Mike999

Welcome back to the hobby! That's a huge topic, and everybody will have their own favorite/un-favorite tools, ideas, etc. I just did an internet search on "building model cars for beginners." Here are some of the links that came up and look good. You can find many, many more. Good luck! https://doogsmodels.com/2012/09/07/how-to-get-started-or-restarted-building-models/ https://hobbyandtoycentral.com/?q=blog/beginner%E2%80%99s-guide-model-building-part-1-4-part-series https://www.titleproloans.com/resources/model-car-guide-for-beginners/ https://www.revell.de/contentpages/en/best-tips/index-en.html

Not "quintessential," but goofy and fun. Also sad, since Pontiac is no longer with us. "Go Back to Your Pontiac" by The Darby Sisters, from 1959. Included in the awesome collection, "Girls in the Garage, Volume 2."

That gold Tucker is the 50th Anniversary Edition, released in 1998. I think the first Tucker they did was the maroon prototype in 1993. According to a die-cast website, the gold version was a limited edition of 15,000. Which doesn't sound very "limited" to me, but I'm not a die-cast expert. I did want one of those die-cast Tuckers for a long time, but didn't want to pay eBay prices. At a flea market, I found a woman selling her late father's die-cast collection. She had 2 Tuckers reasonably priced, the gold one and another in Waltz Blue. I grabbed both of them. Neither one had the box, Styrofoam or paperwork, just the car (and the little tag hanging from the rear axle).

I didn't cut plastic on this conversion yet. But just lining up parts and eyeballing, it looks like the Monogram 1/24 '64-66 Mustang chassis will nearly drop-fit under the Trumpeter '64 Falcon coupe. Putting it under the Trumpeter '64 Ranchero looks like a little more work. The Trumpeter chassis and engine are a little...weird in those kits. The rear wheel wells look "pre-tubbed," ready for big fat drag slicks. And somebody on this board called the mill "a Lego-block engine."

I had an eBay buyer flake just last month, if anybody ever wondered about that. He won my auction, and never sent payment. Or responded to me in any way. After sending him 2 invoices and waiting more than a week, I "opened a case for non-payment " with eBay (which is very easy). After a couple more weeks, eBay messaged me and suggested I close the case. They refunded my Final Value Fee and banned the buyer. At least under that user-name. This guy had zero feedbacks. I like to give newbies the benefit of the doubt, since we all have to start somewhere. But zero-feedback bidders always make me a little nervous.

I found this Lee Models Ferrari Barchetta on eBay just now. Several are up for sale. Soapbox Mode: copying by Chinese vendors is a huge problem in the world of 1/35 resin figures. Many of those companies are very small operations. The flood of cheap copies has almost put some of them out of business. That's being dealt with on military-model forums the same way it is for 1/25 resin copiers on this board - when people see the copies on eBay, they report the item/vendor. But it seems like as soon as one gets shut down, 3 others pop up.

Same with 1/35 Academy military kits. The Academy M-113 still has the holes in the floor and metal axle dating back to Tamiya's motorized days. Those have been annoying builders for years. (The first all-new, non-Tamiya based M-113 kit was just recently released by AFV Club.) Academy also knocked off several M-60 tanks, the Bradley and the M151 Mutt vehicle series, though they eventually did a new Mutt. One version of their M-48 was mostly Tamiya-based, but had extra parts to build a Korean tank. One of the boldest rip-offs I ever found was in a Taiwan hobby shop. It was a kit of the Mercedes G4 six-wheel car, 1/35 scale, complete with a Hitler figure. The flimsy white box was sealed and the shop owner wouldn't let me open it for inspection. It was cheap so I bought it. It turned out to be a direct rip-off of the ADV/Azimut resin G4. But where ADV had included photo-etched metal parts, this thing had them copied in resin! Including some flimsy, paper-thin suspension parts. Even the instruction sheet was a direct copy, with "ADV/Azimut" crudely blanked out. The Hitler figure was also a rip-off of somebody else's work. Amazing...

Lee also copied a bunch of Tamiya 1/35 military kits. In some cases, right down to the box art (just like that Mercedes). Trumpeter is a well-respected company nowadays. But they also copied some kits in the beginning. You can still find some of those old Tamiya knock-offs in Trumpeter boxes, like the 1/35 M-60 and T-72 tanks. Their T-72 copy is famously bad. Where Tamiya provided real mesh for the engine screens, the copies use silver adhesive stickers. The commander figure in the copy is a blob who looks like he was melted by the ray-guns in "Mars Attacks." Adding insult to injury, Trumpeter made different T-72 versions by simply copying turrets from the early (and very inaccurate) DML/Dragon T-72 kits, and adding them to the bad Tamiya T-72 copy.

