62rebel

so my local Hobby Town can be counted on to get these in at least two months after release, if at all? no wonder they're looking like a Soviet-era grocery store these days.

i owned a 1:1 '59 and i would love to do a replica of it, there are some resin kits out there i THINK are based on the AMT/SMP annuals. if so, they probably have pretty good detail and are simple to assemble. I've not had the opportunity to get one yet, and i'd love to see examples of what's available. i have the Revell Skyliner and the body builds up nicely but the real car is so badly proportioned due to that folding roof.... it sits 90% finished in the box still.

having something other than your main occupation to decompress with is a necessary part of human life. "all work and no play", etc. i have this hobby, which includes models of all kinds, not just vehicles, and i have the 1:1's to maintain. i don't do ALL the work on the 1:1's as i'm just not able to any more, but i do what i can. then there's research, on all kinds of topics, and simply reading up on stuff. i can sit at the bench and contemplate a kit for hours without doing much more than examine the parts and plan.... if it's family decompression time, it's MOVIE time. i don't force my hobby into family time. shoot, even at work i'll have a flash of inspiration and have to write it down for later.

i'd hazard a guess that not one single Galaxie 500 made it off the line with a six. the Custom series, yes, but not the flagship series. nothing stopping you from putting any v8 combo in it from a 302 to a 460 if you can find a donor. curious; what cylinder heads did you trade?

it hadn't aged at all, that was a picture taken when it was a fresh build. i don't recall chrome being any less shiny in the old days.

there's a good Cadillac engine in the AMT '59 El Camino; to get stock exhaust you might need to source the heads used for the Cadillac engine in the AMT '49 ford; they're log style and crammed tight to the head. there's headers in the AMT '58 Impala kit that aren't too bad considering they're made for the 348-409 engine. Revell's parts-pac engine is pretty nice but can be hard to find.

i guessed the year but that's all....

now i remember where i was getting all the tokens- K-Mart had an after-Christmas clearance sale while i was stationed in Great Lakes and they had a LOAD of T.J. Hooker police cars and A-Team vans that were going for (get this) twenty-five cents each....... i bought enough to nearly fill the trunk of my '67 Dodge (this was in '87) and i had nowhere else to keep them... i think that i actually bought twelve of each, and some others that were marked down equally fantastically.... it was better for me than going out drinking every weekend.

odd of them to make the rear window surround a separate chrome piece.... it doesn't look like it's proportioned quite right in the pics, too thick. i've had to modify several of these later Lindberg kits' rear axles to support the wheels better, by cementing a steel axle in them. they're too flimsy imho without some bracing added. otherwise, Lindberg's late offerings were pretty good and gave the "other guys" something to consider...

way back when MPC was under "Fundimension", a part of General Mills, they had a "savings stamp" program that let you cut proof-of-purchase logos out of the kit box and send them in for free kits.... and after MPC was absorbed into AMT, the program covered both lines, although i THINK only the MPC branded kits had the tokens on the box. anyways; i had dozens of kit boxes stored away (nothing really collectible, thankfully) and i went through and clipped every one of those tokens out, shopped the little "catalog" for kits, and sent off a scad of tokens one summer in the early '90's.... AMT sent me six kits total for my efforts. i think i ordered their venerable '49 Ford, as it was not currently on the store shelves, and probably a couple of the excellent new '68 Road Runner kits. would it kill one of the kit makers to do something similar today? say, scan hobby shop reciepts showing you paid full price for kits and earn some credit against a "mail-in" kit? pie in the sky, i know, but it was a good memory. BTW, the only per se "collectible" kit box i have (in my opinion, anyway) is my dusty old JoHan Petty Plymouth box. there's a Boot Hill Express stored in it.

i absolutely loathe modern cars and trucks. no secret there. i'm constantly searching for the right old vehicle to carry me through these coming years, and when i decide what it will be, i will hoard repair and replacement parts against the nearing day when nothing at all is available. nothing with electronics, nothing with power accessories, possibly not even electric wipers. it won't have printed circuitry, fuel injection (unless it's mechanical and i don't see many of those around), or ABS, and definitely no claymore mine attached to the steering wheel. people will point at that gray-haired old man driving that old car and wonder "WHY?".... and i'll smile to myself and answer "because."

omigod it's so old it might explode and burn down a school full of blind kids. why, they oughta outlaw them things. i thought i'd get the liberal media slant shoved in there somewhere.

i think, if i got a good deal on them, i'd buy them and dunk 'em in purple power. yeah, even the gold sprues. they really are well executed kits, they build up great.

nice of photobucket to delete all those pics.

i dunno, the IMSA look was pretty popular then. leave it, imho.

i remember those when they came out, and wasn't particularly impressed with the concept. the kits themselves were easy to build and made excellent displays with even minor effort; i just didn't go for the "desk radio" look.... i would like it if Revell thought to reissue all of their classics as well as the Ancient Iron series.

they SEEM to build up as acceptable "shelf-sitters", from what i've seen. unless they're side-by-side with original Craftsman kits or promos, the inaccuracies don't seem obvious unless you're familiar with the Falcon. i wouldn't buy one to do an exact replica of any 1:1 car. i'd hunt down one of the original versions and hope for the best, swap in a modified Mustang chassis plate....

i'm looking at the sprues and the planning that went into ensuring the delicate parts were protected. you can tell ICM did armor or aircraft kits before getting into cars... this looks like a must-have, even though i don't normally "do" brass-era cars.

warning: thread has devolved into another Round2 bashfest. from "Cool Hand Luke"; "Some men, you just can't reach."

x2 on leaving it as-is. that's a piece of his and now your pasts.

i hope you meant papier mache and not paper machete.... one of those sounds deceptively dangerous. nice track; i've been researching them lately as i have a hankering for doing some slot cars...

congratulations, Bill! she's certainly a beauty. and that coming from the resident anti-new car guy! i wonder if you can get to San Francisco by 12 tomorrow afternoon...

it fits in with the rest of our corporate failures, Harry. we're reducing ourselves to consumers and transporters of other people's goods, mostly, other countries. but our kids and grandkids will have high self-esteem, since that's more important than being self-reliant in these "modern" times.

well, i suppose that i missed that period because the AMT kits i was buying had no defective parts.

AMT has always had quick service replacing bad parts when i encountered them. at one time all you had to have was the kit number and the number of the part in the kit. as far as metal axles, i have so many of the things that i've salvaged from junk kits that, if every kit i buy from now on is missing them, i won't be put out. and AMT will always be "AMT", to me, regardless of who owns them.