62rebel

trying to find... clear three view plan drawings, scalable, for both an M2 .50 cal and an M1919 .30 cal..... i've made two, very crude scratchbuilt m1919's.... too crude to be acceptable. maybe draped with a tarp, they'd look okay...... or under a camo net. and a history of the little-known "Grain Crisis of 1982: the Border Wars in Kansas and Missouri"..... or it's companion piece, "Bloody Kansas: What Price Corn?"......

Revell had a ball doing "themed re-issues" every couple of years..... this, the "Hot Rod" series, i remember well; and then the "Saints" and "Demons" reissues... the venerable tri-5 Chevies were constantly being updated and reissued under new, trendy names... the trouble was, they often recut the molds and removed the "old, obsolete" (and now, highly desirable!) parts, replacing them with "new and improved, modern performance" parts... i.e., the "moon disc" wheels they put into the '53 Chevy panel and sedan.... '80's multipiece alloy wheels in the '57 Chevy.... say what? outof place? naaawww.....

great save!

i think the shift to diecast killed plastic promos in the late '80's, when GM was selling Camaro and Silverado promos in plastic. i can't recall when Ford gave them up. Chrysler must have kept them through the '70's anyway.

Art, please, don't for a minute think I'm being too critical of AMT. those kits were the mainstay of the hobby and for good reason. they were visually accurate even if not actually correct, they went together like Legos in most cases, they were almost 100% interchangeable among grouped cars ('32's, 39-40's, '49-'50's) and were filled with optional parts that gave almost endless building possibilities, unlike the straight "one version" kits so common now. there's nothing that can't be corrected easily and quickly on the Cadillac engine from the AMT '49 Ford with a razor saw, a file, some sandpaper and putty. nor the flathead, for that matter.

it depends, my Falcons had a lot of melted locator stubs that i had to cut off to remove the parts. i don't know if they kept on using that method into the '80's or not. all of mine have screws or pins that hold the chassis plate to the body. AMT and JoHan seemed to keep that method through the '70's for promos and annual kits, even when annuals dropped the screws and they added plastic pins to the chassis plates. seems like all the JoHan Oldies i built had screws or pins, except a couple that locked the chassis in place with tabs?

nice, but that picture doesn't show the lower outlets/water pumps. it does, however, show how pitiful the AMT representation of the 8BA is in their '49 and '50 Fords.... good heads and stock intake, but horrible carb and exhaust manifolds. they did a great job on the 8CM in the '49 Mercury and the 8BA in the '53 F100, both of which i have robbed engines from to do shoebox builds. the other flatheads from the Trophy prewar cars are horrible. still; it's not a lot of extra work to put some styrene stubs below the water pumps and some tube from there to the radiator. the Lindberg '53 has a great block assembly but the heads are too flat. substitute '53 F100 heads, and it looks perfect. also gives you a Fordomatic trans if you're building a '51 conversion. remember, too, that those thick belts molded into the pulleys are almost accurate for some years, as there are both narrow AND wide pulley versions. getting the flash ring off the AMT flathead air cleaner and putting the correct seam back on it will do wonders to add realism to an AMT flattie. OOB it's awful and out of scale.

i have a '65 Rambler American promo in ivory plastic, probably JoHan, that is, so far, my sacred cow. it's got faded chrome, scratches in the glass and scuffs on the body, but i found it twenty some years ago in an antique shop and had to have it. it's been on the shelf next to my '64 Dodge Polara SuperStock that i built with crossram dual quads about 1990 or so.... but give me a roundbody Falcon promo and i have some AMT '67 Mustang chassis ready to cut up and shove under it!

i had stacks and stacks of car magazines available as a kid; my uncles were gear heads, my GrandDad and Dad were mechanically inclined, so i was blessed with stores of reference material to glean from. that, and back in those days, the kit boxes and instructions had all kinds of added information such as the brand names of performance parts so you'd KNOW what they were, not just guessing. and today, it's even easier, as all of your responses stated, what with instant internet access to just about any info you desire. add to that, years of building actual cars, and having them at hand to refer to, and there's little reason to get things wrong... not that i'm perfect by any means (far from it, and losing ground due to my eyesight and shaky hands)....

