Zoom Zoom

Wow, nice save, gorgeous result Where did the wheels come from?

You'll never get it back; it's not that it's "just" warp. The warp is from the material shrinking and it doesn't do it consistently. You can try dipping it in warm water which will soften the plastic & you may have some limited success, but you'll never, ever get it "back" to new. You are probably best to clean it up and let it be, & put it in a sealed display case. That's how the promos look. If you want a straight, clean '59 promo w/o the warp, build a Revell/Monogram kit as a promo in the same colors & with the same simplified detailing. Promo collectors love models that aren't "dripping with bare metal foil" as one of my promo-collecting friends describes the kind of models we like

Or...maybe not

Here we are in a thread about our favorite model car kit of the decade, and (of course ) people have to come along and turn it into an IPMS (with emphasis on the PMS part) contest, instead of staying focused end up arguing about something else. In other words, we've become "them".

As an ex-smoker, all I can say is "YUCK". Tobacco is nasty stuff, aside from the addictive properties which are epic. People who smoke cigars smell like they've been munching on skunks. I have no idea how they ever procreate.

Easy Off heavy duty oven cleaner evaporates the chrome in seconds. Soak for a little while (depends on kit) to remove all the clear undercarrier. That said, if the clear itself isn't too thick, or has a run, or dirt, I've never had a problem with leaving it alone and refinishing over it. I usually spray, put in a plastic baggie, rinse off in 10-15 mins. and am ready to refinish.

BTW, love the Kombi, especially in that color combo.

You're measuring the part of the wheel outboard of the actual wheel lip that's meant (I'm 95% sure) to be painted either black or white, depending whether you want blackwalls or whitewalls or perhaps even a narrow whitewall (by painting the first ring of the tire up to the raised rib). It's an odd design, but painted correctly it should look okay. Compare an assembled wheel/tire w/the illustration on the boxtop; it's easy to see where the wheel ends and the tire starts. Surely that wide outer lip couldn't be considered part of the wheel. Just run a black pen around the first engraved line, or a black wash, and paint the outer lip to match the tire. Though I definitely would have rather seen a standard style wheel/tire, like Hasegawa's, with the proper four slots.

Take a good look at the wheels/tires; Revell made it "easier" ?? to do either wide whites, narrow whites, or blackwalls w/these odd wheels/tires. If you look at the wheel, the visible lip of the wheel is inboard; the outer part of the wheel is meant to be painted flat black or white, depending on your style of tire. If you measure to the first engraved line on the wheel, that measures 16.32" in scale, or a visible 15" wheel w/tire mounting flange in 1/24 scale. The wheels/tires are definitely taller than Hasegawas. The Revell rolling stock looks too tall, Hasegawa too small. Hmmm. Also, the conical turn signals are on the Revell clear parts tree. Sort of like how you find Hasegawa Beetle taillights on the clear tree for the vans.

I take it you haven't seen the kit or the instructions. The body doesn't go together until after the chassis is assembled. There's no way to pre-assemble the body, and no easy way to temporarily do it either. Not to mention all opening panels need paint on all surfaces, not just the outer surface. Two tone exterior, three tone interior. There's a good reason this kit is listed as a skill level 5. To do this kit justice will take a lot of pre-planning.

Sometime recently Hasegawa bumped all their prices upward by a good chunk. The van w/surfboards is OOP/discontinued, it was 2600 yen when available...under $30 before shipping from HLJ. Then again, we could fill this forum up w/ridiculous price reports from LHS's. Seems rather universal...and probably helped the rise of online sales.

That has to be real.

Tamiya Enzo/FXX.

I think it was Nikko; I saw them at Toys R Us & Fryes. They're not current, that line of remote control toys was done several years ago, and they've since vanished. Fryes had them for years...kept dropping the price..I got lucky getting them for $6.98; the original price was about $25.

Superglue works fine on the vinyl seats. As does flat Tamiya spray paint (I used a dark gray on my R/T; just treated them like they were styrene...worked fine).

I believe XLR production has been done for about a year now. It's not current, and never sold in numbers even close to what they wanted, certain Ferraris sell in bigger numbers. An exorbitant pricetag is one reason the XLR was doomed to failure. Would be a neat kit, but I doubt anyone in a model company is crying over spilled milk over the XLR (or Sky, or Solstice).

