niteowl7710

Wilson Livestock trailer was just released this week, and the DM800 is an August release.

Now that there's a clearer and larger photo, those are definitely DIFFERENT steer tires and wheels. The original steers had a tread pattern like the super singles, which was kind of disappointing because most people wouldn't actually mount an all position tire on a steer axle, but it made sense fiscally to not create a specific tire tool to pump out two tires per kit.

Usually have 3-5 in open boxes being worked on, traditionally something will grab all of my attention and I will work on that kit for awhile before my modeling ADHD kicks in...

I have to wonder if they're including a "heavier" steer axle tire, if they're not sharing tire tooling with Italeri again. Because the current Italeri tire set that they sell in a "Parts Pack", and the Moebius tires both in the rigs and the parts pack are the same exact tire. Be interesting to know who tooled what and ran what for who in that arrangement. But if a "Super Single" steer is common in Europe...I admittedly have but one Euro Truck kit, are any of the new Italeri truck kits coming with Super Singles?

It's not a drawing, it's the CAD rendering that the tooling will be made from...so yes tweaking that opera window should be very easily fixed at this stage. But "not a good one"...this kit is threatened for September, which makes it dangerously close to the final design if they're gonna get everything done in the next 90 days or so.

Very interesting, we haven't gotten to that point over here yet, at least not that I've seen enough to notice. Super Singles sort of get a love/hate relationship with drivers. They're lighter, half as many tires and all of that, but BOY are they expensive to replace when they go flat, and depending on where you lose the tire it can be quite the adventure finding someone who has one in stock - god forbid you damage the rim in the process!

There are what we call "High Floatation" steer tires that we use in the States for off road and heavy duty vocational applications, but standard Class 8 Highway Tractors get regular steer tires.

You wouldn't mount a super single to a steer axle. The tractor set will be 2 of the regular steer tires, and then 4 of the Super Single wheel & tire pieces.

They're too busy triumphantly posting that tired old claptrap about "Are you a modeler or a kit assembler?" than they are to realize the kit's shortcomings. The rest are so desperate for their to be an American kit manufacturer after Revell closed and Moebius was sold (and for some reason these people seem to think they ALSO stopped working on anything - even though a quick read through of any forum easily disproves that), that their poor shaken Luddite souls can't possibly see this as anything other than a complete and total success and anyone who dares question it is a troll and rivet counter.

Well they released the CAD drawings for both versions of the Monte Carlo this afternoon...

I grant you that certainly, but often time we here the excuse about budgets and kit costs effecting the end price - and ergo we should accept lower quality kits, and be happy about it. But this kit's pre-sale was $40, there's no higher priced domestic offering out there other than the 2 man show at Galaxie Limited, which is clearly offering a vastly superior product for the $40. It's an entire country code closer to Tamiya quality than this Oldsmobile will ever be. As prices rise into higher-end Aoshima and average Tamiya areas, these kits can not continue to be wildly subpar efforts at the same time.

But in a domestic market the Tamiya AMG GT3 is only $36. Which is nearly EXACTLY (and maybe less depending on where you buy it) what this mess costs. I guarantee if one of these winds up in Japan it's not going to sell for $40, it'll be more like $50-55, as current Round2 and Revell kits sell in the mid-$40s. The irony of seeing this post is I was just going to make this exact point that it's effectively Tamiya level price, then I expect Tamiya quality. Or at least RevellAG...or Aoshima...

I fail to see a shared equivalency in dredging up past failed companies, and/or older than dirt models as some sort of - "Well other kits are bad too" argument. Yeah those other kits are bad...and for the most part they were all produced at LEAST 40 years ago, when as we are all told a bajillion times over models were a buck. This is 2018, this is a new product, replete with a head honcho who routinely points out all his experience in toy design and how great he is at it - this is a dud of a kit, that will be a sales success because the run is almost entirely sold out because it was so small, and because the majority of sales were done prior DIRECT to consumers without anyone seeing what the product looked like before hand. Even if I'm willing to give them another whack at things with the Monte Carlo, and they might be able to pre-sale that run to a sell out because "OMIGHERD MONTE CARLOOOOO" - the problem comes in the reissues of the Olds as the Petty car, and subsequent kits beyond that. This first kit is going to under pin - and ergo continue to be a reoccuring issue in - a lot of the future kits. Something will need be done to rectify the shapes, sizes and ejector pin issues because there's only so many times you can "fix it later" can kick before people write you off as the new Trumpeter and ignore your product line.

