62rebel

m'kay.

so i'm sitting here wondering how that works from a purely mechanical point of view.... the front axle would be fairly easy to modify to accomplish that stance, but the rear.....

they were more manuverable in inner-city driving as well; there was a time when long haul trucks had to transfer their loads to shorter inner city trucks to avoid creating gridlocked traffic in town... of course, these trucks weren't used out on the open highways as much.

another of my favorite models, and you're doing a great job with it. i wish there were more of the optional parts present in the numerous reissues but it seems like they welded off another section of sprue every time they reissued it. the Y-block in this and the '57 Fairlane 500 kit are nearly as nice as the recent Revell version. again; excellent work!

your latest ventures have definitely exposed your talents beyond plastic, Harry. well done!

another fine piece! great job on the top and the seat; amazing that the makers of the kit fell so short in that area. maybe their expectations were that nobody would ever follow through all the processes of building the kit! i believe the next logical step is the Queen's Jubilee coach....

Harry, this is a work of art. those Concord stages were the state-of-the-art at the time.... it's amazing how they were able to absorb the amount of abuse they endured. it took a build of this effort to draw me back into posting!

you do realize that on closed body Model A Fords, the doors overlap the body ON PURPOSE and "gaps" are not a flaw....

re: steering wheel- with that chop and channel job, there's no room for anything larger than that thing.. re: engine overkill- a 454 Chevy with 450bhp? good thing gas stations are on every block.... re: radiator height- yeah... never uphill to the front on an A.... level if not a slight downward rake.... re: making an early '30's Ford better? not THIS one, IMHO.....

i don't have a calibrated eyeball, but in my own opinion (and it's worth only 1/1000th of an internet dollar) i've never been impressed by the detail i've seen in most 1/24th kits THAT I'VE BUILT compared to 1/25th.... that disclaimer to take account of the fact that i've not built nearly as many 1/24th as i have 1/25th.... and of the 1/25th, a great many had questionable scale issues, fidelity and accuracy issues and fitment troubles that i've either glossed over or simply accepted as normal for building. as far as why i have a preference for 1/25th TODAY, it's simply because very few 1/24th kits offer anywhere NEAR as many optional parts for customizing as 1/25th kits do. more parts, more choices, more value for my dollar. if any manufacturer decided to put out a line of cars and trucks in military bi-scale, i'd be open to seeing that option open up.

1:1 T's actually do have the rear wheels close to the fender; maybe not as close as they seem in 1/25th but they aren't centered in the wheelwell. T's have enormously flexible frames and articulated suspension; they can literally twist about their own axis quite a bit.

1925 T's were black. front to back, top to bottom, almost every one of them "sprayed" in black lacquer. that said, there WERE special order cars in other colors.... the factory "sprayed" them with a rig that looked almost like a set of water pipes with holes in them, literally pouring lacquer on and letting it run off and be re-cycled through the rig again and again... lacquer dries fast and hard, and takes on a good shine with hand polishing. stripers would run pinstripes just beside the pressed-in body lines, so that washing and waxing wouldn't rub them off. your T looks like a well-worn, well-loved family standby.....

IN COLOR! i remember that phrase well..... Irwin Allen's productions probably resulted in more model kits being sold than almost any other TV work until DOH.... btw those are excellent. expensive kit, though.... i'll wait till Hobbytown puts it on clearance!

those are excellent! and, to echo the others, tough kits to start with. they're NOT for those with a lack of patience....

i'll take a case of those vans. and a case of those cop cars... and here's my mortgage money. YIKE.... gotta start budgeting for these jobbies. i think i'll do one of those transports... i don't remember ever seeing that one. a Poncho straight six on a toronado transaxle....

like 90% of Monogram's cars, it's simple and quick to build, has lots of shiney, and is fairly easy to upgrade with a decent parts stash. it's no Tamiya or Hasegawa by a loooong shot, but i can almost guarantee it won't end up languishing half-built in the bottom of the closet because it was too complicated. these are BUILDER'S kits.

doesn't look like mold lines pose much of a problem for you! i can't see ANY left.... and that kit has had them since day one. it does build into a pretty nice car, and you're doing a great job on it. love the paint job.

i love full detail kits and i applaud those among us who can devote the effort to make them stand out... but, i'm conflicted when i realize that 90% of the detail so carefully crafted, will simply disappear under a body once it's on the shelf.... so; i do what i can to make the exterior look as authentic as possible, and what can be seen through the windows. the rest is just for me; my own gratification so i can do as much or as little as i please. some kits were only released in archaic once-motorized versions, or once-removed from promo kits, or just plain awful kits that were all we could get and we got used to them. doesn't mean i won't buy one IF i get the urge to build it. definitely doesn't mean i'm going to complain all over again about how awful so-and-so's kits were, when they've been out of business for nearly forty years.... it's amazing what modern materials (BMF, buffable metallics, detailed PE and resin parts) can do to make up for the implied deficiencies in older tools. there's a Hubley Ford Station Wagon in Under Glass that looks brand spanking new... and Hubley wasn't known for detailed kits.

