Zoom Zoom

Very nice Make sure to send pics to Kevin, he might be able to put one on his website.

That ad snuck up on me! I was looking through the magazine, turned the page, saw the wheels, said "that's not the right wheel for a GT-500, then I looked at the name...GT500 KR...HMMMMM!!! Now we're talking! Not a peep has been heard about this kit before the ad; a new first, IIRC. I have zero need for a Revell GT500 now; the KR and the Hertz will be just fine...I hope... I'm not averse to custom wheels if necessary

I really do appreciate the quick look and review of basic kit quality, but I wish this first look had been done by someone with more knowledge about the real Mustang and the Revell kits. My main questions about what Revell has done on this kit vs. the '06 GT remain. My biggest concern are the wheels/tires. Anyone who has built the GT and is a Mustang fanatic knows what I'm talking about! Are the new wheels the correct size/shape? Are the tires new? My suspicion, based on the boxart, is Revell kept the GT tires (which are barely acceptable) and the new wheels have 5 spokes that are more of a "classic" shape vs. the Bullitt-style. Would have been nice to see a good crisp photo of the new grille as well. Oh well, in a month or so the kit will be out and we'll find out for sure! Again, it's nice to see the quick look, but basically I'm still very much in the dark about this kit's new details vs. the original GT.

It certainly is an amazing kit, perfect for someone who wants a full-detail build. Make sure to keep it level, store it properly as I've seen one of these bodies warp badly. Harold replaced it, even though the owner was the one who put it back in the box poorly.

Some brush painted acrylic flat black (or acrylic flat or semigloss clear) on the tires where the wheels/wheelbacks/wheelcovers insert will also help. Seal the tires, and make sure the wheels/wheelcovers/wheelbacks have a good coat of paint and they shouldn't melt.

Huh? Oh...I found it...look above your post, to the right in the black band...see "options". Choose "standard". That will make the board read "properly". I hit "outline" and it only shows the initial post, the replies are below and must be clicked to read. Somewhere along the line you may have hit that button by accident? I had no idea there were any other ways to view the threads. Learn something new everyday

How true.

Stunning! Great model

Wow...the Corvettes are cool...but WOW...look at that vintage Japanese stuff! Is this where all the Corollas are hanging out? Amazing...if you see them ever around here, they're pretty ratty. Thanks for the photos!

ACME website Basic site, information for our annual NNL, some photos/links of events, links to our Fotki album and ACME club forum.

Glad you got it Bill! I've seen two of the kits here in Georgia, I got the Saab 96 that's somehow going to end up looking stock but running Subaru WRX STI drivetrain. The Anglia is also a neat little model. I'm anxiously awaiting Tapani's Citroen DS 19

It's pretty amazing. Some might say Va Va Voom...but maybe Va Va GINA? The hood certainly looks anatomically correct

Very nice; almost can't tell it came from the horrid AAR Nice details and personalization.

This was my build for this year's LeMans palooza. I had to do some post-race repairs to the Jaguar but it was technically finished before the end of the race (by 4:30 AM) I just finished the repairs, and took some better shots of the model vs. right after the race. The upper/lower body didn't fit well; the basic resin kept going back to it's original shape every time it hit the dehydrator, the upper body slightly narrower than the lower body. I used a hairdryer to spot-heat the resin, it worked well, but also melted my windscreen ... I used the partially melted vac-formed windscreen as a pattern for a new one from .010" clear sheet stock, I really can't tell the difference between this one and the vac-formed one. This one's certainly cleaner. I also added some unused rivet decals from a Tamiya Kawasaki Ninja XZ 14 that I'm currently building. Finally I added some tape/foil hood straps, the boxart showed them but there were none inside the box...dunno if they were missing or not, the instructions were laughably vague on this model (no photo reference whatsoever, nor parts callouts, it was just a page of text). Good thing I had some internet and book resources. The model is painted w/TS 9 (?) British Green, clearcoated w/TS13. Seat/headrest painted w/TS Red Brown. The original car had a very poorly applied white grille outline (done in tape, I think), I simply primed the car in white and masked it off w/o too much care, but it's cleaner than the 1:1 was for the race. I'm reasonably pleased with it, considering it's a very simple model w/o much detail, only 32 parts, not quite as slick as the E-Type I built last year. I knew going into it that I probably wouldn't have done any more to it whether it was speed-built or built over a longer period, and I also knew it could never approach Bill Geary's amazing D-Type It's not camera-friendly, the camera found a lot of stuff my own eyeballs seem to miss, so I did a bit of retouching This may have been Fisher's first model car? I could believe it, as it was nowhere near as clean as the B.A.T. 5 that I build a few years back, which may have been his last all-new model car. I got this kit last year from a friend, so I'm not sure when it was cast, I have a feeling it's pretty old. It was in a light gray resin unlike any I'm used to.

