do.

I hope that is just a bad photoshop job and the real kit will be based on the existing Rubicon kit. I like the existing kit despite the snapkit nature and have been hoping Revell would use it to offer more options including a hardtop, but the posted photo looks terrible.

Ford owned Volvo the car company, they sold it to a Chinese company. Volvo the truck company is separate and still Swedish as far as I know.

You can also make cockpit green by mixing some black to the Zinc Chromate Green until it is more of a grey green. My understanding is that is what most of these colors were anyway, ZC Yellow was basically un-tinted zinc chromate, ZC green had some black added, and the various cockpit greens had even more black added to increase UV protection and tone it down to a less eye catching color. I've not built that particular kit, but I have done an AVG P-40B in 1/72. The tricky thing with P-40s and AVG aircraft in general is they are often a hodgepodge, frequently having been ordered for a service different than where they ultimately ended up serving. The AVG aircraft were built for a British order using British specs and US equivalent British colors (that don't exactly match US or British colors) so you can end up with a lot of debate as to what colors are "right". When I did mine I just used the standard British Dark Green / Dark Earth / Sky Grey and British Cockpit green which was close enough for me.

Need more options... I'm not really big on box art, I'd buy a kit in a brown box as long as it gave me a good idea of what I was getting and it adequately protected the model. However box art is here to stay so it might as well be good. Ideally, I'd like to see: I prefer drawn / painted box art on the top representative of what can actually be built from the kit inside. However a photo is ok if done right. Unfortunately it often looks toy-like. The Model King has many examples of good box art using actual photos of the model photo shopped into a background to make it more interesting. Actual photos of the model on the sides so I can see the general quality of the model (shows things like chromed solid headlights vs clear parts). A diagram of the parts / sprue layout on the back. Round 2 has done this with some of their kits, I would like to see more start doing it.

Casey, thanks, I've bought some of Ken's engines in the past, but didn't know he had added the 337. That is really the toughest bit to deal with, I can make do with most of the other stuff on my own if it comes to that. Dave's not a member here is he?

Matt Conte (Lookout, Dencon, Grumpy Denise) was doing some really nice resin stuff for medium and heavy duty Ford trucks from the 1950s before closing up again. Had a set of fenders for a 1950 F-8, a sleeper cab for a 1950 Ford, saddle tanks and a 337 V-8 Flathead among other items. He was also working on some stuff for the Revell Dually, but don't recall if that came about or not. Someone had done the masters of this stuff for him. Does anyone know if these items have made it to another resin caster? Whatever personal issues dealing with Matt people have had (and I know there are many), this stuff was really nice so I'm hoping that the masters come back to the guy who did them and might have found their way to another caster.

Neat car, but about 1000x my budget. Nice set of photos and history if someone wanted to build one. I love ebay for that purpose.

Yeah, always an issue doing it this way. If you mean you can't physically get them that small vs maintain a useful quality at that size, you can right click on the image and type in your desired dimensions. Usually this method is just a stop gap though, it can provide some detail at a distance, but they are usually just colorful blobs up close. To get really good quality you pretty much have to go with one of the programs I mentioned in my first post. Anyway it looks like you've found a source to get what you need though. It sounds like there are more interested in these decals than just you, so hope this works out well for all of you.

I thought so to, but I found out that isn't the case. Lasers are less prone to smudging when you apply the sealant though which makes them nicer to work with. Here is an example of what I was talking about using word for. These are actually just things I set up to print on paper to include as cab details in emergency vehicles (reference books, forms, maps), but would work the same for decals. The numbers are included as a key so I know what everything is supposed to be (print is too small to read on the individual items). You can set the table grid to be invisible so the lines don't print out if you want.

Yeah, that is my usual outside of the US seller, but they've been out of the Renault kits for a while. Reading some other posts though it sounds like those have sold really well explaining why HLJ hasn't had them in stock. Supply issue, not HLJ issue.

Entirely different scale so not exactly duplicating anything, but another Type 1 micro bus. I wonder if we will ever see a Type 2 bay window micro bus in styrene. I know the early split windows are more collectable, but it's not like the Type 2s are unpopular in the 1-1 VW world. That is the big news so far in new kits for me this year as well.

The Louisville would be somewhere 1970-74. The trucks were introduced in '70 and the V200 (CAT 1150) diesel that is in the kit was replaced by the similar V636 (CAT 3208) in 1975.

Well with word, you simply open a table with columns / rows set to provide the size blocks you need. The you insert pictures into the blocks and resize them to your needs. This allows you to control where on the page they will appear much like the business card programs do. Tables take some practice if you've never used them but not too bad. You can find short video tutorials on youtube to walk you through table use if you are not familiar with setting them up. I've not seen any specific decal making programs that were of any use beyond maybe providing some useful clip art. If you buy the Testors decal kit they include a sample of their decal maker software (the full program is $8.95), but I've not heard many praise it's virtues. It's cheap though and from what I understand it works similar to the program you used to have. The testors decal paper is ok, and I rather like their decal sealant in a spray can. Decals printed on a laser printer still need to be sealed. I prefer a laser printer to inkjet for decals, but there isn't much difference in quality and both will run or smudge if you get heavy handed with the sealant.