62rebel

seriously... how did someone come up with the the premise that IMC produced a kit in the '60's based on a kit introduced by Revell forty years later? no wonder there's so much pressure to reduce volatile organic compounds in hobby supplies. i'll probably buy as many of this kit as i have of the Merc from 2007.... lots, in other words, and build several different styles. i've built that IMC/Testors kit, actually, both the coupe and the convertible. it seems that the plastic formula Testors and Union used in the '90's was very soft and sensitive to too much solvent.... not like the late '90's Lindberg issues of the MustangII and Cougar, which took liquid cement very well and weren't hard to paint. the trouble with the IMC kit is the opening features; ignore THEM and cement the body together like a Revell multi-piece kit, and do one seam at a time.

well; that style wrecker/tow truck went out of style in the early '80's when Jerr-Dan rollbacks appeared everywhere. it doesn't take much skill to back a rollback under a vehicle to pick it up, where a wrecker took some learning.... most of them are relegated to scrapyard picker trucks now, or have evolved into repo trucks, which usually don't have any markings and have scorpion tail lifts. i'd like to have the one i kitbashed together back in '87 back......

he did add those fender flares, didn't he? that's a subtle touch i didn't "see" until you mentioned it. i'd like to see Revell repop the Midnite Cowboy, just to get some of those great wrecker bodies. the truck part, not so much. i'd like to see AMT repop that '53 again as well.... another of my favorite kits. this is a great build and very convincing in detail.

i notice that several threads with pics are difficult to see the pics on, because other responses end up blocking the pic.... am i doing something wrong and how can i fix it so i can see the whole pic?

it's a true beauty, and if it's any relief for the interminable wait, it looks worth every minute. so.... who has the Chrysler kit on their workbench and is keeping quiet about it..... hmmmm?

they (ALL of them) used to actually describe in detail all the parts of the kit, and tell you what the accessory parts were so, when you got old enough, you could open an Almquist or Honest Charley catalog and order that part for your 1:1 car... those were the days...... now, with our litigious society, you have to license names..... or just call them "custom" parts. well; as far as it being plastic... none of my builds have wires or brake lines..... fumble fingers and failing eyes don't do well with short patience and quick temper.... and if it isn't seen on the finished build, and it happens to be in the way otherwise.... off it comes!

let me see if i can do this right.... das ist schonne? meaning to say, "that is shining (pretty)!" it'd be simpler if you were Le Francaise.

the cylindrical part you had to remove more than likely represented the overdrive solenoid on the 3speed with overdrive. not exactly sure why they chose that transmission for the kit representation, except for limiting themselves to what was an option for over the counter in 1960. it would have been in the way for a floor shifted three speed anyway.... but not for a column shifted car. the '60 i had was a 352 FE with a three speed automatic, column shift. beautiful car, probably one of the prettiest cars i ever had, along with a '62 Continental and a Volvo p1800 coupe....... but she was a rust bucket. she'd do 110 easily enough...... Florida Highway Patrol will remind me of that from a trip i made while i was in the Navy.

"back in the day" we had little or no voice in what the makers did, except vote with our money, and there weren't many options available to kids with an itch to build a model this weekend....... we're gaining ground on the "mainstream" model culture, you know, those guys who build airplanes, tanks, ships, etc.... with a repop promo and a donor kit and some resin parts and some imagineering, there's not many subjects we can't do in some way. i cut up a pair of Revell bass boat kits the other night to make a race car trailer and a bed box for my replica of my last F150.... eyeballed the whole deal..... i've done a couple of Polar Lights snap kits recently... when i see some more for a bargain price i WILL snatch them up. while they are relatively simple, they still look convincing with the proper paint detailing. which brings me back to the intial rant... the reviewers i read. in particular, there was a review of the relatively rare JoHan Olds Cutlass Supreme hardtop, basically an unassembled promo; that seemed to imply that the reviewer expected full detail and an engine, 3-n-1 options and a paint-n-glue accessory kit as well.... dissed the kit for low level of detail in the dash, low parts count, and apparently the kit was too difficult for them to master...... i built that kit twenty years ago ago and while it didn't jump off the table and morph into a finished kit, it definitely took longer to paint than to build.

nice work, Nick! one of my favorite kits hands down. reminds me of my younger years in the sticks of Virginia!

i'd love to whine over the new Hudson!

Robert, hang in there, i know that's some rough stuff to handle. i used to live in Lynchburg, and bad weather isn't all that common up there.

that's where Art trumps Engineering. i'm sure that many kits that simply don't "look" right, do so because the tool maker followed blueprints too directly, and that those blueprints were also made by scaling down factory drawings without allowing for scale proportion changes. they're not "wrong", per se, they just don't look right. i meant to add that i also looked at several galleries of the reviewer's work........ not to throw stones in glass houses, but some of them show little aptitude for going beyond trimming flash and spraying paint. i then had to consider the level of ability of the builders in reviewing THEIR reviews..... kind of like grading papers in school. i forget that everybody isn't on the same page, so to speak. when i was early in the hobby, it was just as important to me that the wheels rolled as anything else, because in those days i still played with the darn things. a model that didn't roll was illogical to my young mind..... so, metal axles and rubber tires are sort of "ingrained" in my methodology, although it's mainly to get stable and flat chassis now than for rolling ability! i build up suspensions around those steel axles, and i can sand down rubber tires (rubber being a catch-all term).... ahhhh, well. vent over. i have to go find out what a Yamaha outboard engine is supposed to look like.

