Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) Funny. The last thing I did pull some calipers on was a bit troublesome - but mostly for things that had nothing to do with what I was using the calipers for. The changes I made, and watching the results take shape, were a BLAST. And the way that model sits there looking quietly more correct than most any other one built more conventionally? That's the very soul of FUN. It's a gift that keeps on giving, in fact. Edited March 13, 2015 by Chuck Kourouklis 1
blunc Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 I see that we have gotten to the "fun" section of this discussion. Is there a possibility that everyone can adjust to the fact that one persons version of fun will have more rivets in it than some other persons version of fun? (and just quit telling us that you only build for fun...we get that already)
Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 I'm game. But then I've been saying basically that same thing from a different angle all along.
charlie8575 Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) After reading the last several pages a few times over the last couple of evenings, I've been considering very carefully how, or even if, I want to add to this discussion. I've decided I'm going to add something because I wish to be heard. Or read, depending on how you look at the exact phraseology and how literal you wish to be. For the record, I intend to buy this kit, even with some errors that might need correcting. While I will never expect a perfect product- as I have often said, to expect a product of man, who is an imperfect being, to be completely flawless, is unreasonable. I like wagons, and simply, there aren't enough of them available for me to be TOO picky. If it was a flawed, completely mis-shapen lump, no way. This isn't that bad, some problems, but this kit, when built, is still a reasonable facsimilie of the car it's intended to depict. That said, I have seen that the most vocal of people- Chuck, Bill and Andy, merely call for Revell's design and machining departments to do their job better before asking us to spend money on something that doesn't quite make the mark in terms of accuracy. Is that really that bad a thing? I don't think so, and I am in total agreement with their stances. While perfection is an unreasonable, although laudable, pursuit, and one we should strive for, we are not necessarily looking for perfection. Rather, we're looking for a well-done, accurate model. "We're modelers" is true. Here's the problem- not all of us can fix the problems created by not paying closer attention to product design and execution. And when I'm being asked to spend nearly $30 for a product that's intended to be a medium of creativity and relaxation, I really do agree I should not have to engage in several hours' worth of fixing problems that could have been avoided in the first place with extra time to do the tool right. As Tom pointed out, some deadlines occur, and occasionally a little futzing around to get the job, say, 95% done, at least enough so the fundamental deadline and objective is met, is also well-taken, and a point I also agree with fully. Reality does dictate what happens sometimes, and, unfortunately, it can mean a less-than-desirable outcome. Tom's major point, however, and one I think has a lot of salience, however, is that there are times that "good enough" really is "good enough," and we, as rational, thinking beings, should be able to discern those times between "good is good" and "excellence is necessary." Not flubbing the most visible part of the entire model, in my opinion, falls into the latter category. Again, notice not "perfect," but maximum effort must be expended, and if it's a six-month delay to revise a tool, I'm OKAY with that. Really. And I think most of the die-hards here would be, too, because a better product will result. And Revell, being I would estimate the third or fourth largest kit manufacturer, has the resources to absorb that, I would think. If not, then I think there is in fact some serious mis-management. Moebius, to me, still holds the record for stepping up with fixing that '53 Hudson. They were rewarded with a very high sales return. That, in and of itself, made the business case for an expensive, time-consuming re-do of an entire mold. Sales resulted, along with many very appreciative customers, who keep coming back. I'm one of them. That being said, errors like missing or mal-formed body-lines are something that's not an issue of deadlines to me. To me, that's an issue of someone being asleep at the switch, and people rushing to get a product out the door. Honestly, I never picked up on them, and, to be completely honest, I'm still looking at pictures and comparing the alleged errors. I'm trusting Andy because he has one of these cars in his garage. Andy- would you be willing to post some pictures of your dad's car so we can get a better view of what you're talking about? Those errors, to me, are sloppy. Setting aside locations of engineering and tooling, there is a very obvious breakdown of communication between the two task-forces, and that is not how to run any business. In the years I taught school, if I ever had a kid turn in work that reflected that type of rush-job with glaring omissions/errors, it would almost always be returned for revision. I wasn't aiming for perfection, necessarily. I was aiming for a job done well. "You can do better than this," was heard by my students more than a few times. In this age of CAD/CAM, cameras, 3-D digital scanners and an availability of people who are still skilled in the art of producing manual, pencil-and-paper drawings to ensure that the computer doesn't miss anything, it really does make you wonder how it was done- many times, so much better from an accuracy standpoint in the 1950s-90s, using bass and maple bucks, slide-rules and calculators, and engineers' scales on paper. While factory cooperation did help, I think it was also