62rebel

so tell me this: who/what/where is "King Ranch" and what in the blue blazes makes that name worth gluing to the side/tailgate of an otherwise unremarkable ford pickup and surcharging the customer another house payment or two....... and as far as that goes..... why does Ford have a Harley-Davidson edition? does Harley-Davidson have a "FORD" labelled motorcycle? geez. stickers and badges do not make a vehicle any better.... that's my tuppence, anyway. (BMW: Bavarien Motoren Werke)

i have one, the aggravation i feel with it is establishing good demarcation for two tone as far as the dashboard goes. the top of the dash is not the same color as the hood.... it's a pretty model once finished.

i believe the treadle beam's gone askew at the mill! the Stephenson Rocket display accurately portrayed the strap iron laid on top of wooden stringer for rails, before they came up with real RAIL... in use, the iron strap would be stretched by the engine/cars running along it and snap loose, curling back like ribbon and slashing through the floors of early rail cars. travel by rail was a slightly more dangerous undertaking in the early days.... cool models. sometimes, something other than just more cars is just the ticket!

i was under the impression that the slot car guys didn't want styrene body shells because they tore up the lexan jobs if they hit each other? at least, that's why i was shown the door when i brought my JoHan '63 Fury bodied slot in for tryouts around 1985 or so...... that's what THEY told me. i chucked it in the partsbox and never looked back.

tires in modern kits are a pet peeve of mine... i substitute old parts box tires that have detail on them for kits with "generic" tires, but that's a drying waterhole as far as i'm concerned! once i've depleted my stash they're gone. and scraping together a full set that match? woof. this is why i've been sectioning those huge Goodyear Blue Streak tires.... slice them apart just where the tread goes from angled to straight, then glue them back together. makes great muscle car or pickup tires.

i tried for months to get a friend to sell me his old Commando, it had the V-6 in it, and had the hardtop shell. he just let it sit there and rust away..... maybe he was doing me a favor.

i haven't seen one of these truck in real life yet. wondering where IH derived the body design... Delahaye? now that is baroque at it's best. 69.99? haven't Moebius heard how much truck kits go for lately? if they aren't careful, they might drum up sales! (since mainstream CAR kits are well past twenty bucks retail...)

i actually had an A100 van years ago; it had the dashboard auto shift and the 318 v8. the kit is very accurate in depicting a short A100 pickup. i have two builtups of the reissue from the '90's, both stock versions of the LRW. i never could get the door hinges to work well, so the doors are glued shut. i might grab a couple more to see if i can replicate my old van....

my buddy from the '70's used to clip threads from his REAL bedroom carpet and glue it into the floorboards of his models... until his Mom asked him why there was a bare patch near his desk..... Chuck, if you're reading this, sorry; it has been thirty years.

wow. well; what i mean is; WOW. at first i thought you had to be kidding, and then ..... oookayyy. you did an outstanding job and finished up with a real beauty. i'd see about getting that tagged and insured now.

black because it's a drag car, not a street car?

go back to the pic of the front end where you've smoothed out the plastic wood (i remember when PW was one of the very few options we had for filler!) and look at the flow of the lines referencing the top of the windshield in relation to the door cut lines, where you've removed the drip rails. it's just my 2 cents, but removing the drip rails "raises" the door cut line visually and throws off the balance with the windshield opening. nice trick removing the headlight area; i do that to install the Chrysler dual headlights from the '50 kit and avoid the long nose of the kit piece as well. it's only a little more work to do, and keeps the body from getting "nose heavy". i even jumped into a Revell Merc with both feet and installed a set of them... not as simple as on the '49/'50 kits. this kit is without a doubt my favorite AMT offering. i must have 2 dozen of them in various styles. even 2 "Sportsman" what-if's.

any word on the expected release date, and are stores like Hobby USA going to carry them or will they be special order only? i've been watching the local HU and no sign so far....

i was fading out of building models when Dodge brought out their ORIGINAL "Magnum" coupe.... IIRC somebody might have kitted an annual of it while it was new? MPC? AMT? anybody care to reboot my memory on this?

i wish i could get my pics to load; i have two matadors, one stock, one "X"; the "X" has a cool split-level hood and coffin nose grille, but they kept the stock rear end... i couldn't see having a wild custom front with a plain butt, so i used a custom grille from something and inset it into the rear pan, then painted clear red over the chrome to simulate lens material. a pic of it might be stored in some of my old posts. i wish AMT had provided a better depiction of the front suspension, but those were the '70's.

i have one of these nearly finished; it's a tiny little car compared to most of my other models. your build is very nice and clean.

while you are correct that Rommel built his reputation in North Africa and his vehicles there were more than likely desert yellow or tan, he later commanded the defense of The Atlantic Wall and the soft skinned vehicles used by Wermacht staff there were more than likely field gray or black. they didn't believe the Allies were as great a threat to them IN Europe at first, and didn't bother camoflaging equipment until our Air Forces had superiority in the skies and everything moving in daylight was a target.....

i'll even interject how ships in 1/16th increments came about... physics. water behaves in the same way for a full size vessel as it does for one one-sixteenth actual size, or in 32, 48, 72 (decreasing in scale too far renders the effect null.)..... and in the days of wooden ships, there were no "blueprints" per se... the naval architect had to work out his design in scale and carry the model to the shipyard for the builder to approve. saaaaay.... suppose i carry my customized '49 Ford model to a Ford dealer and say "Build me THIS..."

i don't know about your experiences, but for me, Testors enamels in bottles is like burning 5 dollar bills. don't get me wrong; i like Testors and have used it since the mid 70's, but if i had a quarter for every bottle that dried up on me? yeesh. i remember when a bottle was 15 cents, too. i've had my model stuff packed away for months, and took the paint out last week to satisfy a jonesing for modeling, only to find several more bottles dried up. grrrrr. it seems that, once that bottle is opened, you have a limited amount of time to use it. even if you DON'T open them, they dry out on you sometimes. it's part of the budget for modeling that just disappears, like sheet styrene and sandpaper.

i will have to set aside some funds for a couple of these, if only to stash them for when i'm settled again. excellent rendition of what is shaping up to be a new benchmark kit.

i think the Toyota Celica from Hasegawa has slicks in it; they might scale out to 13". i built mine stock, but am saving the tires for something else.

very clean build; interesting subject! i like to see armor that's not mainstream. the Char B was a fine machine but Le Francais used them incorrectly and wasted their advantage over the panzerII and III's during 1940. then again, Guderian knew what he was doing.

there's not a thing i don't like about this build; mighty nice work. i like especially the use of T-bird parts throughout. (of course, this is my all-time favorite kit to build, i have at least a dozen different styles built and half that in progress!)

i don't think these years have been addressed by anyone yet, but the possibility is that you might adapt another year by kitbashing. you might try searching Hemmings or Collectible Automobile for articles on these year trucks and determining how closely another year or even another maker's body resembled it. i, for one, can't really form a picture mentally of what a '36 Ford truck looks like. i know that '37-38 is distinctive, and Revell has a kit of that one. AMT/Lindberg's had the '34 reissued bunches of times. sounds like an interesting build, nonetheless.

2011 will be a challenge. 2010 was enough.