Monty

My compliments! The effort you put into the paint and assembly resulted in a beautiful build. Can we see the engine & chassis?

One of my all-time favorite sports cars. Lookin' good so far. I've never built a Hasegawa kit, so I'd appreciate your insights as the build proceeds.

I prefer to build the majority of my models in a mostly replica stock manner, so when I come across a kit with scribing cut into the underside of the hood for the use of a tunnel ram or blower setup, I want to find a way to "restore" the factory stock look to the hood, including the cross-bracing etc. Here are some solutions I've heard about but haven't tried yet. My follow-up questions are in blue. 1) Fill the gaps with Evergreen/Plastruct strips and Tenax/Pro-Weld. Obviously feasible, but will the melting properties of the glue seep through the thin surfaces of the scribed areas and mar the top surface of the hood? 2) Fill the gaps with Milliput (white). I've been told this stuff doesn't shrink & dries incredibly hard. If I use a glue like Tenax, will the thin strips of Evergreen cross-bracing strips adhere to it? 3) Fill the gaps with Tamiya putty (white). Never used this stuff before either, but heard lots of good things. If I use a glue like Tenax, will the thin strips of Evergreen cross-bracing strips adhere to it?

As I said on the Spotlight Hobbies board, I think this is your best work yet.

Did you ever run across any info as to why they decided to paint parts of the front pink? Was someone else running a gold Mark II there? Did you ever build any of the IMC/Testors kits? If so, I'd love to see those sometime too.

IIRC, your Holman-Moody car finished 3rd at Le Mans in 1966, while two Shelby American-built Mark II's took 1st and 2nd. If you had the time and inclination, this would make a killer diorama.

The Corvette I owned for 20 years gave me great handling and straight line performance. The downside was having to toe the line on the speed limit while every metallic beige Camry ever made could do 15 over with impunity.

First, if I hadn't been an "enthusiast", I wouldn't have cared and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Do your "finger-quotes" indicate that you find something demeaning about performance car enthusiasts? Hey, drive your Prius/Scion/Corolla and be happy. Just don't ask me to settle for those. Second, the anger was also directed at Ford for thinking they could just slap the Mustang name on anything and no one would mind. Unfortunately, Ford wasn't the only car company to do something like this. I'll quote myself from page 2 of this thread: Car names are evocative to a lot of us who grew up with the "real thing" which accounts for the howls of derisive laughter heard across the US when Oldsmobile watered down the soup one more time and issued the Calais-based 442 (What'd that stand for? 4 cylinders, 4 speed and 2 gauges?), or when Chrysler tried to pass off an Omni-based econobucket as a Charger. I'm sure there are a dozen other examples of this kind of thing going on in the auto industry and Mark Taylor explained why it happens. Just don't expect a real car enthusiast to give the watered-down versions a pass just because they carry the name.

I thought I explained it sufficiently. At the time, I was a Mustang enthusiast & to most people like me, "Mustang" meant American designed, V8-powered cars with rear wheel drive. The Probe lacked all of those attributes. To compound the error, there were no identifying characteristics that showed it was part of the Mustang's lineage, and there were a million jokes about the car looking like something Mattel had cooked up to sit outside Barbie's Dream House. The final nail in the coffin for Mustang enthusiasts at the time was the thought of their favorite car being just a Mazda derivative. Maybe I was lucky for having grown up when I did. I can't imagine bragging on a car whose performance could be called "zippy" or "peppy", although with today's gas prices hovering near $4.00 a gallon, I'll concede the point about mileage.

Because it would deteriorate from neglect. If you were to believe some in here, spelling doesn't matter.

NEVERMORE!

OK, I'm confused - are we talking about Sheriff John Darm or Omar Sharif?

Actually, I'm inclined to agree with you. The subject matter probably wouldn't appeal to younger buyers, which, I've been told, is the primary market for snap kits. OTOH, I'm still cranked at them for making their '63 'Vette a snapper when the tooling from the '67 'Vette could've provided the means to make it a worthwhile kit.

Yay! Moar Snap Tite kits! I can't git enuff Snap Tite kits!

You can still help! Feel free to send me all the parts that make up the chassis assembly and we'll call it good.

Tell me something, Gerald. Why is it that our Scandanavian members seem to have a better grasp of English in regards to grammar and spelling than some of our native sons? It's a second language for them. And since someone has already played the Grammar Police/Spelling Nazi card, I'll ask why anyone shouldn't be embarrassed not to know the difference between words like there, their and they're/ your and you're/ hear and here etc. Most people had learned to differentiate between these words by the end of second grade.

My thanks to all who helped! Casey, the pics sealed the deal. I appreciate it.

Well... I just Googled the name and found this from our very own forum a couple months ago. Some of the pics look pretty convincing http://www.modelcars...showtopic=28780 but Mark seems to be saying otherwise in his post above. Mark, if ya get a chance can ya post a pic or two of how it turned out for you?

Thanks, Mark!

Anybody remember the actual name of the stuff?

The point was, an adamant group of Mustang enthusiasts did what they could to prevent the newest version from becoming yet another Japanese-designed, underpowered wrong-wheel-drive car. The Mustang was an iconic car, and despite its humble Falcon ancestry, it was solidly 100% American. The thought of a Mustang based on Mazda designs was unthinkable. Good for Ford for finding a way to sell those Probes. We used to wonder if proctologists got discounts on them.

I remember years back when Mustang enthusiasts like myself learned that Ford was going to release a "new" Mustang with a wrong-wheel-drive chassis and no plans for a V8. There was no internet then, but the various Mustang magazine editors told us who to write and where to send the letters, and we did. By the ton. And Ford blinked. That car became the Probe, and thankfully it eventually died off. Deservedly so, in our opinion. I wish a similar campaign could've been set up to keep Chrysler from tarnishing the Charger name. Question for Mark Taylor: why didn't they just make the Magnum available as a sedan and a wagon? They were the same platform, weren't they? Car names are evocative to a lot of us who grew up with the "real thing" which accounts for the howls of derisive laughter heard across the US when Oldsmobile watered down the soup one more time and issued the Calais-based 442 (What'd that stand for? 4 cylinders, 4 speed and 2 gauges?), or when Chrysler tried to pass off an Omni-based econobucket as a Charger. Just seems strange that they went from that extreme to turning the current version into a dowdy Checker knock-off. Sometimes I swear "Chrysler" and "style" are mutually exclusive terms.

Is it available anywhere here in the US? If so, could you provide a link? If not, do you have a link to an easy-to-use Japanese site? RE Japan: Is everything back under control there (are orders shipping like they were before the storm?)

I've got an old jar of Polly S water-based acrylic paint that I found on a "Discontinued" rack years ago. (Original P/N 500817). Long story short, it has dried out and I'd like to find a way to revive it, since it's not available anymore. 1) What would be the best substance to use to try and revive it? (I have a Badger paint mixer...) 2) Being a water-based acrylic, and assuming we figure out a way to salvage the paint, what can I use to retard the drying time? I used to use this primarily for lettering tires,but I found that it dries too quickly and I can only do parts of a letter per stroke (think Monogram outline letters on their GT Radials). I'm really not looking for a substitute, primarily because I think this paint's slightly off white color looks more realistic than a stark flat white of most flat acrylics. (Look at your own white lettered tires when they haven't been freshly scrubbed for about a month).