a case of jobs being done by people who actually cared about their work, and that, sadly, is something that I see less of each and every day. We've all seen "oopses" over the years. The first-run '55 Chevy trucks from AMT with the up-slant side windows that was later corrected, the slightly-high roof on the '66 Fairlane, and of course, the mis-shapen side-spear on the '58 Plymouth that also had some other body issues. The point is that mistakes do happen. Some, like the pickup, aren't too tough to fix, requiring only a file and a few minutes. I recall Jon Cole's thread on correcting that '58 Plymouth, on the other hand, and man-oh-man! No, no kit will ever be perfect, but negligence is something I can't abide by. Mistakes are one thing. What appears to be willfully ignoring photos by design, or, assuming design realized something was wrong, and tooling ignored revision orders, is quite another. I wonder how it would work if the car companies started withholding approvals? That, to me, would be more devastating than all the complaints filed here. The model manufacturers won't pick up their toys and go away, like some people have made the silly allegation of, but, the licensors may take the toys away if more flubs continue and they decide to enforce their right against mis-representation of their products, and that is when we all lose. This, gentlemen, is negligence. No, it doesn't rise to the scale of space disasters or train-wrecks, but the concept is still the same, it's someone willfully failing to do their job right, or management not allowing the job to be done right due to unreasonable actions or time constraints. It besmirches the manufacturer and fails the consumer and licensor. Nobody wins, even if the consumer is happy with their purchase- because it could have been better. I'll still grab one of these wagons, and I'm sure I'll enjoy building it. But it'll be a little less enjoyable knowing it could have been so much better with minimal, if any, extra expenditure in time or capital to get the job done right. Not perfectly, but better. And better is something we should all aim for. Charlie Larkin Edited March 13, 2015 by charlie8575 1
Atmobil Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Well written Charlie Well. By "looking good", I meant mostly that there wasn't any screamingly obvious 2-inch chop, headlight-housings-out-to-the-moon, hacked-off rear quarters, bulbous upper fenders or flattened Hapsburg-lip wheel arches. In other words, errors of a sort that do not require "engineering tools" to see, stuff so off that your mere recollection of the 1:1 calls it out, krap-before-calipers-like-it-or-not - though it doesn't seem to suit your purposes to acknowledge problems like those, now, does it, Tom? The kind of logic you rely on really appears to hinge on the premise that A N Y deviation must be off incrementally, so we can just jam it into a "rivet-counting" context no matter how obvious the problem really is. BUT. I was aware of a hazard in my premise, and I may inadvertently answer Bill's (now deleted) question here: it was Mattel that finally cut the scat and went to LIDAR scanning of prototypes, as Airfix is doing now - most notably, the scans that figured into their Batmobile diecast, which Polar Lights ultimately leased to make a kit that was somehow magically free of the gross proportioning issues we see in so many other new tools of vintage subjects. And what's the constant refrain? Maybe Airfix can afford it, certainly Mattel can, but that kind of tech is simply out of the budget for domestic model manufacturers to acquire for themselves just yet. But the Polar Lights/Mattel association is a link that pretty emphatically suggests you examine the fruit with an engineering tool or two before making any arch generalizations about the comparison. Anyway. Kool ride! If Mattel has LIDAR to scan prototypes, I'm guessing they may have used that on the Barbie Fiat 500. Maybe it is about time they scanned a woman an started making Barbie dolls that acctually look like what they are supposed to be because when it comes to Barbie dolls we can really talk about gross errors in shape. Now this is going very much off topic and I apologize for that but I think that fixing that would actually be of importants to the world. I have a sister that has struggled with an eatingdisorder since she was in her early teens and I'm not going to say that it because of the shape of Barbie dolls but she did play with them when she was a kid and I don't think it helps anyone to have kids play with dolls that are shaped like freaks.
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Is that a sedan guard, or a wagon/Ranchero/Courier guard? Did you mean the bumper guard didn't exist, or the angels? Wait, what? I'm hoping additional versions of the tool could be a Ranchero or Courier. So tooling bumper with short guards wold be beneficial. Front bumpers had tall guards like rest of line if they had them. Here's 2 pics of very basic cars, 300 level trim, with short rear guards. I have only found 1 picture of wagon with no rear guards, and have found wagons with no front guards and tiny rear ones. BTW, I was wrong about 58, but these are the weirdest little bumper guards I've ever seen. Link below to 223 6 powered wagon with usual rear guards. http://www.boldride.com/ride/1957/ford-ranch-station-wagon#gallery/3 that stool is certainly earning its pay
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 .... kits are made perfect by the Rivet Counter.... signature material right there Lads
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 .... The problem with the kit stems from the molding shop being in China and they do not know what the real car really looks like. This was a quote from Revell in a reply to my email.... yeahbut ... i'll bet the reply was written by the marketing department. if the kit got that far in any country it would be too late to do anything but halt production and retool. guy was a bootlicker.
