Sam Cates

It is all dependant upon the price of oil and the price of labor, Yesterday at our local club meeting we discussed this, paint comtinues to go up as well as prices on kits. Prices on paint and styrene (both oil products) will probably continue to rise according to oil prices. Also, there is an issue with wage increasment in China, workers are getting less productive and demanding more salary.

1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2, looks like you got it! great progress so far! BTW My friend and I painted his sled with a couple cans of that Bahama Blue, looks to me like it'll be REALLY close.

Thanks guys, I guess the dust isn't too visible in photos, mostly on the left side of the truck between the door and bed anyway. Hoping to build a couple more midgets, maybe a filthy post race mud caked car?

I gave up on the paint with this combo, hit it five different times and I just can't keep the dust out for some reason but it turned out better than I expected. The pickup is an AMT '60 Custom Fleetside with parts box wheels. Detailed the 235 and wood bed floor, added hitch from the Midget kit. Painted the midget and trailer to match the truck, added wiring to the Offy engine, custom tail lights, safety chains light harness and moon discs on the trailer.

I'll be making one last attempt to get the little turd Nissan back in order (in the case that I need 4WD). Sticky throttle cable, burns oil like there's no tomorrow, internal friction slows the starter down, and it has no reverse . We'll see how THAT goes, pretty soon that little 720 pickup will be sitting on a K5 Blazer chassis . Still have to winterize my wife's car (coolant change etc.) and clean up the messes around the apartment building. With the little extra time I find between school, house chores and winterizing, I get as much painting done as possible. I don't like to use the hallway as my paint booth, if I must, I spray outside on a dry cold day and bring it right back inside. Got plenty of styrene and supplies so I should be ready to go! Lots of projects I plan on wraping up in the next couple months.

I built this in January for a "Beyond Thunderdome" theme with the local club. Most of the parts are from the Titan 90 kit, the gun/pedestal are from the Hogan's Heroes Jeep, the skeletons are from Rommell's Rod, lots of styrene stock. The brush guard is scratch build, and the screens are made from Amaco Wireform mesh. Interior was detailed, lots of experimenting with washes and weathering. The kick is, I sent this down to California for NNL West in Feb. because I wasn't sure I could fit it in my bag. Guaranteed next day arrival, insured, packed EXTREMELY well. It made it there, a day late...one end of the box was split open, everything was destroyed, parts missing. Well I finally managed to conjure up some courage to put it back together, the plow blade I hadce mounted up front was gone along with the ammo boxes on the back. Hope you guys like it!

Interesting that you posted this, I started the same project quite a while back, maybe it is time to get it back on the bench. Yours looks great so far!

Nice build, love all that cash laying around in there, and the doughnut box lol. By the way, which issue of Penthouse is that?

Well well! Very cool, I have one on the shelf, now I am looking forward to getting started on it! Great job on the panels! Do you make your own WA plates? I want to make some of different eras but I am not sure where to get the blank templates. Anyway, Sweet build!

I cried a little today... With testing this morning I didn't get much shop time, but I got enough time to find yet MORE damage in the right side of the car. It started with the door, as one of the guys was stripping the paint with the 8" sander, just below the paint was, you guessed it, body filler! He asked me about it and I told him to see how far it goes(thought maybe we could fix it), but no, the door is pretty bad. Holes in it everywhere from the old "slide hammer" trick. Looks like I am heading to the salvage yard foor a right door. So I told him to start stripping the right quarter panel to so if there was any major damage there, and this is what we found... He started with 40 grit on the 8" sander, found some filler and started cutting in with a "rice cake" to see how deep it really was. I measured, 1" thick in some spots. So, rather than attempting to weld some studs and pull like crazy, I will get a patch panel, the rest of the right quarter is nice and solid so it doesn't merit replacing the whole thing. No progress on the kit yet though.

Just hacked a ton of plastic from the kit chassis, it looks like crud under there, but you can't see it anyway.

So, I didn't get it done quite as soon as I wanted to but it's done (again, for now). I am sure I will find something else that it needs but I think it looks pretty god for now. I was going to add some headstones but decided not to because I will be using the dio for a few other builds as well. ...and the best part is, it cost me a whopping $0 to build it! snagged some junk from the brush pile in the back yard, sliced up an old rubbermaid tub, a few coats of black paint and a couple handfuls of dirt, and voilà! As always, comments and complaints are welcome!

Here is the only one I built, couldn't resist doing something different with it.

Nice! ...and now I'll try to one up ya! Here is my daily driver for now, 350 with tons of performance packed in. This '85 Nissan "king Cab" was my DD until everything went wrong, I am trying to get it ready for winter and hoping it can make it through, want to drop a new engine/tranny in next spring. Engine is old and tired, smokes, hard starts, barely turns over with a new starter, and I blew reverse in the tranny.

So, I picked a bad day to wear a sleeveless shirt to class, welding and bare arms don't work well together. Got the fenders and hood mocked up as well as the tunnel ram and valve covers (had them blasted yesterday). Also got the left quarter patch panel in today, have it in place for rough fitting, hope to get it welded up tomorrow. As far as the kit, I have mocked up the body, engine and chassis together, hoping to get the bumpers out next week for an Alclad treatment (since I don't have any right now) I wish the 1:1 was this easy!

ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!

Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback, I wasn't so sure about this build. Thanks Harry for the photo and inspiration for the skirt style.

The mock up looks EPIC!

This is the body I started with, had it in primer, set it on the heater so the heat from the pilot light would help the paint dry and my son turned the thermostat up before I woke up the next morning...

I love it, smooth single color looks excellent, engine detail is very nice and the car looks great over all!

I am actually working on a piar of skirts for it now, I had a pair made up for the first body, but, most of us saw what happened to the first body...