Incredible work there! I've already built the kit totally OOB; seeing the detail is very inspiring! Doubt I'll go that far when I do my second kit as the #22 Lucybelle in white/blue stripes.

Y'know, a simple google search is all you need to do for answers to most anything I googled "photobucket hacked" and voila: Photobucket Forum - read the thread

Do you spray the Future? Decanted BIN sprays a lot different than Future, which is much thinner, and is so thin it tends to run if I'm not very careful. BIN doesn't spray nearly as smooth, either, but it sands so easily and to a very nice surface that I'm not concerned if it's not a perfect coat of sealer; it's merely a vehicle to block the solvents and it does it's job well. BIN out of the spray can is awful. It's got a terrible texture, the nozzle is worse than anything Testors uses, and it tends to have a lot of stray droplets; it's really intended for heavy-duty work on rough wood, not fine detail on a model. Airbrushing it is important. I had some lying around from another project when I learned about it's uses for models. I decided to do the acid test for it for my primer article and as I had found on other projects, it really works. I should try some Future as well, since it's just as easy to find and it isn't as messy to spray, if one remembers that it seems thinner than water when it's sprayed!

Some Tamiya colors, especially Chrome Yellow, are more prone than others to having propellant bubbles appear in the paint if you apply it too heavily. The propellant in the can doesn't have a chance to fully atomize before hitting the surface, and it bubbles as it tries to escape, and it looks pretty gruesome on a model. I had it happen this weekend on my LeMans build Jaguar, using an old can of British Green and spraying heavy/wet coats, it caused the paint to both run and get some bubbles in a couple of spots because I had a few small fisheyes show up in the first coats and I was literally flooding parts of the model with the green to get them to fill in (thankfully the damage was more on the underside and not in the most visible areas) which I had to let cook in my dehydrator for 3 or 4 hours before wet sanding with 1500-2400 Micromesh and then re-shooting the green from a fresh can and lighter coats, covered w/a several good coats of clear which fixed my problem w/o recurrence. Many builders see a problem like the one I had and freak out and strip the paint; while I remain calm (who, me? ) and just deal with the problem and fix it! I'm too impatient to wait for the paint to strip and spend so much time starting from scratch with paint. My second round of paint was nearly perfect, and Tamiya paint shrinks down a lot, you can spray a bunch of it on a model and won't fill in the panel lines unless they were really faint from the beginning.

Steve Milberry to the white courtesy phone! Zinsser B.I.N. shellac-based primer/sealer, comes in a spray can or pint/quart/gallon cans for mixing. Spray can is easier to use if you decant the stuff and airbrush it. You MUST lay down a coat of some sort of primer or paint onto the plastic first, before applying the BIN. BIN doesn't like to stick to plastic nearly as well as it sticks to any other paint. Once the BIN is applied, it sands beautifully and can be covered by other primer or paint. It's white, it's bright, it doesn't spray as nice as lacquer but it sands easier than any other primer, down to a nice powder, and it seems impervious to bleedthrough of color or ghosting of mold lines or bodywork from lacquer paints. It's also alcohol-based, so it's much less toxic than the urethane based primer/sealers like Variprime that some builders practically demand that you use (to your own peril). I found those toxic sealers to not work as advertised, so the Zinsser was a nice surprise to actually work, be actually fairly inexpensive, and fairly non-toxic, and easily found at Home Depot/Lowes/hardware stores. I haven't tried Future yet, I'll test it one of these days, but I do trust the word of those who say it works. I use hobby lacquers most of the time, so sealers really aren't necessary unless I have some serious bodywork, a nasty color to cover, and am using automotive grade lacquers.

