Force

The car hauler axles are 1 ½ inch drop from a regular axle and are widely used together with single leafs and air bags together. Petetrucker: Hesperia, Ca...I have been there lots of times, I have a friend who lives on Cottonwood Ave.

Here are a couple of articles from the magazines back then. First some larger more readable pictures from the Hot Rod February 1970 article you posted And a later article from Cars December 1970...note that they used dual distributors and dual plug heads by then as in the later 1971 'Cuda.

Well someone dug deep in the archives to find this thread, it was started over 3 ½ years ago and the latest pictures were posted 2 ½ years ago, so "much water has run under the bridge" since then. He could have rearranged his albums, deleted the pictures or even closed his account with photobucket since then...who knows.

M/T even ran a 2 cylinder Tempest engine sometimes and the car and a couple of it's engines (the 2 cylinder) are on display at the NHRA Museum at Pomona, CA.

Thanks guys! Yes the AMT kit looks a little off but it was the only kit available at the time. On the other hand, the doors are longer and the roof is shorter ...and maybe even slightly lower...on the Hard Top so you can't compare the body styles that way. But you can allways use the current Revell 55 Bel Air Hard Top kit and use the post roof from the 56 Del Ray and you'll get a better model, I have seen it done and the conversion isn't that difficult.

Yes, I have never heard of anything else than Chevy big block based Arias Hemi engines. The Arias, Donovan, McGee and other engine designs were used in drag racing back in the 70's and 80's but NHRA stated that the Mopar 426 Hemi design specs were the only accepted design in the rules for the nitro classes back in the 90's so the other engines faded away. John Force Racing designed a Ford Hemi called Boss 500, other than the block is anodized blue it looks like the other aftermarket Mopar based TFX, KB, BAE, AJPE Hemi's as the bore spacing and other measures has to be as the Mopar Hemi's, the only thing altered is the main bearings and the lifter holes are slightly different. The tractor pulling guys has since then adopted the Arias Hemi and it has been widely used there.

The teardrop scoop on the Revell Thunderbolt is too square and angular in shape and that's the biggest issue with this kit, it should be more round to be correct...I don't think Revell ever did anything to correct it so the last issues has the same squareish hood scoop. The flat stock like hood came with the last 2 'n 1 issue wich also had dog dish hubcaps and the teardop hood is still there. The Modelhaus does a correct resin teardrop hood for the Revell kit and I think there were more casters who had them at the time. If we go to the Trumpeter Falcon there are almost too many faults to list.

As far as I have heard the original sleeper for the second issue of the 359 small window Pete is altered and not usable. But AITM has the original sleeper, it's marked as 36 inch Restrite Sleeper on the website. A chromed Mercury Sleeper is a cool choise, many polished them out.

Time for another of my old builds, this time it's AMT's 55 Chevy Bel Air. I started this one in the beginings of the 2000's and finished a couple of years later, the kit is as I said an AMT wich is a bit demanding, the hood didn't fit and I had to add material both to the sides and length to get it to fit right in the opening, the rear light bezels was too large for the openings and had to be trimed to fit, I also had to scribe in a couple of missing panel lines in the front fenders and some other things. I used Alclad II Chrome on the light bezels and grille as it's opened up to accept a photo etch screen from the MCG 55 Chevy photo etched kit for the Revell-Monogram 55 Chevy, it works for the AMT kit with some slight modifications...all scripts and emblems except for the hood and trunk amblem are from the MCG kit. The engine is a Chevy big block from the AMT 69 Chevelle with some basic wiring so I had to put the radiator in front of the core support as they do on the real cars, the color is 418 Red Pearl Metallic from Volvo 850 with BMF on all trim and the wheels is from the Revell-Monogram 37 Ford Convertible With Trailer. Well enough talk...to the pics.

You're welcome. I'm not an expert but these are things I have learned from my own experience and trials. I bought my EOS 400D back in 2008, sold that and upgraded to an EOS 650D in 2013, I used the standard 18-55mm kit lens (no IS) and a 55-250mm tele zoom (with IS) at first, but wanted to be more flexible and I don't like to drag on more equipment than nesessary so I bought the EFS 18-135mm IS STM lens I have now and it's a nice close to midrange lens.