It didn't come out with the first batch of July stuff (AutoCar, Coke Trailer, Tiger Shark & Gear Hustler El Camino), so it'll probably be a week or so until the rest comes in closer to the end of the month.

That's all fine and well, but the shipping weight on the Chiron is 450g. I like HD, I own a bunch of their stuff, I will invariably get the 488 GTB when it comes out. BUT, he's still hosing people on shipping to keep the price inline with what the resellers will price it at, $150 from him, or $151 from Hobby Easy (plus shipping obviously). I don't disabuse him from protecting the resellers at all, but if you're going to do that, then just sell the stuff like normal HD stuff.

Understand that this mess is going to be lurking under all of their kits for the foreseeable future. The entire purpose of making the chassis 2 part and "adjustable" is so that it can be modular and fit under whatever project they plan in the future, so it's going into the Monte Carlo as well albeit with a more nominally better rear suspension set up, and I believe a different front suspension work up as well. The idea is to make the entire thing plug and play so you can kit bash whatever you need to get whatever version of the running gear you need for a given project.

Cartograf makes nice decals, but they're not expensive when you're printing in a 3k piece bulk order. Revell did, and Round2 does use them, and there wasn't a subjective increase in price of their kits. I don't think a couple of hundred bucks was gonna save this disaster in the making. NASCAR itself isn't hard to market. The 80s & 90s kits were just run at rates of something like 25k pieces PER kit, and when you're releasing 5-7 of them YEARLY that adds up to a glut of models over flowing out your earholes. This kit was done on a run of 3k kits, most of which were sold in direct pre-sale and then in supplying a few larger dealers.

The only things that Hobby Design does direct pre-orders on are these new Alpha Models kits, technically it's a different company. *wink wink* As far as protecting re-sellers of the line, that's done by hosing the direct pre-orders on the shipping. I've done some business with a couple of vendors based in Hong Kong, directly (as in assistance in product design & development) and indirectly (buying stuff), and there's no way in the world it costs $30 to ship that over here. For example it's about $10 to ship a Meng automotive kit over, and they're dimensionally 3x as big and twice as heavy.

Well ya know...it tiptoes down that line of - alright there's a lot of things wrong with the engine/transmission, wow look at those sink marks on the odd 2 parter chassis...buuuuuuuut will you ever see any of that again once it's built and sitting on a shelf? Same thing with the rear bumper and body line issues - how many people (general public, not Colonade fanatics) REALLY know what that's supposed to look like who'd be viewing the built model? I see a lot of "never built a NASCAR before, but I bought this!!" comments afoot, and I think the relative openness they had on FB showing live video after live video of the molding process, their willingness to interact - with positive comments, and gee golly willickers will you look those decal numbers are printed in CHROME!!! Combined with the limited run numbers, they can sell out 3k of them before the "negative rivet counting" can stop it. Actually a quick check of their website this morning shows they're about to run out of them on their end...VIOLA sales success!

A quick spin around FB will once again prove this place is the 1% HQ, because outside of here it's being "nominated" for Kit of the Year and called the best thing since antibiotics. So long as they can sell enough to that crowd - well hey that marketing has worked for Revell & Moebius for over a half a decade at least.

In regards to that ridiculous amount of huge depressed ejector pins on the chassis - which considering the amount of kick outs on the runner proper, and the fact it was a side loader injection machine is ridiculous - I can only assume they chose the lesser of two evils route. If those parts HAD to have all of those marks they went with the bottom since that's the side you won't see sitting on your shelf, as opposed to having those all over the business side of the interior and visible through the windows. Ehhhhh I'm less impressed than I already was...

Same reason my Quebec box is in Italy, a human somewhere along the way missorted it. Or when it was riding the belts it was too close to another package going to the wrong place and both got shoved off into the rolling stock for California. Within the USPS anything requiring coast to coast priority flies with FedEx.

Shipped a box to Quebec, which the USPS sent to ITALY, where it's been sitting for about 3 weeks now. Talk to the USPS, they say it'll get sent back "eventually".

I wouldn't go that far. It'll be a good seller, but aside from minor variations between WEC, Le Mans, and IMSA there's not a lot you can do with a car that is only available to two teams globally both factory supported with effectively the same livery for all of the cars.

It's a shame these guys can't afford keyboard warrior mercenaries like the Revell Defense Fund. Because Lord know when these exact same sort of issues were brought up about their kits, everyone who dared point out the flaws were told to shut up and be happy models even still exist.