Fat Brian

I had that kit saved in watch list but got a Model King DM800 reissue and another AMT K-100 instead, I got pretty good deals on both so I will have to catch the FLD another time.

Here is the thread from the truck section, this will tell you everything we know and will be the best place to find updates. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=64836

The biggest complaint is that the truck on the box is not what is in the box. The box shows a 379 long hood but you get the 378 regular short hood. That being said, it is a nice kit and would accurately replicate an owner/operator rig like the ones on IRT. The 378 can be used for moderatly heavy haul without too many mods to the kit, I see many in my area being used to move offroad equipment or oversize loads. The part that seems to intimidate most builders is the multi piece cab, mine went together well and was really a non issue. One tip is to use the cab floor as a guide to keep the sides straight. It really does fit together pretty well without too much drama.

There isn't a date yet, it was just announced a month or so ago. There may not even be a complete mold yet, we weren't given many specifics.

My company has a fleet of vehicles and in the US the government mandates that if your fleet is over a certain size that a percentage of your vehicles have to use an alternative fuel. Some of the vehicles my company bought were late ninties/early 2000's dual fuel Cavaliers that ran on gasoline and natural gas. The GM natural gas set up was really awful at the time and after a while the regulator would begin leaking gas into the intake and overnight the intake and air filter box would fill up with gas. Every morning when the drivers went to start their cars at least one of the thirty or so cars air intake tubing would literally explode. Most times it was just a little burp that would only pop apart the slip joints in the tubes but every once in a while it was a huge boom that blew apart the plastic tubes and air filter box, we even had to replace a few hoods that were pushed up from the inside by the force. Beyond this "feature", these cars were just complete garbage. We normally keep our vehicles until about 100,000 miles but these were costing us so much money to keep them going we started selling them early just to get rid of them.

The closest I've ever seen is AMTs 60 F100 promo. Here is a link to a resin 57 on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/...=p2047675.l2557

Thats interesting to know about the axle, I was thinking of switching it out to something more commonly seen.

The two pipes on the air filters means this truck has the tip turbine Mack engine. It was a king of bypass intercooler and was available from 285 to 315 and eventually 350 hp. This system was introduced in the mid to late seventies and was phased out in 86 when Mack redesigned the heads of their straight six engines.

In those days it wasn't uncommon for the cars to be driven to and from the track.

Ahh, the Quad 4, I had thought about posting about my time with the Quad 4 in here but it didn't seem fair because I got the car well after it's prime. We had a Quad 4 in a 91 Cutlass, the valvetrain was so loud at idle you had to turn it off to through a drive through. It finally met it's end under the rear wheels of a semi truck, thankfully no one was injured. The worst vehicle I have ever personally owned was an 89 F-150 4x4. Electrical problems, the TTB front end, an aenemic 302, just poor on so many levels. I fought and fought to keep that thing in running condition and it just wouldn't have it.

The door handle is a bit too high and the character line is not right between the rear window and the top of the rear wheel arch. It looks like the wheel arch is about a 1/16 inch too tall and the character line is about the same too low. The line should be at about a third of the way between the window and the arch but it's closer to half way to two thirds down.

I had an 89 F-150 4x4 with TTB and it was really bad. It was impossible to align and burned through tires every five to ten thousand miles. Everything on the front end needed to be replaced but by the time I owned it that would have pretty much totalled the truck.

The front suspension from the AMT kit is terrible, the Monogram parts are so much better.

My Dad bought a Tempo new in 89 and he put almost 300,000 miles on the car, it never gave us an unusual amount of trouble and was still in decent shape when he gave it to my sisters ex husband who proceeded to drive it into the ground.

It looks like Dodge does the same as Ford in that they add all of the extra bed length at the front of the bed which means you only need to cut one end off. Most fullsize pickup beds are 6 1/2 feet for the short bed and 8 feet for the long bed so will need to remove about three quarters of an inch from the the area ahead of the wheel wells. If you can find a 1:1 subject to get measurements from you can get the exact amout.

The twin I beam suspension came out in 65 for the two wheel drive trucks but the 4x4 trucks still used a solid front axle until 80 when the Twin Traction Beam or TTB front end was designed. Basically they took a Dana 44 center section and stuck it one of the I beams and then ran a drive shaft out of each end to the front wheels.

The front axle in the GMC kit is a Dana 44 which was used by Dodge during the same period. The transfer case in the GMC kit should be an NP205. Dodge used an NP203 in the late seventies but I bet no one will notice.

The wheels in the new 62 Vette look pretty close as well.

1. What is a model kit? A group of preengineered parts that when assembled replicate and object, either real or fictitious. 2. What activities (e.g. painting, sanding, burnishing) do you associate with modelling? Cutting, sanding, gluing, painting, mixing, measuring, testing, thinking, polishing, fitting, creating, comparing, researching, examining. 3. Do you follow instructions when building a model? It depends, if I'm not modifying the kit much I will use the instructions. Other times I only use them for certain parts like the engine for example, since the rest of the build may be mostly scratchbuilt or bashed to the point that no one set of instructions is really applicable. 4. How skilled are you at modelling? Overall I would say I'm average, I'm good at certain things but not so good at others. I'm pretty good at scratchbuilding, I have a fairly analytical/mechanical mind so I try to build things that are realistic regarding how they would function on a real vehicle. On the other hand, I'm not a very skilled painter or weatherer. It's partly due to not having an airbrush and partly because I just don't do it well. I'm also not a good "finisher" of builds, I tend to get distracted by something else before I can bring one build to completion. 5. What are kit conversions? Have you ever done a kit conversion? I imagine it is where you take one car and make it into either a different make of a similar car or differnt model of the same car. Body work isn't my strongsuit so I don't do major changes that will require a lot of cleanup. 6. What is kitbashing? Have you ever kitbashed? Kitbashing is taking parts from multiple kits and combining them in one build. I can count on one hand the number of kits that I have finished with only the parts that it came with. Of the over 200 kits I have there are probably a dozen that don't already have something from another kit tossed in the box, and that is only becuase I haven't figured out what to do with them yet. 7. What is the object of model-making? What is the end product? For me the end result has to psychological because I don't produce a lot of finished builds to speak of. It is an escape from the pressures of life and an outlet for creativity. I have always loved cars and trucks and mechanical things and this is a way to connect with that.

Maybe you could scratch something like this. You could use aftermarket interlocking tracks to do it, probably from a Panzer IV or a T-34 since Sherman tracks are so easily indentified.

I have the 71-73 Mustang and Pinto funny cars and they are very good, better than AMT was doing at the same period. The only thing that is odd is that the rear axle is tremendously out of scale, it looks like it came from a semi truck, but everything else is great.

There is a slight flared lip arounf the rear edge of the 32 grill shell, the Revell kit replicates chrome strip being placed around the shell. There are not dimples in the stock shell, the must be for headlight placement. Here is a pic of a replacement shell up close.

Multi-piece, they are easier to shorten or lengthen that way.

Oddly enough, even though the 4.3 is a v6 it has the small block bolt pattern since it is based on the 350 and shares it's internals. Just about any 90s GM kit with an auto transmission should have some variation of a 700R4, they were in just about everything and the difference between the V8 and V6 is pretty small.