niteowl7710

I tend to stick within paint lines, so I would (and suggest) using DupliColor primer. Some people will say their primer is too "hot", but if you lay down several thin coats (enough to completely cover the part being primed - usually 2-3 thin coats) before laying down a couple of wet coats it works just fine. The key to almost all DupliColor be it primer, color & clear is multiple thin coats to achieve a "base" of whatever your using before adding in a few wet coats. Takes a bit more patience than fire hosing on coats with regular model paint, but the drying time between coats for DupliColor is 10 mins between same product and 30min to an hour between the others. Eg - 10 mins between coats of primer, then let dry 30 min, then 10 min between color coats, then 1 hour to dry before clear, then 10 min between clear coats. To me that's plenty fast, as how much of a hurry are you really in especially when painting a body. Since Testors enamel (be it bottle or rattle can) NEVER seems to actually dry, it's really quick!

My wife likes to play the vexed spouse who's husband is playing with silly cars, but I've slowly been drawing her deeper and deeper into the madness. The last kit I was examining at home, she stopped by and asked me what I was looking for (mold lines and test fitting the body/interior/chassis together)...then quickly walked away when she realized what she asked. We have a joint and separate bank accounts, and so long as I replace any money I spend out of the joint account, and don't let the bills go overdue, I can spend "my money" as I see fit. Last week I ordered her a box set of DVDs from one of her guilty pleasure T.V. shows and when she went to get it from our P.O. box the lady was having computer issues and couldn't scan the delivery confirmation. I said "Well you should have opened the box, took out your stuff, and gave her the box back and let her scan it on your own time". She replied back. "No it's a pretty big box, I figured you can use it if you need to send out a trade..." (dead silence) "I'll kill you if you ever tell anyone I said that..."

Found one these tonight at a Wal*Mart in York, Nebraska. It was the last one...same all black unmarked unit as seen elsewhere in the thread. I would like to find some white ones without mail-ordering them, as I have a couple of KY projects (I know KY as a test bed, who'd a thunk it) for them, but I don't want to repaint this black one...it's far too ominous (and the paint is pretty good too).

Found one of the MotorMax 2011 Ford Police Interceptor "Concept" diecasts at a Wal*Mart in Nebraska. Same all black, slicktop one as discussed in the thread about them in the "What's New" section. Now if I could only find my flippin' Phillips head screw driver so I can take this little plastic base of it

Man that would be the last thing my bank account would need. A hobby "shop" within walking distance. The fact I have to drive a 1/2hr to get to my local joint keeps me from spending unnecessarily

I guess they were desperate to attempt something to help cover the tooling costs? Same thing with the '97 F-150 kit. They picked the most baseline vanilla options...2wd, base model...how about a 4x4 F-250, or 2500HD Duramax or something interesting?

I think a lot more of it has to do with the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of the automobile manufacturers than the kit companies. If you'll think back a few months to the fiasco over the M-B SLS AMG and Revell USA being told to sit and spin on the idea of re-boxing that kit in a "North American" box without paying a separate licensing fee. To the gist of this thread, the Charger kit from Lindberg (for Testors) came out in 2006 when the car did. I would like to a Durango/Grand Cherokee (since they're the same platform) kit. I think right now there might be a good case for leader/follower for a new truck/SUV kit. Whoever leads that path is going to have good sales, whomever follows perhaps not as much. Remember the last modern day pick-up kit was the 1999 Silverado, so 12 years later I think there is a market clambering for a new kit. I don't know that there's a market for 6 of them.

A variation of #8 is Wife (fiancee/girlfriend/mother/aunt/cousin/personal finances) are forcing me to sell my collection. This means my collection is going on eBay for 7-10x what it's really worth, just so I can tell my (see above) that I TRIED to sell my models, but no one would buy them, when in reality I had no intention of selling anything I just wanted (see above) the shut up and leave me alone.

Did you count these? ...let's see here...no you can't has a Viper, and I found the Bugatti body is pretty warped when I got it out of storage last year. I haven't really examined it to see how fixable it is... The vast majority of my stash (with the exception of about 50-60 of the newest kits, and the '80's Monogram/Revell kits that I've purchased in the past year) is carried out of storage that I purchased before 1998. Once I started actually building half-way decent results in my late teens/early 20's, combined with having a job and disposable income, I was purchasing faster than I could build them. I just didn't liquidate everything like most people do, and I'm happy that I still have everything, and it would cost a small fortune to rebuild "the wall" from scratch.

My grandfather would have been there, but he blew out a knee at Basic. Thanks to all the living WWII Vets for saving the world as we know it. Never forgot those who were lost that day.

So long as you have a room, there are always cheap plastic shelving!

