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This is the excellent AMT kit of the 66 Nova that can be built up one of three ways.... as Grumpy's Toy drag car, or a street custom, or just factory stock. I chose the street custom route and modified the engine slightly by using a P/E air cleaner from Parts by Parks. I also wired it up and added fuel and electrical lines. The paint is rattle-can Tamiya Metallic Red over a base coat of Silver Leaf. The interior is Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black, the carpet is flocking from Detail Master. The fantastic tires are pad printed tires from the AMT 68 Camaro kit (which came w/ 2 sets of tires!). I'd love to have one of these bad boys in real life!

This was my first time to try hand-painting letters and artwork directly on the body of a model car, which turns out, is a whole lot harder than drawing on a piece of paper laying flat on the table, but it was a fun experiment! I’m gonna be trying more of this on more projects soon! This is my tribute to those crazy fellas from the 50’s and 60’s who lived to drag race with whatever they could get their hands on….probably built in their Dad’s garage…the big blown souped-up motor was the most important thing. Winning on Saturday night was all they could think about all week long. And maybe safety wasn’t exactly first on their mind--just winning with the craziest fastest car out there! This is the excellent 1/25 AMT ’37 Chevy kit that comes with the option to build one of three ways, and I chose to build a mad gasser in honor of those drag racing pioneers. The body was primed with Krylon Gray Ultra-Flat primer and allowed to dry outside for about an hour while I took my oil pastel sticks and scraped 5 colors into powder with an Xacto on a piece of wax paper…Orange, Rust, Yellow, Light Blue and Brown. I used cotton swabs to mix those powder colors together a bit, and then rubbed the body down to appear severely weathered, like it was finally rescued from the junkyard. I sprayed Testor’s Dullcote over the body to protect all that weathering work, and to prep for the task of hand-painting the lettering and ball-and-chain artwork -- the lettering was done with acrylic paint markers, and the ball & chain was done with the edge corners of the pastel sticks that I made the powders from earlier. Then a second coat of the dulcote to protect the artwork. The chassis was painted Krylon Red Oxide and set aside. I added a few of my own touches to the beastly 427 powerplant -- like the MOROSO valve covers, some CRAZY PIPES from a Miss Deal funny car kit, velocity stacks made from Evergreen Styrene tube, a parts-box blower, and I made the fuel pump tubing from some clear plastic bead string stuff I found at Michael’s that I painted with Tamiya Clear Yellow acrylic to appear full of gasoline - then hooked up to the kit-supplied fuel pump. The rear tires are the most excellent pad-printed M&H dragmaster piecrust slicks from AMT parts pack--the Cragars are lightly coated with Tamiya Light Gunmetal to bring the kit chrome shine down a bit. Seatbelts were made from masking tape painted the same Light Gunmetal, and P/E buckle hardware was added. Finally, I used Tamiya Weathermaster Orange rust to give the door handles and headlight bezels that neglected look like it was just dug out from years in the junkyard. This was a BLAST to build! Thank you AMT.

This is an old 1/25 AMT kit of the very popular Chevrolet Nomad wagon. The kit included parts to build a factory stock version only, and I envisioned a lower, custom version to carry stuff to the beach in style. The body shell is painted with Testors One Coat Fiery Orange Lacquer, and the roof is Tamiya Light Gunmetal, all polished up with Meguiar's Scratch-X, and 3200 grit abrasive. Instead of the dull kit wheels, I used AMT Deluxe Champion wide whitewall tires, and American Racing slotted mags. Then I lowered the stance about 4mm all around. The kit engine was tweaked with dual Holley carbs and parts-box velocity stacks, then everything was wired and plumbed. The interior got a lot of work--Detail Master Gray flock was used for carpeting, the dashboard got Bare Metal Foil at the guage level, and the seats were dressed in a snazzy 4-color scheme. Starting with Tamiya Racing White as a base coat, seat tops and fronts were striped with alternating silver and semi-gloss black, the silver being outlined with a black .01mm Microperm pen for better contrast. The seat middles were painted silver, with a top coat of Tamiya Clear Orange. The seatbelts are gunmetal with Bare Metal Foil for the buckles. Surfboard's are made from DAS air-dry clay. The clay was warmed by hand, laid out in pieces, and rolled with a heavy steel pipe, then cut to approximate shape a bit larger than needed to allow for shrinkage when dry. The skags were made the same. Once dry the boards were sanded with 200 grit thru 800 grit, primed with Krylon white primer, painted with Tamiya Racing White and decaled to resemble surf boards from 60's. Decals used were from an old Revell '40 Ford Woody kit, and a newer AMT Woody kit. Firewood for camping was made with yard twigs bundled up with hemp rope, beach blankets are paper towels rolled and folded, then painted with Tamiya bottle acrylics, and the Boogie Board is made from the same clay as the boards, painted Tamiya Light Blue, ankle strap added, touched with clear acrylic at random with baby powder added to look dirty from a day at the beach!

This is the reissue of the old AMT kit, re-packaged this time with a beautiful photo reference booklet, pad-printed drag slicks, and a re-engineered decal sheet. To replicate George's car, I used Krylon Baby Blue spray lacquer with a Tamiya clearcoat finish. The beastly 427 engine chrome valve covers were given a fine spray of Tamiya Light Gunmetal, then sanded at the lower flanges and painted a combo of red primer and hull red to give a look of new gaskets. Tires were sanded and wheels were given a light flat black wash to punch the details. Wheelie bar mechanism was a nightmare to assemble and I had to break out the ol' 2-part JB Quick Weld to get the assembly to see things my way---after the weld dried, it was painted with gloss aluminum. The drag chute cable was made from braided line from Detail Master. The seatbelts were molded into the drivers seat--I painted those with Tamiya acrylic Khaki Drab, then painted a piece of masking tape the same color so I could later cover the molded-in belts, plus continue the seatbelts to their mounting points on the floor. AMT included a very neat photo book in this kit that includes pictures of the real car at the model factory's offices as it had been striped with tape so that the engineers could take their measurements to make the molds for a scale model kit. HOW COOL IS THAT? ...this is how they did it before CADCAM digital programs! AMT has done a fantastic job of resurrecting their historic moulds and bringing some old kits back to market for a whole new generation of modelers -- and even better this time >> not only have they gone back to their original box art, they also include some real tasty goodies in most of these kits. They've brought the fun back to modeling... AWESOME work AMT! This is the reissue of the ancient AMT kit, re-packaged this time with a beautiful photo reference booklet, pad-printed drag slicks, and a re-engineered decal sheet.

Hi all, Now that we can attach photos directly to email, here's a few photos that I know Ed Wahl's been waiting for. As for the rest of you, the photos and model are part of a construction article I wrote called "Dirtmaster" that appeared in the August 2014 issue of Toy Trucker & Contractor. Ed, I hope you approve of what I did with your kit. Richard