Zoom Zoom

That's terrible! Great to meet you on Saturday, fun show!

It's a great kit...very simple, I built this during the 24 hours of LeMans in '07:

I had the same issue w/my Grex Tritium TG. Once I replaced my O-ring (and bought spares), I began to take better care of it. First I make sure the needle always comes out of the airbrush and is inserted back into the airbrush from back to front, so the blunt cut-off end never goes through that O-ring first. Second, I always use the blue needle lubricant applied to the needle in the general area it goes through the O-ring. This helps to protect the O-ring from the solvents and from the friction of the needle itself going through the O-ring. I have had zero issues since replacing that first O-ring, but I'm also careful. If it becomes an issue again, I'll have to source better O-rings. So far, not necessary, and I use the brush a lot.

X20A is only for acrylics, it works fine for Tamiya acrylics, but you can also use isopropyl alcohol and sometimes even cheap automotive lacquer thinners to thin Tamiya acrylics. The lacquer thinner works for acrylics and decanted lacquers. You can also use Mr. Hobby/Gunze Mr. Color Thinner, it's nearly the same thing as Tamiya, and you can order big 400ml. bottles of it online, it lasts longer. And if you have any issues with blushing, or spray in cold conditions, you can get Mr. Hobby Mr. Leveling Thinner to slow the drying time. I use the Mr. Color thinners all the time. I find all paints seem to spray a bit better after decanting w/a few drops of thinner.

If you look closely, that's only 3 different wheels, but they are each offered in 2 very different finishes. Regardless, what's shown on the prototype is not prototypical of any factory wheels, and they look tame compared to the real wheels on the real car. Plamoz really does nice wheels, I have them on my i8 and soon on my 918 Spyder. I also have their ZR1 Cup wheels that also replace Revell's lame/undersized wheels in that kit.

Decanting and airbrushing TS-13 is a piece of cake, and you will get better results than spraying X22 acrylic. You may want to get some of Tamiya's lacquer thinner (notable by having a yellow cap), I add a few drops of the thinner to decanted TS paints, just seems to run through my airbrush better.

My i8 is completely curbside, and you cannot tell whatsoever. I saved a lot of time not building stuff that would never be seen. I just can't quite figure out what I'll do to attempt to make the 918 engine cover look like mesh...the decals are gold! The mesh is black! Sigh.

Revell has been designing glass to install from the outside like this for several years, long before Moebius. Moebius needs to learn from Revell, not the other way around, when it comes to this style of glass.

Definitely. The spokes are parallel, and match none of the available wheels on the real car. The kicker is they're exactly just as wrong as Maisto's wheels. Chicken or egg?

Formula 560 is perfect for the job, epoxy is total overkill. F560 is exponentially stronger than Elmers, and it's thicker. I use it on nearly every model, and yes it can and will fill gaps. Love it, amazingly good product. It's also easier to wipe away excess than epoxy. Epoxy has its uses, but again total overkill on this glass, once the edges have been dressed and modified to fit the body, there should be no gaps.

I haven't uploaded my photos to my Fotki account yet, but if you are on Facebook they're posted on the ACME Facebook page which is a public page. I don't think I saw your car in Tom Valenta's album. SCMA Spartanburg Show

Nice FD, very eye catching. I took a few pics of it yesterday at the show. I know a guy in the Atlanta area who has done at least 15 1:1 LS conversions on FC's and FD's and perhaps an RX8 or two.

Looks great, love that blue. I finally built mine late last year after stripping the 20 year old paintjob that failed and I put it back in the box for another day, luckily the new paint came out well. Now these kits are rare, hard to find, and pretty cool to see built! I have fresh decals to build the BTCC wagon I've never started but will build this year.

Thanks for the info Bill! Unfortunately it comes after I painted my Ventura, a kit that I was pretty excited to get. Word to the wise...do NOT paint this model before fitting the glass! I'm not at all happy w/the glass fit. It's embarrassing and aggravating. I got the front to fit (removing material from the glass and completely getting rid of the lower channel that holds it up too high), but the rear glass is even worse. Glass too big, channels too shallow...not good. Back in the box it went so I can work on something else that is hopefully more satisfying. I really don't want to have to start w/a new body, new paintjob, new kit to get the results I want.