This is how it starts...all innocent and small. But a few kits here, and a few kits there, and you'll have outgrown that shelving unit...and need another one....and it will look so empty...so a few more kits here, and a kit there...

Went to the LHS and picked up the Ferrari 458 Italia. Wanted a 2010 Mustang too, but the owner said he sold the 2 he ordered in less than 2 hours after putting them on the shelves on Wednesday. I suggested he should have ordered a case...since I would have been sale # 3 in 3 days, the other 3 surely would have sold quickly as well.

Finally got home to paw through the box of kits I got doing a deal with Dave (Double D)...when I show her the kit you tossed in as a bonus, she looked at it and went what's a Cuda? I weeped...

There were several tools that Lindberg did during the Craft House management days ('66 Chevelle, '53 Fords, '61 Impala, '67 Olds, 64 Dodge & Plymouths, '98 Ford F-150) that are as good as any other tooling of their age (late 1990's) as far as fit and finish go. A lot of their modern car tooling during the time (Dodge Caravan, Crown Vic Police kits, & Chrysler Sebring) were also snap-tites that were basically un-assembled promotion models, or in the odd-ball 1/20th scale. The 1/20th kits were again pretty decent kits, but the scale turned a lot of people off (I'm personally still annoyed the Jeep Grand Cherokee & Nissan 4x4 were in 1/20th). The problem is a lot of Lindberg's tooling catalog is old IMC tooling from the 1960's and the kits weren't particularly good back then, let alone 40 years later. The most recent tooling they did are the various 2006 Dodge Chargers that were sold both as Testors kits, and as an SRT-8 and police version by Lindberg directly. They are superb kits, but some seem to have a "made on Friday" feel that some of the casting wasn't done quite right. One kit will be perfect, the next is slightly askew to the left, or to the right. Also at 158-250+ part Skill Level 3 kits (depending on variation) I couldn't in good faith recommend them to someone who's just starting out. The overall AMT v. Revell thing is nearly as old as a Ford v. Chevy debate, to say nothing of the 1:24 v. 1:25 skirmishes. Some people build only one or the other. When I was a kid I built a lot of Monogram kits as they went together a lot better than the "fiddly" kits that especially MPC put out. A lot of those old Monogram kits are out there now in Revell boxes (they're the ones in 1:24 scale). But over the years AMT & MPC merged, and so did Monogram & Revell. While you can still see MPC and Monogram boxes out there in "Retro" packaging, the companies in a literal sense don't exist anymore. I build on subject matter rather than any loyalty to a particular company. Is a curbside kit worth $50? I don't know is it? Depends on how bad you want to build the subject matter. In the end is the lack of engine going to matter to anyone when it's sitting on your shelf? You're going to die of oxygen deprivation if you hold your breath for a U.S. company to do a current Subaru WRX, Lexus LF-A, Aston Martin DB-S, or Nissan GT-R, 370Z, etc. If you like the real 1:1 kit, and can afford the kit, I say get it. I think it takes a higher detailing skill on a curbside anyway, as you can't be all "gee-shucks-wizzBANG" with engine detailing/wiring/photoetch. All the work I did on making this engine flashy to cover the fact I didn't sand the mold lines off the exhaust, axles, steering wheel, or any other round surface in this entire kit...Your basic kit skills and detailing painting abilities are going to shine through on a curbside/limited engine build. As a model builder you can fix problems (if they bother you that much), but really no matter how long you participate in the hobby, or how good you get, that little box of plastic bits will still be able to conjure a cursing drunken sailor on leave at times.

If your talking the type of dry transfer where you rub the letter on the back-side of wax paper and then the letter is applied to the model, the same usual scotch tape trick you'd use with regular decals will work. I've had to remove entire wording from things before, and never had any issue of paint lifting, the "adhesive" used on dry-transfers aren't very good, and they tend to flake off with time if you don't clear them onto the body.

I understand what you're getting at, but like most things statistics can be made to say whatever you want them to say. Do you really believe there are nearly 3.700 metropolitan areas in this country? According to the U.S. Census I live in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Census Area...but I'm literally 28 miles away from my front door, to the center of downtown. Can anyone explain to me exactly how that makes me part of a Metropolitan area? Especially when I have a horse farm next door? When you really look at that data there are only 463 actual Metro Areas of 100,000 or more people. 1,838 areas are areas of 50,000 or less, and the final 1,328 are areas of 2,500 - 5,000 people. I hate to break it to the almighty Federal Government but 2,500 people does NOT make something "Urban"...that's flipping rural! Heck even if your county seat has over 100,000 people in it, that doesn't make everyone living outside of it "Urban" either.

