Ace-Garageguy

YES. on the frame. Rather simple, more "stockish" rectangular tube frame with a molded-in rear floor. I don't have the latest Revell one-piece truck cab in stock, but the AMT flip-nose looks like it should fit the old Revell SWC Willys OK (both on the bench as we speak). The AMT nose is cut through the rear of the fenders...the entire fender does NOT come up with the nose, so that will take some careful work. Also, the AMT front wheel openings are somewhat larger and shaped differently from the old SWC body. Why not just cut the fenders loose on the body you have and graft them to the hood, making your own flip-nose? Then everything should fit well. The engines in the AMT kits are Oldsmobiles, by the way.

I do a lot of hacking, splicing and heavy mods (this is some of my work-in-progress) I would respectfully suggest that measuring and cutting CAREFULLY are the most important parts of the procedure. If you're NOT concerned with saving the '65-'66 donor, cut the area you want to transplant somewhat larger than what you think you'll need, and cut far enough away from the gill detail so you won't go into it during the graft. Cut the receiving body a little undersize, so you can CAREFULLY file it to EXACTLY follow the lines of the transplanted part. NOTE: To get the cleanest job on this vintage Corvette, I'd personally cut both lower fender panels away from the bodies on the door cut-lines and at the character line (the raised peak on the fender). I'd CAREFULLY fit the panel to be transplanted to the body that's receiving it, being very CAREFUL to get the wheel openings, the door cut-lines and the character lines lined up PERFECTLY. Use a 32-tooth per inch razor saw to make the cut on the character line, and deeply scribe the door cutline with an X-acto or the tip of the razor saw, then snap it off. Because you cut the receiving body undersize, you can file the area CAREFULLY right up to the character line and the door cut-line. And because you cut the donor panel area slightly OVERSIZE, you can file the new panel to match the cut-out portion of the receiving body. Doing the graft on the character line and the door cut-line allows you to hide the graft in the cut-line by simply re-scribing it once your glue has set up, and hiding the graft and finishing bodywork on the edge of the character line is far far easier than trying to do bodywork in the panel, adjacent to the gills. Again, get things fitting PERFECTLY, and use a quality liquid cement to put everything back together. LET IT DRY THOROUGHLY. You will definitely want to reinforce the back-side of the graft seams with something. I personally use epoxy resin and very fine fiberglass cloth for this, but a lot of folks seem to have good results using strips of sheet styrene.

If the model is glued together with a solvent-type glue, then no, brake fluid has no effect. Solvent glues actually melt the plastic and fuse the two parts together. There is a huge (21 pages) paint stripping thread with all your answers at the top of this heading, called ''Paint Strippers-What to Use?" If that's too hard, click here...http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=83153

Why bother building a half-azzed model for $20? i don't get it. No satisfaction in doing mediocre or worse work...to me anyway. Sure not worth $20 to me to build crapp to pass on to someone who doesn't know any better. But I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. An aviation shop I worked at for a while got $15k to $35k (the shop rate back then was $35 per hour...you do the math) to strip and refinish composite sailplanes. It's highly skilled work, cause you CAN'T use chemical stripper, and if you go too deep with the sander, you've destroyed a $100,000+ airplane. Plus, the 30 foot wings have to be blocked dead straight, several times. We did close to perfect work, and the aircraft that came out of our shop looked at least as good as new, with better finishes that would last MUCH longer than the factory gelcoat. Guy comes in wanting a price and goes away shaking his head. Brings the airplane back in a couple of weeks, all proud and wanting to show us up," 'cause he did it hisself and saved a hole lotta money". It looked like it had been painted with used rollers and dirty brushes by drunk chimps (or drunk 5-year olds) with sander gouges in the fiberglass that weakened the structure. He had his wife with him, and apparently she was just as clueless. When we asked her how long he spent on it, she beamed and said "oh my... 2 whole weekends !!!". It looked like it, too.

Thanks again for all the enthusiastic and positive comments. I'm really trying to get a few minutes in on it every day, just to keep it moving forward...at least a little.

Without doubt the most heavily modified '49 Merc I've ever seen. Nice craftsmanship marrying all those disparate elements.

The Fiat 500 "Topolino" represented in that kit was produced looking much the same from about 1936 until 1949. You should be safe calling it a late-'30s car. Some history... http://www.fiat.com/fiatpedia/heritage/fiat-500-topolino#

Mitch, a lot of online photos can be copied here just by right-clicking on them to get the dialog box up, left-clicking "copy image", and then coming back to this site, positioning the cursor where you want the photo and doing Ctrl-v. SOME photos won't copy, and you'll get a "that photo extension isn't allowed" or something like that. You can still get them to copy, usually, by copying on to your hard drive, and then re-copying on to Photobucket (and I assume Fotki). Then just copy the image link into your response window.

