Maindrian Pace

Sure. Here's another one of that car, the engine came from a '10 California.

Yesterday, Tempe Walmart parking lot.

Thanks a lot fellas. I've been a paintin' fool lately.

Wow! That is just beyond words, and a nice clean build on the van too. Great collaboration.

You know, that actually works!

The 396 was undoubtedly a stronger engine than the 390 Ford, but it wouldn't have gapped it by quite that much.

Those little precision gluing applicators work with much greater precision if you take that little fuzzy thing off of the tip.

Very, very nice build, love the details of the scratch built items like the light bar and the pallet.

That stuff would all be really easy to add with styrene strip. The stock full wheel covers are in the Lindberg jelly bean CV kit. Whitewall stickers, and you're in full AARP regalia.

A good friend of mine passed away about two years ago, and I inherited a lot of his model building supplies, including this spray booth that he made himself. It's big, about 5' tall on a 2x4 base. He had a huge cast aluminum and steel exhaust motor and fan on the back of the unit that stuck out about 2 feet, much too bulky to put the unit against the window in my model room. So I replaced it with a 4" 12 volt boat bilge fan, 240 CFM if I recall. Ebay purchase. This fan is ignition/explosion proof, very important when exhausting volatile fumes. How do you make a 4' fan draw through a 12.75" hole? With a plastic mixing bowl found at the 99c store. After looking for something all over creation, that is. The 4" flange and sleeve and the dryer duct were hardware store items. I bought a 7" wide pine board from Home Depot and cut it to fit the window, cut a 4" hole in it, painted it, and put the flange on. I sandwiched a piece of window screen between the flange and the board. On the outside, I used a dryer duct cover with a flapper door and a bird screen. I don't expect anything to get in the house through this window. I locked the window shut against the board with weather strip on all sides. It's really tight. I put a power strip on the side, and plugged in the LED light bar (Home Depot) and 12v power supply (deceased friend). I'm glad he had one, because these are getting hard to find, for some reason. Still have to mount that light, but it puts plenty of illumination through that diffuser that my friend thoughtfully added. Complete bowl, fan, and exhaust: Does the little bilge fan work? Does it ever. The only problem found is that the house A/C blows a lot of cold air outside through the duct, something which I thought would happen. The first fix was to replace the filter with a block off panel each time, though that was kind of a pain to do each time. The permanent fix was to install a 4" blast gate, an Amazon purchase that cost 6 bucks delivered and arrived in 1.5 days (!) Don't know how they do that. Last item is this switch for the air compressor. I got an entire model painted in less than a day, including all small parts. Model building just got a whole lot faster.

Another observation: There is no buying or selling allowed on this forum, so it may well be... that Paul read the rules and isn't selling on this forum.

Damon looks nothing like Shelby, but if he pulls it off, I'll be OK with it. Paul Walker would have been perfect in the role, but... Seeing it regardless.

The local fire engines are painted a very similar shade of chartreuse, a highly visible color in any light. I don't think I've ever seen that color on a car before. I hope you like attention!

I got the bumper in from Joe a few days back. The Easy Chrome (EC) looks pretty good, very reflective and chrome-like, but not exactly like vacuum metalizing, or for the sake of this discussion, VM. Onto the pics. Here we see the kit bumper, re chromed by Chrome Tech USA, no longer in business. Here is the resin bumper finished by Joe in EC, installed in the car. In these two shots, I wanted to get both bumpers in the same position and lighting so an accurate assessment could be made. EC on top: EC in the car: The main concern that I had was if the layers of paint used in the EC system would obscure details, but it doesn't seem to. This is with application of the base coats with an airbrush, rattle can would not work as well. The second concern was if the EC dulls if rubbed with a soft cloth, as if to remove finger prints. I touched the bumper, then rubbed it off with a glasses cleaning cloth, no damage to the finish. That leaves the appearance. The EC is undoubtedly darker than the VM, and doesn't have quite the same reflectivity or depth of shine. It looks similar to a black chrome finish, though not as dark. Joe used a black base. The chrome is more blue in appearance, and this leads me to believe that if you used a medium to dark gloss blue as your base, the EC would come out a shade lighter, and be closer to the VM. I also would make the observation that the EC looks a bit more like polished aluminum, making this product ideal for '60s car grilles and related trim which were mostly anodized "Brite Dip" aluminum. That together with VM bumpers would give the car a more realistic contrast. In all, I think that this product shows promise, and experimenting with base colors could make it really pop. Thanks again to Joe for the sample piece.

The Panther got a lot better with the suspension redesign in 2003 that included an aluminum front crossmember and control arms, rack and pinion steering, 13" brakes, and 17" wheels. I've driven a few of those, including a rare opportunity to drive a brand new '06 with 45 miles on it, and it was kinda quick (4.6 liters will never really be happy dragging 4,000 pounds around) but the handling and braking were very good, with some penalty to ride quality. Those final iterations were very specialized cars, and the cops I've spoken to really liked them, with the only occasional complaint being power. Practically indestructible, even in police use, many departments still have them in their fleets; including my city of Mesa, some of which are ten years old. They stockpile parts and they have a favorite body shop whose owner is a Panther enthusiast himself, and keeps them looking mint at all times. It is nice still seeing them in traffic.

Yes, and with optional parts for the aero nose versions.

Fantastic Joe, I'll send it to you in the next couple of days and PM you the tracking#. I'm looking forward to this. -Mike

No, I don't understand what that referred to, it was what the website instructed, and there was no mention of what applications it did or did not apply to. That's why I wanted to know what it looks like on detailed model car parts. You see, on this and any other model car board or group, the members are going to be most concerned about how this product works on grilles and wheel covers, not speed shapes and cartoon model planes - which have scarcely any more surface detail than speed shapes. And as for Pete's pic, it truly does say it all, it looks barely any better to me than Testors Chrome spray paint. It doesn't look like kit chrome at all. So before I lay out the cabbage, I want to see what it looks like on a model car grille. Tell you what Joe, I'll be happy to send you a fresh resin Maverick bumper/grille for you to finish with this product and send back. In addition to supplying return postage, I'll pay you $10 for the service, and then I'll post pics here to show what it looks like on the car and compared to vacuum metalized grilles. Why? Because I want to try it before I buy it. And if it works as you say, I will buy it.

I paid $9.99 for the Ford hubcaps, $15.36 with shipping, so it doesn't look like it's going to change much.

On their site, they say that 5-6 coats of various materials are required for this system to work. That's kinda red-flaggish on a model car part with lots of fine detailing. The examples shown are large smooth pieces, but we really need to see what this looks like on a front bumper/grille or other elaborate parts before this can be the official chrome replacement product. Vacuum metalizing is very chrome-like and very thin, and there lies its advantage.

Got mine today, they look great... or will when chromed. As soon as I can figure out who to send them to for chrome.

If it's as bad as reported, maybe it does.

Superior job right here. I love these creative heavy duty truck builds based on pickup kits.

Got my order a couple of days ago, and they are just as nice as you'd expect. These are the #435 big and little rat rod tires, steel wheels and hubcaps from the parts box.