Tom Geiger

Cool! Looks like you made that top yourself. I'd seal it with paint. It'll be stained in no time and crud will embed in the bare wood.

Yea, but even that time spent staring in the distance is hobby time and more relaxing than regular life!

The kind of people who drive Ferraris.

Back to the original question... as you can see from some of the responses here, some folks think it's like black magic and beyond their skill set. When I've shown some people how to get photos to my Fotki account, then post onto a board, they are amazed at how very easy it really is. I've had a Fotki paid account for at least 10 years. They have sales all the time, and I'll re-up for multiple years when the price is right. I like the way Fotki albums and functions work, and I have something like 25,000 photos on it. I use it for model cars, real cars and family stuff. There's nothing like being able to post an album the day after Christmas and being able to send a link to your relatives so they can view it too. And that's worth the dollar or two a month for me. The other reasons people don't post... some aren't that comfortable writing and composing posts. Some are lazy. It takes a bit of time to put together a "How To" or even a build thread. I post a lot, I find it fun and easy to communicate this way. And with the number of photos I have a click away, it's easy to find one to illustrate my point.

That's the one! And Doug Whyte photo shopped my dog Ted into the scene. Ted died a few months ago.

Remember to take the lugs and dust cap off that wheel! The AMT '55-57 Chevy pickups have a spare wheel with those off already.

I've tried to add modern belts to cars.. a real pain. I glued the belt up in the headliner, then had to try to glue it down on the floor through the window once the interior was in the body!

A bit tough to do since model boxes are several trees deep. They'd have to do a whole new box concept, like the Japanese kits with the body etc in their own little compartments... and that would up the cost a few $$

The first thing that came to my mind was the old Revell '53 Chevy kit. I'd expect it to pretty much be that kit with an Olds body.

The '50 Studes have to be a kit... they are from the same mold.... port holes to door handles.

The vaccine producers miss-guessed the stains this year. I read that it's only 25% effective this year. My wife was down with it for 2 weeks... I was fortunate not to get it from her. We both had shots. Be careful Bill! I know you live alone. My brother in law also lives alone and almost died from it a few years ago. It turned into pneumonia and he didn't know that. He had been to the doctor, but was just toughing it out. His sister called him and realized he wasn't making sense on the phone, and called 911. He was in the hospital for 2 weeks, we were told he was near death.

Wonderful Interior Jeff! ROG put so much detail into that and it's a shame some of it doesn't really get seen once the interior is put inside the car... for instance the seat bases and the shifters between the seats. My favorite part is the seat belts. I could use a dozen sets of those to use on other modern car builds!

Here's a photo of the finished modified chassis. It's ready for weathering, the interior on the flip side is just about done too. And here's how we looked at the 12 noon deadline! Up on wheels. I did some of my usual little details like valve stems. Grille is blacked out with Tamiya Acrylic. I can see the Sharpie work I did around the headlights, so I'll go back and hit those areas with the Tamiya flat black. You can see the issues I had with the Duplicolor Black paint. It just reacted with the plastic and I got this rash look. It's a bit pronounced in this photo since I sanded it a bit. I thought it was because I painted it before the primer was really dry, but it did the same thing on the hood that had sat over night. Funny thing, is that it will be in character for this build. The truck I'm modeling was old and worn, and the final finish will be a mix of dullcote and semi gloss. The real truck had a white scallop on the doors. I actually had bought a set of scallops (K-Dog Graphics decals) and tried to put one on for the noon photo. The decal just shattered! I took the remaining part of the sheet and sprayed some Testors Decal Fixative on it, so we'll see. So that's as far as I got during the 24 hour build. Around 4:30 am I took a couple Advil for my neck, laid down to wait for them to kick in and awoke around 8:30. My wife was up at 7 and didn't wake me up ("I thought you wanted to sleep") so I lost a few hours, but it's all good. I wouldn't have gotten much further and now I can fiddle at my convenience to complete it. I'll be able to do some things, and fix some stuff that I would've let slide by to finish by noon. And with two big storms coming my way I may have some bench time available this week! I will continue this thread until the model is finished!

Ack! I forgot to update this thread overnight. I was updating on the 24 Hour Build FaceBook page, and I got as far as posting my 3am shots on Fotki, then forgot to post! That's middle of the night brain! A couple of things that cost me valuable time were making the bench seat and again fixing issues with the kit. I didn't get far enough to address the lack of a radiator, and I'm sure there's a few hours of fiddling there. And here is the issue with the chassis. At 4pm I posted how far I had gotten, but above photo shows just how bad the chassis was. I just had to fix it. And here's what it looked like at 6pm, once the glue had dried and I trimmed it to fit inside the body. This is an 11:30pm photo. I had masked off the body to do the white roof. The masking cost me time, and I should've gone with my initial thought of spraying the entire body white, then putting the black on top of that. I feared that since I was working quickly that the white would come through. Instead, I had issues with the black over Duplicolor primer and some distorting on the body. And by 3:45 am, I had the interior mock up done. Dash and shifters were glued in at this point. The seats and tire cover were not. I had sanded off the window cranks since they were just a slight outline on the door panel. I replaced them with resin ones from Model Cars & Replicas of MD. I just got my Model Car Garage order of seat belt buckles, so I'll be adding those. I also spent time masking here, I first masked off the doors and sprayed the black, then did the opposite. Others may have just brush painted here, but I did it the way I was comfortable. At 3:45 am, I was till wide awake and raring to go, but my neck was killing me from sitting and looking down for so long. I've made a note that I will set an hourly alarm next year for a 5 minute eye and body break! Another view, I probably won't be using the tire cover. It is supposed to stand in the back left corner. In doing so, you can see inside the empty shell through the window! Another shortcoming of the kit. It's too small to put a tire into, and it's doubtful that the owner of this old beat up Scout would be so tidy as to cover the spare like this. I will probably add a tire and wheel standing up in the corner like it should be. Engine was also assembled and painted at this point. You can see how simple it is, no carburetor, just a stump to hold up the air cleaner. The engine bay is also pretty stark. No radiator, no heater assembly, no overflow tank (heck why would you need that without a radiator?) and no wiper fluid container. I have all those pieces sitting ready to go in, as well as a prewired distributor.

