Mike999

I picked up one of those too, as I mentioned in the Free Time thread. If you want to do something different with it, Terranos are very popular in the Middle East. I saw many in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, along with Mitsubishi Pajeros (also a very nice Aoshima kit). Now if we wanted a real challenge, here's a Terrano in the 90/91 Dakar Rally...

Great thread! If you build Ray's Vette, you may have to decide whether it will be pre-Hummer or post-Hummer. In last week's episode, we could see the post-Hummer version, with the fiberglas split open right at the roof pillar. And of course, in homage to the original movie...don't forget that Tru-Coat! :-) One of the umpteen projects I have going is a grungy '76 Vette. Had an MPC kit missing a few things like the interior tub, but found those in parts boxes. Internet research provided a lot of inspiration, like pix of Vettes from that era with the paint worn and scruffy.

Testors decal sealer smells, looks and acts just like good old Testors Dullcote (flat clear lacquer). Which is probably exactly what it is. For making decals, I've used the Testors decal sealer, Dullcote, and also Krylon's Flat Clear Acrylic. All worked well. Whatever sealer you use, just be careful to apply it in very thin coats. Otherwise it will melt the ink and make your decals run. Don't ask how I know this...

In the USA, Sprue Brothers carries Miniman Factory kits. The two CUCVs have been "out of stock" for some time now, but Sprue Bros. still has pages up for them. I have the M1009 kit and a couple of others from Miniman Factory, like the Russian UAZ-452 truck and van. They're all nice kits, very cleanly cast.

This could get expensive! "To Live & Die in L.A." (1985), with its wrong-way chase scene on the Long Beach Freeway. Notice the white Pontiac Astre in the middle of the pic below, behind the stake truck. Great action movie directed by William "Exorcist" Friedkin. The creepy bad guy is played by a young Willem Dafoe. It would be resinly expensive to build the 2 main cop/robber cars from the beginning of the movie, if you can even find kits of them. The Secret Service agents drive a beige 85 Chevy 4-door undercover special. They're chased by bad guys in a black '85 Mercury Grand Marquis.

Sort-of cop, bounty hunter Ralf "Papa" Thorson, played by Steve McQueen in "The Hunter" (1980). AMT's got us covered for this ride, and the kit was just re-issued - the 1951 Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe convertible. Of course, you could spend a lifetime building McQueen movie cars NOT from "Bullitt." Especially "The Getaway" (1972), where McQueen burns thru a lot of cars. Back on cops and robbers: "Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry" (1974). A '69 Dodge Charger and a bunch of early-Seventies Mopar cop cars.

The Ollie's in Anderson, SC finally got some of the Good Stuff! Today (6/1/17) it had the Revell Jukebox '55 Ford, Roth Surfite and '67 Plymouth GTX Sox & Martin. Still no Showboats, Slingsters, 48 Fords or 90 Mustangs (unless some of you greed-heads bought them all!). I asked at the check-out and they would only tell me they will be putting out model kits for "some time to come." So if your local Ollie's is still only selling Lindberg cannons and steamboats, keep checking. They may surprise you yet.

Another big Thumbs-Up for Freetime. I have an order on the way from them right now. I constantly compare their prices to other online vendors. They're lower on some items, higher on others, but have consistently good prices overall. Like the OP, I grabbed one of those Aoshima '91 Nissan Terranos (Pathfinder in the U.S.). The price was an amazing $13.95. The Freetime listing had a photo with the box open, and this kit has both right and left-hand dashboards. "Wrong scale," but if you like police cars or Land Rovers, here's another kit with 2 dashboards - the Italeri Land Rover 109 Series III with markings for the Spanish Guardia Civil, in 1/35 scale. The basic kit is the old Italeri 1/35 LR III that dates back to the 1970s. But Italeri freshened up this release with the right/left dashboards, a spiffy new hardtop cover for the rear and some other small parts. Some online vendors are showing the Land Rover kit as unavailable until July 2017. Freetime not only has them in stock, they're on sale for $16.74! I've seen the old Land Rover kit on eBay for about twice that price.