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 People are in a urination match over some plastic...before we even have seen it in person. ya! '57 Ford Throw-down NOW!!!
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 sorry for so many posts in a row (not really) but i don't usually follow post '52 vehicles. catching the last 5 or 6 pages was a chuckle i needed with my second cup of coffee. i remember the AMT version from '60 whatever of the '57 Ford. i think it had those upholstery decals and especially a little dog you could put on the package shelf. i'll bet if Revell included that dog, no one would ever even look at the other parts of the car. woof!
unclescott58 Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 I see that we have gotten to the "fun" section of this discussion. Is there a possibility that everyone can adjust to the fact that one persons version of fun will have more rivets in it than some other persons version of fun? (and just quit telling us that you only build for fun...we get that already) Hmmm... So we should not talk about the fun of building models? I guess no matter what opinion is expressed here, it is wrong in some way? By the way, with the complains here in this thread, has anybody gotten their hands on Revell's Del Rio Ranch Wagon yet? If not, how do we know they won't fix the problems some here are complaining about before the kit comes out? I'm sure the guys at Revell are trying to offer us as good of a model of each kit as they can. And over all I think they do a pretty good job of it. Would it be nice if they got everything correct when a kit come out? Of course. I don't know where this thread is going any more. Are we just a just arguing for arguments sake? It's okay if you do not like the way a certain kit is done. And is okay if I do like it. Scott
Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Yeah, you got him. After pages of Herculean eye-rolling and snark directed at muzzling anybody who's not all sunshine and my-little-ponies about this kit, you all actually caught somebody trying to dictate your content for once. Did you entirely miss that his second sentence was basically the same as your last two, Scott? Now as for KNOWING Revell won't correct whatever problems there are with this kit, no, we can't say for sure - we just have a decade or more of seeing kits show up on the shelves with the exact gremlins seen in previews to indicate the likelihood of correction is pretty low, which is why this angle is so old I've had it covered literally for years in #4 at the blog linked below. And I'm just gonna toss it out there that you can acknowledge Revell is trying and still be critical of the products. The two are not mutually exclusive. I'm goin' all hard-core 'cause there's that same ol' BS in this thread demanding a counter, but the timing is ironic because I could not be more delighted with Revell right now. Their '14 Mustang has wheels, a strut tower brace, and an intake cover i've been waiting years for. If we can't get a glue kit of a current pickup, their SVT Raptor is the very next best thing, the greatest promo-style late model SnapTite they've done, for my money. That Model A comin' up looks so awesome I have a hard time imagining what could go wrong when I open the box. And then yes, THIS DEL RIO WAGON ITSELF looks very exciting to my eyes, to make Bill's point one more time for anyone who actually gets such points. But pot-stirring begets more pot-stirring, long before this thread and long after.
Austin T Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 But pot-stirring begets more pot-stirring, long before this thread and long after. Yeah, personal attacks tend to help as well...
Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) Why should I see your point if you refuse to acknowledge anyone else's? You are too afraid to consider other's ideas because in your mind if you submit then you will be seen as weak, your a class A example (And a raging one at that) of an "Alpha Male" who will do anything to remain on the top of the heap. Fell free to continue vigorously mashing in keys in a fit of rage so that you don't lose any dominance in your little utopia, I honestly can't wait for the day it all sets in that you've wasted hours of your life trying to change peoples minds for them over a model kit. *EDIT* woooops, my bad. You didn't change this. So. Come again? In fact, why don't you quote me on anything as presumptuous and judgmental as this? Or in the alternate, why don't you show us where Bill tried reading your mind and slapped up some half-conceived hack profile on you? Edited March 13, 2015 by Chuck Kourouklis
Sledsel Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 That being said, errors like missing or mal-formed body-lines are something that's not an issue of deadlines to me. To me, that's an issue of someone being asleep at the switch, and people rushing to get a product out the door. Honestly, I never picked up on them, and, to be completely honest, I'm still looking at pictures and comparing the alleged errors. I'm trusting Andy because he has one of these cars in his garage. Andy- would you be willing to post some pictures of your dad's car so we can get a better view of what you're talking about? Charlie Larkin As for getting Dads car out right now for additional pics, I am unable to do that, but I will point out the problems in pics today since I was asked. I am in no way attempting to "stoke the coals" is this fire I seem to have started.
charlie8575 Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 As for getting Dads car out right now for additional pics, I am unable to do that, but I will point out the problems in pics today since I was asked. I am in no way attempting to "stoke the coals" is this fire I seem to have started. That would be great, Andy. Thank you. Charlie Larkin
charlie8575 Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 sorry for so many posts in a row (not really) but i don't usually follow post '52 vehicles. catching the last 5 or 6 pages was a chuckle i needed with my second cup of coffee. i remember the AMT version from '60 whatever of the '57 Ford. i think it had those upholstery decals and especially a little dog you could put on the package shelf. i'll bet if Revell included that dog, no one would ever even look at the other parts of the car. woof! I don't think any of the re-issues I have have the dog. Cool. Charlie Larkin
southpier Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 are you going to Masscar sunday? http://www.masscar.com/uploads/2/0/9/1/20913414/flyer2015.pdf someone said it was going to be the last show???
