Monty

Thanks, Tom. Just pronouncing "bumbers" should give you a clue that you've misspelled it. . Here's another one: the word is lens, not lense.

IIRC, Model Master paints allegedly use more finely ground pigments.

You're screwed as far as the 'Vette goes. Your only options in 1/25 scale are the less-than-spectacular AMT kit and the Revell snap kit. I had hoped that Revell would produce a real model of this car, but somehow Revell's brain trust determined that an iconic car that appeals mostly to adult males over 50 should be modeled as a 'tard toy, 'cuz we all know that the kids who know nothing about the real car will buy anything as long as it's a snap kit. Neither company will ever bother to retool their respective kits, so rob the other Revell C3s & improvise wherever you have to. For being a simplistic, 2-metal-axle model, I've heard this kit has more than its share of ill-fitting parts etc. I'd love to see Revell take a shot at it, with a skill level equivalent to, say, their '69 Nova. I wonder if you meant the MPC '67 GTO. It's an absolute turd on stilts compared to Revell's '66 Goat. Not that you asked, but I don't think anyone's happy with AMT's '65 GTO either.

Nice body of work! We seem to have similar tastes in kits, but I really like that T-bird. Could I trouble you for some engine, chassis and interior pictures? Did you use a hobby red or something from Dupli-Color for the body? It's a beautiful shade.

The shade of gold is perfect for what I want, but the reason I'm asking for pics is because this paint comes from Testors' One Coat line, and I'm concerned that it will have the same overly large (IMO) "flakes" that many of the other paints in the One Coat line have. I'm trying to avoid that look. TIA for any pics you can share

A couple months ago I bought a small quantity of 23 ml jars of Tamiya acrylic paint, including XF-56 Gray Metallic, from a highly reputable online site I've used numerous times before. The paint is the exact shade I wanted for certain applications, but it separates out quickly, even after being mixed thoroughly with my Badger paint mixer. Within hours, the paint will devolve into silver elements at the bottom of the jar and an inky black residue at the top. One of the other jars I bought was Tamiya's X-13 Metallic Blue. Unlike the gray, it's a gloss color, but it doesn't show any signs of separating out. I guess I never figured I'd see this kind of thing in a Tamiya paint product, so I was surprised. Has anyone else experienced this?

Wow, what's not to like? The interior and chassis look remarkable, the body and paint are sharp & I'll give you major kudos for the job you did scratchbuilding your own bumper. That said, it's what's under the hood that really sells it for me. Between the imposing engine and the "tinwork" that makes up the inner fenderwells, there is some exemplary work worth checking out here. Impressive results for something that started out as a gluebomb.

Jonathan, what paint did you use on yours?

What an interesting twist! Most of us enjoy taking a mainstream car and turing it into a street machine, but he turned a true factory muscle car into a mom's car. Kudos for nailing the interior & exterior colors from back then, too.

As you know, BMF is generally only applied to body trim pieces, and all the articles I'd read on applying this stuff said to make sure it was burnished down as much as possible to prevent future lifting, so that's what i did. The BMF is just clinging exceptionally well to the body's trim areas. The rest of the body is back to Monogram's original orange.

Sounds silly, I know, but I'm getting nowhere. I'm trying to redo the paint on a Boss 429 I built back in the early '80s. Several years ago I used Scalecoat to remove the Testors enamel paint on the body, but the BMF doesn't want to budge. Apparently I burnished it exceptionally well, since there's no obvious ragged starting point where I can start peeling it off. So far I've tried: Purple stuff, Polly S Easy Lift Off & 91% rubbing alcohol, with no visible success. Suggestions?

Well said. Thanks!

Wow, I love how this turned out!. Fantastic color combination & assembly work, Carl! What did you use for the silver paint on the roof?

Don't mind me, I'm just finishing off an old thread with a mild rant. I would've written this sooner, but apparently none of the hobby stores around here plan to ever carry these "trend" paints, so I finally had my lhs special order a few of the ones I was interested in. The first thing you need to be aware of is the cost issue. These paints are only available in the little 1/4 oz jars of our youth, but they're priced @ $1.85 a jar. I'm always on the lookout for some great new shade of color that'll really make a model stand out, so I bought a couple bottles of each, just in case they turned out to be unique enough to make that happen. Turns out they're not unique at all. When I saw that they'd created a paint called "Honey", I had high hopes for a translucent golden yellow. They bottle may have been labeled "Honey" but the paint itself was nothing more than standard yellow. The next bottle was labeled "Caramel", and I envisioned using it as the basis for something like Mopar butterscotch paint or an interior color. Nope. It's pretty much a poor man's version of Tamiya's Camel yellow. OK, so those were a letdown. Let's see if Testors did better with some variations on red. I've got a kit in the on-deck circle that I have every intention of painting cherry red, but it sure as heck won't be this formulation. Anybody wanna guess why Testors would make a paint called Cherry and make it a flat color? One last try: How hard can it be to mix up some maroon, Testors? Apparently much harder than I thought. I'm not sure I can describe what the actual color is, but I can categorically say it's not maroon. I've sprayed Tamiya's maroon. I've polished Tamiya's maroon, and Testors, your stuff ain't worthy of the name maroon. Take-home lesson: Skip the Testors "trend" paints. They're expensive, and you probably already have that shade somewhere in your paint collection. But I'm not bitter....

