ian ashton

Very cool, thanks! I just emailed to see if they'd do a cab-only. Then I'd just have to work on a dually bed, which shouldn't be too hard to get from the Chevy & Dodge kits I have.

Very true, but it has been my experiance that I have a short attention span, and with really indepth projects I'll get about 60% done, then lose interest, haha.

Bummer. Looks like I'll try my hand at hacking some stuff together... Thanks!

I've searched all of the big names and can't seem to find a thing. Anyone know of a Chevy or Dodge 4 door cab to pair with the AMT kits, possibly a Ford cab and bed combo?

Your daughter drove that thing? How many arguments did that start when you gave her the keys, lol. This is a super cool build though, good work!

Very cool, I believe I saw it at NNL Toledo, right?

Very cool! Thanks for the measurements, this will make a fun "rainy day" project sometime...

The mailman dropped off a 38' gooseneck Galaxy trailer today. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but it is cool to say the least!

I apologize for the long post, I just started typing and this is what came out. Lots of memories from the model car building, and I thought it would be cool to document how I found my way back to a hobby that once was my entire life. Some of you from the Michigan area might recognize my name, or at least my last name. More than a decade ago my dad (Bob Ashton) was the owner of the automotive hobby shop AutoKnow, in Utica Michigan. With him, I used to go to all the toy shows, swap meets, and of course model contests. I can't count the number of trophies and plaques I used to get from building. This is back in the days when the D.A.A.M. show was held at a high school, and Toledo was the only NNL, on this side of the country. Yes, this is that obnoxious kid that used to "tub" and put HEMI's into everything. I'm 27 now, and hopefully have mellowed with age, haha. Anyway, when I turned 16 and got my license I pretty quickly fell out of the model car building scene, even more so when my dad's company went out of business some time in the early 2000's. Aside from picking up kits here and there that I thought were cool, and getting Christmas presents from my dad of models that I had built as a kid, I haven't really done anything in the model car world to speak of. Isn't it weird how a hobby can go from being everything in your life, to not even a small part? We still host the Mopar Nationals Model Car Contest every August, so I get to see some cool builds, but for all intents and purposes I have had absolutely no connection to "the scene." Over the years since I stopped building I've had a ton of hobbies - anyone that knows us knows about the Low Rider bikes - from there dad and I got heavily into Car Audio (specifically dB Drag Racing) competitions, competing on a national level for about 4 years, and at the World Finals 3 times. That hobby came to an abrupt end when a garage fell on my competition vehicle, totaling it and basically killing my interest in building another car. From there we migrated into the Sport Compact Car scene, and I've built a few Honda autocross cars, one being a full out race car (which, like many of my old models is sitting unfinished, stored in an enclosed trailer for the last 5 years - some things never change!) During my tenure as an auto crosser, I was also finishing up my degree in college, and decided to start looking at the possibility of buying a boat. Initially I was looking at something I could spend weekends on, sleep on, and all that jazz. Quickly that changed, when I discovered the sport of wakebaording. Shortly there after dad and I had decided on a brand and model, and had a custom built boat on order. The reason why I bring all this up is because the sport of boating, specifically slalom water skiing is what has brought me back to the model car scene. Owning my boat for about 3 years now we've gotten a ton of use out of it (nearly 300 hours on the meter) - most of that spent skiing and wakeboarding. This July I was up on Torch Lake at my girlfriend's family cottage, and sustained a pretty bad injury, leaving me unable to ski for quite some time. As it turns out, I severed the ACL and PCL, and sprained the MCL and LCL in my left knee - just about the rarest, most painful, and hardest recovery of knee surgeries I'm told. Luckily I have a job that permits me to work from my home, so the fact that I can't walk without crutches or drive a car (oh yea, I had to buy a new car because of the injury, no way I can shift the gears of a sports car for the next several months...) hasn't impaired my ability to work, but it has pretty much destroyed my ability to do anything else that I used to take for granted. So, sitting in my house I once again got 'the bug'. I hobbled down to my basement, where the years of model car "collecting" has wound up, and dug out a kit to cut my teeth on - an easy start Tamiya Honda S2000. No engine to detail, just a body, chassis, and interior. Because I didn't know where my painting skills were, I opted for a matte black finish and a sort of 'drift' style car, and I must admit I'm really amazed with how well it came out. The project took me about 3 days (boredom is the best motivation?) I swapped in seats from another kit, and some gauges from the parts bin, and the rest is history. I'm working on my second build now, a Revell Dodge Magnum, replicating my dad's current transportation, and have lined up my next several builds, all progressively more involved. While building, memories of the Toledo Toy Show and NNL started popping back in my head, so I started poking around (in the process discovering this site) and found that the show is this weekend! So, dad and I are planning to make the trek down and check it out. I'm hoping to get some supplies to rekindle my proficiency, and maybe see some old faces we haven't seen in a long time. I'm not sure if I'll bring anything to put on the tables at NNL, but I'm are definitely looking forward to checking it out, that was always such a cool show.