4:00 PM Progress Report Quite a bit of progress and working as fast as I can. I have all the parts off the trees and cleaned up of mold imperfections. Most of it all is either primed, and some of the flat black chassis bits went straight to paint. Engine is assembled and painted. Body is primed, but needs a bit of mold line work as soon as primer is hard enough. Above photo is my work on the chassis. This is a fairly simple kit done by Ertl, so the chassis was lacking. You could see right up inside the doors and tail gate, so I've added a bit of plastic to the chassis. I always build something for the 24 Hr Build that I have multiples of, so I did the chassis work using a second body for sizing, as the body I'm using was primed and drying. This is a reference shot from eBay Motors, my first 'go to' source. The Scout I am doing a replica of had a bench seat, and here it is. I think it's cool that it has a 1/3 2/3 split. So we'll have to create that seat! And here we are. I had figured out during the week that the seat in the '55 Chevy pickup had the right shape. So I had pulled three of them out of my parts box. This cost me about an hour, but I think it will make the build. The kit had bucket seats that were flat and not so realistic. And a front view. Still a lot of putty and sanding work to do, but I needed this seat for the truck to be correct. I didn't explain what I'm building and why. Back in the early 1990s I was looking for a little 4x4 and came across a Scout II for sale. It was black with a scallop on the door and a white roof. It had an awful green interior. It started and ran okay on my test drive, but I couldn't help but notice it had a big oil stain under it. I asked and the owner acted like he didn't know anything. The final straw for me was he said the hood latch was stuck so I couldn't investigate, so I walked away. About a week later I notice it parked a block from my house. A guy in the neighborhood had bought it. I did want it, and here I had to look at it often just to rub my nose in it. It must've been a decent truck because I saw it for years... sitting in a big oil stain! The new owner didn't fix it so it probably was something expensive to fix. So that's the truck I'm building. The one that got away! And I did get my 4x4, that's when I bought my 1991 Geo Tracker. I think I made out okay since I still have it! Anyway.. back to work! I will post again at the next milestone.

Here we go... I'm participating in the 24 Hour Build. Many modelers across the country and Canada are about to start their builds at noon East Coast Time! I'm just having a quick lunch before I start. So watch this thread, it will be updated throughout the night!

Kewl work Chuck! I love this truck, I built one of the box art trucks for Dave! Here's one that just speaks to me. I am planning on building it one day, complete with the rust and primer patches. This was a frequent visitor to my neighbor back in NJ.

Good progress. I don't think Nissan ever sold that pickup.. a unibody one, here in the US did they?

So true! What I find is that if I'm in the middle of a big office design / construction job at work, I don't model since my creative focus is satisfied with that project. If I don't have anything going, I'm sitting on the couch mentally moving walls around, so I better get up to the model room!

I think your dents look fine. It looks like you rode a divider... or someone side swiped your parked car.

I don't see any malicious posters here or on the udder board I post on. Mainly because people use their real names and have to be registered to post. That keeps the anonymous Internet bullies away. I was at a show some 25 years ago. I had just finished my '59 Chevy convertible junker and some little 'Richard' looked at it and remarked that I had ruined a perfectly good kit. I thought it was funny and it became a long running joke in my club.

Local DJ on the radio told a story about his lack of car sense... His car had no power, no pickup. He said it kept getting worse although the engine seemed to be running fine. Put high test fuel in it, no difference. Finally it got that he couldn't get it up over 50, so he took it into a garage for repair... The diagnosis... his floor mat was bunched up behind the gas pedal!

Reminds me of an old uncle of mine who wore cologne that smelled just like whiskey!

Since Round 2 stopped doing private issues for entities like Model King, Dave has started doing the same with other manufacturers. Dave knows most everyone in the industry, so he struck a deal with Ed Sexton to do some Revell releases. The '57 Ford Police car isn't the first, there is a bunch of Revell / Model King kits prior to this, older reissues that we hadn't seen in a while. Dave contracts with Revell to produce the turn key product. Dave pays to have the additional tooling done, such as the tree of police accessories. Dave has his own artist do the decal sheet and box art. Revell probably does the instruction sheet changes. Revell has it's Chinese contractor produce the whole thing in sealed boxes, so Dave never deals with putting parts in boxes. Then they ship the bulk of the order to Dave's warehouse. They do drop ship some of them to distributors on Dave's behalf. Dave has a whole list of resellers in the hobby who buy and sell his kits. So most of them go to the hard core builders like us, rather than to the mass market. Why would Revell do these releases? Simply put, it's additional guaranteed sales off the tool. In an era where they may be able to sell 10-20,000 of a new release, and someone is offering to buy a few thousand.. well, money talks! I haven't asked Dave if he's planning on a release of this kit.

Welcome Dave, I live in the Philly suburbs. Lots of PA folks here.