Ace-Garageguy

Very clean. Paint and foil work look just about perfect. Nice.

Cool. Looks like she's got the painting thing down pretty good already. Glad to see you have her using a decent respirator, too. Funny...that's exactly how I paint model parts...one hand gloved, holding the part taped to a stir stick, outside. Works great.

Last AMT '67 Galaxie kit I saw went for over 300 clams, a little steep to cut up...but choo just never know...

Cool project. The model looks very good. The Ford P68/69 was a fascinating but little known car...beautiful but unsuccessful...with a very low drag body design that also proved to cause poor stability. I'm sure you'll do it justice. Sure wish somebody made one in 1/24.

Elmer's or other white PVA (polyvinyl acetate) glues will work, but you need a lot of patience because they have to be completely dry before you can handle them. I use white glues frequently for evaluating exact fits and stance prior to final gluing, but again, overnight drying is sometimes necessary. Rubber cement is another option. It handles differently and is good for different things. One of the most useful "temporary" glues I've found is actually liquid model cement itself...but only a TINY DROP, just enough to get a very light solvent joint that can be easily broken. For this method to work, the parts have to fit very well at the point of contact.

This is the image to take to the bank (blue car). Note that the stance in the factory literature closely matches the stance I showed in the first photo (white car, though its nose is just a tick down). When photographed square from the side, the top curve of the front tire is tangent with the curve of the wheel opening on the fender. Many things can affect how a car's static stance appears. A car photographed going uphill (as the red car above); a full tank of fuel; rear springs weakened and sagging over time (common on these cars, even "unrestored stock"'); steering angle of the front wheels (which can raise the nose slightly); cars photographed under acceleration, as are several of the examples above (and the source of much of the misunderstanding of "gasser" stance); cars photographed from any angle other than square from the side (unless one is VERY familiar with the subject, it's almost impossible to get useful data from a 3/4 shot as far as exact stance goes); front springs replaced with higher-rate units, and ride height not correctly dialed in to compensate (which, on these cars, can require trimming partial coils from the springs, which requires spring removal, sometimes several times to get it right...and is often neglected as being too much like actual work); misinterpreting a rising body line (as mentioned by AFX)...and it should be remembered that the line of the rocker panel relative to the pavement is what determines nose-high or otherwise. A point about "pro touring": Cars worthy of the name are built on entirely upgraded suspension systems, often with engine setbacks to improve weight distribution, and often lowered to further improve handling as well. Stock stance has nothing to do with it, and no professional car builder who understands vehicle dynamics 101 will ever let a nose-high car leave the shop.

This is as-delivered new.

While the builder / owner has every right to tart his car up any way he pleases, I also have the right to my opinion, and the right to voice said opinion, that it has the artistic merit of smearing excrement on a wall, or mounting two dozen illuminated plastic flamingos to a Ferrari 275GTB, with deck screws and paste. While there are many in the world today who insist that there is no such thing as objective beauty, that everything is relative, so everything...no matter how inept, tasteless, or downright ugly...is of equal value and merit, I am not among them. This piece of "art" just recently sold for $120,000. Is it "of any less value/ambition than that of our desire to build scale models of (fill in the blank)"? To my way of thinking, a resounding YES.

I'm a lucky man, as my local provisioner stocks both. Eating Oscar Meyer dogs makes me think of salted snot, boiled in a balloon.

Yup. "Oooooo...I want to take my kinda cool old car and make it into a rolling billboard for carbonated sugar-water". It's so inspiring that people still have meaningful ambitions.

The chocolate porter is a bigger story...

As always, you hit the period feel dead on. Colorful, interesting cars, no two alike back then. Very nice.

Palmer. A real beauty, eh?

Most of the work will be the roof and tunneled decklid, obviously. I'd try a Jag XK-E or a Lindberg GT-6 roof for starters. Neither kit is much good for anything but a parts donor.

No Coke. Petsi...

Thank you. I'm looking into that possibility as we speak...

That looks a lot better than I would have expected from that horrible kit.

One of the easiest to adapt to other cars is in the Phantom Vickie kit. The front suspension mounts to a crossmember that's molded as a separate part, and it can be made poseable, or lowered, quite easily. Page one of the thread below shows what it looks like being installed.

You are correct. Ford began making electric start available on its cars in 1920. This is the switch pictured above, listed as fitting 1928-1931 model A Fords. The pushrod, under it, is what goes through the firewall, and you step on it.

I agree with you completely, sir. The Ford exercise looks better than just about any restyle I've ever seen. The lines of the original are nice, but Mike's condensation of what's already good makes a striking improvement. Kinda like cooking a sauce down to intensify the flavor. His restyle shrinks a wallowing boat down to a nicely tossable package, but retains a distinctly American feel. I can envision that body built in composite materials, over Corvette C5 chassis and running gear to give it handling and performance to match its looks...but maybe with vintage Ford 5.0 pushrod or even Coyote power.

Be cognizant of the fact that if the C-pillar on the very well proportioned restyling exercise presented here was as wide horizontally as those referenced, the visual center of mass would be where the leading edge of it is in the exercise...precisely where you want it to be. Also be cognizant of the fact that the intersection of the lower rear line of the sail panel and the horizontal element of the quarter panel on all your examples of "correct" is directly over the rear edge of the tire...precisely where it is on the exercise. Further, be cognizant of the fact that the proportions of the Saab and the exercise bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever.

Very sorry for your loss, sir.

Hmmmmm...I've seen a lot of cars, either in the flesh or in photos, but I've never seen one of those. Interesting little guy.

Pedros flew air rescue and support through '75 in Southeast Asia, though the Hueys were more universally known.