The JF XLR is an odd duck. It's based on a remote control toy that is slightly larger (toy scales out to about 1/23.5). Pros: It's the only resin XLR. It will supposedly fit a modern Corvette chassis. Clear glass. Cons: It's a body only, you're on your own for interior. The headlight covers/taillights are molded integrally w/the resin. No way they'll be prototypical. The remote control toy has black windows, no interior, and a simple remote control chassis. Decent chrome wheels, decent clear red taillights, decent chrome headlight bezels w/clear headlight cover. Chrome grille. I found 3 of these obsolete toys at Fryes Electronics for about $7 each on closeout. I gave one to a friend w/the Flintstone kit. Gave another to another friend. Kept one for myself. I'll just paint it decently, try to put on better tires, and call it a day as a slammer w/black glass. It's a shame the JF piece has the headlights/taillights cast w/the body. Won't be easy rectifying that.

That is outstanding! Love it I love the club build concept too; I might see if that's something the guys in our club would want to try. Seems like a natural for almost any club.

The Mercer may have been the first model car I ever built. Long, long gone, never replaced. I have a really nice built Stutz that I'll restore someday; unpainted, missing one outer wheel & tire, otherwise complete. I have a rougher Pierce Arrow, though I do have replacement parts to make it complete (I sent this & a restorable Jordan Playboy to Guido/Scale Kraft; he made molds to put cars in production, sent me replacement parts when he returned the masters...then he almost died & went out of business so they'll never see the light of day ...). I have a mint unbuilt Jordan Playboy. Not sure if I'll build it or sell it to a collector...neat car...I'd rather have a restorable (the one I sent Guido belongs to someone else). These really are neat kits, glad to see people interested in restoring & improving upon them. I want to do some things to the Pierce Arrow to make it a bit more to my liking...the basics are there. I could shoot myself for selling a mint/unbuilt Bugatti from this series. Oh well, win some, lose some. At one time I had all of 'em, I sold off the Duesenberg & Packard, they're not my favorites.

Not a book, but a great article by Virgil "D a m n Cranky" Suarez in MCM #135/October 2008. A step-by-step how-to to get a weathered/rusty "beater" look. I'm looking forward to trying his technique, the results are fantastic.

It might be easier for a beginner to cut one large piece that covers all the trim, and trim away the excess. With practice you can precut thin strips of foil & apply separate pieces for each section, being careful to overlap where vertical & horizontal trim meet. The "new & improved" BMF is awful. It's as if they've forced the "bright chrome" finish on us, and it's got too much adhesive and either the adhesive or a coating on the foil has a texture that will not smooth out with buffing. I'd rather have the old stuff that cracked with age. This new junk also tears badly when I'm trying to trim it from the backing sheet, doesn't matter if it's a new blade or not. I'm going to have to resort to making my own foil, thankfully I got some new store brand foil for the kitchen recently and found it's thinner than it was before, so it may work well. It's still a bit thicker than BMF, but it will smooth out & buff out to a very realistic chrome shine.

I didn't like it that way. Too much open, black space. I'm thinking about doing this; more body color, less black, ties together the crease from the side w/the lower taillight sections:

The "problem" arises from taking a literal interpretation of the 1:1 car, and using the unmodified Corvette chassis. The extension will work, but it's spoiled by the wheelbase. Now there is too much visual weight ahead of the front wheels, it's not as balanced as before. The rear wheels are in the right place. The model would (IMHO...) look a lot better if the front wheel openings were moved forward, stretching the Corvette wheelbase. It's a model, so it's not necessarily constrained by the 1:1 engineering, unless the builder is going for a true replica. If not it's possible to make the model look better than the 1:1. Which, IMHO again , isn't too difficult. I took a few minutes using my "clone" tool in my photo retouching software, to show what I'm talking about: Original: Retouched: That to me looks better than the real car. But these are only my styling opinions, so if they're not seen the same way by the builder, that's fine with me

I've done a few updates to it since the show, still not 100% satisfied but details are getting better. I put a black wash on the remaining fuel cap, I painted the side mirror stalks & part of the mirror housings black, and removed the Mustang emblem from between the taillights. In its place is a couple strips of plastic to cover the mounting hole; one is flat black, the top one is .040" half round painted Grabber Orange. This helps break up the expanse, and makes the taillight panel look a bit like a negative image of the hood stripe. It's better, but I'm still thinking there's something better to be done.

Excellent model! Makes me wonder why I haven't built mine. Nice work on the neatly-applied-while-restoring undercoat that was seen on nearly every car in the rust belt