If you're just talking about the cab, hood & sleeper, you could probably get by with the smaller jar (10 ml) although I don't know if that'll allow you to do stages (mist coats building up to wet coats). I'd say go with the big (23 ml) jars. They're generally only about $1.00 more, and you have more than twice as much paint on hand if you need to do repairs / resprays or multiple coats. Just out of curiosity, what color are you considering?

That updates itself automatically, more or less. I basically click OK and Finish.

See Nick? That's why I hoped Steve would jump back in. I knew there was something goofy about the engines. If memory serves, Steve built a killer blue '72(?). Maybe he'll post a pic of it here. Steve, you're probably right, although I doubt MPC was the first model company to copy someone else's product. I love the '66 & '67 Toronados, but the JoHans were always way out of my price range. I happened to get my MPC for an unexpectedly low price off ebay awhile back, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was fairly well detailed all the way through, including the undercarriage (as compared to most MPC chassis).

I've recently noticed that my computer is having problems with YouTube. Long story short, I can only watch about half the videos I pull up. Others will either just play the audio track and leave the screen black, or else not play at all. My computer is only a couple years old and has fairly decent memory, processor, 64-bit blah, blah, blah, so this recent inabiity to play everything I find on YouTube is puzzling. I'm not a computer guy, so keep that in mind when/if you decide to respond. Thanks!

I know that MPC did a '67, and it's not a repop of the JoHan kit. Steve M. might be able to provide a little more clarification, but I've been told all the '66-'70 JoHan Toronado engines are actually Cadillac engines from the Eldorado kits (also FWD) but with Olds valve covers.

I think that's backwards logically. Yes, the younger they are, the more simplistic the kit should be. The same 14 year old who can find cheat codes for WoW, Halo etc (I'm not a gamer) can't figure out a printed instruction sheet? 14 year olds can't handle painting a kit? If 14 year old kids haven't matured enough to deal with glue models, I don't want them anywhere near real cars when they turn 16. Eventually, I'll reach the age where I'm lumped in with the old guys on the board, but most of us were building (gluing!) and painting out kits at an early age. Take off the water wings and swim!

I agree with Niko on this. Even without someone else's assistance, a 14 year old should already possess the brains to interpret the instructions on an average glue kit (such as the Revell Basic Builders Niko mentioned) as well as the dexterity to put it together. IMNSHO, if snap kits are to be recommended at all, they should be relegated to kids in the single-digit age range. I've never understood the "dumb-it-down" mentality that seems to go along with "snap" kits. My first car model was Revell's notorious '55 Chevy with opening doors etc. I'm not going to lie and say it went together easily, but it turned out OK considering that it had been built by an unassisted 8 year old. I wasn't exactly resilient back then, but I knew that that building experience would teach me lessons that would serve me well as I continued building.

He told me it's getting harder to find collections of kits to resell, which was the major reason for the lack of an update in November. Apparently more & more people are selling their stuff on ebay instead. Wish I would've known about him years ago.

Felipe, welcome to our board! My compliments for taking the time to fix that front attachment seam. 99% of the people who build this kit never address that, to the detriment of the model. I see you've done some nice work on the engine and interior, too. We look forward to seeing your other projects.

Wow, looks like everybody used up all the good superlatives, so I'll just offer you my compliments for fastidious assembly work as well as choosing an outstanding paint color combo and applying it perfectly. Kudos also for the interior upgrades and the chassis mods which allowed you to run that wheel/tire combination. Hope to see more of your work soon.

I purposely used the phrase "poser parade" precisely for the reasons you mentioned. It's stupid and dangerous, and its only real purpose is to gain the approval of others with the same mentality. "Hey look everybody, my tires stick out at an angle!" Obviously, lowering a car can result in better handling if used with the correct suspension & tires, but these Hellaflush setups aren't meant for anything but short drives. Again, unsafe and pointless to all but the attention-horses (trying to avoid naughty points) who drive them. I was fortunate that I was surrounded by car-smart people when I was building my street machines, and I think their advice still has merit: performance issues should only be considered once you've made sure the car is safe and reliable first. This speaks to your T-bucket point. All speed and almost no brakes? No thanks. I never went in for the Pro Street look either, so I'm not the one to ask about their handling issues. OTOH, consider what's being done in Pro Touring. Incredible engines, brakes and handling packages - that's a trend I can embrace.