Ace-Garageguy

And now for another way... Cut the Chebby like zo... Cut the Olds to match and drop in the donor roof and tail. You have to match the angles of the donor piece to the tops of the rear of the Olds doors... Line up the bottom of the beltline chrome of both parts (you will lightly file the top of the AMT donor chrome to match the top of the Olds chrome) and make sure the line of the windows is straight... Do it right, and you have very little fill work to do, and what there is is in the body crease...to me the easiest place to do it and get clean results. You WILL have to mildly reshape the leading edge of the roof panel and the corners of the windshield frame. Simple, and if you're careful, the '50 Olds windshield should still fit.

Have the engines back on the bench, as I've now got all the injector stacks and Hilborn bodies in one place (there's one more set of injectors in an unopened Thames kit).

Hokay, she's still moving, albeit slowly. After making up some front engine mounts, I shot the frame in SEM self-etching black primer, and then started filling the ugliness left behind from its gluebomb days. Sanded, re-shot with SEM. Much better, but still have a way to go. The SEM really shows up flaws, and also takes the Bondo-brand filler nicely with no adhesion problems. This shot also shows the very nice steel Ford wheels kindly sent to me by Joker. Mounted on old old AMT ribbed tires, they have the right look and diameter for the front. Not bad, but not done. A little more careful fitting, filling the corner and matching the curves of the bottom of the bellypan pieces. Now just have to copy it for the other side. Opened up the tonneau more for the base of the windscreen. Have to get Lefty to sit in her one more time to make sure everything is right.

Frankly, I was a huge fan of the Revell kits of that period (especially the Challenger and Showboat kits, and the truly great parts-packs). The detail was simply outstanding, especially for the time, and I always attributed the difficulty of getting everything to fit properly as a function of my own less-developed skills, and NOT as deficiencies in the kits themselves. The complexity of the Revell engines of the time, that went together more like REAL engines (rather than simple blobular halves), and the inclusion of tooling of some internal parts, was in a very large way responsible for my developing an understanding of how engines actually worked, and served to start me on my ultimate career path. I've recently been building a Challenger, and beginning restorations of some gluebomb '56 Ford truck and Chevy kits, and I find that the kits build beautifully if you have the patience and skills to make them work. No, they're not easy shake-the-box projects by any means, but to damm the kits as "finicky" misses the whole point of offering opening panels and a very high level of detail in general. The woody with all its opening panels (and all of its derivatives) is to my mind the best model A Ford ever offered, and I have amassed many of the things because the parts are just SO GOOD. Revell's current '50 Olds and '56 Ford kits are, to me, a return to what I think of as Revell's golden-age, and now that we know how good their kits can be with current technology, it's difficult to excuse major scaling and proportion errors.

Very clean. Love to "low bucks" local sponsorship concept too.

One source for a somewhat similar set is in the old AMT '49 Mercury.

No. Ferrari sued several manufacturers of Daytona look-alikes and essentially shut them down. The producers of the show agreed to destroy the replicas to avoid legal issues, and were offered two real Ferraris for season 3 onward. The Ferraris supplied to Miami Vice were Testarossa cars, not Daytonas. There also was a fake TR stunt car built on an old Pantera chassis.

Here we go again. Revell HAS made some beautiful stuff recently. But if you want to excuse poorly-measured work, excuse your own. Don't try to make "most modelers don't know any better anyway" excuses for professional tooling designers. People in the industry get paid enough to get major dimensions on model cars scale-correct. Expecting major dimensions to be correct IS NOT RIVET COUNTING.

Usually available NOS or used on ebay as that particular kit for between $10-$30, and in the old AMT 8158 "Blueprinter" parts pack. It also comes in the AllisonThunderland funny car kit, this older-issue AMT parts-pack, and the more recent multi-engine pack below (TDR also offers a 1/8 scale 3D printed version for under $300, if you want to go big):

More like a hot-rod wood chipper. Great way to get rid of the kids, and make concealment of the little corpses easier. Kiddie mulch.

In June.

All ya gots ta do is read the label. Some rubbing alcohol "products" have additives...kinda like pasteurized-process-cheese-food "American Cheese" isn't really cheese, you know?

Ah yes, like so many things in life, it just kinda depends on your perspective at any given moment... I had a girlfriend whose female roommate put up a huge, sealed-in-plastic poster of a shirtless Ponch in the shower. Talk about uncomfortable... I like Revell. Always have. I like pie too.

Depending on what kind of soap you use, it MAY leave a residue. You won't know until it fisheyes all over, and you have to strip it again. I started using 70% isopropyl as a final-cleaner on real $10,000+ car and aircraft paint jobs. We can't waste time and money stripping them if we go oopsey woopsey.

I ALWAYS scrub stripped models with Comet and plenty of hot water, with a toothbrush. Then, I ALWAYS thoroughly clean the model again with 70% isopropyl alcohol (available at the drug or grocery store, cheap). If I do these two steps, i NEVER have any problems.

You've no doubt noticed that not all wheels have exactly the same outside diameter. Depending on exactly what you've got, you'll have to remove material from the outside diameter of the wheel you want to use. I find the neatest results are achieved by chucking the wheel in a drill motor or variable-speed Dremel, and using it as a lathe to turn excess material off the wheel. It's important to keep whatever you use to sand the wheel rim exactly perpendicular to the wheel. A pair of digital-readout calipers makes the work quick and accurate.

Remarkably like the voting process.

This is a special bus that just hauls 4-6 really fat kids, right? i mean, what with the emergency ice-cream cone dispenser in front of it...

Yes, I think you may both right. I've seen other references saying they've never seen a '70 W-30 with power brakes too. I don't know for certain, one way or another. I have seen that body-shell presented as a W-30 car, with power brakes. Could have been a clone, or a downright fake, or a dealer installation, etc. I was just trying to clarify. primarily for the OP, that ANY '66 442 (or any car for that matter...unless it was being built very strictly showroom stock) could be correctly equipped with power brakes, one way or another.

The original question was about the '66 car. The OP is building a '66. Far as the '70 cars go, this is from http://www.442.com/oldsfaq/ofwmc.htm QUOTE: "W-31 A Cutlass w/350 CID performance option, not a 442 option. Technically, the W-31 was only built in 1969 and 1970. While not called a W-31, the equivalent vehicle was available and called the "Ram Rod 350" in 1968. All W-31's came with manual brakes only, due to the 308° duration cams (e.g. not enough vacuum to operate power brakes). But it's not hard to add a booster, though. You just need a reliable vacuum source." NOTE: A manual brake car would have a different diameter master cylinder from a power brake car, to increase mechanical advantage on the pedal. Power brakes could easily be fitted, as I said before, using the OEM master cylinder and booster. It would look just like a factory installation. The only difference would be a large vacuum can and / or an electric vacuum pump mounted somewhere. The silver thingy to the right is a typical electric vacuum pump, added to a normal power brake system. An auxiliary vacuum reservoir could be as simple as a 1-gallon fruit can (which some pop-up light Corvettes used as backup to lift the lights if the engine was stopped).

Yup. Regular "bondo" in the big cans is really too coarse in my opinion. Use 2-part finishing glaze. I used to swear by USC Icing (I build real cars and always have it in stock) but the Bondo Brand stuff shown above is even finer-grained and comes in small packages.

Bondo "Professional" 2-part (catalyzed) glazing putty. Available in smaller tubes too. This is the real deal. Learn how to use it, you won't be disappointed. Get it at the real-car parts store near you. To see a hood being made, click here... http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=96942

Have you seen John Teresi's model of it? Really incredible work... http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=38705