Scale-Master

There is a lot of nice work in that. Great shine too. But the tires steal the overall effect and give it a bit of a toylike look/stance, (or production die-cast look?) because of their large size. The left side tail light missed getting painted red too. Maybe it's because I owed a real '67 Coupe, I see the proportions/balance differently than others? I too would like to see more of that engine bay. Nice first completion.

I decided to do the headlights differently than I originally planned since the silver and black plastic are different densities and proving difficult to scribe evenly. You can see the louvers are now opened all the way through…

Ahhh, that explains why you aren't using the 455 from it now. Yes, I agree, it is a nice kit, I built the white and gold one and the bronze one for the original issue box art.

I have a couple of them, keep almost starting on Oscar Koveleski's version. One of these days... I understand there are some issues with the supplied plumbing/wiring in those kits. You are better off providing your own thinner materials if you want to be able to button it up.

Isn't it sitting on the '72 Cutlass kit's box?

Pete has it for me. Enjoy the building process, the reward is the finshed piece. I'd rather look at something I finished and be satisfied than wishing I had tried to do better.

I have some of those Japanese 1/28 kits, even built the Shadow. You are not missing anything.

Amen to that! It didn't hurt that when I met my wife I had a car on the cover of a model magazine (not this one). She took a copy of it back home that month for Christmas to show her family "what I did". She is very supportive of my participation in the hobby, both the work and the pleasure sides.

Nothing like torque for drag racing. What a great launch!

I milled the louver panel. Since that photo was taken I relieved the back so they are flow through.

For as much advice as you dispense to everyone, I am really looking forward to seeing you put your experience to work on this iconic car, (and a favorite of mine) and show us firsthand what you've been trying to impart to us.

What!? You mmmmmmean they're not ALL collector items?

I cut the hood louver panel out because the detail was really soft and uneven. I made this one out of sheet styrene.

That is actually quite close to what I intend to do Skip. Here is how I fix door lines. This one has a problem from it being on a mold line. On both sides of the car it has a shift and they were poorly defined. I already scribed the lines where they should be, but needed to clean them up. I built up the low side of each one with filler and before it set up, rescribed them. Sanded and feathered the filler… Primed… Still more to do though.

Funny you mention that Charger, for some reason that popped into my head as I was working on this. I'm up for it, anyone have any questions? I didn't mention what I was using as filler. Mostly CA, but also polyester two part filler called Poly Putty I got from a friend to try. It's like super fine Evercoat. And yes, Mr. Taylor left the forum and magazine, he was writing the resin column, (and doing an awesome job IMHO).

This is an Esci kit from about 30 years ago, fortunately it is from one of the earlier production runs, so the molds were not too worn at the of it being made. But it still has some issues with flash, sink marks and unevenly molded parts and poor engraving. (Some of the parts are short shots, but luckily they’re not ones I need.) It also appears to have been intended to be issued as a motorized version at some point too, so the interior and engine detail is lacking. So I’ll build it essentially as a curbside. First I went about cleaning it up with 320 and 400 grit sandpaper and a scriber. I was able to sand out some of the sink marks, but about a half dozen were too deep to just sand away. Then it was on to filler to take care of the deeper sink marks. First round of priming shows some decent progress, and where I need more filler. I also had to cut open the rear quarter vents in the engine cover since one side had screen engraving and the other didn’t, and they were not symmetrical.

I believe that is the "What-a-Drag".

Did anybody else notice how much dust is on that in the crevices? That puppy has been built and on a shelf for a long time.

Oh, I thought you were showing a production built die-cast. It is still a model... either way. I was referring to your comment about "disassembling this kit". Kits are already unassembled... and that one is clearly assembled.

So that's a harpoon in my back?

That is a model, not a kit, yet... But since it was designed to be built on a type of assembly line and to stay together, it may prove to be more difficult to make it into a kit than it appears. At least without breaking some parts in the process.

Why not climb through the windows? And it would appropriate with buzzard bars on the windshield...

I think a root of the "problem" stems from when they are entered in contests. A lot generalizing here to keep it simple: Some of the die-cast builders come from a customizers background, so modified die-casts may be viewed by some modeler as "big Hot Wheels" or "toys". Other die-casts I have seen that were "modified" still wore the factory paint and detail work. That is not a level playing field in competition. Once a die-cast is disassembeled it is a kit, or worse, (we just went through this discussion in the Ferrari thread). But many modified die-cast models do not get fully reworked. So there may be some issues of what is factory built and what is modeler built. Are they still models? Yes. Just like snap kits build into models.

Like Dukes 'O Hazard?

I don't see it that way. When you buy a kit, it is far more than the raw materials (i.e. lumber). It is already something worth appreciating for the engineering and molding that has been done. If you bought a bunch of Arrow aluminum shed kits and kept them as kits, that would be a closer analogy. I would bet most people have an intention of building kits they buy, we just buy more than we can build.