niteowl7710

But there-in lies the problem with every thread like this that crops up around here. If you don't care about "floating alternators" or anything else, then they aren't common building MISTAKES, whether it's "laziness", preference, or especially if you're building contest level box stock and can't add things like a bracket, wiring, P.E., etc. the way Person A chooses to do something doesn't make it a MISTAKE, just because Person B is "annoyed" by whatever the offending component happens to be. When does a preference, building style, or building class become a mistake exactly? Who gets to be the arbiter of that decision? Because frankly for all the bally-hooing about brackets, wiring and all these other re-hashed pet peeves plenty of people on this forum haven't even got an median grasp of painting or clean final assembly skills.

Kit value has two components. First is the recent spate of shows on various reality TV channels all touting how everything old is worth a small fortune no matter what it is...that deludes people into believing their plastic models are cast in platinum encrusted diamond dust. You see this with a lot of 80's/'90's AMT & Monogram annuals. They are $10-15 kits all over eBay and at shows, but there's always someone trying to sell them for $50 or more. Second as Cliff points out is rarity. The one thing that drives the price on a lot of AMT Annuals is the fact that those kits were changed each year that the tooling was run. So that if the tooling exists at all it's "stuck" at the last year or modification that the tool received. Now we have seen recently where Round 2 has been willing to backdate some tools to stock condition - in the case of the Gremlin, or through all of it's variations in the case of the 1:16 DoH Charger/Street Charger/Petty Charger. Obviously a bunch of people with older kits got "burned" with those back-dates were done, but it's not likely we'll ever see Round 2 backdate the tooling to say a '61 Ford F-100, if that annual tooling even exists at this point. The other side of rarity is what you see with JoHan and Aurora. Where the tooling (or the majority of it) has ceased to exist either through maleficence of employees in the first case, or a train crash in the latter. Those kits will never be run again because the tooling had been melted down into a refrigerator three decades ago. Lastly for newer kits it's the "OOP - One Run" syndrome. Basically the kit is out of production, and was only ever run once. You can see that in the prices of things like the '58 & '59 Corvettes that Revell/Monogram did in the mid to late 90's. Both of those kits fetch a hefty mark-up over the $12 they cost new because for whatever reason Revell hasn't ever run them a second time. The prices on the '65 Impala Convertible was in the $40-50 range right before it was reissued (mercifully, as I refused to pay that kind of price for that kit) recently. That can also be what you see in the spike of prices on certain kits at certain times. When the news comes out that a kit that was either once several several years ago or last done a long time ago - The AMT Ford Racing "Wedge" Hauler is a good example it's been 30+ years since that was run last - you see everyone who bought the kit as an actual investment scramble to try to unload them at the "rare" price before the reissue hits the market and guts the price down to the MSRP of the reissue - or perhaps even lower since who knows what kind of shape that decades old kit and decals are in, when you can have a minty fresh one. The "OOP - One Run" hits Asian kits a good deal as well, they do business differently there, and their runs aren't 10s of thousands at once. They may run off a few thousand of a specific variation, and then that variation may never be reissued again - or at least not for a decade or more. One thing you have to also take into consideration is that just because a eBay auction is completed, doesn't mean it actually involved a sale. There are two different categories when you search "the past" one is Sold, the other is Completed, they're not the same thing. I think it's somewhat of a fools errand to collect models as an investment. Now perhaps for some of us it's an investment just because we wind up with stashes well beyond our years of existence to be able to build them all, but to do it solely for financial reasons seems dubious. It's not gold, it's not a stock or bond, and it takes up a lot of space and is going to stick your kids/spouse with a mound of boxes that is more than likely going to be bought for pennies on the dollar and then sold on at a premium to the next collector. I know a few people who have purchased a "rare" collectible kit just to open it in front of the vendor. Not sure the morality involved in trying to kill a vendor via cardiac arrest. It's perhaps not pleasant to think of it this way, but the Baby Boomers all will go the way of their parents and grandparents and at some point in say 20-25 years there's going to be a glut of old "rare" and "hard to find" kits all come on the market at once with not nearly as large a group of people willing to purchase them. What will the value of these multi-hundred dollar kits be then?