The Hobby Lobby clearance aisle had a Revell '59 Cadillac hardtop with a big DAMAGED sticker. The box had been re-shrink-wrapped. For $7.99 it was worth the risk. That kit is a gold mine of parts, from the detailed engine to the bullet taillights. Just opened it up. The only "damage" - the rear roof pillars are slightly tweaked. I think this was pretty common on the 85-4361 issue of this kit in the small box. There's just too much plastic to cram into that little box. Otherwise it's complete and mint. I already have a couple of these in the old, bigger box, but don't mind having another. Especially for $7.99. A bigger risk, since I had a 40% off coupon and saw no kits I wanted - got a set of the Jacquard airbrush-ready metallic paints. I want to do some airbrush experiments with metallic colors and that seemed a fairly cheap way to do it.

The Aurora "ALF 900 Pumper/California Fire Truck" is a very good kit. It is in 1/32 scale, not 1/25. It has opening doors, full interior, and neat accessories like hand-held fire extinguishers and spare nozzles. Here's a thread about it at Scale Firehouse: http://scalefirehouse.com/sfh_brd/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5418

Another good reason to pick up a Raiders Coach - along with that cool Hammond organ, it has speaker cabinets with Vox nameplates molded in. Perfect for your diorama of a Sixties-era garage band and their van or hearse! The Raiders Coach box mentions that the figures are "molded in 'soft' thermoplastic." Many years ago, figure modelers used to modify Elastolin and other "soft" plastic figures in amazing ways. The British magazine "Military Modeling" had a lot of articles about that. The biggest problem was painting them and the experts came up with all kinds of solutions - base-coating them with a mix of white glue/water, using white artist acrylic as primer, etc. Enamel paints/primers would melt them.

This one's obscure but they turn up on eBay fairly often: years ago, TAMIYA did a few American and German WWII 1/25 military figures. Most were done in both plastic and metal. I've found these very cheap at kit swap meets, since they're sort of "orphan" figures - not many 1/25 scale tanks were ever made. Along with the "right scale," they come with useful weapons and equipment. The set of German staff officers from the 1/25 Tiger tank kit should look good with one of the ICM 1/24 Mercedes or Opel cars. Here's the Patton figure, they all had similar box art:

Got this one, FINALLY. Since they seem hard to find in the USA, I bought 2 of these tractors. Also a Lindberg Century Coronado boat. Pre-birthday gifts from myself to myself.

Along with the kits for sale, that site has an incredible collection of model kit history, biographies of box-art illustrators and kit company employees, etc. etc. I recently posted a link to the Pyro history page, which has full-color box art for almost every Pyro kit ever made. The section is not that easy to find, but: (1) on the Home Page, top-center, click on the link "Plastic Model Kit Articles and Howtos." (2) On the right side of the Articles page, click on "Plastic Model Kit History." Or just be lazy and click this link... http://www.oldmodelkits.com/blog/category/plastic-model-kit-history/

Here's a real oldie: the TSUTSHO 1/24 driver set, with woman sitting on the car, flagman, and standing/sitting drivers. I have one of these sets but threw out the box years ago. There's one on eBay right now, Buy It Now with about a week to go: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-24-Scale-Model-Racing-Driver-Figure-Set-by-TSUTSHO-FiscoVintage-/361810219730?hash=item543d91d2d2:g:T~8AAOSwXeJYGl1e

Preiser calls those "Adam" and "Eva" figures. I guess we can...figure...out why. I have some in 1/24 and 1/32. All the same parts, just pantographed up or down for the different scales. I've seen some amazing things done with those figures, with modelers using epoxy putty to make clothes for them. Verlinden and Historex/Nemrod did some nude resin figs they called "academy" figures. I guess because art students at Ye Olde Academy used nude people as models. Verlinden also did a nice 1/24 resin California Highway Patrolman. Some online vendors still have them. But if you want one you probably better hurry, since Verlinden is out of business.

