Fat Brian

Good luck with that.

Did that version of the truck still have the bumper with GIANT engraved in it?

AMT originally made the BJ and the Bear truck and it was a standard length K100. Then they made the Papa and Hideout trucks with the super long frame and ramp body. Then sometime in the mid 2000s they reissued the long frame trucks but without ramp bodies. Did they mess the molds up for the regular length K100 to make the Papa and Hideout trucks?

I saw a W900L the other day that was about the color of the Pete above, it had all of the chrome blacked out and was running 6" stacks. It was really cool, I might try to build it one day.

That is seriously awesome, truly amazing!

There has to be a point at which the companies can still make money on a new tooling and people will still buy enough of them to make it worth the tooling cost. They won't be able to get $75 for a car kit of the level they turn out now but I don't think mid thirties is out of the question if the kit is good and has some build options.

I understand that, but a lot of the reason the reissues sell is that sometimes they are the only kit of the subject available. If given a choice between an old annual version of a kit and a fresh tooling I would buy the new tooling even if it cost more.

I have to agree on the dull blade, I use the back of a blade that the tip has broken off of to open doors and trunks and such. Start with light pressure, just following the line, then after a few passes you can begin to increase the pressure to cut deeper. When you use a new blade for some reason the tip won't follow the panel line at all but the dull blade will chase it like a champ.

I think one of the reasons car modelers are cheap is that the companies just keep recycling the same old molds over and over again. I think we've all been burned buying a kit at full price that turned out to be basically a box of unidentifiable lumps and flash. I wouldn't mind paying more for a kit that I know will be up to current mold making technology. The old kits have their place but would it kill them to retool some of the more popular vehicles from yesteryear?

That is why I still believe that doing this as part of a model contest or show would be best, that way the crowd is model people and would probably be most likely to bid a decent amount especially for a nicely built item. It also eliminates the tricky shipping phase of the transaction.

If we as a board wanted to do a charity auction we could set it up with ebay, they have a framework in place for creating listings and getting the proceeds to the approved charity. We could do a cbp and when it's over each person who participated would have to send their project to a point person who would make the listings and be responsible for getting the items shipped out to the auction winners. I still believe anyone could participate though, I wouldn't want to say that if you're not a master builder you can"t contribute. Here is a link to the Giving Works rules: http://pages.ebay.co...-nonprofit.html If this plan starts to get serious we should clear it with Greg.

That looks really good, one day I'll build mine.

The recently reissued AMT 55 Corvette, it was at Hobby Lobby on clearance for $7 and I still feel slightly cheated. The only one I can remember that was worse was the 69 Daytona that AMT had out a few years ago, I bought it at full price and was very upset that they would waste my money and their time by dusting off those wretched molds. I try to do my homework on kits before buying one, especially with their price now, but I still get bitten overy once in a while.

I would love that, the model companies need to look not only for interesting subjects that have never been kitted but also popular subjects whose kit is so outdated that it's begging to be done again with modern technology. It happens with armour and aircraft models all the time, it seems that some subjects get a whole new tooling every ten to fifteen years while we still get repops of 50+ years old kits.

I was just showing you the difference in the frames so you can ID the trucks on Dennis' site, someone who works for Bigfoot 4x4 and wrote the history of Bigfoot 3 I linked to has offered to help him fix the Bigfoot section but he won't let them. The truck above will most likely become Godzilla or Duraliner Giant when I get around to building it. Here is the original Dabney brothers Blue Thunder: This will become Bear Foot 2 or 3: This will be Pony Express: And these are just some things I was messing around with. I have about twenty replica monster trucks in various stages of completion.

Here is a long bed 80-86 truck I made using a Quadzilla kit and two Monogram Broncos. You have to use two Broncos the get the correct length behind the rear wheels. On Ford truck beds the distance from the rear wheels to the end of the bed stays constant between the short bed and long bed and flareside bed , all of the difference in length is added at the front of the bed, but the Bronco rear is too short to be correct. To get the length and proportions correct I used the bed side from the Monogram 87-91 extended cab long bed and cut the Broncos to match that bed side. If you wanted it in 1/25 you could probably use two of the AMT 80 Broncos that were recently rereleased and any of their 92-96 bodied trucks to get the cab roof, rear and glass. I don't have an AMT Bronco kit to test this, it's just a guess.