Good to know, I've only seen a YouTube video of the one Aoshima used for their kit that has the pink insides.

Yes and 1:24.

Well Aoshima updated their existing GT-R into three (well five if you count the two pre-painted versions coming this month) revised 2012 kits. There was this one - which is RHD JDM. It sold out after awhile, but you can find them all over eBay. They plan to do another spot run in August Then around Christmas it was issued as two different kits... The 2012 GT-R Egoist - which is a really amusing "tuner" car that costs something like $180k U.S. in 1:1 and famously has a pink...err salmon color interior. This is sold out and discontinued, and I haven't heard of another run of it yet. But there are 4-5 of them on eBay. Then lastly it was tweaked to a 2013 (not 2010 like I stated earlier) and released as a U.S./North American LHD model. I've seen exactly ONE of these ever listed on eBay and it sold the day it was listed.

It was in stock at HLJ for like 2 months, then went onto back-order. I joined that back-order que and about a month later we were all told it was Discontinued and they couldn't get further stock. Hobby Search had it for about a month longer after that, but I missed pulling the trigger on that one too. The only place I can even find them is on Amazon where they start for $70 which about 2 1/2 times what the kit actually cost and that doesn't count shipping it from Japanese Amazon sellers. It'll be back...I'm patient, and it's not like I'm at some shortage of things to build.

Ahh I dunno. They just released a version with a 19 piece engine. So far they've been mum on whether they plan to include that engine (which wouldn't technically be correct as the Rocket Bunnies are turbo-charged and inter-cooled), if they plan to tweak the engine to be correct, or if they will just be run curbside. The photos they are showing are of Scions, but the kit is for sale as the Toyota 86...I've asked - and have yet to get an answer - about whether they plan to release the kit with the Scion/LHD parts of if they plan to do RHD JDM only versions. Usually Aoshima kits will "silently" carry the LHD parts if they were in the kit to begin with the way the two '07 Subaru WRX STi Tuner kits did. Those kits are both marketed as JDM RHD Tuner cars, but all of the North American/Euro spec LHD parts are inside.

Well if you had a spare 2010 Nissan GT-R North American (LHD) version kit right now, I think you'd be able to name your price. Those things are vaporware. Aoshima has said they plan to do another run of it, but right now it's not on the horizon through September. The Egoist version was hard to come by for awhile too, but now several are on eBay and I managed to track one down Stateside. But that N.A. GT-R, I can't even prove they ran the kit

Austin, it's not a conversion, it's an entire model kit! So you get the whole shebang, ready to go out of the box, not just wings, flares and wheels with a bunch of body mods to do like the two resin conversion sets.

$25.74 by the current exchange rate. I wouldn't expect anything on that front other than perhaps a few more dimes less if the U.S. Dollar gains value as the devalued Yen isn't going anywhere for another 18 months at least based on stated policy. If you ship it via SAL that's running about $8 right now, so about $34 delivered. Figure it'll be high $30's to lower $40's if you have a LHS that would carry (or can order) something like this. Buy early, buy often. Like most things Aoshima has been doing lately these will be hot. The first runs of the BRZ & 86/Scion kits with the engine in them, have already sold out and they've been on the market from a grand total of 9 days.

Best governed truck I had performance-wise was a '99 Pete 379 with a 550 CAT I had when I drove for Werner. That thing flat flew up hills, you'd have to actually watch your speed going up Monteagle in TN because I could pull it the full 65MPH fully loaded. I also had a '05 International 9400i with a Cummins, but I set the governor out at 85 (mostly to keep from going any faster) and it would produce 7.5 - 8 MPG all day long, and made trips out West a lot more bearable when you could cruise across AZ, NM & West Texas at 75mph.

People don't belong to model forums (any of them, not just picking on here), model clubs and to some extent participate in contests for the same reason. Raging junior-high level egos and behavior.

