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Looks great; I'm hoping to be at B'ham Saturday but I may be getting sick and Lee Baker's funeral takes precedence and not sure when it will be

I just found out that legendary classic builder Lee Baker from Chattanooga has passed away. I was hoping to see him this weekend at the Birmingham show. See details below.

This is Revell; I think you may be reading far too much into that photograph of a real car w/kit wheels and tires spliced in. Maybe they'll prove me wrong?

I don't build models of cars I hate. Definitely I'd build a lousy kit of a loved subject. Might not enjoy it as much as a better quality kit, but I build for subject matter that means something to me personally.

Very inspiring work! I have yet to build a '57; Bel Airs just don't do it for me. These do.

Michael's doesn't carry it anymore.

Thanks! I heard about that one this weekend from one of my friends (I finished the car during a modelpalooza w/a couple friends), he saw it last year at the NNL West, I'd love to see pics of the car, I don't remember seeing pictures of it. Maybe he can get some pics of it next Saturday when he's out there again.

Thanks! I had no idea where I unlocked it (it was a long time ago)...googled..."Win Vette! Vette! Vette! series in the Chevrolet Showroom"

If you can locate Plastikote primer, they make a white and it's better stuff than Duplicolor. You can do a web search through Plastikote to find dealers near you. Tamiya white primer is really nice, very expensive but worth it. Second best IMHO is Plastikote. Duplicolor is just enough "hotter" that it cause problems sometimes. Tamiya white primer isn't always the best at covering colors; it's best to start w/gray and then go to white.

Thanks! I brush painted the wheels with Tamiya Nato Black acrylic.

I've wanted to build this particular car ever since unlocking it in GT4, was contemplating making decals for it but thankfully the decals are available from VRM to do this car and several other vintage Corvettes. This is an almost-replica of the car Bob Bondurant raced in '63, and the restored car is currently owned and vintage raced by Edelbrock. I started with the Revell snap '63 Split Window coupe. I used seats, side pipes, wheels/wheel backs and rear tires from an Owens Corning Corvette parts kit, roll bar from Revell Subaru WRX, parts box front tires, Shabo white letters, VRM decals. I made a Wink mirror for it. Hopefully next weekend I can find a red driver's side window net at the Birmingham show. I also need to add a column-mounted tach. I carefully removed the wipers before painting. I should have paid more attention to photos, as the car doesn't have vent windows today. I painted the vent posts black to make them less noticeable as I wasn't going to cut them out from the painted body. The decal sheet is incredibly nice, though it does have a few anomalies. The car as it runs today doesn't have hood vents, but they are so well done on the decal sheet I used them, also as I didn't want issues w/trying to sand those recessed areas smooth. The emblems are amazing, two layer deals where you apply the base colors and a second layer of chrome surround. For some reason the "Santa Barbara" is done in white instead of black, and there are some front fender decals that aren't included. Paint is a decanted mixture of Tamiya gloss aluminum and light metallic blue. This was a really fun build; very few hassles and only about 12 hours total building time.

Good stuff; I've built the Cayman GT transkit and have a set of their wheels/tires. Strada Sports carries their stuff, and have free shipping for orders over $25.00

I couldn't agree more. There's quite an art to making the best of what's inside the box, and applying all that basic craftsmanship to a kit without aftermarket bells, whistles, and gizmos. Some of the best models you'll see can be built completely OOB. I love looking at the over-the-top detailed builds, but that isn't my style of building. Simpler models can have nearly the same "gotcha factor" when the builder pays attention to the basics. A builder who wants to be competitive would be wise to concentrate on OOB builds to learn the basics of good craftsmanship before setting off in the direction of checkbook modeling. To me all that extra detail is spoiled when the builder clearly hasn't mastered even the most basic of paint and assembly techniques before peppering their model with a bunch of gimmicks.

I agree; BMF is fine, flocking isn't. Even though to me it's a paint technique. As for filling/assembling a multi-piece body, you are allowed to join the parts together and "finish" the joins. I would assume OOB would also allow filling of sink marks, so as long as you are filling as a finishing technique and not to make any design changes, it's okay. I use a lot of superglue/kicker for filling, so much faster and less hassle than mixing up putty. As long as you sand it when it's fresh, it's easy to sand.

