Fat Brian

You can get good results from cans with practice. Honestly, the painting is only half the battle of a good paint job. The rest is surface prep before painting and polishing afterward.

Thank you, I'm glad it turned out alright.

You're best bet now is to get one of the 71 Cyclone stock car kits and use one of the Revell 70 Torino kits as a donor to un-racecar it. That's my plan when I get around to doing it.

Does anyone make Alps printed Bandit style gold Trans Am decals for the 1/24 Monogram kit?

Thank you, I think it turned out pretty well.

Well, I'm calling this one done. It's built basically kit stock except for the light bar and Aoshima wheels and tires.

The Starky & Hutch Torino has a 351 that would be good for that car.

I built that for Kris Morgan at MAD, I'm not sure where he is with the rest of it. I started with a broken Galaxie body and cut notches in the fenders where the A pillars and vent windows attached. Then I cut the roof and deck lid off leaving just about 1/8 inch of trunk lid and the rear vertical part over the bumper. Then I added the entire top, A pillars, vent windows and all, and the deck lid from the 66 Galaxie. Then I sliced off the 66 rear windshield and added a modified piece from a 69 Thunderbird. I used sheet styrene to fill in the from side of the C pillars and strips to make the drip rails. Here is a pic without paint that shows how the cuts were laid out.

This was an amnesty build, I started it around 15 years ago and decided to finish it up recently. Nothing special, straight out of the box with decals and front wheels from the more modern issue of this kit.

Keep at it, he can get pretty busy.

The AMT kit is the 73-79 body style. You just need to find the early grille from a resin caster. The AMT kit is also a Camper Special so the rear wheels are moved back another six inches from a normal long bed and it has tool box built into the passenger side of the bed. I believe Kris Morgan has a correct standard long bed in resin.

I would love a first gen Ranger but I'd want it to be 1/24 scale for what I want to do with it.

Is your build going to be period correct or a modified current day version? For a current day build the Revell motor from one of the 32 Ford kits is the way to go there are a bunch of intake options and a good automatic with overdrive. For a vintage build I would go with the 70s AMT Ford van transmission, it's a c6 with the correct small block Ford bellhousing. The Starsky & Hutch Torino is another option for small block automatic.

That's what happens when you check by wikipedia.

These came stock with either the baby straight six or a 260 v8, the six might be hard to find but a small Windsor block v8 should be easier.

It wasn't awful, it was just not what you want a Firebird to be. The Firebird also has about 1k pounds on the Cavalier and was automatic. It was also about 16 years old with over 250k miles when I had it so it's good years were behind it.

Are you wanting to buy one or do you have one and want to know if you should build it or not?

The Monogram Fiero has a 1/24 scale 2.8 v6, that engine made the rounds in a ton of GM products and even a few non GMs. Early XJ Cherokees could have the GM 2.8 instead of the 4.0 straight six. I had a 2.8 in an 86 Firebird, it was pretty lackluster in such a heavy car but would be fun in a little pickup with a good tune. It will bolt to standard GM transmissions, I believe the Firebird had a 200R4.

It's really going to depend on the paint, you'll have to test it to know for sure. One thing to consider if you gloss over it is you'll turn all your panel lines shiny which probably isn't the most desirable look.

Steve's method yields the best looking results by far but there are other options for us mere mortals. Silver Sharpies and Molotow pens can give good results with some practice and easily wipe off with alcohol if you need to try again. Be careful with the alcohol around some paints though, test it before going after a visible area.

Okay, so that explains this kit. Testors must have reissued the Gunze kit and the Italeri kit at different points.

It's a great kit and all in all an easy build, that's why I was surprised when I got to a snag that far into it. I'm going to build at least one more, probably a 289 hipo road race version.

The motor part is fairly easy to replicate because it's just a cylinder about a foot or so long and eight or ten inches around. Here is one with an adapter plate to bolt to a Turbo 350 transmission. For a more modern transaxle style setup here is the drive unit from a Tesla model S. This is how the battery pack is layed out in a Tesla, it sits in the floor to put its weight low in the car. In conversions of gas vehicles into EVs this battery pack is disassembled and put into more of a cube or rectangular shape that can be put into the car to keep the weight distribution close to the same. As you can guess be the picture of the engine there is plenty of extra room under the hood for the battery.

I didn't realize the interior tub fit so poorly until it was already painted but I had to sand the outside edges of the tub down where the door panel meets the window opening to get it to fit. I didn't get it enough the first time leading to the chassis not sitting deep enough in the body and all that fun.

Thanks guys, I got it figured out. I had initially not gotten the interior up into the body far enough so when I put the chassis in the drivers side didn't sit correctly. In fixing that evidently the engine popped up a bit so when I fitted the intake tubes they sat too high and interfered with the hood. All fixed now, this is the first one of these I've done so I didn't want to chase my tail if this was a common thing.