that's real progress! very nice... tip: the spare tire well is almost scale UNDER the car, but way too narrow inside the trunk... so: cut your intended spare tire down where it slips into the well and sits at a slight angle to the right. put a small square of styrene over the center to represent the jack base as used to hold the wheel firmly in place, with a slight depression in the center (maybe cut the center out of a spare air cleaner to get the wing nut detail...)

you have to add small wedges to the rear seat bottom edge. replace the front seat with a reworked Lindberg '53 Ford unit, or make side panels that widen the base of the seat from the kit. the actual 1:1 seat tapers inward towards the top, instead of widening as the kit seat does. there's virtually no inner structure in the trunk, so closing the top of the fuel tank and adding a trunk mat will do the trick there. making accurate '49-'50 trunk hinges will be difficult, as they're mounted on the surface. i built mine as a '51 so internal hinges work out. sealing the floorpan to the body once you're done will duplicate the way the actual body looks on the frame, oddly enough... i built mine with the floorpan in place and cut the transmission crossmember loose so i could install the engine after the body was painted. i've found that i should add two small pieces under the rear quarters to represent the rear body braces from working on my 1:1 shoebox.... actually, if i wanted to go nuts i could add dozens of little details that AMT left out in '62.....

kudos for opening the doors but that's only half of the job. the doors are roughly the same thickness almost from the door handle down, not the full width of the space between the tub and body. i've done one with opening doors and trunk and you can separate the sides of the tub from the floor, fill the gap and get more scale appearing doors with not much more effort than you have so far. opening the doors on kits with "tub" interiors usually results in problems with door/quarter thickness due to the draft needed for molding the tub. the AMT '49 is one of the kits i've built many, MANY times... love it. easy to work with and modify.

how can you marginalize ANY of those developments as simply "improving the quality of life"? by the way, we ARE in "Space"; right along with every OTHER bit of stardust and molecule of gas in the Universe. we just HAPPEN to be on the Earth at the same time. and "the american army research" you refer to is by no means the ONLY source of constant technical advancements; throughout our history, Technology has been driven by Military need, not by social need. that's just the way it is, not a statement of criticism of ANY political nature. Solar power HAS been CONSTANTLY improved upon since it's inception, better methods of transforming Solar rays into usable energy with smaller cells that cost less to produce are the goal of many researchers. and , btw; who's to say when MAN first gazed into the night sky and wondered HOW to get THERE from HERE? it wasn't simply in the last century. it's been a mainstay of nearly all civilizations with a recorded history.

here's a better perspective IMHO: somebody sees the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and starts thinking; "Gee, i'd love to have something like that in my house.." and begins to research the requisites for getting a mural done by a master artist in wet plaster... then decides he can get the same results with some poster paints and shoeshine brushes. halfway through, he realizes his efforts are little more than the wild splashing of a drunken chimp, and then finishes it where he's at and claims it as "Art, my way"..... there's a whole genre of "Art Cars" out there; wrought iron VW Beetles, sharks on wheels, etc... they're amusing and thought provoking in many instances. taking a pile of rusted scrap and snot-welding it together, throwing all sense of style and proportion out of the window, and expecting no one to react negatively to it isn't facing reality. not everyone is an artist, not everyone is a doctor, not everyone is an engineer... and staying at Holiday Inn Express last night doesn't make anyone a genius, either. If Foose is building cars up to his previous levels, and painting them to look rattish, at least he's making sure they operate properly.

"traditional" and "rat" are polar opposites IMHO. everything had an era in which there were stages of acceptability in build quality; check out some of the early "Little Pages" Rod and Custom magazines and you'll see endless pages of homebuilt rods that were as good as the owner could do on his budget. peppered in there, you'll find a few really visionary customs and rods that were pushing the envelope for that time, but you WON'T find outrageously radical chops, football-field length frame extensions, or cars that were openly unsafe to operate OR illegal... more on THIS in a minute. the editors of ALL the magazines of that era had hundreds of cars to pick through each and every month to do features, that's how big the craze was in those days. it was a big issue to them to put forth a vision of the car culture as clean and wholesome, safe and fun; not one filled with rat-trap cars and rust and hoodlums... so; every car featured met a stringent set of guidelines for proper safety equipment, functional accessories such as fire extinguishers, roll bars, disc brakes, etc.... drivers even went to great lengths to make SURE that unfinished body work, paint, or interiors were not photographed. i'm currently building a 1:1 1951 Ford Tudor sedan into a mild custom... it will eventually get new paint, lowered suspension, a few tasteful mods, but it will NEVER be a rat rod. it will not have an intake sticking through the hood, donk wheels under it, or mexican blankets on the seats, nor license plates for door panels or a pirate flag for a headliner....

the '61 Starliner rear window doesn't have the contour at the bottom that the '60 does. it goes in a smooth arc across the tulip panel.