Fat Brian

The Auslowe 6v-71 would be fairly accurate and would fit under that short hood.

Well, each barrel of a carb doesn't feed only one cylinder, early V8s ran one a single barrel carb. The area of an intake manifold under the carb is open and the runner to each cylinder connects to this common area, think of a bucket with as many holes as there are cylinders around the bottom. The vacuum of the engine draws in the air/fuel mixture through however many carbs there are up there and into the common area where it's drawn into the individual cylinders on their intake stroke. Here is a diagram that kind of shows how all the intake runners come together under the carb.

I had a seller do that to me after I asked a question about a kit they had listed as Buy it Now. I had just bought a sealed Transtar 4070A for close to $100 and when I opened it the cab was crushed so when I found a good price on a Revell K100 with only one picture I sent a message to the seller asking if the kit was in good condition. She flipped and cussed me out and raised the price on the kit about 20%, needless to say I passed on that one.

I have to agree, one seller has the Truckin' USA van I recently picked up listed for $200. I won mine in an auction for $41 and it was still bagged inside. You really have to do your homework, if you impulse buy you're very likely to over pay. I know the sellers are being kind of predatory but as a buyer if you drop that kind of cash without comparison shopping it's as much your fault as there's.

That's what happens when the molds get modified, the previous version gets scarce. If demand gets high enough maybe a resin caster will fill the void.

The DM 600 is fine for the MPC/AMT dump bed like in the Ford snow plow and Paystar kits but the chrome Revell bed is probably out of it's weight rating. I see trucks like this with that size of bed almost daily. Those wheels would be accurate, you could get the truck with the kit style spokes, two hole Budd wheels or the aluminum Alcoa wheels.

When we compare Tamiya and Fujimi to Revell and AMT we're leaving out one significant part of the equation, the imported kits cost twice as much if not more than the domestic offerings. Would the market bear new US kits costing $50 a piece if it meant gettting better results? What if the US companies would adopt a pricing structure like the Japanese, reissues of older tools are cheaper than brand new subjects?

Attaching the valance first lets you paint it with the body which is nice but it makes getting the grill in a pain. I think this is how I did mine, try this and see if you like it. I remember putting the valance on and the radiator support in and being able to drop the grill throught the hole in the radiator support and position it. Test this before gluing anything in place because it was a long time ago that I did this and I might have forgotten something. If this works go ahead and make sure the grill fits the valance well before gluing it in so you've got more room to work with it.

After a few emails with the builder he said it was a Corvette orange metallic with gold flakes in the clear coat, I think this car looks pretty similar.

Parts 84 is either an amplifier or cd changer, I never figured out what went on the package shelf.

The five spokes look incredible Mark. Getting down to brass tacks, what is the ballpark for a set of these?

For me, my ideas are ambitious but frequently outpace my skills. I can't seem to stick to just the parts in the box and eventually I hit a wall where I can't make an acceptable fix and end up shelving the build. I'm trying to make a concentrated effort to stick to one project start to finish, it's just hard because I have so many ideas floating around.

The Johan one from the Mustang and Pinto drag kits are really good, you might find one cast in resin.

B-n-L casts a 69-70 grill.

I would love truly staggered wheels like these. One of my biggest gripes with modern kits is that they don't offer realistic wheel widths. When I had my SC 300 I ran 235/30/18s in the front and 345/35/19s in the back on 18x8.5 and 19x9.5 wheels and it is nearly impossible to find similar fitment in the model world.

Harry, I think part of the reason for the lowering of expectations is that it's become so hard to hold any one person accountable for anything. Think about the last few times you've been wronged, how many times was it an individual versus a cog in a nameless, faceless multinational corporation or governmental morass? We've become so accustomed to these various degrees of injustice that we have lowered our threshold for what "good" is.

Like others have said most of my really bad ones got burned or blown up years ago. Now if one is going awry I just put it back in the box until either I figure out how to do it correctly or my skills get better and I can realize my vision.

This looks really sharp and several will be coming home with me.

I'm so glad to hear this, I haven't bought one online because I've been waiting to see if HL got them.

One will be getting a dump bed and another a mixer, I might get a few more for maybe a crane truck or a removeable container truck.

I always thought they were powered by the steering system somehow but after some reading most seem to work like casters and just follow the angle between the front and rear tires. Hendrickson makes a system that uses some air pressure from the bags to re-center the wheels but they don't "steer" as we think of it. All of the Hendrickson systems say to lift the axle in reverse because it can't follow correct going backwards.

I've never encountered an unbuildable kit but there are many that aren't worth the effort to fix them when better alternatives exist. The AMT 69 Daytona was one for me, I already had the Revell ProModeler version but picked up the AMT kit up to see what it was about. I picked over the few parts worth keeping, used the body for paint testing, and the rest went in the trash can. To me there was no point in using my time polishing excrement when I had a better alternative. There are times when a bad kit is all we have and I don't mind putting the work in but I try not to punish myself when I don't have to.

There are instructions somewhere to build one out of a plastic tub and simple exhaust fan. The biggest thing is to be sure the fan is intrinsically safe so you can spray flammable paints in it.

If you already have the Freightliner then build it, it's not so difficult that you should trade it. The only real issue is the multi-piece cab but it's not that bad. Don't worry about saving the rivets on the roof, their over done anyway. Loosing them makes fixing the seam on the roof much easier. Be sure to sand the edges of the interior tub to keep it from fitting too tight or it can split the cab after it's painted. You might as well learn on a kit that's cheap and easy to replace.

All of the old AMT kits take a lot of test fitting and truing up the parts to get a good fit and keep things straight. I can't speak for the Kenworth but the Freightliner does take some work but can be built into a nice looking piece.