Here's the classic glue-bomb many of us built as kids - yes, I want to use ALL of the customizing AND competition parts, thank you very much! The clear hardtop is glued very firmly UNDER the sun visors. That may not matter; the glue was so old, parts were just falling off, like those fender skirts. This was part of a 4-kit lot I found at a flea market. I sold this Vette but plan to keep the other 3: a '60 Corvair, T-Bird hardtop, and Ford pickup/trailer. All are built similar to this one. I thought the pickup was missing its stock tail-lights. But they were glued to the trailer! Nothing was glued into the pickup bed, which made me happy.

I have a love/hate relationship with Scalemates. It's an incredible source. Love it when I want to see kit info quickly, especially re-issues. It's handy to see the time-line of different kit numbers and box art of a kit thru the years. That's useful in maintaining the spread-sheets, since I can add "1975 re-issue" or whatever. Though as Rob said, it's better on foreign kits. Which brings me to the hate - when I'm trying to find a good, honest build review of a kit. I do a search and many links to Scalemates pop up. Scalemates does link to reviews, but they are often brief in-box reviews, or in foreign languages. So when searching for reviews, I usually exclude Scalemates to reduce the clutter. I also exclude Amazon and eBay because I don't want to buy the kit, just read its reviews.

I use simple Microsoft Excel spread-sheets for each category of model: cars 1/25, cars 1/32, trucks, motorcycles, die-cast, resin 1/25, figures and accessories, etc. Since I also fool with military models, I created other sheets for 1/35 scale kits and plastic/resin figures. Finally there's a "kits_misc" sheet for stuff like ships and large-scale horror figures. The columns on the spread-sheets are: Manufacturer, Kit #, Description, Quantity, Price, Notes.

Thanks! I really liked the retro "long-box" reissue of this kit, back in the 1990s (shown below). IIRC, the original was first issued in that box around 1966. I'll probably pass on this one, just because I have several already - one in the long box and others in the circa-1989 box, with the pink El Camino on top. I recently found one of those at a flea market, shrink-wrapped for $7. It's one of my favorite kits, and makes a great vintage service vehicle for a gas station.

Seen parked at Huddle House a few days ago: '68 Plymouth GTX (440), white with black vinyl top and white interior. Automatic on the floor with console. On the back seat: the ERTL 1/18 scale die-cast model of the GTX, still in the box.

Great haul, especially those Revell oldies! Those stores are great. I live in a small town, but it has 6 second-hand stores: Goodwill, Salvation Army and 4 stores run by local charities. On weekends, carloads of people drive here from several hundred miles away just to visit those stores. Many years ago in a Los Angeles second-hand store, I saw a mint-condition SMP '59 Chevy box behind the cash register. It was only missing a few parts, one of them being...the body! It still had the chassis, separate hardtop, instructions and some Kustomizing parts. I paid $1 for it. Later traded it to a friend who was restoring a built-up. Maybe I should have kept the box - one online vendor is asking $45 for the empty box alone.

I should have mentioned MegaHobby. If you want to learn how to do extremely realistic weathering, MegaHobby carries the whole line of how-to magazines from AK Interactive, MIG, Abrams Squad and others. Here's an example from Tanker Techniques Magazine, Number #01 “Extreme Rust.” That van is the ancient ESCI 1/32 scale kit, NOT 1/24. The builder added new wheels and a ton of other detail. As this pic shows, the weathering tricks are shown in detail, step-by-step:

I saw this explained by some smart person on a military-modeling board long ago: CA glue doesn't have much "shear strength." IOW, the ability to move side-to-side without breaking the glue join. Years ago, a TV commercial for super-glue showed a construction worker hanging from a steel beam, with his hard-hat glued to the beam. A good stiff breeze and he could have been in serious trouble... Anyway, that's where I learned to always use 2-part epoxy when gluing parts that might move or flex. I've been using DEVCON 2-part "Five-Minute" epoxy for many years. It's still sold at Lowe's, Home Depot etc. If mixed right and allowed to set up hard, it makes a very strong bond. While setting up, it does literally smell like a glue factory (or dead horse). But it's always worked for me. Other companies like Gorilla and Loc-Tite also make 2-part epoxies.