I have a 1/12 scale diecast Viper (black, first generation). It's a beast. It was made by a company called JRL Toys from China. Nice model, probably can find them on Feebay. IIRC I paid about $100 for it. Toy Liquidators had a few in green for awhile (years ago), I think they were more like $65 there. They are probably the only large scale Vipers you will find. Twice the length, width, height of a 1/24 Viper.

I'm definitely interested in it.

I remember you saying that before...today I was looking at my Monogram 540K coupe (trying to find research...not easy), comparing it's details w/someone's Johan 500K on another forum. And after you mentioned the scale, I compared the Monogram 540K to the Italeri 540K that I recently built...they're the same basic size; length, width, wheelbase. Perhaps the 500K Johan did was shorter than a 540K? The bodystyle looks like it's based on a shorter wheelbase. Johan's kit was 1/25 scale, so it would look smaller by a good bit. I don't have a Johan 500K (yet). It's always looked a bit on the small size to me, but then again, many classic kits have been in 1/24 scale so the comparison isn't always clear. After comparing Monogram/Italeri 540's, I'm not convinced the Monogram is 1/22...if it is, so is the Italeri. But at least the two 540K's I have are the same size. I was concerned after reading your remarks that the Monogram kit would be a good bit bigger than the Italeri.

That would be cool. I'm amazed that more vintage Beetles haven't been done in resin (sad that Scale Kraft is gone...he did the most vintage Beetle stuff). Especially ones like this:

Read this!

That is amazing, great combo

You live in Illinois. You must pay an additional extortion fee to get your mail on time. Didn't you get the memo?

Just got mine in today's mail

They're pretty easy to find and pretty inexpensive to purchase without needing to make them yourself. Craft stores, art supply stores, Office Depot/Staples/Office Max should all have them.

Fred's Model World

I had a '90 SHO; bought it as a "program car" with 10K miles, sold it at 55K miles. What a screaming pile it was. The Yamaha engine was fantastic. The rest of the car around it was utter garbage. I was better off selling it vs. keeping it, as it was due for about $3K worth of service by the time I dumped it. The lack of a manual wasn't what killed the V8 SHO, it was the lack of HP. It barely had 240 HP, it was slower than the V6 SHO, and the competition was quickly coming up with far more HP than the old 3.0 liter Yamaha/Ford engines. In addition, the V8 SHO's were also overpriced (as were the V6's), and had that same horrific interior design as all '96 Taurii. Ford wasn't very good at keeping SHO owners happy. Every time SHO owners griped about the lousy transmissions/clutches/shift linkages/brakes, all they could say was "you'll LOVE the new one". Yeah, but there were plenty of us who would never consider a new one, if they could care less about what our current one was like. Then the V8 came out and it was pretty lame, so no...the "new one" was not loved at all by the V6 SHO owners. Typical of Ford of that era; I vowed never to buy another Ford product based on how awful my SHO was to deal with. It always had a list of issues to be dealt with. I'm so glad I had a good warranty; clutches didn't last much more than 25K miles. Brake rotors maybe 10K miles. The stereo failed twice. The ignition switch almost set the car on fire. The motor mounts broke early. The AC/Heat blend door failed. The driver's window failed. The sunroof rails failed. The car had rust before it was 6 mos. old. The paint was terribly pitted by acid rain damage. The thermostat failed. The oil pressure sending unit failed (good thing I saw the puddle of oil under the car). A portion of my wiring harness failed/shorted. At 55k miles the struts were almost completely worn out. The shifter was horrific. It was the most un-satisfying manual transmission/shifter that one could ever imagine. The car was purposely under-engineered by Fauxrd. Had some sort of Mazda transmission and Mazda clutch, neither intended for the purpose it was given in the SHO. My friends called it the SHI. I'd buy a 4 cylinder manual Fusion long before another overpriced Ford "halo" car. And to think I sold my beloved 88 Mustang 5.0 sedan for the SHI. Idiot.