Modelmartin

Aaron, That rail car is too cool. I will throw some goodies in with your order. I will give you a scrap body so you can use the cowl area on an AMT body to make it. For the Model T lovers I almost have the Cycle fender version ready to sell. This one uses the 27 T touring for a donor so the Frontenac engine can be used. Actually the 23-25 versions with separate tires will work too.

It is odd that such an iconic and popular car, and it is a spectacular car, has been served so poorly by the kit manufacturers. Perhaps Gunze should release theirs in the plastic only series.

Nice build work there. I like the 212. I must say that Miniracing made that 712 actually look like a go-kart!! The early Miniracing kits were execrable globs of whitemetal. they improved a lot over the years and actually tackled some interesting and obscure subjects. I am building one of their kits right now - a Mini-Marcos from Lemans.

Of all people, Tonka made a 1/25 1914 Touring car. It is actually pretty nice. It came in a scenic diorama kit. I found mine on Ebay. I plan on resin casting copies of it at some point. The Aurora is a 1921 and is almost identical to the AMT kit. Those Ts didn't change too quickly. The thing about the Aurora is that the detail is much nicer and more finely engraved. I prefer it over the AMT. It took me a while but I found a few of them for my stash. Almost Forgot the Tognotti's T from MPC. It is a 1914 Roadster and can be converted back to stock without a lot of trouble using AMT chassis and engine. I would be happy to supply some resin cast small hoods and radiators.

I just finished this white metal 1/43rd Mini 1275 GT. This was the car that took the place of the Mini-Cooper from about 69 to 79. For those who don't know about Mini history - the Mini-Cooper was the Hi-Performance version. The Mini-Minor was the normal one. If you think GTO and Tempest you have the right idea. The 1275 GT was based on the Clubman which has the ugly square nose grafted on to the regular Mini body. They produced these through the 80s but the old style nose was produced on other Mini versions at the same time and all the way through the end in 2000! The kit was made by Abbey Classics in England. There were about 20 parts in the engine bay including the engine. I passed on putting in plug wires and other detail. Enough is enough! It went together pretty well but the instructions were quite poor. They had very little reference regarding colors and detail painting and they didn't explain very well where all the little bits and miniscule decals went. The windows just snapped into place without glue! Not bad for vac-forms. It fills a little gap in my 250 piece Mini collection.

His other models are obviously models. The Toro is his standout piece. It is surely one of the best I have seen and even rivals a Olive-Sans model. I won't tell anyone.

Oh NO!!! That beautiful Toro just rolled!

Never mind, Harry. I found it. How about next time use his 63 Chrysler model? :lol: The Toro isn't bad for a 40 year project!!!!

Ya! Right! Good luck with that Woodward! or is it Bernstein?

Holy Cow! That is some model! Who built it? Inquiring minds must know!

Clear plastic is cheaper. That is why they use it for chrome trees.

Here are some pics of the rest of my Fleet. Here is my Raleigh Olympian. It is dialed in real nice. I can hop on at any time and do 30-40 miles with ease and comfort. It was free and I have over 1800 miles on it this year and maybe about 800 last year. This was my dad's 76 Raleigh Sprite 27 5 speed. It is currently torn down and will go back together as a 12 speed touring bike. I have found a lot of neat old timey NOS parts for it. I found this early 60s Gitane in a funny little charity bike shop in town that is only open Saturday and Sunday afternoons and Tuesday and Thursday evenings! It cost $42.00 and I had to strip off a child seat and about 50 spokey-dokeys! I put new tires and tubes, bartape, brake hoods and regreased all of the bearings. I cleaned up the chrome. I love the chainguard! The fenders and racks are original and color matched. I need to rewire the lights and get them working. It rides great and is a lot of fun. It has a Minneapolis bike license on it that expired in 1964. Someday this Peugeot will get built. I got the Mixte from my neighbor for free. It was his mother's and is mint. I found the men's frame on Craig's list for $50.00. My dad had one and I always loved it.

Nichimo had a "World Wide Worthy Car Collection" back in the 70s!

Sounds like my last job!!!

Au Contraire! Those round impressions are EJECTION pin marks. They push the molding out of the mold. In injection molding the plastic comes in little pellets and and is put in an auger which slowly compresses it until it becomes plastic and is then released into the mold cavity. No heat is applied at any point. The pressure of the auger makes the heat. In fact many injection molds have water cooling to reduce the heat and cool off the parts so they can be removed from the molds. Someone else asked about how many come from one mold. Usually one or two trees come from each mold. Bodies usually come out of a single cavity. Wait for Art Anderson to post about this subject. It will be a Master's thesis!

I will add more pics soon. I am a road bike guy and don't have much money to spend and I love old 10 speeds. Perfect! This Raleigh Olympian from about 1985 was free. This picture is from RAGBRAI - the ride across Iowa - from this past summer. I did 420 miles with it that week. I have ridden 1800 miles with it this year total. I have since added new tires, cables and Aero brake levers. I did take off the panniers, kickstand and Bell after the ride. I did manage to reach 42 miles an hour with it very briefly on a very nice hill! I have managed almost 30 on the flat for about a block!! I have 2 more Raleighs, A Gitane, a Peugeot project and a Diamondback Parkway I fished out of the neighbors garbage in the alley a few years ago. Riding is fun and it really helps the fight against aging, both physically and mentally.

It should. It was re-released at least once or twice. They are not hard to find or cost much on Ebay.

Actually those are MPC kits from the Gangbusters series which were pretty good kits. They had 2 Lincolns, 2 Imperials, and the 32 Chevy Cabriolet and Panel truck. One can only hope Round two recreates the tooling for the panel truck. The Cabrio still exists. It has been released several times in the 70s. Even more awesome would be to find the 1927 Indian Ace motorcycle that came in one of the kits back then. It was nicely done with an inline 4.

Most of them like the California Flash duster and Motown Missile were basically stockers with scoops, wheels and decals. Then when they did the Pintos and Mustang II they actually made the proper tubbed chassis and lots of accurate details but they took a lot to make them sit right. I refer to some comments in the worst kit thread about the firefighter kit. The Jenkins Vega was the worst. Radiused wheel wells, STOCK Chassis, engine too far forward.

They were cool kits but most were very inaccurate.

Really! It could conceiveably be a large scale model but so much just screams real like the trim around the windows not aligned at the door opening and seeing stuff behind the grill. If it is a model it is really, really good. The only thing I see that says model are the windscreen looks thick and there is no weight squishing the tires down. Maybe Bill is on to something! Hmmmm.

That actually looks like it could be real. I never thought a Deal's Wheels car could become a non-caricature!

This is just an obversation of mine. This thread has really gone to sleep but the one about the worst kits is still going strong even though it was started much earlier than this one. I guess we all like to complain more than we like to praise.

Even the old Aurora/Monogram kit is better than the Revell.

And had old Revell Chrome!!