mr moto

It's not models, but the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, IN is a must see. It will knock your eyes out and amaze anyone who likes cars even a little. Located in the original ACD corporate headquarters and palatial showroom.

I love that it looks so much more than functional. It looks like the hinge that belongs on that car.

That is just TOO fine! It sets a standard for others to aspire to. Is the hood hinge also a scratch-built piece?

FYI, the 1965 AMT Coronet that was tooled by MPC (that's the one that you have) is not the same as the AMT '65 Coronet that is currently available from Round 2. That one was tooled by Polar Lights. There's still a chance that the hood will fit or be close enough to adapt and it might be your best bet. The original AMT/MPC version is a very rare and much sought after bird.

Sorry, that one's a reject. Check out the sloppy fit on the right side doors. I would expect better on a low price Japanese car and I could buy a 1:1 for less.

Just an idea that I have not tried but Hob Lob sells a rock tumbler for about $25. My daughter had one when she was little but I don't think it's still around for me to try. Anyway, it seems that you could tumble some tires for a short time with an appropriate grit and get all the shine off of them. Cheaper than a sandblasting rig.

Excellent work and fun to look at!

I LOVE IT! That's what I call having fun with plastic. We can all use more fun.

Vodka?

That Packard must be the world's heaviest gasser!

I'm old enough to remember those well. They were extremely popular at the time despite not being the kind of chromed barge that Detroit was selling at the time. Their runaway success is what inspired Detroit to start building compacts. BTW, wouldn't one of those make a really cool gasser?

I've tried the covered wire before since the LHS had some in stock. Great idea but not as good in practice. I find it very stiff and difficult to work with. Any use of tools to bend it will damage the relatively thin and soft covering. LHS doesn't stock the bends and I didn't know they existed but that looks like a much better idea to me. BTW, I feel lucky to have a LHS even if they don't always have the most advanced stuff.

It was done using flexible tuck n' roll made from acrylic craft paint. I don't know if you're familiar with that method at all but there's a discussion of it somewhere on the forum - maybe someone remembers where and when or you might be able to find it with a search. It helps to have some experience with simple resin casting. That way you'll know of the basics of making a silicone mold and may have the materials around. I didn't get a lot of photos of what I did on this build but I can post a few. Here's a sheet of tuck n roll just out of the mold: You can see that I prefer Anita's brand paints for this. You can get them at Hob Lob for all of $0.89 a bottle. One bottles makes two sheets like that one - plenty enough for almost any model. To apply it I cut a piece large enough to cover the whole dash with some to spare then lightly coated the backside of my piece with Micro Mark liquid PSA glue (tacky glue). You can get similar glues at Hob Lob and such and they seem to work just as well. After it dried to a nice tack I literally wrapped the entire dash with the upholstery. I had never really done that before. I had only used it for maybe the top of the dash, seat inserts, door panels, that kind of thing but it worked great at following the shape. It's very flexible. Just take it slow and work it into all the contours. After that just trim off the excess with a good hobby knife. In this case, I put all new gauges to make a totally new instrument panel. More often you would probably not cover the instrument panel section of your dash - up to you how far you go. My thinking on the two large round gauges is that, if I was building a 1:1 car, the one in front of the driver would be the real speedometer and the one in front of the passenger would be calibrated to read about 25% high just to really impress them!

I think I'm way overdue to give everybody a very large "thank you" for all the great comments and appreciation. THANK YOU, EVERYONE!! Because of my age I have a built-in tendency to build old school but I still wasn't sure if this one fit into any known era at all. That's the reason for the "maybe" in the title. Thanks again to Ace Garage Guy for showing that it would have fit right in. A lot of people have commented on the roof. That part came in the SMP Corvette annuals for a few years and it originally had all the outlines of the roof panels and pillars molded into the clear roof so it could be painted to look like the Corvette's optional removable roof by leaving the window areas clear. The one I had was glue damaged from the original build so some creative damage control was needed. Didn't get a picture of the way it started out but here's the annual that it came from: And this is what the roof looked like after all the molded-in detail was sanded off: So the flames are really there to cover up the damage. From this point it was sanded down with 2000 grit paper (much finer than a 2000 grit polishing pad), buffed with some Novus #2 on a felt Dremel wheel, masked, flame painted and then dipped in Pledge/Future stuff. So that's the full story on that one. Part's like that really can be saved!

Thanks, Alan! Here's what I did with the interior using cast acrylic craft paint and dollhouse carpet.

Thanks for the compliment and thanks for that tip. I had to Google Bob McNulty. I must have been channeling his vibes!

A friend and fellow club member gave me this AMT 1957 Corvette kit that was missing an engine. He buys small lots of models from Ebay to be used in our club raffle and any that are incomplete tend to be passed along to members. I started to install a '57 Chrysler hemi but then decided to be lazy and build a curbside custom. It has '58 Lincoln headlights (Reps & Mins of MD), '59 Cadillac taillights, '63 Plymouth wheel covers, and a grill surround and hood scoop made from a resin '56 Studebaker Hawk hood with photoetch grill mesh. The roof was salvaged and restored as well as I could from a glue-bombed SMP '59 Corvette annual. Paint is Duplicolor Metalcast green and Testors wet look clear over a white pearl base. Here we go - hope you enjoy.

Beautiful build of a truly classic car.

Great to see you back again. I always love your builds.

Beautiful work and SO CLEAN. A lot of lessons in model building contained here!

Huntington Beach? Shouldn't it be equipped with a surfboard?

I still have a set of '57 T-Bird upholstery stickers around somewhere. Maybe I can get a picture posted later. The whitewall stickers came into being as a short term solution because the whitewall paint AMT used was found to contain lead.

Doctors don't know everything about life!

Not sure but I think that "pebbly finish" is just printed on the packaging and is not on the sheets.

I like to build period kustoms and to me they require stylish steering wheels like many early 60's Mopars had. Since Modelhaus went away I don't know of any source for those '60/'61 Dodge/Plymouth/Imperial wheels. Is anybody casting these right now?