Mike999

OK, I'll dream really big on those two: make the front door trim pieces separate parts. We can add them for a stocker, or leave them off for a police car. The box art for Lindberg's pre-painted Crown Vics show those trim pieces missing. The kit has them molded in. It takes some VERY careful chiseling/sanding to get rid of the trim, then the doors have to be re-painted. Without ruining the rest of the pre-painted body.

Close but not quite on the chassis. The gray chassis on the left is from the re-issued '63 Nova wagon. The brown chassis on the right is a resin re-pop of an AMT '63 Nova hardtop. The wagon chassis is just a little longer in the rear, and has the spare tire "bump."

Found one of mine at the SCMA show on May 15, the Jo-Han '66 Marlin. I would have settled for a "USA Oldies" re-issue. But many of those re-issues on eBay cost more than what I paid for this one. Sometimes a lot more. If you wonder about the "chrome trim" mentioned on the box, it's a sheet of stuff like Bare Metal Foil, only thicker.

Hit the closest Hobby Lobby today. All the discounted Testors paint is gone. No new kits. Picked up another '50 Chevy truck, "Union 76." The basic kit is good, and that version has some useful extras for any service truck plus a great decal sheet.

Beware! The Heller '58 Cadillac is a bad copy of the original ARII kit. It's motorized and lost some chassis detail, because it needed space for the motor/batteries. The same goes for the even worse LEE copy from China. Stick with ARII, IMEX or Micro Ace kits (the new name for ARII/IMEX). Here's a thread from 2012 talking about it: Need Some Help - '58 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz - General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars) - Model Cars Magazine Forum

Agreed. And this story might save somebody some money/aggravation: at a kit swap meet once, I bought a package deal of an IMEX '58 Cadillac top-down convertible, and a resin '58 Cadillac Coupe de Ville body mastered from the Jo-Han Sixty Special. The seller wanted to build a full-detail '58 Coupe de Ville, using the IMEX chassis and engine under the resin body. He was a good builder but he had to give up on that project. The Jo-Han body is smaller than 1/25 scale and the IMEX kit looks even bigger than 1/24. So he couldn't make the parts work together. I'm not sure why he didn't go with the IMEX '58 hardtop kit. Maybe at the time he couldn't find one, or didn't like the separate roof on that kit. I just took a look at the resin body. The maker did a pretty good job of converting the Jo-Han 4-door body into a 2-door coupe. But he left the "FLEETWOOD" lettering across the trunk. The Coupe de Ville trunk lid should have a Cadillac crest above a gold "V."

The fe-mail carrier just dropped off 2 of the Italeri #3630 Toyota BJ-44 Land Cruisers. I had no luck finding this kit thru a U.S. company, so I ordered from Jumblies in the UK. They had the best price I could find, U.S. $22.46. Unfortunately, airmail shipping ran that WAY up, but we're all hostages to shipping these days. I ordered on 5/15 and received the kits today, 5/28. So less than 2 weeks from the UK, again not bad with the current worldwide shipping problems. The kit looks like the ESCI original: blue plastic body, black chassis/interior parts and the 2 tops are molded in white. ESCI never put both tops in one box, so that's a nice bonus. Maybe I can partly recover the cost by selling an ESCI "Filipino Taxi" on eBay...

You sure know how to get the best out of these old turkey kits. I tried a short-run Russian kit once that only had about 6 parts and gave up on it. It's somewhere on the Shelf Of Shame now... On Russian jets in general...my job took me to many aerospace trade shows back in the 1990's. Though unfortunately never Farnborough or Paris. At the big AFA (Air Force Association) show in Washington DC once, a fellow lurched up to our booth. He had obviously been hitting the bars in the hospitality suites pretty hard. His nametag identified him as a Defense Attache from the Russian Embassy. Another name for Defense Attache is pretty much "spy," and those guys love trade shows. They can collect information without unpleasantness like going to prison. This guy launched into a rant about the superiority of Russian weapons in general, and the MIG-29 in particular. He even said the U.S. should be "afraid" of it. One of our guys mentioned that the Serbian Air Force had MIG-29's, all of which had just been destroyed by NATO aircraft. That really annoyed our guest, who sputtered: "Those were export models, not real MIG-29's. Bad aircraft. With VERY BAD PILOTS!" 🤣

