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Great looking Saturday Night Special at the Drags.

Great looking paint and body.

Beautiful looking finishes and like the detailed flathead.

I also like how birds become so trusting after a time and realize that you're not going to bother them. When I go to refill the feeders, the birds will often wait until I'm in arm's length of the feeder before flying off. Often before I can even walk back to the house they are on the feeder before I even get inside.

We never got that great of a turnout, but that was fine by me. From what I have read about many Waterfowl birds is that the mated pair will usually return to the female's original body of water and territory for breeding. We had a concrete settee at the water's edge and the female would bring her chicks there to get into the shade under it during very hot days. Spiders also liked to build webs in that area as there seems to be a lot of insects as well. The chicks would go after any spider or insect to feed upon. The couple that bought our old home 4 years ago had mentioned that the ducks still keep coming back.

Ducks are cool birds. Used to live beside a large pond or small lake depending on your definition as to the size of a body of water. Had ducks that nested under some big cedar trees, and one raised the 6 or 7 babies on summer. The next year they all came back and nested under our trees again and this went on for several years. They learned to sneak under the trees and get the bird seed from the ground under the bird feeders.

Beautiful looking '34. The channeled body looks very well done along with the grill and paint. The Flathead is well detailed. Like the wide whites and polished Americans.

Both are great looking rigs. Like the gold paint and trim. Good looking wheel & tire combo.

Great looking chassis and engine. You've got the stance.

There was a Revell kit of a Mercury Cougar from that era, I can't remember the exact year model. I somehow wound up with a partial of this kit and I used interior parts and suspension on something. I have the engine from that kit. The parts I still have are both engine halves that include a manual gear box, oil pan, the heads and valve covers, the front water pump, two parts representing the drive belts and pullies, and what looks like a small oil cooler. The intake manifold and whatever injection or carb may have been there is gone. This is done in black plastic as the entire kit was in black plastic. Does this sound like what you're looking for?

Great looking body work and the paint looks great as well. I like the fake fingernail hood scoop; I'll have to remember that idea.

I'm not sure about the 305 in an '80 Corvette in California anyway. The small block 400 engine started to show up in the K10 4x4 pickups and I remember at least one El Camino from around '75 with that engine. That would have meant that the Chevelle would have had it also. The problems with the 400 had to do with cooling since the cylinders were so close together in the block that the area between the cylinders in the block could overheat and cause head gasket issues if you didn't look after the cooling system. Back then the hat thing was to get the 400 cranks and put in your 350, after a little notching of the block siderails. With a slight cleanup over bore you had a 383 cu in engine. Now you just order a new crank from Scat crank or one from some other supplier.

There was also a normal '63 kit with the factory fuel injection engine in it and all done in stock trim

Beautiful body and paint work. Clean body trim. Like the engine detailing.

Love your story and the gritty finish on the pickup.

I would look forward to seeing your touch on this kit.

Great looking paint color and finish. Looks a lot like the "Tiger Gold" of the era. Wouldn't be a GTO without a set of Redlines.

Great looking paint finish and color. The engine and interior look cleanly detailed.

Beautiful looking Nomad. Great looking body chrome and paint colors. Like the stance and the wheels.

The cost for GM and all the manufacturers at that time to smog a car for sale in California and a couple of eastern seaboard states was so great they limited the available engines for California. Your mention of the 2bbl. 350 for example. What Chevrolet did was to offer the base 250 in line 6 or the 350 4bbl engine in the Colonnades in California. The same for the Nova as well. One bright spot was the Monza models as they had either the 4 cyl and the V-8 option was the 350 where everyone else was getting the 267 cu in V-8. C-10 pickups used much the same engines as the Colonnades and the Novas. Impala & Caprices also used the 350 4 bbl. engine after 1974.

Great looking Pontiac. The interior you mentioned would represent the Venture trim option. Like the paint work and the optional wide whites and the 8-lug brake and wheel combination was unique to the Pontiacs.

I also became a fan of the Colonnade style two door body style. I remember some '73 model Malibu SS cars that were the last of the 454 4-speeds available in California. They wouldn't keep up with the '72 and earlier cars, but they wouldn't leave you embarrassed either. Detroit was scrambling to keep up with the smog regulations and especially the ones that were even stricter as California was at the time. Just a little history lesson from that era. In California, as in many other parts of the country, the largest polluter were the "smokestack" companies that insisted they couldn't afford to make their emissions cleaner, so the government went after the auto industry customers who would have a much smaller voice and presented that the automobile was the main cause of air pollution. In fairness there was auto caused pollution, but not on the scale that was presented to the general public and giving industry a free pass.

As everyone else has pointed out the paint finish and color look great. I like the clean finishes and body trim along with the engine details.

Beautiful paint finishes and color. The lighting in the photos make the model look very realistic.

All great looking builds and the verity of styles as well.