I think we're talking about 2 different trains. I see the 1/45 scale modern train in the middle of the flyer. But way down on the bottom left, I also see a loco in 1/50th scale that looks like the older EF series.

Thanks for the info. If my old eyes aren't failing me, I see some 1/32 scale 40-foot shipping containers. Useful for junkyard dioramas, 1/35 scale modern military dioramas, etc. I have the ancient ESCI 1/32 scale container, so I wonder if these are new. And speaking of ancient...in the bottom left-hand corner, that looks like the 1/50 scale Japanese National Railways EF-60 Electric Locomotive! I think those kits were originally done by Entex back in the early 1970s. They did a whole series of 1/50 scale Japanese locomotives, which have been re-issued thru the years by ARII/Otaki and Aoshima. They seem pretty popular on eBay, though just a little too weird for me. And I like weird stuff.

Liberty Classics did a bunch of die-cast panel trucks/SDs in 1/25-ish scale. Its "Law Enforcement Series" included a '34 Ford, a '48 Ford and this neat '53 Jeep in Michigan State Police markings. The Spec-Cast company also did the Jeep, as a disassembled kit in plain white with no markings. I've seen those done up very nicely as a Fifties Civil Defense vehicle.

I keep a text file "wish/granted list" handy. Use it to keep track of stuff I've ordered, so I don't stupidly order the same thing twice (which I have done). I also use that list to note the date I ordered stuff, and the date I received it. For HobbyLinc and Freetime Hobbies, going back more than a year, the average delivery time has been 5 to 7 days after I placed the order. So not too bad. The fastest order turnaround has been Sprue Bros., with delivery in 2 to 3 days. Unfortunately they don't carry many car kits. They do have the Fujimi Ferrari 348 Challenge on sale right now for $24.99, if anyone's interested. And they carry a lot of useful armor accessories that can be used on cars, like nuts & bolts.

If you want to do something different with the G-wagen, see below: a German army ambulance. The back door is different from both the Dakar and Feuerwehr kits; it has a single rear door, hinged on the left (driver) side, with a spare tire hanger. A guy at the IPMS-UK site built this one and the much bigger G-wagen high-roof ambulance. I'll post the link, but the pictures were removed by the Photobucket Curse. The thread is from 2009: http://ipmsuk.proboards.com/thread/5080/24-mercedes-wagons-die-bundeswehr

Amazing work, as always. I have the book “Roar With Gilmore: The Story of America’s Most Unusual Oil Company” by Charles Seims and Alan Darr. Great read. As the authors point out, Gilmore was an oil company that people actually LIKED.

Thanks, looking on U.S. eBay just now I saw them in the SMER box and also releases by Heller and other companies. With a wide variety of prices. I have the Atlantis double kit. I put a typo in my post, the company name is AtlantiS (not Atlantic). Stupid fingers! According to the Atlantis website, they only issued 500 of the double kits world-wide. I just saw one on eBay for $25, so they don't seem to be fetching outrageous prices. Yet.

If you want to build those ex-Merit GP kits above: the Lago-Talbot and the Alfa-Romeo were released as a double kit by Atlantic, circa 2014. They retailed for about $40, as I remember. Not cheap, but maybe cheaper and easier than tracking down originals. After Merit released them in the Fifties, they were Unobtainium for many years. Eventually the Russian company SMER got the molds and re-issued them some years ago. Online reviewers say they still look good, with minimum flash etc. The worst thing about them is the clear plastic spoked wheels, but that can be fixed. The box art looks like this. Notice the sign on the overhead bridge, behind the Lago-Talbot. Sneaky! It used to say "Shell":

There's tons of great stuff at Shapeways! I want to build a couple of modern 1/24 armed "technical" vehicles, like the Italeri (ex-ESCI) Toyota BJ-44, as used all over the Middle East. I could not find one essential item for those vehicles - 1/24 scale AK-47 rifles. The vendor Anyuta at Shapeways makes them. They are pricy, about $10 each depending on many you order. But they sure look good. Anyuta makes AK-47's in 1/24, 1/35 and 1/16 scales. Anyuta also makes a 1/18 (!!) scale kit of the Fletner FL-282 "Kilibri" (Hummingbird), a WW2 German helicopter. Eshaver: "This is great for me as I'm re creating a corner of early Los Angles as a diorama trio." I can't wait to see that! Wonder if they can do figures of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, for a diorama from "Double Indemnity." "I think you're swell. Long as I'm not your husband."