My Hobby Search MX5's are in-transit (I had ordered them August 25th, the pre-sale price included 15% discount, but the original estimate of 2800 yen retail went to 3200 yen). Hobby Search had them available for pre-order months ahead of HLJ. I think I read that Tamiya was putting the screws down on HLJ, that their overseas distributors were complaining that their prices were too cheap. We heard that there is 2 levels of Tamiya distributors in the US, so every middleman means more $$. When Tamiya stuff started going scarce at HLJ, the next step was the discount went from 20% to 5%. It has since gone to 10%. My pair of MX5's cost me 8250 yen including express shipping from Japan, just under $34 each...which is quite a nice discount vs. $49 retail plus sales tax plus gas $ here if paying full price at a hobby shop.

I thought it was a Barkas, but it wasn't...though the Google Image Search had so many pictures I found the Fiat among them.

Fiat 1100T

I had the same issue w/the rubber O-ring becoming damaged and causing very messy leakage as you described. I was able to get a couple replacement O-rings from my LHS and I carefully replaced mine about a year ago and it hasn't been an issue since. I only run the needle from back to the front when removing, and I lubricate the needle where it goes through the O-ring each time I put it back together. No leakage, and I've used it a lot since replacement. Replacing the teflon packing seal requires sending it back, but that wasn't necessary. I replaced the same O-ring in a friend's Grex that was also leaking. Mindful of how fragile the O-ring is, we're both taking better care of the brushes and have replacements on hand, consider it a maintenance item.

I have two friends that bought the Grex airbrush & compressor systems after seeing the Grex sales representative demonstrate them at a local show, and from knowing how pleased I have been, as well as other friends, with Grex airbrushes. The compressor is amazingly quiet, it's a very high-quality item, as are the airbrushes themselves. If you have the budget, go for it. I have two Grex Tritium TG's (top gravity feed, I have 3 or 4 different cup sizes, including a huge 1.7 oz. cup for big jobs), and absolutely love them. The pistol grip is a natural (I learned on a spray gun before ever using an airbrush), and the spray quality is unbelievable. You can easily adjust airflow (with a separate inline adapter) and paint flow, where the exact same needle and tip can do tight, hair-line detail up to full-blown wet coats on bodies. I also have Grex's new fan-tip spray nozzle that makes spraying bodies even better, it was developed specifically for model car builders. The Grex airbrushes are not cheap and they do require you to keep them clean and the needles lubricated where they pass through the O-ring seal. They require one small wrench (included w/the airbrush and with every new needle/nozzle purchase) to remove the inner nozzle when cleaning, everything else assembles finger-tight. This only adds one small complication of cleaning over my Iwata & Badger brushes, and it's not much, I have several of the wrenches at hand. The Grex .2 and larger needles/nozzles flow so much better than my Iwata and Badger 175's, and the quality of spray is far better than the Badgers. I don't miss the siphon feed cleanup and waste of paint and cleaning materials. If you are serious about your airbrushing, you can't really go wrong w/Grex. You might consider a lower cost setup to start with depending on skill level, with practice nearly any airbrush/compressor can give much better results than any spray cans. Grex is good if you have some experience, you actually plan to use it with frequency, and want high-quality tools that will last for many years.

Thanks for sharing those Len! It was a great fun show, good to see you again.

It's my photo that I took at our show. This particular model shows the kit as it will be available for kids to build at the auto shows. It will reportedly be available for public consumption in March with a pair of side mirrors. There's engraved detail in the headlight bezel area under the headlight covers (where Mustang/Raptor etc. have none). Engraved detail on the interior is more complete than the Mustang/Raptor etc. This kit sort of bridges the gap between Revell's build & play and their regular snap kits. While it's troubling to see their focus on modern cars go away from detailed kits (there is absolutely no guarantee that they'll do a more detailed 2015-up Mustang at this point, for instance. In fact Maisto's diecast is far more detailed, but suffers the typical diecast issues), this may be the only way we'll see the GT in plastic at all. I can have lots of fun w/the kit if it looks right and subject matter is enticing. I'm hoping the windshield fits better than this sample.

Not true. When using img tags as shown above, the copy/paste function in between the tags merely copies the offsite host URL for that particular photo. This forum is not uploading the photo, it's still hosted offsite. The gold Mustang I show is not hosted here whatsoever.

I'm using a PC laptop w/Chrome and occasionally Firefox. I think people are thrown by the "Insert other media" button, rather than just posting the img tags right in the body of the message being typed. Img tags seem to work pretty much universally on forums like this.

Test 2; used the img tags as mentioned above by ChrisBcritter, pasted the photo URL from right-clicking on the photo in my Fotki album in between the tags. Not a big deal. It works.

Test. http://images49.fotki.com/v559/photos/8/10258/13860787/IMG_4163-vi.jpg