niteowl7710

Now the low on Monday is forecast for -11. Tuesday's highs is -1, Low of -1, so it's just gonna sit there at for 24 hours...that's ridiculous! I'm O.K. with that kinda of nonsense if I'm in say North Dakota, but that mighty cold for SW Pennsylvania.

Forecast for Monday night is a low of -4 with wind chills potentially hitting NEGATIVE 30.

I grant your point and I agree with it, BUT - the fact is that's what the U.S. and NATO has being dealing with for the past 10+ years. It's not a question of traditional war vs. gorilla zealot terrorists blowing up things up, or even whether the "war" in Iraq or Afghanistan should have happened, whether we should drone bomb Pakistan, or whether the Israelis should play nice with the Palestinians, or who's at fault for Syria, Libya, and the beat goes on and on. Heck it's not even fight over there, so we don't have to fight it over here. Unless China or Russia go off their rockers and starts WWIII this is the unfortunate and real face of "warfare" for the foreseeable future. No amount of guys with guns, no matter how much training, can REALLY stand up to an army...see Northern Mali vs. a small contingent of the French Army (the butt of every bad surrender joke since 1942).

Unfortunately the hot pink car in the picture isn't the car the model was made of, nor even the same manufacturer as the picture is a Nissan, not a Toyota. It's just the one that Greg found (and I suspect the worst one in his eyes he could find at that) to "illustrate" how silly he and others find the name of a set of tuner parts. But then that just makes Jonathan and other's point - I hate the car and I don't even know what it is...

Being that it's aimed at Armo(u)r modelers for use in a diorama setting it's got a few building options. The IED laden vehicle on the box top for something in the 80's-Current Middle East conflict, or with it's taxi/police markings for something period and less violent with a period German armor. It's not aimed at automotive modelers, it's not supposed to be P.C. War is stupid, but it's also a reality, and for the people who this is aimed it it gives them something besides a WWII scene to do. Complaining about the box art reminds me of the thread about the Revell AG Beetle. "This isn't designed for me and my preferences, or the USA; so it's wrong and/or I object"...

When I checked the weather to see how that 3-5" of snow was coming, I was alerted to the pending doom of a NEGATIVE 10-15 degree windchill tomorrow night into Friday Morning. Then Tuesday the High is going to be something like 1, with a low of -11...quick someone turn on dirty coal plant or something, we need to trap some heat in the ozone layer stat...

The Renault 4 CV is only 88 pieces and it has an engine and everything else you'd expect.

We had the 6th snowiest December since 1950 (when the new airport was built), seems like every morning we wake up to another 2 inches on the ground. Supposed to get 3-5" tomorrow...

Seems like since the 360 twins Tamiya has focused on the Hyper Car end of the Ferrari line-up. The Enzo, the FXX, now the La Ferrari. Still waiting to see who's gonna be the brave ones and take on the Ferrari FF...my guess would be Fujimi, but it might be no one at this rate.

Well while there was a 1/25 Rabbit, and Fujimi did a curbside 1st Gen Golf, neither was European -- the internet has shrunk the world, but I can see them wanting to do their own, I imagine these will be strictly German/Euro version cars much like the Beetle kits from this year. 1st Gen Golf is (at the newest) a 30 year old car now, and 38 years since the introduction of the GTI in 1976, and 34 years since the Cabrio first appeared in 1980.

It's been a long and exhausting past couple of days dealing with a sick mother, and a 10 mo baby in the ER until 2am last night (double ear infection, he'll be fine, he's a trooper), so if I actually make it to Midnight it'll be something. Besides it's only 3 1/2 weeks until the Annual 24 Hour Build (Jan 25/26), so I need to stock up on sleep now while I still can!

Well I already have the vastly superior (sorry it is, and always will be -- just compare any Tamiya and Revell AG Ferarris) Tamiya LaFerrari, but sign me up for the Golfs and the Trabant WAGON.

If I'm not mistaken isn't the 4L the new "Pope-mobile"?

No biggie Lee, the written word can convey an idea, but not necessarily the tone (or in this case the bewildered amusement) of the idea.

Well when the thing is tan, and people paint the tips of the distributor lead black, that contrast in color (and attempt to detail the engine) draws ones eye to it, and the fact it's one cylinder short of a Hemi. Lot of people like the drill out the distributor and wire into the cap, can't do that either for the same reason. Part of a kit review should let people know the positives AND the negatives in a kit. In this case it also alerts someone who planned to wire the distributor directly through the cap "leads" that there are in fact an INSUFFICIENT number of them. Nor can they display the carburetors in the kit without the air cleaner on, unless they're O.K. with the fact that instead of having a set of primaries and a set of secondaries the venturis on the kit pieces are arranged N/S/E/W in the shape of a CROSS. I'm pointing out kit flaws yes, but don't take them to be complaints. I never said the kit was junk, or not to buy it. I just think that 25 hours from 2014 someone at the R&D department can't count higher than 7 and apparently if confused about the proper design of the carbs can't "Google Image Search" the thing and get the picture they need in .00004 seconds would be laughable if it wasn't so depressing.