I often order from an online vendor who offers UPS SurePost delivery. It's about half the price of other shipping methods and very fast. I think it means that UPS trucks the package to my local Post Office, which delivers it. I know it's always delivered by my usual fe-mail carrier in her Jeep. That fe-mail carrier is probably about ready to clobber me. I'm getting ready for an eBay sale and ordered 4 different bunches of free shipping boxes from USPS. They came in 3 different shipments, all pretty big and heavy, and she had to drive down my driveway and leave them on the porch. I was either gone or didn't hear her all 3 times.

Looks like "Truck Model World" magazine is still being published in the UK. I subscribed to that one for a while, thru Amazon. Many of its articles apply to model cars as well, of course. It often features some really complicated conversions and upgrade/detail articles. http://www.newsstand.co.uk/158-Modelling-Magazines/3050-Subscribe-to-TRUCK-MODEL-WORLD-Magazine-Subscription.aspx

Nice work, and those women look anatomically correct. My gripe with most 1/24 female figures in resin: they look like a teen boy's fantasy. Skinny matchstick legs and they're very...top-heavy, if you get my drift. Scaled up to human size, they'd always be falling on their faces.

If you have one in the area, a real car club might want the Hemmings and similar mags. But I'm just guessing. Maybe see if you can donate the model mags to a model club, library or just about anywhere before dumping them. I'm currently drowning in magazines myself, so I know the problem. But I also remember when I got back into building models, many years ago, it was seeing build-ups in magazines that first inspired me to try the hobby again. So maybe some kid - or even some old geezer (like me!) - might pick up one of those magazines and decide to join the hobby.

That's sort of weird. My local HL (Anderson, SC) had all 3 sizes on Friday. I got a 1mm and 2mm at $11.99 each. The 4mm was $12.99. I wondered if it was marked with the wrong price, or the biggest marker just cost more. I didn't get the 4mm, since I remembered reading the threads on this board about Molotow markers. I figure for anything that big needing to be chromed, Bare Metal Foil or Alclad might be a better solution.

No. But there is a Michael's near Costco, almost at the intersection of Woodruff Rd. and Laurens Rd. "Costco re-supply" means I'm almost out of critical, life-sustaining stuff like their beef jerky, peanut butter, big box of candy bars, etc.

Thanks. I may try that store again, but Greenville is about a 50-mile drive for me. OTOH, if I take Hwy. 123 I can also hit a Hobby Lobby and the Hobby Connection shop in Easley on the way. And I could use a Costco re-supply stop on Woodruff Rd...hmmm... Has anyone seen the Coronado boat kit in an Ollie's? That's still a pretty new release, so I'd be kind of surprised if it was already in a blow-out sale. But I guess stranger things have happened.

If you're still looking for toilet fixtures, here's a 1/24 set from eBay - sink, toilet, tub. There are others available - 1/24 is half the regular dollhouse scale of 1/12, so some dollhousers build in that scale. I've also seen these, or something very similar, in Hobby Lobby. https://www.ebay.com/p/?iid=262202571588&&&chn=ps

A '70 Monte Carlo at Hobby Lobby, with the 40% off coupon. Also got the Molotow Liquid Chrome pens, 1 and 2mm sizes (as posted elsewhere). Off-topic, but with all the eBay horror stories, here's a good one: a few days ago, I did a Buy It Now on the very old Williams Bros. 1/72 scale Martin B-10 bomber. Had one long ago and always regretted selling it. The package just came. The kit box was grungy and water-stained, which I already knew from the eBay listing photos. But inside that box was TWO complete B-10 kits - one still sealed in the original plastic bag, one loose in the box. And even 2 sets of decals. No instructions but I can find those elsewhere.