Try getting some water into the joint (like if it's an engine, get it into the drive shaft "hole" or in through the water pump/fan belt mounts) and then re-freeze them, water being one of the few liquids that actually expands when it freezes it might get the joint loosened up a bit perhaps to the point of completely separating it.

Well Round 2 does list it as a "panel van", so it appears to be just that.

Was looking at the pdf file of the instructions, that engine is 19 pieces, which is a pretty high parts count even by today's standards (and might be about a third of all the kit's entire contents). That's a lot of time and effort in the design process for a Pacer

I know I have my modern is better reputation, but I'd happily take and love every minute of driving that '50.

It seems to me that rather than the website being "out of date", it really only has items on it that have definitive release dates, not just a list of every announced kit (like say Tower Hobbies pre-order site). Wouldn't surprise me if they ran into some sort of snag that was going to push it out to an undetermined date so they pulled it off. There was supposed to be a lot of restoration of the tooling to revive this kit back to it's original state, good things come to those who wait and all of that.

This kit was also issued by Fujimi as the Lexus IS 200/300 with appropriate LHD and markings.

Fotki's largest display resolution is 1000x1000 which is about full screen on most monitors. The only way you'd get things any bigger would be of you're choosing (and D.P. paid the extra to host) "View Original" in which case it'll display at the largest resolution possible which could conceivably be 4x larger. If it's a set of instructions you intend to use, right-click "save as" and save the file to your system. Your computer will auto-resize the image and allow you to increase and decrease the size as needed.

Wow if something like that were devised for the automotive hobby - aside from the cries of "I build for myself" that would ricochet around, I don't know how many people in all of the combined forums of the hobby could actually get the certification. Just read some of the requirements, that is some hard-core model railroading.

On eBay it seems what makes something "Pro Built" is a great sense of self-importance and an ego that barely fits through the door sideways. I have to laugh in my industry how many companies like to advertise about how professional their drivers are, only to see these people driving and behaving in the least professional way possible. I request people do NOT call me a "Professional Driver" as I don't want to be associated with most of these people that populate the highways with me.

I find my clinging to start showing up when to comes to tablet computers. I need something with a keyboard. Touch screen is fine for a phone, but it has to at least have a keyboard like a Surface. The idea of using something like an iPad or other touchscreen computer as my primary device just doesn't make sense. Perhaps it's because I need a real computer to edit my website, but the to me a "pad"/tablet touch-screen is nothing more than an expensive 2nd toy to me, and doesn't do anything my cellphone doesn't - other than the obviously larger screen.

Oh come now! That is one of the most famous 911 calls ever! This is the best I can come up with that has all the naughty words bleeped out. If for some reason you desire a stream of obscenities the uncensored version is out there. http://youtu.be/n7AB9rzIJPM

My parents are the ying & yang of technology... My dad who turns 66 this month use the internet and all of that for work, and while he has a personal e-mail address I can't ever recall a time where I've ever seen (or heard about) him surfing the net from home, and I don't believe I've ever gotten an e-mail from him. He has no need for Facebook or any of that. My mom who just turned 65 has a desktop, a laptop, and a Kindle Fire. She's addicted to FB, she's an eBay Power Seller, and it's rare to not see her attached to either her Kindle or her smart phone doing Lord knows what. She's worse than my 11 year old daughter. Go back in time 20 years and we had gotten our first Windows computer (ahh Windows 3.1) and AOL, so they've had technology/internet since they were in their 40's. There's no viable reason why any baby boomer isn't connected to the internet in someway unless they've just stuck their fingers in their ears and went "lalalala can't hear you, LALALALALA CAN'T HEEEEEEEAR YOU" whenever the subject was brought up. As others have mentioned most every job requires some form of electronic communications for the past decade. It's one thing to be around retirement age and have no need for any type of social media, but it's hard to imagine not having some sort of free e-mail (Yahoo, GMail, their ISP, etc) and at least being able to seek out information on the hobby - be it here, or Revell's website, or online stores.

Those new fangled cars will never replace horses! Why would I want a telephone? I can write a letter! A box with moving pictures? Bah nothing will replace my radio!