Unfortunately Dennis doesn't know 3 from 4 from his own behind, half of the pics he has listed as 3 are 4. The tell is that 3 has a drop in the frame under the cab because it used a strengthened stock truck frame where 4 used the straight frame rails from a semi truck. Look at the frame right under the rear corner of the front fender of the first pic compared to the same spot on the second pic. The first pic is 3 the second is 4.

I try to be a good citizen on the boards I frequent but I also like to know the lay of the land.

I would be on board for something like this. If we want to get serious about doing this we need to get a workable plan together to present to the various organizations. Some groups have charity auctions already so maybe we could do a cbp and then turn the finished models over to the organization to be included in the auction. We would need to know who to send them to and when they need to be there to be included in the auction. Since the object of a charity auction is not necessarily the quality of the product purchased but donating to the charity anyone should be able to participate since a contest quality build isn't really the point. I wonder if the NNL would be interested in doing this at the various contests accross the country. That would eliminate the logistics of shipping the models which may arrive broken and the bidders could pick up their purchase in person. Vehicles intended for the charity auction could be put on display in a certain area and at a given time the auction is held and the money collected and the models given to their new owners. Then the event officals can just turn over a chack directly to the selected charity. The bids for models might be higher from model people than the general public and we would just be making a straight donation to the given charity. I don't know, just spitballin' here.

Another question on points, do they ever expire? On another forum I'm on the amount of points given and how long they last are based on the severity of the infraction, I was just wondering if these points were similar.

Modern car parts look out of place on a rat rod but if you are doing a custom modern hot rod you could use a new Mustang or Vette engine. My left over bodies are usually used to test paint techniques or various paint brands for compatibility prior to shooting my actual build.

I was just giving you some more resources for pics and things, your build looks really good. I have some mirrors from the Monogram Bronco I can send you, they will be a touch out of scale but will be the correct style, pm me your address and I will get them out to you the first of the week.

I have used the Testors decal kit software and paper before, it works okay. I wouldn't recommend the Testors software, any photo editing software should do. This is a link for paint.net ( http://www.getpaint.net/ ), it's a free editing program that has pretty amazing functionality and is fairly easy to learn. The most diffficult part for me was knowing when there is enough of the protective spray on the sheet to keep the ink from running.

Yes, that Revell kit is the snap version. This version, with the flat top sleeper, is the full detail kit http://www.amazon.com/Kenworth-W900-Tractor-Revell-Germany/dp/B001TLV62U/ref=pd_sbs_t_7

You did right by going for Bigfoot 3 with this kit, it's closer to 3 than it is to any other truck. Still there are some issues though. First, Bigfoot 3 had an engine with Boss heads for its entire lifetime as a competition truck, you can always tell 3 from 4 or 6 and 7 by the Boss heads since they had regular 460 style heads with Bigfoot cast into them. The engine in the kit is totally wrong, it's an FE family engine (390,427,428) with 385 series (429, 460,514) valve covers intead of being the correct 460 based engine in the actual truck. Second, the non-planetary chrome wheels in the kit were never used with the body in the kit. Around the same time that the truck was rebodied with the 87-92 style body it was also updated to planetary hubs like Bigfoot 4 had. It wouldn't be very hard to make the correct hubs since the hub faces used were just flat pieces of steel with eight or ten bolts around the edge. Here is a great source for monster truck photos, almost every truck ever made is shown here although some of the sections are a little disorganized: http://monsterphoto....com/gallery.htm Here is a link to a history of Bigfoot 3: http://www.bigfoot4x...f3_history.html Here is a pic of Bigfoot 3 with the original body showing the Boss valve covers and the non-planetary chrome wheels: Here is a pic of Bigfoot 3 with the body in the kit with the planetary hubs and white wheels: Here is a pic of Bigfoot 3 today. It was sold as an almost bare chassis sometime between 2000 and 2004 and was robodied and repowered first as the Dixie Thumper and now Legend.