i was marooned at work today and had a lot of idle time to surf the 'net... i landed on a site that had a buttload of user reviews for kits, and read a LOT of them. some of them were very informative and helpful in making future buying decisions, and a lot of them i read to see what the reaction was to kits i know WELL.... i was astounded by the amount of negativity directed at kits we "old pharts" drool over in our apparently ancient and decrepit minds.... and by the realization that most of the reviewers were unaware that many of the kits had been around for DECADES. sure, we put up with promo chassis pans and tub interiors to get desirable old cars; we put up with steel axles and holes through engine blocks. in those days, that was the way it was done, because the kit makers sold "coasters" and "friction" versions of these kits as well. sure, we put up with MPC and JoHan often having laughable interpretations of engines that were nowhere NEAR accurate. we put up with Revell making incredibly fragile yet beautiful renditions of well known show cars.... we put up with sometimes hopelessly out-of-proportion Monogram kits. "buy a different kit if you want an accurate version of THIS car" comes up almost every time the review hit on something based on Promo.... buy it from who? usually, only one or two makers did a promo and then a kit to follow it. if that version bites... well, it bites. sure, in the past fifteen-twenty years, the surviving makers have stepped up their game and redone a major variety of old cars while issuing new ones never kitted before. that's fantastic, and it draws ever more people into a hobby that many people misunderstand. but the makers who answer us old guys and reissue old kits are keeping a part of model BUILDING alive... so, don't diss that engine-less promo kit; get to work and detail it. are you a modeler or an assembler?

we tend to call them "bugeye" when they're more correctly known as "Frogeye" in the UK.

i have to agree with the sentiment regarding the copying of an entire post, pics and all.... please, just please, stop that. add your comment and reference it if needed, but don't quote the entire post.

is he on this forum, or how can you contact him? does he have a catalog or listing of what he's got on hand?

i glue down a half-sheet of 120 grit to a plate of glass (won't flex out of square) and set that on the workbench top. tape the plastic "glass" as mentioned, and slowly slide the piece back and forth until you've removed the required amount. if glass seems to hazardous, get a large floor tile from the bargain bin at Home Depot and us that. the trick is to have a known flat surface to work from. i use this trick to modify wheels, sand tires, square parts up.... i looked at the bottom of the kit box and saw what i thought was half of the RR kit.... didn't realize i was right!

i just dug out my Belvedere and am finishing it up.... sometimes i sharpie the date inside the body when i start one.... i started it in 2007! i think that kit is one of the best AMT ever did, even with it's issues; it builds up NICE and square with few problems and is very detailed. your builds are very clean, and your pics are nice and clear. more....

it'd be a neat thing to pull off, but i believe that the target market would not find it appealling enough. they would have to be a very small scale, probably HO or N train gauge size, in order to be feasible, and still would be fairly large. once assembled, they'd require dust free display or they would quickly accumulate a thick coat of grime under most conditions. personally, i'd find a larger scale diorama of a ballfield with a game in play more enjoyable. maybe depicting a scene from a turn-of-the-century classic or a pick up game in old hometown USA circa 1950..... which leads me to my lamentation that not enough scale figures are available for "car scale" dioramas. i think i caught this bug around 1972 when my parents took me to Gettysburg and i saw those marvelous "cyclorama" battlefield scenes...... "toy" soldiers never looked the same after that.

post up a pic of those wheel covers you need; i have some old Toronado wheel outers that i got in a box of parts. i can tell they're Toro but not what year. they LOOK JoHan to me.

i installed an engine i had sitting under a tarp in my back yard for four years..... it had been sitting idle in a pickup truck for who knows how long before that. that car, with that engine, is still daily driven. of course, the engine in question here is a Ford 390 and expected to do miraculous things. the AMC engine has a reputation for withstanding outstanding levels of owner neglect and abuse without failure. personally, even though the Pacer isn't by far my favorite AMC, i'd rather have IT that any new car made in the past twenty years.

ahhh... my second favorite ...no, third.... anyway. one of my favorite wheel types. the AMT '49 Merc has deep reversed chrome wheels with baby moons, but they often have deep sink marks in the center of the cap. the current issues of the AMT '56 Victoria do NOT have a SET of chrome steel wheels, just two rears. the fronts are simulated hallcrafts. the only Revell tri-five Chevy that had moon caps was the '56, i believe, and those were designed for Revell's narrow rubber tires. the '57 had optional reversed rims but no moon caps. they were designed for wider plastic two-piece tires. the AMT '29 Ford has a decent set if none of them have sink marks. the AMT '51 fleetline had nicely done but lamentedly very deep ones. trying VERY hard to remember any other kits that might be extant today..... Revell's Beatnik Bandit? i can't picture the cap in my mind, but aren't the wheels chrome reverse? AH. i have TWO sets of them that i definitely remember the source of: the AMT Ghostbuster Ambulance. can't say for certain that they're reversed, but they have nicely molded moon caps. i didn't build either one as a GB car, so the wheels were out of place.

i started reading this Saturday and i am thoroughly engrossed in this build...... i've built very few larger scale models and NOTHING at all to compare to this behemoth.... very impressed with the build even i i have to repeat myself. when i was a kid, i lamented the utter lack of anything even CLOSE to scale to properly equip my squad of GI Joes.... and having recently seen "Play Dirty" with my cousin, also a huge GI Joe fan, we set about trying to build LRDG Chevrolets from whatever two crazy country kids could find. never got past drawing up plans...... now... if we'd had a rapid prototyper and some education in engineering..... hahahahahahaha.

where's the work in progress? no pics. like Mrs McGillicutty always said in math class; show your work!