Rockford

Couple of primer coats and a few days to cure and I've had no problems ever. Even Tamiya surface primer has worked ok with it.

I hope it goes well. Rear spoiler is easy, just sand it off and profile, smooth, scribe trunk lid shut lines. T tops glued in filled and sanded, sanded, sanded, then added drip rails. When you take the arch flares off there's no fender behind which had to be built in plastic card and profiled. I had to add the wheelarch trim in fine plastic strip, then foil it. The hood scoop hole is hard, getting it flush and having the right profile for the ridge down the centre. I used gallons of primer because I'd sand something down using wet and dry and it would look spot on, then I'd prime it and it would look like a relief map of the Himalayas! I get a tremendous kick when I look at this car. Cant believe it was me that did it!

I went with the full whitewall tyre on this one and a metallic red interior. Love the dash on this car, I foiled it then gave it a wash of gunmetal to bring the detail out.

That's uncanny, I have that kit built in the same colours, white with a red interior! Great work though. Very elegant body style I think.

It's a KW so there's a big positive to start with, but then you've do e such a good job on the build it looks fantastic. Very realistic, not OTT, a real rig that earned a living but got a bit of TLC too. When you a KW conventional do you think Bandit or Movin'On? For me it's Movin' On. That was a beautiful vehicle, even if it never seemed to earn a cent!

James Garner appears to have been a very genuine man who didn't seek the limelight. I know his marriage lasted for decades and there was no scandal attached to him. I love the Rockford Files with it's permanent sunshine, the street scenes with the passing traffic, the complex storylines, Jim's constant misfortunes and THAT car. The way he threw it about too because he could drive! In the later episodes you can see the beginning of the end, Datsuns and Mazdas start to appear and you just knew the days of the traditional American car were numbered.

Not sure on the sister kit status sorry, I can only say it was an older Revell kit. The moulding was very crisp and required very little fettling.

That's some paint job, must have taken an age.

Nice 396 in this kit. Did a bit of detailing with heater hoses and brake lines from the master cylinder. Added a set of what look like Compomotive wheels from the Revell Firebird kit I think but I'm thinking of digging out the originals and putting it back to stock. Lovely kit this, fell together.

This is the old Revell kit with all the custom options. I used the Hemi engine and built the flathead to keep on it's own to look at! Fiat taxi yellow is the colour, wheels came from the Snaptite Chevy Monte Carlo and fit the bill well. BMF on the front and rear bumpers. Not much more to say really.

This was a nice kit, good definition and went together pretty well. Nice interior with separate side panels for easy detailing. I tried doing a vinyl roof using paint instead masking tape but it turned out too smooth. still, looks ok. Swapped the kit wheels for the generic Revell balloon radials as they were far too small, the car looked like it was on casters. I added white lines using a gel pen and a circle sheet from a school geometry set because I just think they make cars go POP! Colour was chosen from the '66 palette and looks good rather than the usual vivid reds and blues you see for these cars, there's a place in this world for MUSTARD!

Spencer, I've always just used rattle cans of car body paint from a local parts supplier, primer and topcoat. I think this was actually a Ford colour. Olympic Gold I think. Now and again I'll use a Tamiya rattle can and I think their surface primer is a fantastic product, but when painting cars there aren't all the colours you want. I've never suffered a reaction with the car paint and it's so tough once it's cured that you can work on the finished shell without worrying. I have to say I admire airbrush work, and I have an airbrush that I have used ONCE but the amount of work you need to shoot one layer of paint and clean the gun etc.... i just haven't got the patience. Just shaking a rattle can for two minutes is tedious for me! Thanks everyone for the comments, I'm very proud of my Firebird, don't think i could do it again with my gozzy eyes.

I've just seen your build, I didn't know there was a different rendering of the low rider kit. I really would have loved to have one with those Rallye wheels becaue it would be just perfect. I think I used the custom wheel out of the '70 Impala kit.

These Montes are one of my favourite cars. I'd love to have several of these cars built in different colour combinations. The NASCAR version of this car looks stunning! Great job yet again Gareth!

If ever you are suffering build fatigue and just want something that's easy to build but yields great results, get one of these, the Revell Snap Tite Monte Carlo. It comes in vile green plastic but with just a little paint it builds into a great looking shelf model. The dimensions are spot on, the interior is well detailed, it falls together and the end result can't help but make you smile!

Looks very clean Tom, right stance, nice "day two" wheels someone would have added in the day, lovely paint. Takes a lot of effort to get them looking so clean. I remember visiting relatives in Canada and I saw an old guy climbing into one of these in a parking lot, it was huge! Like an aircraft carrier!

This is one I did a little while ago. The Firebird from The Rockford Files with James Garner. The only kit available was the Revell Trans-Am Firebird so I had to get one of them and remove the following:- 4x Wheel flares, trunk spoiler, T-tops, Front fender extractor vents, hole in the hood for the shaker scoop and then add all the chrome trim on the belt line, outer sill, hood rear edge and wheel arches. I also added seat belts because I love the way they go to the rear of the roof on Gen2 F=Bodies It was a lot of work but it turned out so well, it looks just like the Firebird "Esprit" that he drove at the time. They were actually Formula 400's dressed down to look like Esprits. It puts a smile on my face when I look a Gen2 Firebird of any type. The Trans-Am is a brute, the Esprit looks sleek and nimble and demonstrates what a fantastic piece of design the car was.