The standard 18-55 mm kit lens is a cheaper lens and a new more expensive one with higher quality might help some, but it isn't the total solution to the problem. With a 200 mm lens you have to go a lot further away from the object, I have a 55-250 tele zoom and the closest distance for focus with that is 3.6 ft (1.1 meter)...plus the fact that zoom eats light so the shutter speeds are slower. The most common misstake when photographing small objects is to stand too close to the object so the camera chooses a focal point further away in the background and the foreground gets out of focus, if you use the zoom feature you might have to stand a bit further away than the closest distance marked on the lens, 0.9 ft (28 centimeter) for the standard 18-55 mm kit lens in the 18 mm range and a bit over and if you zoom out to 55 you have to stand a bit further away from the object With a Macro lens you will get some distorsion of the object...not much but some, and that lens is only good for closeups. Another thing to keep in mind is the cameras focal points, I don't remember how many focal points the EOS 400 have but, it's 9 on the 650 but I usually only use the one in the middle so I'm sure what I'm focusing on and where the focus is in my pictures. Another thing, you don't have to be upclose to take good model pictures, you can try to not fill the whole picture with the model you want to take a picture of, the resolution on modern cameras is so large (if I remember correctly it was 10.1 megapixel on the EOS 400D and I have 18 on my 650D) so you can cut out the part you need from a larger picture and use it in normal size...the resolution setting you have chosen for your pictures also have much to do with how sharp your images gets, a larger resoution has more information per square millimeter and will get you a sharper picture and many professional photographers use the highest RAW setting wich captures all information possible for the picture...but the file size with RAW are huge and are not nessesary to use for this, jpeg is the most common file type for images and it's compressed so a jpeg file also looses some in quality. Also if you downsize the picture and make the file size smaller in for example Photoshop it will also loose in sharpness. So there are many parameters on how your picture comes out.

I have a Canon EOS 650D, I previously had an EOS 400D as you wich was a good camera but I upgraded to a 650D little over a year ago as it has more features. I have used either the original 18-55 mm kit lens or the one I use for most photographing nowadays, my Canon EFS 18-135 mm IS STM lens wich has better midrange so I don't have to change to a tele lens other than for realy long range. The key to sharp model pictures has not that much to do with what lens you use, it's better to try to use as small shutter opening as possible, if you go Full Automatic the camera chooses a larger shutter opening and the pics are only sharp where the focal point is...and on a car model that can be just the front fender...with a smaller opening you will get more "depth of field", that will say the picture is sharp from front to back of the picture and the whole model gets sharp. Use the AV setting on your dial and choose the highest number possible (for example F18, F20 or F22) and the camera chooses the shutter speed automaticly for that shutter opening...if you don't have Image Stabilizer you might have to use a tripod stand and use the camera timer so you don't shake the camera when you "pull the trigger" so to speak. I have photographed models in all zoom ranges of my lens with this method and it doesn't matter wich I use, the pics comes out sharp either way, but don't go too close to your object, the closest distance possible you can go is marked on your lens, my 18-135 lens has 1.3 ft, ( the standard 18-55 is 0.9 ft) closer than that the camera can't focus.

I believe he talks about this one....it could be a clone and the picture is taken at a later stage and not in 1970. This car also has Centerline or Cragar Super Trick wheels instead of the regular Keystone Classics, Bear Paw or 5 slots of the other cars.

Thanks guys!

According to my references the Plymouth and Sox & Martin scripts should be a silver circular swirl finnish with black outline and the Ronnie Sox and Mechanic Jake King and some other scripts should be gold swirl on the 70 Cuda, . Slixx still has a couple of their Sox & Martin decal sheets in stock, the one for the early 70's Cuda is not entirely correct as far as I know but better than the Revell decals, Slixx says that the 70 Cuda had gold lettering, I don't say they don't exist but I don't have any pictures with all gold lettering for the 70, that's more correct for the 1972 Cuda with number Pro 23 or Pro 4, the 70 Cuda had number Pro 200 or Pro 705, the 71 Cuda had number Pro 4 or Pro 44, the numbers are different depending on driver as Ronnie Sox didn't drive all the time, (Herb McCandless amongst others did some driving for S & M)...and the sanctioning bodys could have had different numbering.