Thanks Bill; and wouldn't you know I spied my Scale Auto with your D-Type in it last night and took another good look at it...you did such an amazing job with that kit, the Fisher kit is the polar opposite as it's only 32 parts. It's one of his earliest, it's quality wasn't up to his later stuff, but I love the car and had to have the kit and it sure does look good sitting next to my build from last year, the E-Type lightweight from Profil24. I need to heat the D-Type upper body up a bit to stretch the resin out a bit to match the lower body (dehydrator time, a must for any 24 hour build, keeps making it go back to it's original shape), it will fit together better. I also made a couple rows of foil rivets w/a pounce wheel and glued them to the lower body right below the panel line. I also have some rivet decals from a new Tamiya bike kit that I need to apply, and need to fashion a couple of hood straps that weren't included w/the kit.

This was ACME's third running of the LeMans Palooza, where we get together at a member's house and have way too much fun building LeMans models during the race. Rules are simple: the model has to have run at LeMans and the model may be prepped as far as "finished primer" before the beginning of the race. Therefore loopholes and interpretations of the rules are easy to exploit so we can have fun and hopefully finish a good model during the race. Our friends over the border in Canada have been doing this for five years, they also finished in grand style though I think their rules are a bit more strict, but amazingly enough we manage to build all this without consuming any alcohol...just a bunch of caffeine soda, chips/salsa/pizza and some of Deanna's (Eric's wife) amazing home made cookies that were overnighted to us in a chilled container. Now that's a support crew! We had ACME members from Tennessee, Georgia and Florida in attendance; Brian Venable hosted in rustic and rural Ringgold, GA, Eric Cole flew up to join us representing our Florida chapter. Eric and I spotted a silver '09 Nissan GT-R barrelling down I-75 southbound on our way north, it's a killer looking beast out on the road in it's element Wish we saw more of the Goodguys cars on the ride since our LeMans obsession keeps us from the rest of our club that's running and enjoying the model and 1:1 show at Goodguys at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Maybe someday they won't be on the same weekend We all finished! Danny Edwards finished his Monogram Ferrari 275P first, his son Mike finished second with his Formula Canada/Scale Productions Ferrari 333SP, by about 2AM. My Jaguar D-Type (Fisher kit) was done around 4:30 AM; it could have been done before 9PM if I wasn't running my mouth and attempting to provide comic relief and a bit of friendly competitive grief to the other builders Eric Cole's Denso Toyota 88C was done just under the wire, Henry Trent build a Tamiya Porsche GT2, Brian Venable built a Tamiya Porsche 936-78. I built a Fisher Jaguar D-Type. Mike stayed up during the whole race, the rest of us old pharts napped a time or two in the wee hours of the morning. Can't wait until next year! ACME LeMans Palooza Album http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.p...=12550&hl=# Complete Edit

Sorry to hear that; I never got burned by them (never ordered anything), but your story is sadly the norm with them. With the number of customers in the same boat as you, I have to wonder how they have continued to operate as most people consider taking people's money and not delivering to be criminal.

How good? I see Model Roundup sells one of the lower-end resin conversions for about $38; they aren't up to Modelhaus or AF/X's quality, but I don't know of any other source.

Agreed; I doubt that anyone else will step up to the plate for this one, now that this kit is on the market. Revell AG kits might not be Tamiya kits, but they're quite buildable and with typical care will turn out spectacular models. If Tamiya kitted the R8, it would likely end up between $60-$70 retail, or well more than twice the Revell AG price. To some Tamiyaphiles that's entirely acceptable, to me it isn't if there's already a good one on the market. I didn't know the US version lacked some plating; doesn't matter to me personally as I can shoot some Spaz Stix right over the shiny white parts and have good chrome in no time. Plus I won't have to deal with the infernal Revell AG boxes that are only accessed through the end panel. I wonder what the chances are that Revell would update the kit to the R8 V12 TDI concept which looks so much better than the production version?? If Tamiya did that one...I'd be first in line for it

Hmmmm...very interesting idea...I might steal it myself, as I have all the kits as well Make that Quattro a mid engine?? Hmmmmm....