I would question what he paid the money for...sure the tooling has value, well beyond the money it would bring simply scrapping it, but I'd also argue that without the rights to AMT & MPC the tooling would be worth far less. Sure Tom could have created TLM or just used the "Round 2" name or something and run the '70 Camaro, and then face a giant headwind of trying to explain that it's ex-AMT tooling that he's running under this unknown name, with no shelf presence and no reputation. But at that point it would almost be easier to start over from scratch, when you look at the near constant flack, and probably damage to their overall reputation Lindberg took reissuing those old Pyro tools under their own name. A very similar situation to what Tom's own father did when he sold Tidy Cat to Ralston Purina. They could have bought a very nice litter product, and the facilities to manufacture it, but what they really wanted (and paid $200,000,000 for) was that "Tidy Cat" name to sell it under, as NEW from PURINA - CLEAN KITTY!!! would be a huh? what? moment in the market place.

They had the inverse problem too, as the kit was originally marketed as a '92, but without the Pony wheels being in the kit, the last year the Rotary Phone wheels were available on the civilian (non SSP) Mustang was 1990.

It's not like the "Retro Deluxe" reissues have been available in recent years either. The upcoming 70 B-M Camaro hasn't seen the light of day in 10 years (and has only had 3 releases total in it's history), and it sounds like they're finally actually putting the B-M decals in it this time rather than shrugging and wishing you the best in masking all that off and doing "free-hand". Draw up new decals, draw up a new box, plow some plastic into the mold. Make it and they will buy to paraphrase -- I know I'm in for one. Running the easily "flipped" tools like the Starliner, '62 Pontiac, '62 T-Bird, '67 Shelby GT-350, and '69 Olds 442 all of which again hadn't been released in 10 years or more, let them get the cash to fix the Pacer, the Gremlin, the LN Car Hauler, the Pepsi Box Truck, Galaxie, etc.

Well I would point out in the defense of my apparent "over nit-picking" that the AAR Cuda, a kit I think we all agree is the weakest of the three Hemi Cuda kits that Revell & Monogram have attempted has an 8 point distributor cap. The entire distributor stinks on ice in comparison to the part in the new kit, but even on that really subpar effort they got the small details correct.

The last few tools of the AMT/Ertl era were the Starliner, '62 Pontiac, and '62 T-Bird -- which actually had all of the various custom parts tooled up but never released (until Round 2 came along) before the Racing Champion disaster. The Showroom Replicas (Challengers, Camaro, & Corvettes) are Round 2 creations. RC2 did the Camaro "Concept" kit, along with the Escalade EXT, '06 300, Ford GT, Pontiac GTO, the banana trimmed Belvidere to name a few. As for the financials since Tom Lowe owns Round 2, it has as much money as he wants to put into it. He's a multimillionaire heir, and a successful businessman in his own right, which is again why he's spending money on new tools in Sci-Fi, Star Trek, etc where people are willing to drop significant cash, and focusing on getting the most value he can out of the old AMT/MPC tools by restoring them and unlocking long ago seen tools.

I think it's somewhat subjective to presume that Round 2 is in any way, shape or form short on cash. Look at who owns it, he could buy and sell pretty much everybody here a couple of times over. Obviously he's taken the approach that Round 2 should be run as a successful business rather than being his personal "plaything". But at the same time he's willing to spend money to further his investment, when they purchased the tooling & rights for AMT/MPC from Tomica, and this summer when they purchased the tooling and rights to Lindberg. Round 2 has done several new tools, but they've all been aimed at different markets than automotive, deciding that in that realm they'd rather focus on dragging ancient tooling out of the recesses of the warehouse and re-introducing them to the public. For the most part once they blew through the easily run kits back in 2008-2010 the majority of releases have been kits that haven't been around for a long while, or have been improved in some way. Which I'd rather have than the 5th reissue of the '99 Ford Lightning in 7 years.

Yes and your distributor cap will have 7 stupid ribs, not 8. Sanding the cap flat isn't going to fix the overall dimensions of the entire piece. Which either means you're going to have 8 wires poking out of a 7 lead distributor, or you have to source one from another kit, or buy an aftermarket distributor -- and those last two cost money in some form or fashion, which some people would have a big problem with... While I'm nit-picking, anyone else notice that the carbs are molded with in a N/S/E/W configuration rather than the primary and secondaries being in a two neat rows like they should be. At least the air cleaner covers that mess up...

So I saw some photos of this kit being built recently elsewhere, and something struck me as odd, so I had to dig back through this thread to find Tim's photos. Now I know this sounds "nit-picky", but considering they've had 43 years to research this kit, and three shots at getting it right...No not the debatable body contours in places, but rather - it's so considerate of Revell to include a SEVEN (7) cylinder distributor cap... I know, I know, replace it, fix it, blah blah blah...but really is the V-8 a new development? Did that extra cylinder catch them off guard at the last minute? Gonna make wiring the engine with the cap in the box...impossible... Some people claim it's going to be 2014 in three days, but don't tell the Q.A. people at Revell that.

Well presuming the advertising board was literal in there being a "Series" of the pick-ups, there are what Art? 5 variations coming? That's how many trucks are pictures on the promotional board that's been "shopped" around the various model shows/contests.

Rear seats are mostly vinyl seats in the 80's and '90's. The hard plastic "prisoner" seats didn't start really appearing until the Crown Vic got restyled in 1998. Even now they're not standard equipment by any stretch, they cost $$$ and require "gutting" the back seat area, which makes the up-fitting cost more $$$$. Once you go outside a major State/City/County garage that does it's own prep-work you're talking about patchwork of small businesses that "up-fit" the cars with the prisoner partitions, electrical (lights, sirens, cameras, computers, etc), push bumpers, graphics, et al. With all the fancy airbags and what-not in cars theses days, and the introduction of strobes and ESPECIALLY LEDs, the days of bolting things onto the bumper and roof is long gone. You basically have to disassemble the entire interior and front bumper assembly now.