in other words, what can you tell people about your model? that it was a sales leader or a lead brick? that it held a speed record for years or was the slow and steady tortoise? do you rely on the kit instructions to tell you what colors were appropriate, or do you seek out more concise information? the modifications that you do, are they viable and feasible on a 1:1 or flights of fancy? (nothing wrong with flights of fancy; just asking). i ask because i tend to work from physical examples: usually my own, or friends' and family's cars and trucks, or from magazine articles, even if i'm doing customs of my own design.

i think we're so used to seeing crazy-thin tires on conestoga wagon rims that we don't recognize what a '50's car, especially a big honker of a Chrysler, would have rode on... nice, comfortable, wide whitewalls that soaked up the still-marginal highways of the '50's!

the warped ones are made of acetate... no, i wouldn't use one of those, personally, because you can't stop the warping. but i have, and will again, use promos to do builds. they're models. not investments.

luckily, they all kept the lower hose/water pump/motor mount arrangement. as a former owner of a '51 shoebox, another detail overlooked is the fact that the radiators have lower tanks as well as upper. not all shoeboxes have blower motors mounted on the heater air intake tube, either... and a good many didn't even get heaters at all. i won't even address the fact that the interior slopes outward at the bottom, not inward... because that's just a limitation of the design of the kit typical of the era.

exactly as i was hoping and expecting; near-excellence! another beauty of an early Hemi, though i warrant few of THESE will get scrounged for other builds! i hope Hobbytown doesn't wait three months to get some of THESE in, like they did with the Hudsons....

you know AMT...they never made anything right. Revell is the only manufacturer fit to sell models. i hope you understand sarcasm.

you should get that "salesman" to buy you a new kit for that bit of "help".... the bottle is marked "brush cleaner". if the piece is fully dry, i'd sand it as Erik said and see if you can get it smooth enough with a final polish. at any length, you still have the piece itself to use for a pattern and cut one from clear styrene or acetate. for next time, keep any type of tube glue away from your clear parts. use the white glue based clear parts cement, or clear enamel to hold in your glass.

i watched a new flick last night called "The Dead".... folks; i think we won't have the time to do involved vehicles like these when the ZA (zombie apocalypse) happens..... we'll be lucky to find gas and open roads without roadblocks full of nervous troops with itchy trigger fingers and orders to kill. and, even with fuel and running vehicles, what is the destination? scary premise..... relentless undead roaming the land.... and i do mean RELENTLESS.... they never stop, never sleep, always following whatever sense leads them to the living.... but ya'll keep it up. i enjoy looking at these machines of our last desperate acts of survival!

your GrandDad would be the first to tell you that the roof insert doesn't rust... it's rubberized fabric over a wood frame, with chicken wire and cotton batting under it. it would deteriorate and show the wood slats, etc. other than that, you pretty much captured the one he had in the barn when i was a kid..... the radiator shells on A's were nickel plated; they don't rust like chrome.... hard to explain.

it doesn't bug me to see an old build a couple of times, nearly as much as it irks me to see an entire post quoted SEVERAL times in a thread, or a post filled with links that some of us might be unable to follow.

glad to have been even a small part of the scene.

why is that linebacker wearing ballet slippers?

the top of the rear axle from the '79 is missing. the rest of the parts are there, as stated above, and the wheelwells AS PICTURED on the box have to be cut out to do that, so, the '79 can be built MOSTLY stock with a custom grille insert. i do NOT recall whether all of the stock engine parts were there, but a well-stocked parts box could take up the slack.

if it were a new tool along the lines of Revell's '68 Firebird or AMT's '67 Mustang, several! if it had multi-year building options; again; several! if it had accurate Pro Stock parts to depict era-correct racers, again, SEVERAL. just because JoHan made a ProStock version (and NO stock ones) is no reason to dismiss a new tool.... and this would give the kit manufacturers a chance to tool up a new, accurate SIX cylinder for us replica-stock Ford builders......

i didn't know Lone Wolf McQuade drove a Mustang.....

i wanted to give the question a Mythbuster style closure. i've known for decades that a broken one is unrepairable except to use for a pattern. stopping somebody from chucking a whole kit in the trash because of a ruined glass piece is all i had in mind.