Diolch yn fawr! Superb looking build of a superb car. I think I have one of these in my stash. You've given me the impetus to get it done!(well, at least make a start, I've still got Buddy Holly's 58 Impala to finish!).

Thank you all for your kind comments. I think my deeply detailed days are over for the moment due to a cataract in one eye and typical vision problems for a 56 year old in the other "good" eye. Makes small detail work soooooo difficult, especially with only really having one eye to work with, you lose your depth perception and it's so hard to place the knife blade or brush, even using a magnifying glass. I think I'm confined to six-foot models for now [ie: look good from six foot away].

Husky, thanks for the kind words. I have to say I have had so many comments in the past that have said "love the vinyl roof but you forgot the seams at the side" when Chevy split theirs down the centre. Ford and Chrysler used two side seams. You're the first perso to acknowledge that. At last I've been vindicated. I've had two Chevy's from the 70s, both with factory vinyl tops and both had central seams. I've got to thank everyone for their kind comments. It's spurred me on to post a few other builds I've done over the years.

This truck is a tribute to my dad Bernie McNally, who loved Macks. [I was always a West Coast thoroughbred man myself, KW, Peterbilts and Freighliners]. It's based on the Revell 1/32 R Series that comes with the Fruehauf tank trailer. I modified the mudflaps to look less intrusive and more realistic, foiled a few parts and added a driver's sunvisor out of painted paper, so easy but really adds a bit of realism I think. The main thing was painting it in the colours of their vehicles, yellow and black, and printing a set of decals on clear decal paper with the company my dad drove cranes for for so long, Roadcraft in Bootle, Liverpool. Put his name on the hood and the back of the sleeper. I'll have to stop there because I could tell stories about my dad all day, even though he fell asleep in death about 28 years ago.

Just love these old barges! Added a vinyl roof to this using masking tape but had to make drip rails around the side glass first as they were so poorly moulded, otherwise this kit is spot on dimensionally, even if not the most technically advanced. I always look at this car and imagine its graceful stance being cast aside for sheer brutality as the throttle blades crack open and make the big block roar and the tyres screech in protest.

Hello all, my name is Steve I'm now 56 and have built models for most of my life. When I was a kid in the 70s there were only really Airfix kits, though we used to see adverts for Aurora and Revell stuff in DC comics, they were so exotic! We were happy building the bombers, fighter planes and battleships that were Airfix's staples then but my brother sent away an order coupon from a magazine with a postal order and got a model of Star Trek's USS Enterpise from somewhere in the USA; it was fantastic! I envied him that kit for years. As the 70s wore on I got heavily into American trucks, mainly because of Will and Sonny's Kenworth in Movin' On and eventually found a shop that stocked AMT kits. I was so desperate for some of these I sold my model railway layout to buy some. My first was the 1:43 Peterbilt conventional which I built using the box art only. There was no internet or anything then and I'd never seen one in the flesh. Next came the classic 1/25 KW W925 which I built box stock. Then I discovered ERTL and the International Transtar 2 cabover which remains one of my all time favourite kits, so well done! I left school as early as I could to become a HGV mechanic [Class 8 in USA terminology] and loved it but poor health led me to come off the shop floor and into back office work. Ended up working for a Mercedes Benz dealer for 28 years. I've always loved American machinery. I had a 1970 Mercury Cougar as my first American car. Then a break after marriage until I bought a 1979 Chevy Caprice, which I sold to buy a 1976 Chevy Nova, which I have now owned for 20 years. My modelling went on hold after marriage; different priorities, but once established soon started building car kits because they were small and easy to display. Still had a yen for trucks though so when I saw some re-release of the 1/32 Snaptite trucks that I'd owned in the 80s I had to have them. That was about three years ago and the Coronavirus lockdown has given me the time to get them started.

The enforced idleness of Covid19 gave me the opportunity to delve into some kits I've had for 3-4 years. I saw some 1/32 Revell Monogram Snap Tite kits in a model shop in England and I couldn't resist them. I'd built quite a few in the early 80s and ended up giving them away when I moved into my own home. You can see the original version of this kit on a shelf in the photo of my bedroom taken in the 80s. Sadly, this is the release with the vinyl stickers rather than decals so I didn't use them. Just sprayed the cab white using a rattle can. I also adjusted the mudflaps because the look rather like sails in all these kits, also I relocated the quarter fenders a little closer to the axle. Made a visor out of aluminium sheet too! They're not bad little kits, take up less room than 1/25 kits and look fairly good with a little work. They're commanding unbelievable prices on Ebay! Trying to figure out a fix for the 5th wheel with its pin instead of the jaws. Spoils the whole look. I think I've put this in the wrong topic, don't know how to move it. My apologies.