62rebel

i'm not going to complain that they don't have the instructions for AMT's Iron Horse Mustang; they had darn near everything else under the sun! i went through every possible permutation of the kit in case it was hidden somewhere... seemed odd that nowhere on the MPC section were there any Nascar/Grand National kits..... oversight on somebodie's part i'm sure. there was definitely a need to fill in the late '70's issues.... the halcyon days of annual kits were not well represented!

wow. i just blew three hours reminiscing. and wondering how many of those tools are still good to use...... i noticed the Palmer section only had one kit... well; it only takes one to show how crude they were.

looking it over once again; might i suggest that you make an ID tag for poor lost Franz here.... both halves intact. metal, oval, seamed down the middle with information on both halves, so that half is taken by his CO and half is left with him for Graves Registration, or whatever the Wehrmacht called that unit. one more chilling detail.... i'd replace his k98 with one that has a working bolt, rust the bolt open. he didn't go down without a fight.

it looks so "real".... but... i see some things that don't seem right for 1:1..... model. Pocher, maybe; or even handbuilt from scratch...... there's a reason you didn't use a full view picture, i'm certain.

i worked with a British gentleman who used to work for BP in North Africa; his work detailed him to go out and survey pipelines and other tasks that had him out in the desert where most of the fighting was between the British 8th Army and the Afrika Korps. he told me that it was common to come upon isolated scenes of extreme violence that had played out thirty years before, and never properly recovered. chilling, he said, to find lost men and their i.d. tags..... bone fragments, he said, are much lighter than stone or sand and stay on top of the ground until weather wears them away, bleached ivory white by the Sun....

punk, or dressed in mufti?

last year, i think, the Russians unearthed a lot of German remains near one of the hundreds of battle sites of WW2; the pictures look very like your work here, except mud encrusted and rusted up weapons with the wood stocks rotted away.

i got a builtup GT500 from Josh in Lexington SC today, and it has already been sacrificed to the styrene gods to repair the "funnycar" header cutouts on one body. THANKS Josh! it was a good opportunity to compare the Shelby parts against the IronHorse more closely; the interior tubs are similar at first glance but there are significant differences in length, rear cargo area design, and retainer pin presence. the GT500 grille/bumper won't fit the front clip without rework, nor will the valance panel. the GT500 tail panel fits the IH as well as it does the GT... i.e., it needs work! one of the major things was the broken "A" pillars; the GT500 has noticeably thicker ones than the IH... i can thin the GT500 ones down to use, but i was surprised to see that difference. anyways: i now have two salvageable bodies to work from the ground up.....

be aware that the Thunderbirds used rear sump oil pans when you're converting the "full-size" Y-blocks from the '56-'57 kits. also, the distributor on a Y-block exits the top rear of the block at an angle, not straight up.

i don't quite get the concept that using the kit contents without alteration somehow allows competition as a "Custom".

i'd have sworn it was a '37 Ford except for the front opening doors. seems far too big to be French.... side opening hood; pressed steel wheels;.... Terraplane, maybe.

i am overwhelmed by your dedication to scale fidelity and craftsmanship. a hundred and twenty years ago you'd have been working for Faberge making eggs for the Romanovs......

see; not being a Corvette fan, i never saw the error built into the door panel tops.... i've given up on more than one AMT '53 because of the interior tub/chassis/body interference issues.... the engineers laid it out a certain way but neglected to explain WHY....

beautiful build of an excellent kit. mine isn't decaled yet; the first kit in a very long time i've built OOB and as the boxart intends.

before trying anything like that on your 1:1, call the Ford dealer and ask them what they use to cover scratches.... i used to work for Audi and VW and the type of plastic we used and the coating on it was some difficult stuff to do touchup on. we had a kid who drove a MKIII Jetta and he used housepaint (!!!) to do all the trim on his dash..... and then had to buy all new dash parts to replace them, because the paint refused to dry..... give the dealer a call.

you won't be able to use it. it's an AMT part.

that's a shame on the tires; i hope you kept the wheels. how do you get filler to stick/stay on cardboard? i remember lots of modelers using "file card" and manila folder paper for interior tubs, etc, but never for whole assemblies.... very intriguing! please elaborate a little on your technique.

what era is acceptable? any? does the vehicle have to actually portray an actual competitor? would the Carrera PanAmerica Road Race qualify as acceptable vehicle type?

think what the archeaologists would say when they found those guys in a couple of millenia....

the last fairly realistic figures that came in a kit were probably the Fonz and the Sweathogs when MPC retooled the Monkeemobile and the Superfly kits in the late '70's. the Club De Mer, Futura, and Cadillac from Revell are the only semi-current kits that have figures with any fidelity to them. AMT had Laurel and Hardy (google them, kids) in several T's in the late '70's, and the MPC Gangbusters Lincoln had some awful "gangster" types.... MPC's 75 Dart had a driver, as well.... we sure could use some, shall we say, cost-efficient figures in styrene. Fujimi's 1/24 stuff is great, but EXPENSIVE. and Ulrich's Mini-Men take some real craftsmanship to do anything realistic with.

oh... that is sooooo pretty.... how many red flaked plastic kits did they make?

beautiful MODEL. nice color, too.....

until i reached the pic of it sitting in the palm of your HAND i was wondering how big it was, and thinking 1/24 at least.... that's a cool little housetruck! i used to read through the housetruck sites a LOT for reference....

so, this issue has deleted the Pontiac 421 engine parts i remember? leaving only the y-block?

looks like a cool project! keep it coming!