Terry you're just in the wrong part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area, I have at least 4 of them within 25 miles of my house, and they're building a 5th.

Yeah what Mark said! Get some run of the mill scotch tape, burnish it down tight, and then remove. The decal should come right off without affecting the underlying paint.

Well in reality we probably will not run out of oil, we will however at some point run out of commercially viable oil. The U.S. sits on more oil than the Middle East, however getting the majority out of the ground involves either getting it out of shale, or our own oil sands, neither of which are cheap, so the investment isn't being made. Besides I've long thought this country's long-term energy policy was to use up the world's oil first, then we'd have all of it. This conversation has been an interesting exercise in paranoia and far-out technology dreaming. But as is the usual case the here and now falls somewhere in the middle. Despite all the noise on both sides about either government control or the evils of urban sprawl, the vast majority of this country is the middle of nowhere rural. I live a short 28 mile commute to Pittsburgh, but out in my county it's primarily rural/agriculture zoning. We don't even have a taxi service, let alone public transit. We have a "bus service" for seniors and the infirm, but you quite literally have to be approved by the county to us it, you can't just get on the bus and ride it around. I;m the first person to admit that when I got to D.C. on vacation I park my car in the hotel and don't see it again until I leave, but that all encompassing Metro system isn't going to help me or 85% of Pennsylvanians who live outside of Pittsburgh & Philadelphia. All the hybrids, electric cars and high speed rail isn't going to help the farmers in the Midwest, or ranchers in Texas. There are always going to be people who really DO need 1 ton dually pick-up trucks, 7 passenger SUVs, and 16 passenger vans. That's to say nothing of commercial freight movements. For all the greenie/touchie/feel good ads that Norfolk-Southern & CSX run, the fact of the matter is that your local grocery store doesn't have a rail siding behind it. All of those containers and intermodal trailers have to come off and be run to their final destination on a truck. All putting things on rail does is eliminate long-haul trucking jobs, and reduce traffic congestion in Kansas. It just means MORE trucks on the road in major cities to deliver all those trailers to and from the rail-head. Also due to the way the rail lines merged and consolidated we're one major train derailment away from having the entire grid come to a halt. Chicago is a particularly notorious choke-point, with the freight going through far exceeding the rail capacity...one wreck there (aside from whatever devastation the potential chemical release might cause) could shut down East-West rail traffic for weeks. A lot of rail-beds were torn out and turned into "nature walks", bike trails, etc. so there's no real viable work-around either that doesn't detour things through Kansas City, which goes into an entire separate issue of who's rails who's trains are using. The next great thing out there might very well be developing in an R&D lab, or percolating in some college kid's mind, but until it gets here we use oil. The problem as I see it really lies in the fact that we're throwing subsidies around for these "green jobs" and "alternative energies" with the same reckless abandon the Feds do everything else...which is to say totally ineffectively. Bypassing various technologies based on who has the biggest lobbyist convention in town. This country has shown a complete and total propensity towards talking a lot of doodie, but not taking any actual actions (see - No budget in over 2 years, huge deficits, Social Security & Medicare going bankrupt through at LEAST 3 administrations). Bottom line is those dopes don't care one whit about any of us on either side of the "aisle", it's all about power and $$$, and the infrastructure of this country is collapsing around their collective greed.

Alright Nate let me just sit here in stunned silence at the over-arching stupidity of that excuse... O.K. I can't...what the heck is that even supposed to mean? Kids love cars real and models! I went to a model show attached to a car show in VA, and the kids had to be forcibly dragged through the contest venue (to get to the other part of the real car show) because they wanted to look at the models.

Since two people have now asked, and have been told to buy airbrushes, but never had their original question answered... This effects the spray paint, not the little bottles of paint. There's still more than enough X-18 to go around for everyone, or at least there is at my LHS, who just got a re-stock of the the acrylics last week (I know since I bought the last jars of several colors back in April, and he had fresh stock in May.) Paint is like motor oil, antifreeze, and most other common "chemicals". Along with most food companies too come to think about it. There are only a few companies that actually make it, and then they co-brand it to several specific brands. Figure out who makes Tamiya spray paint, and then buy the cheaper off-brand, but just as good stuff.

They are the exactly that. The Police car kits actually include the wheels, and several engine parts from the SRT-8 kits. They are also the same as the Testors Daytona and R/T kits as well as they were cast by Lindberg for Testors.

Might be that nobody knew about it? I'm presuming we're talking about New Stanton as in at the corner of I-70 and the PA Pike right? I went to the show in Pittsburgh in March, and have been to the hobby shop in Connellsville 3 times in the past 3 months and never saw one word of there being anything today.

Diesel Exhaust Fluid...aka DEF...aka synthetic urea...