Harry P.

How the heck does a 4 year old post come back to life?

Actually they don't. I talked to Marvin about how he acquires his stock, and he does it just like anyone else... he buys it off ebay! Also people are constantly calling him and offering to sell him kits, but he doesn't have any spare parts. The only parts he would have to sell are his own aftermarket parts, and the window frames aren't ones that he makes. No problem though... the Plastruct U-channel I found fits the kit glass perfectly, like it was made for it.

Oh, to be 15 again and have those "problems" ... It's all relative. What seem to you like big problems now, you won't even remember a few years down the road. Trust me... whatever you're going through now is nothing compared to what's coming... wife...kids...job...mortgage...ex-wife... I don't mean to be a downer... it's just that you have to keep things in perspective. Life is a whole series of problems. There's no way to avoid them, you just have to deal with them as they pop up. I agree with the guys...it helps to talk to someone older/wiser/"been there, done that." Take advantage of the people in your life who are in a position to help you out... a teacher, a school counselor, an aunt or uncle, your mom or dad, an older brother/sister. Even if they can't do a thing to help you, it's good to just talk to someone. That alone will make you feel better...

No, Pocher bodies are plastic like any other model. Many chassis parts are metal, but no body panels. The window frames can't be fixed, because I need a mirror-image set (one left and one right), but all I have are two lefts. I can't just flip one over... then the window opening would be backwards! It's like a left-handed and a right-handed baseball mitt. You can't take a left-handed mitt and flip it over to make a right-handed mitt. What I did was glue some Plastruct U-channel around the window edges to simulate the metal molding. I'll use BMF to "chrome" the moldings (God willing on the BMF part!) And hopefully the BMF won't get scraped off against the edges of the window opening as the window goes up and down in the door. If so I'll probably wind up just painting the moldings silver. As far as the doors... I think if I shim the body a little, the door latch will be able to hold the front of the door in place fairly well (the latch is right at the upper front corner of the door... right where the gap is, so that might just work to keep the door shut and the gap closed. Right now I'm making new convertible top hoops out of brass strap. The kit hoops are too small... they don't stretch out the top when the top is up, they need to be taller (longer side legs). That was a pretty easy fix... just use the kit hoops as a template but make the brass hoops slightly longer. If I can get this door alignment issue solved I'm home free. The hood will probably have to be finessed too... but that should be fairly easy. If the panels are too long it's no problem to sand them down a bit... and if they're too short I can adjust the position of the grille shell relative to the firewall by adjusting the nuts on the radiator bracing rods and the mounting bracket at the bottom of the radiator shell to bring the radiator closer to the firewall if needed. It's the doors that are the big stumbling block.

Nice! I didn't know about that site, thanks!

I used to own an '84 Turbo Z. Garnet red upper, silver lower, 5 speed. Pretty fast car for a 4 cylinder... until the turbo blew. Bought it new, drove it for 6 years (including 2 years with the blown turbo!)... It looked exactly like this one:

Dodge Daytona?

Very nice, very clean. If you did the "FORD" lettering on the front end with BMF my hat's off to you. Or are they PE? Either way, fantastic job.

That's actually pretty cool! But I wouldn't want to try going uphill with a full passenger load...

Some of the "skins" here don't work correctly. Until they're fixed (if ever) I'd suggest you use the default skin (IP Board)... that one seems to work fine. You can change the skins using the dropdown menu at the extreme lower left corner of the page.

Yeah, you can use bigger pix. If they're too big, the site automatically downsizes them anyway. Usually I go with a size roughly 9x7 inches, give or take.

I'd say that despite whatever problems you ran into along the way, the end result turned out real nice!

i agree with the gang 1,000%. That is one sweet looking Barracuda. Fantastic!

Wow! Really nice! Do you have any bigger photos?

It comes in the Sunday paper every week (at least here in the Chicago area it does). You can also download it from their website.

Future is clear acrylic, not a polish. And since it's water-based, it won't hurt any paint... you can put Future over anything.

I once rode a bus with Chrisite Brinkley from Chicago to Denver... so I'd have to say yeah... you can take models on a bus!

I used the can to hold the door in place for the photo! No kidding! (Although I did use it earlier on some of the silver-painted engine parts and the transmission.)

I've talked to Marvin several times. He's a very nice guy. I bought a whole boatload of his aftermarket stuff for this kit. He even called me to personally thank me for the order (plus he knew me beforehand from the photos of my Alfa and Fiat that I had submitted to his online gallery). I also have the supplementary instructional CD from Paul Koo, so I know all about the problems... I just have to figure out how to solve them! I've decided that the door problem is caused by a warped cowl on the body. I'm going to shim out the cowl a little bit to try and make the door gap smaller (and hope that I don't cause the other door's alignment to go out of whack!) And rely on the door latch to hold the door in place, more or less. And also, I've decided to accept the fact that the doors will never line up perfectly, because it's a Pocher, and Pochers are what they are.

The Rolls is in "suspended animation" because this kit got my interest instead. The Rolls is a finished chassis at this point. I'll get back to it once I figure out this one!

You really need to figure out how to focus your camera...

The HL here has a great kit and supplies selection. The biggest problem with HL is that they're closed on Sundays. And like someone else said... check out the other aisles. There are tons of things scattered throughout the store, in areas you might not think of, that have items that can be used in modeling. The jewelry aisles, in particular... all sorts of little detailing items, a wide selection of wire (colors, aluminum, copper, etc.) that can be used for wiring models (and WAY cheaper per foot than aftermarket wire), tools like cutters and needlenose pliers, etc. I even found some "mother of pearl" looking paper in the scrapbooking aisle (I used it on a model's dashboard), and leather upholstery material in the fabric section.

More crying and moaning... The body parts are connected to the sprues with HUGE stubs. I mean, they're like tree trunks. You can't just snip the doors, hood panels and fenders off the trees with standard-issue sprue cutters... you need something more like a chainsaw. The resulting problem is that once you free the parts from their parts tree prison, there are monster-sized nubs that have to be filed/sanded/smoothed. And the attachment points have not always been necessarily engineered to be in an inconspicuous place. Or to put it another way... they are at the most highly visible areas of the part. For instance, the fenders are attached at the front, right smack dab in the middle of the arch of the fender on the leading edge, and along the side, right about at the midpoint of the door. In both cases, once you trim and sand the attachment nubs smooth, you have to go through a whole elaborate sanding/polishing operation to try and make everything look smooth. Same with the doors. And since I'm not painting the body (just polishing the plastic), it's a pain to try and make these attachment points disappear and the surface as smooth and shiny as the rest of the part (which is actually very shiny indeed. Pocher spent some serious time polishing the molds for the body parts). Check out the photo above of the misaligned door. That's the bare plastic surface right out of the box. So at least they got that right!

They didn't copyright "roadrunner"... They copyrighted "Road Runner."