Ah yes, a woman in action. Take her to the paint store and let HER pick the color. Colors don't usually look the same on the computer, either, because of variances in monitors, etc.

Yup. Color, stance and overall look are spot-on. Very nice.

Great looking cars. Love the Stude.

I've kinda noticed lately that a lot of colors from earlier periods seem to be getting recycled on late-model cars. In some cases, they're kinda close, and in some, they're dead on. Depending on how close you want to get, you can buy "chip-book" single color sheets on ebay to get chips of the exact color for a particular year car, and then go Duplicolor-shopping at the old auto-parts store to get a close match. Duplicolor has a HUGE range of pre-mixed rattlecan colors, and not all stores have the same color selection.

Nice looking work on this model, and too bad you had the paint problem so close to the end. Maybe the paint demons crept in because they were offended by the car being referred to as a "shoebox". The actual "shoebox" Ford is this earlier 1949-1951 design...

Great looking clean build of a kit that has a rep for being difficult. Very nice work.

Cool concept, colors, stripes, stance, wheels...very nice indeed....and something that would be a real kick to do in 1:1.

One of my favorites.

It's kinda blobular to be much of anything, BUT the 3-on-the-bottom, 1-in-the-center-top bolt layout on the valve covers (the one on the right is installed upside down) identifies it as a "Windsor" family Ford engine (221-260-289-302-351W, from 1962 onwards). The 289 was indeed run in GT-40 cars, and it would have had pipes and a transaxle like your model. I have no idea which kit it may be from though.

Kinda like the Fed fining folks who can't afford health insurance for not having it, eh? "Let's see...they don't have enough money to buy health insurance. Hmmm...here's a good idea. They have very little money, so we'll take MORE of their money to punish them for not spending money they don't have. Yeah, that'll work." Morons. Sorry...not PC. Oops.

Thanks Ray. I'm going for more of a Mopar "the beat goes on" period vibe now...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ewp3EpKmZs

Good point made and conceded. But "tasteless" sells to the vast majority. I guess that's the real reason why the PC police are coming...to protect society from tastelessness.

There's simply NO logic here. Why, oh WHY, would anyone name a sports team for something they looked DOWN upon ??? These "Indian" names were chosen, again, to denote the bravery (like in "Braves", ya' know?), spirit, ferocity and tenacity of tribal warriors. Nothing racist or derogatory implied. But wait...naming teams for anything that implies CONFLICT or COMPETITION should surely be outlawed as well. Maybe teams should be named for warm fuzzy things instead, like the Little Kittys, or the Gerbils.

Porsche 550 Spyder replica (Beck). Soon anyway...currently putting the engine back together. After that one, there's an '86 MR2, getting headers, a light flywheel, dual Dellorto side-draft 2bbls and a 2-inch lowering job, with about 400 pounds taken out. Then to finish the '74 Porsche 911 Targa-based, 911 Speedster widebody semi-replica (chopped windshield and turtledeck). Steel 930 flares, Weber 40IDA-3 carbs, headers and again, as much weight taken out as possible, and as low as possible. The '86 Jag XJ-6 is running again, but an iron LS engine is starting to look pretty good for a swap. Already did a 700R4 gearbox, and it made a world of difference. Both GM trucks are still "resting".

These shots of the production version of the engine from a circa '62 Tempest show pretty clearly the obvious half-a-V8 look. Bearing this in mind, you could fairly easily cut one of the old Revell parts-pack engines down to make a convincing 4, just like the MT engines.

Well, while folks of non Native-American lineage are being all distraught about the words "Indian" and "redskin", it just MIGHT be good to take a minute and think about the fact that MOST OF US are living on land effectively STOLEN from the indigenous people. Of course, it's a lot easier to get all uptight about the political correctness of a label than it is to take a hard look at the real moral issues, isn't it?? I mean, I don't see many (any?) "redskin" protesters standing in line to give their real estate back to the tribe that rightfully owns it.

Just had to replace my antique WindowsXP system with a Win7 machine (interesting that it crashed relatively soon after TinyLimp stopped supporting XP) and naturally, many of my old programs and periferals are not compatible, entirely, with the "new improved" O.S. The most annoying is the Nikon PictureProject that was a real sweetheart of a one-stop editing and photo transfer tool. I CAN use it under Win7, but I have had to devise cumbersome workarounds. The functionality of Photobucket is changed as well, though it still works...just differently. Happily for me, I was able to transfer all of my important files and photos to the new system, but getting to them and being able to actually use them is a little bit of a hassle.