1320wayne

Good looking build.

I have molds for some modern components like console, radio handset, laptop computer, walkies, etc. Send me a personal message with your email address and I can send you some pics.

You know John, out of all of your outstanding craftsmanship, added details, weathering, fantastic finish, etc., the one detail that stands out to me the most is the fact that you took the time to create the Jaime Sarte trademark pineapple portholes in the tinwork. Not to sell any other builders short but I believe that most folks wouldn't have even known to go there. Superb work yet again.

Scott pretty much gave you the basics of modern day Pro Mods, including a lot of the basic measurements to follow. From there it's up to the builder of the car to determine just how far they want to go with altering a body from stock trim to trying to create something that is relatively aerodynamic out of something that more or less resembles a barn door. The cool thing about pro mods is the varying degree of body styles that so many racers utilize. I have been creating pro mod masters for resin casting for more than 10 years now and each one has been a learning experience. What I've found is one of the best ways to create a body is reference material of the real cars. Not neccesarily exact measurements but basic body styles and areas of the body that has been altered to achieve the look desired. Since you are interested in the Cuda body mentioned I will show you some of the steps I took in creating one of my latest bodies a few months back. In a lot of cases there are multiple steps involved in creating the body such as raising the rear deck area, stretching the wheelbase, wedging the side body profile, tilting the nose downward for aerodynamics, sloping the a pillars backwards and arching the hood area for added spacing for blowers, high rise manifolds and turbos. But as Scott mentioned the final piece is what makes you happy when you're finished. Here are the pics.

And one more, that would be more involved but this Bob Marshall car is one I've wanted to do for years.

Not to bombard you with too much but here are a few other ideas that aren't too involved.

How about a nice set of decals for the Cotton Perry Pocket Rocket? And/or some more modern SS Hemi decals for the Darts and Cudas? I've been wanting a sheet of the Jim Pancake 68 Cuda for years. Keven Ellis of Bad Habit Decals did a sheet years ago but no one has any that they would be willing to part with.

I think the bottom line to anyone's argument about this kit, yours, mine, etc., is the price of a kit that is a far stretch from accurate, especially for those of us that care about accurate representations of specific cars. But, until this reissue the alternative for building this exact car was either a resin body along with aftermarket decals, which would most likely run you upwards of $45 to $60 just for those two components, plus everything else to pull off an accurate, detailed build. At the least you would be looking at scratchbuilding the body plus the aftermarket decals and all of the other components to pull this off and that still adds up in the money dept.. I stopped adding up the individual dollars and cents for every build years ago. If I worried about that it would make this hobby (in my mind) a lot less enjoyable. So to me the $30 price tag for a good baseline kit, plus decals, to start with, is irrelevant.

I agree that there is no justification in paying $30 for an old, somewhat antiquated design like the Prudhomme kit, even with the few new items added, vs. a superbly designed and detailed kit the likes of what Meobius is turning out. But, I don't think this kit is as bad as you make it out to be. Personally, I'm at the age where I treasure seeing reissues of kits that haven't been reasonably available for so many years that I also missed out on because I wasn't old enough when they were originals. I'm willing to forgo the lack of detail compared to today's offerings for just that sake. And as far as being a stickler for detail I don't have a problem having to go that extra mile to make a build just a bit more accurate than how it comes straight out of the box. Now, here are the pictures I promised. Overall the kit isn't bad. Even though the tampo printed tires look good they are actually some of the worst tire selections that AMT ever provided in kits and I would simply throw them in the parts bin. For my build I will stretch the chassis along with the body panels to make a more accurate wheelbase. I'm torn about messing with correcting the taper on the wedge body because I think they did a nice job on the molding process. However, for all you rivet counters out there.........the molded rivets are all wrong, hahahaha. The general casting looks nice and crisp and the decals appear to be very good, even though I will most likely mask off all of the white to avoid any red bleedthrough.

Mine showed up today. Will post photos in a bit.

Also, if your a stickler for detail and doing the later version that ran the funny car style headers you would possibly want to add the magneto bulge on the body panel covering the engine area as seen here.

