Oddball Cars or Car Models - Pt. 2
Uh-Oh, I'm Baack!
We left off talking about Revell and AMT and their early wheel mounting and such. Now for phase two. Revell had a neat group for sure, the "TriFives"! Who wou;dn't want them. But Unbeknownst to most modelers revell had a problem.To fiddley on steering details and parts and to Clumsily Loose on Moveable panel function. I definitely didn't enjoy the door sag on my 55 Chevy. Turns out there was an easy fix that I was quick to let my modeling Buddies know about.
I won't go into that, but it was required after painting on all moveable panels, bar None. Even the paint didn't help in some areas. On the Steering.I always had the connectors on the tie rod ends break off when trying to connect them to the Steering Arms or the Arms would break of the wheelback from the maneuver. Not happy at all with this. Fixed that by using "Eyebolts" from model ship kits epoxied to the ends of the tie rod . Now, mean while another group of Companys snuck on scene. Remember Life-Like? How about Renwal or Lindberg?
They started us with very lenient fitting Military models in Renwal's case. Some interesting, But not mainline cars from Lindberg,and lastly Life-Like with a few interesting but pain in the butt 1/32 cars that had no Chrome(paint it silver Dude!) or once in a while the same ones with poor chrome plating that didn't last on the shelf for say a year, just like Monogram!
Speaking of Monogram. Why did they choose 1/24 when everyone else mostly was 1/25? I will say this about Monogram though. I never met a car or theirs I didn't like even if they were molded in color. In many cases plastic so high Quality all you had to do was polish when finished. After which You learned to put Pactra or Testors Clear Gloss over the chrome parts. Still had to do the side trim with Chrome Silver paint which didn't stay that way after overcoating it with clear!
Lindberg and Monogram did some Show Cars and the like. Very interesting, working Features and so on. Nice, but I would rather do it myself! Going back to Monogram's finishes, I have to Re-Visit our friends from Venice california. What they were thinking with the next product will always puzzle me. Molded in MetalFlake in the 62-63 model year Dodge and Plymouth Cars, Imperial too I think. In that case real Boo-Boos!. There was no way you could cover properly the Frosted(heavily) areas where the plastic was the thickest under a coat of Candy.It always left a frosty spot. Primer was not an option if you wanted O.O.B.
The MetalFlake used in those Revell cars was way out of scale and kicked their bottom line out the window on those products. So Back to the usual. Now, hmmm> They took the beautiful Country Squire mold (1957) and ruined it to create another neato Ford . The 57 Ford Ranchero. But, no opening doors or tailgate. Multi piece Body again.Oh well some take a long time to learn.
Next time, I say let's, take our "Jimmy" and "Bronco" and Go Fishing" okay? Catchya Then! T.B.