Some trivia about the Monogram Land Rover that I saw long ago on an internet forum. A poster said he was working at a garage in Burbank, CA when Monogram came to measure and photograph the Land Rover in their shop. He said he had worked on the Rover, and it had a U.S. spec carburetor. He didn't provide any more details, but that might have been required by CA pollution standards. Here's Chuck Most's excellent article, "The Sad and Sordid Tale of Monogram's Land Rover." http://chuckmost.wixsite.com/madhouse-miniatures/single-post/2015/04/07/The-Sad-and-Sordid-tale-of-Monograms-Land-Rover#!

Great work! The car and the little old lady both looking good! A cartoon has been stuck in my head for years and it might make a great diorama. A used-car salesman is telling a couple, "This car was only driven on Sundays by a little old lady." Over the fence, a little old lady is counting a stack of money. And wearing a jacket that says "Drag Strip Annie."

Fantastic work with that clean build! One of the best "de-militarized" versions of that kit I've ever seen. Usual Boring History: When ESCI originally released those 1/9 motorcycle kits back in the early 1980s, they did a civilian version of the WLA-45 (and the 350cc British Triumph 3H). The civilian kits are VERY hard to find and expensive nowadays. And it doesn't matter much, since a good builder can convert them, as you did. Italeri also re-issued the military Triumph 3H-W, back around 2006 or so. Somewhere I have a really old article from a British modeling magazine. A builder used the same military WLA-45 kit you did, and built it as Lee Marvin's ride from the movie "The Wild One."

In the category of "stuff I probably shouldn't laugh at, but did anyway:" I recently inherited a High Standard .22 caliber over-and-under Derringer. Went to the internet to research it. Turns out it's a quality little weapon, one that many cops use for their back-up gun. It doesn't have a safety, except for its 15-20 pound trigger pull. Somebody posted that he knew a cop who used that Derringer as his back-up. He kept it in his back trouser pocket. One night it snagged on something, providing just enough pull for it to go off and shoot him in the butt.

Great build and a great back-story!

Why that '64 Impala 327 engine is getting so many compliments: separate fuel pump, water pump, oil filler tube, coil, alternator with bracket, etc. This is the instruction sheet from the Revell '64 Impala Lowrider. I'm not sure if the stock-only kit has the optional Holley carb shown here.

I built the Nürburgring racing version of the Cosmo, and it had one small annoying problem. Hasegawa provides decals for the houndstooth checked seat covers. But they were too short to fit the seats. I think I filled them out by making a Xerox copy and splicing it in. I also have the police version of the Cosmo, and its seat decals are the right size. So the problem seems to be just with the racing version. Other than that, it was a well-mannered little kit that just fell together. A nice "weekend builder," since you can probably get it together in a couple of days (minus paint). That racing version even had photo-etched emblems.

Yes, and thanks for the great rant! 😂 It sounds like some of mine. When I moved into a house with a concrete-floored basement for the workshop, I smirked that I would never again lose a part to the Carpet Monster. And I haven't. Now parts hit the concrete floor and bounce into another space/time dimension, never to be seen again. If you don't want to scratch-build, you might find the part on eBay. I found a complete chassis from the new Nova wagon kit, including the engine plate and your buddies, the 2 little wheel mounts. I have a resin '63 Nova wagon body/interior with the hood molded shut, so I just needed the chassis parts.

Thanks, that was interesting. I'd add the Nash Metropolitan to my "Wanted" list. I don't believe it has ever been re-issued. The French company Record also made a Renault Dauphine in 1/25 scale (according to Scalemates). But it's even harder to find than the Hubley kit.