Sledsel Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) Okay.... Before anything, I would like to state, the kit photos I am posting here are from Túlio Lazzaroni - Lovefordgalaxie. I am incorporating his photos because his builds and photography are excellent. The lighting and colors on these pics really help point out the areas discussed. I am in no way trying to discredit him or his builds, I have seen many of them and they are all excellent. If he has a problem with me using the cropped pics, I will gladly remove them. I am going to address the body issues only. Yea, there are other problems under the car, but I really do not care, it is the initial displayed kit that means the most (to me) There is a tail light bezel issue, but that would be fixed with a few minutes of sanding, so it will not be shown. Besides, it was shown earlier in this post. Front fender: As discussed, it extends to far down in the front, and the valance should wrap around and be connected to the fender. Behind the tire, the body line extending towards the bottom should be sharp end very evident. Also, this area should be concave towards the tire. The Revell kit has this area actually bulged out. By paying attention to the shadows you can see this. Also, the bumper should reach to the edge of the wheel well. These issues really could easily be fixed, getting that body line sharp would take some time. (the green Ford is my dads, I included this because the bumper is off and shows the valance/fender area clear.) Now the rear quarter, and the more difficult area to correct. If you compare both body lines, you can see the difference. The upper line should extend almost to the bumper. This part of the quarter is rounded, whereas the kit quarter looks pretty flat. The lower body line on the kit looks scribbed into the body. There should be a definite break and then a concave area like the front fender. This body line also needs to extend further back. Note: The 1:1 pic is a Custom 300, and the rear quarters other than the fin is the same on all models (shorter on custom series though) Dash speaker speaks for itself. An scale inch high. Again, not a bid deal, sand off or cut and recess.... but still.... As a final note, these items were not measured and checked with a caliper..... they are visual. Apparent to me as soon as I looked at them. I did not need to compare. This entire mess started because I said I hope they addressed these areas for the wagon. Ironically, the 50 year old AMT and Revell Wagon/Ranchero kits have these areas spot on...... How they do that then and not now? Edited March 13, 2015 by Sledsel
zaina Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Did anyone notice that the kit doesn't have keys in the ignition or oil in the motor.
keyser Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) Charlie you said it well. Southpier you're funny. Pictures are awesome Andy, not anywhere near look of 1:1. Scott, errors are in the 300 kit. I won't google that for you. The bumper guards from the sedan are too tall for the wagon, hence my ton of bumper guard pics and being shouted down as rivet perfector. I said lets see what Revell does about wagon bumper guards. Will they or won't they fix them. If not, I want all the fine folks who say "it's fine, they're toys, doesn't matter" to do a how-to for the dents in the tailgate from the wrong bumper guards. Or, we all learn whether they'll fix a very obvious and easily fixed issue. Or not. Edited March 13, 2015 by keyser
Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) W O W. Very clear now that you've pointed 'em out, Andy. Still heartened, though. Corrections on this will require a lot less than the Olds did, certainly much less than The Kit That Must Not Be Named, maybe about on par with the 'Cuda. Btw, did anyone notice the shove down a slope that doesn't really slip? Edited March 13, 2015 by Chuck Kourouklis
unclescott58 Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Andy, thanks for posting the photos showing us the model vs. the real car. It is very helpful in understanding what your talking about. I agree those areas on the kit are incorrect. I never noticed them until you pointed them out like that. I do hope that Revell corrects these problems down the road. At the same time, and I don't know why, but I still like the kit. Over all it looked correct to me before you pointed the flaws out. And it still looks okay after seeing the flaws. I guess I'm just not that picky? At the same time, I do wish it was better. If not prefect. I'm torn. There are other kits with worst flaws I've chossen to overlook in past. Scott
Chuck Kourouklis Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 I still love the danm thing, myself. I just don't understand - where does examining a kit's flaws mandate that ANYBODY shouldn't like it? I'm hard-pressed to come up with anybody insisting that a modeler is somehow at fault for liking a kit with problems - but that sure seems to be way people READ it. And I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing the connection between that interpretation and reality.
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