The car that is in Garlits museum is in fact the same car that Prudhomme ran back in the day. It went through a restoration process sometime in the early 80's for the sake of being moved to the museum and the Hot Wheels logo was done in a crude manner to allow them to avoid any licensing issues. It also has a Pepsi logo on the cowl area just in front of the drivers compartment that was put on the car as that was one of Prudhommes primary sponsors at the time even though the car always ran with the Coca Cola sponsorship on it. If you watch Diamond P's Decade of Thrills video from 1984 they film Steve Evans and Prudhomme in his race shop and you can see the wedge car in the background in numerous shots and it's the same as what is in the museum. Here are a couple more vintage shots.

Thanks Rob. Haven't been to Jaxcon since 2013 but now that my last 4 1/2 years of driving a truck OTR is done and I'm back home on a regular basis I can get back to some serious model building and get some projects completed and get back to some model shows that I've missed out on over the past few years.

Cool. Nice build.

You know, we can pick this apart in so many ways and say that this isn't accurate or that's not right, but the bottom line is that it's a model and how many times throughout the history of models can we find a model that was absolutely perfect, especially when it comes to drag racing based kits. AMT/MPC has never been known for accurate kits in their history of drag racing kits. But, with that said, I am very happy to have a new model of a never released subject matter from one of the most popular and historical drivers in drag racing history, especially considering that Prudhomme has been very stingy in the licensing dept. throughout the years, and if I have to make some changes to the kit to make it better then so be it.

Thanks Chris. I'm not sure what the problem was. I've been clearing models for years and have seen all kinds of problems from atmosphere issues to incompatability with clears and paint and many other issues. I couldn't pinpoint what happened here because it only happened on the roof and I applied the clear evenly across the body. The only guess that I could come up with is that the roof is the only section of the body that I did any major bodywork to and that may have had something to do with it. But, problem was resolved.

And the hits just keep on coming. Most excellent.

Got another build finished. This is another simple, out of the box style build of the Tim Kushi Monza Funny Car using a Revell kit along with Chuck Boerner decals. This is my first build where I finally used some of Chuck's superb decals. For the sake of the build I made my usual adjustments to the chassis and suspension to make the kit sit better along with swapping out the rear slicks with a set from a more modern Revell funny car kit as they were better suited for the cars from this era. I also made the changes to the body along the rear roof area to allow for the real car as Kushi was a very tall man and the real car had to be notched to allow the body to clear the roll cage because of his height. I also made new side panel tin work and some homemade graphics for these sides as a lot of the real cars from this era utilized a lot of different style marbilized paint schemes on their tin work. Now, in regards to Chuck and his decals. For those that have purchased Chuck's work before they are fully aware that his decals are most excellent. They go on great and the graphics are crisp with virtually no bleed through on any white areas. The other aspect of Chuck is that his customer service is superb as well. I finished the decals on this body over 4 months ago, which would be plenty of time to cure before adding any clear coats. Two weeks ago, when I added the clear, the roof panel wrinkled up beyond repair. Don't know why as every other spot of the body came out fine. It had nothing to do with the decals but apparently something else. I contacted Chuck and explained the issue and he was more than happy to send me a replacement roof panel to correct the issue and finish the build. I couldn't have asked for anything more and even though I have an extensive library of Chuck's decals for future builds I will never hesitate to spend more money there in the future.

Nice clean build John.

I've heard and seen examples of Mike Coleman's work but have never been able to find a way to track him down on Facebook. The link you provided doesn't work. Is there any other way to communicate with him to see what he has available or can even create?

Very nice work. It would appear that this is the new resin body that was just announced as available from Southern Motorsports Hobby. http://stores.smhracing.com/76-plymouth-arrow-p-s-with-chassis-pan/ I don't know if this will help you and I'm not sure where you might be able to come up with a useable set if these would work but this is an image of a Chuck Naylor set of decals for the Billy the Kid Colt that he did a few years back.

Some small updates. Got some work done on the motor/trans. setup. Finally found a use for these anodized purple valve covers. Selected the tires and wheels for the rear.

Absolutely mind blowing detail and craftsmanship. Wouldn't expect anything less with your work.

Here's one that I finished about a year ago but don't remember posting any pics here. It is the Doc Holiday Telstar 70 Challenger funny car using a Johan kit along with Whoopiekat decals. Nothing fancy. Pretty much straight out of the box.

Thanks for all the comments.