I'm a big fan of true crime TV shows. It's amazing how technology is helping solve crimes, especially cell phones. Many people still don't know they can be tracked by watching their phones move between cell towers. The perp on a recent show knew how to fool that cell phone tracking. When he set off at 5 AM to kill his ex-wife, he left his phone at home. Instant alibi! "I was home all day!" Unfortunately, the route to his ex's house passed by several gas stations and stores. Many had CCTV cameras, and the cops were able to follow him on camera all the way to his ex-wife's neighborhood. So in the end, technology got him anyway.

Then you'd think all the Coke-licensed kits would be molded in red, but they're not. I got one of the new 60 Falcon Rancheros just for the vintage Coke cooler. The Ranchero is molded in white plastic.

I'd like to see the Chevette reissued with its "Bonus Racing Diorama Parts." A tent, table, chair, first-aid kit and 2 figures. I have an original, but you can never have too many accessories.

I hope I'm not writing about one of you guys. 😁 But I think this is a pretty funny eBay story, so I'll pass it along. A while back, I sold one of the rare resin '61 Corvair 95 Rampside truck kits on eBay. This was made by the long-defunct company "Corvair Models." It was a straight resin re-pop of the old 1961 PALMER kit and well done, though as a direct copy it kept all the errors of the original plastic kit. Corvair Models only made 1000 of those resin kits many years ago and each one was numbered, so they're hard to find. I listed it as "1/25 scale," because I thought it was. A buyer snapped it up quickly for a good price and I thought we were done... ...until I got an eBay notification of a buyer complaint. The buyer went over the kit with a micrometer to prove that it was not 1/25 scale, but closer to 1/22 scale. He's right about that. But he went on with measurements and explanations for NINE (9) FULL PAGES OF TEXT AND PHOTOS! I quickly surrendered and issued a full refund. He returned the kit, I immediately re-listed it as "near 1/25 scale," and it sold again. I used the proceeds to buy the very nice Rampside resin body from Best Model Car Parts. WEIRD UPDATE: when I went looking for a photo of the Corvair Models Rampside, I stumbled across a Worthpoint listing. That seller copied my original eBay listing word for word, and even stole my photos! I know that because my kit was #820 of 1000 made...which is clearly stamped in the bottom left of the kit box. 😂

Great work! Keeping it simple and near stock is a good idea. These original Eldos were gorgeous right off the assembly line, and their understated elegance doesn't need any extra bling. Many years ago I tried to build one with the "halo" vinyl roof and failed miserably. Always wanted to try that again. For those who've never seen it, here's the Jo-Han '68 Eldorado in the rare and short-lived "Custom Car Kit" box. I don't believe these kits had any extra parts. Jo-Han just highlighted the custom version by putting it front and center on the box top. The custom treatment and the wheels make that big old Eldorado look like one mean machine. It reminds me of the Olds Toronado in the Stephen King novel/movie "The Dark Half."

Don't have one to trade, but Revell and Minicraft both did 1/144 scale DC-8's. The Revell is an older kit and according to the experts, out of scale and proportions. Minicraft did several different DC-8 versions, including a Dash-63, Dash-71 and Dash-73. They get good reviews, but may be out of production since their prices seem sort of high on eBay. Minicraft also did this neat CIA version from "Southern Air Transport."

AMT682/12 1962 Ford Thunderbird BACK FOR A LIMITED TIME! Jul-21 Wonder what the changes are with that one, if any? Not too long ago, the last version was available at Ollie's for $7.99. That's the one with the standard, non-Sports Roadster engine parts etc. Here's a good article on "what went wrong" with the Sports Roadster. Elvis Presley's wire wheels collapsing, for one thing... 1962-1963 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster: What Went Wrong? (automotivemileposts.com)

Great job, especially the engine and that cockpit with the cable bundles and other details. And with that plane, at least all your hard work is (very) visible. Nothing like spending hours on the cockpit, to find that those details virtually disappear when you glue the fuselage together and add the canopy! Recently in a thrift store, I found the book "Spyplane" by David Donald. It's an illustrated history of spy and recon aircraft from WWI on. It mentions the photo-recon version of the Arado Ar-234 and says it was a great success in that job. Simply because it could out-climb and out-run any Allied piston-engined fighter.