I'm a Sox & Martin fan and I loved building the Jo-Han Sox & Martin 71 Barracuda and I cant wait to get this one. I have several of the Jo-Han 71 Barracuda's, a couple of Jo-Han S & M Superbird's, and a couple of Revell S & M 67 GTX's so this would fit well in my collection, my plan is to build as many Sox & Martin cars as I can from kits available. The small kit flaws with "the fender flares" I can see beyond, they are not that hard to file down and correct so it looks better...it's easier to remove material that shouldn't be there than to add something that's not there...after all, we are model builders aren't we.

Time for another of my old builds, The Pro Touring style was popular at the time for this build about 10 years ago so I thought I would give it a try and the choice of subject fell on Revell's 68 Pontiac Firebird. The wheels are Pegasus Chrome T's with Tamiya tires on the rear end to get a higher profile tire and I narrowed the rims and tires slightly at the front, I used photo etched disc brakes from MAS and calippers from Replicas And Miniatures Co Of Maryland and the front suspension is lowered to get the stance I was after. I used C4 Corvette front seats from a Monogram ZR1 and modified them to fit in the Revell interrior, I also cut out and did new inserts for the back seat to match the pattern of the fronts. The Paint is Volvo Ocean Blue Pearl Metallic with BMF and all emblems are from a Model Car Garage photo etched detail set. The engine block and heads are the same color as the outside of the body and is built out of box with some basic wiring, I had to shorten the headers as they touched the table top before the front wheels so I took 3-4 millimeters out of the downwards pipes to tuck them up closer to the floor, I also redid the exhaust system to meet the headers and clear the rear tires better. Now to the pictures. Enjoy

It might be 1/24th scale but the only Edelbrock Rat Roaster intake manifold I know of is made by Ross Gibson, but he only sells complete engines so it's the Super Stock Rat Roaster Hemi RGE 204 engine you have to find to get one. It wasn't only Super Stock 'Cudas and Challengers who used this intake, Sox & Martin and Jack Werst ran Rat Roaster equipped Hemi's in their SS/E and SS/EA Plymouth Superbird's.

This reissue is the old "Small Window" Unilite cab version, not the later 1100 cab.

As far as I know Jake King painted the engines he built for Sox & Martin Ford Engine Blue as a homage to his own time racing Ford's and to easily identify his work. Jake drove the Atwater Ford Thunderbolt before he joined Sox & Martin. I have pictures from back in the day when Ronnie Sox were still active of Sox & Martin 68 Barracuda's running in SS/A, SS/B, SS/D, E/SA (340 car), FX, A/MP and Pro

Great work on this one Roger.

We don't have any plating service for modelers over here either but if you have an airbrush you can use Alclad II Chrome for the wheels...not perfect but it gets very shiny and it's the closest thing you can get with paint. Who knows, maybe Round 2 will reissue the old Ertl IH Transtar II Eagle sometime.

It would have been great if you did the Tyrone Malone Bandag tires as well Ben...many of Malones trucks can be built with current and recent truck kits, you have the rims and they are top notch, but the tires are hard to come by as the original AMT kits are harder and harder to find and costs a fortune. Possible trucks to build except for the AMT Malone kits are the Boss Truck Of America W900, the Defiance Freightliner, the Mama Truck K100, the Old No 8 K100 truck with the living quarters trailer, the W900 Whale Truck with reefer trailer, the No 13 KW W900B, maybe the Hurricane W900 if you are good at scratchbuilding and modifying...and some more.

Nah, it's not as cool as the other Malone trucks but he got both the Defiance and the IH transporter at the same deal. On this picture you can see the Defiance Freightliner and the Smokey Bear Corvette on the lowboy trailer behind the IH and you can get a glimpse of the Hurricane KW on the truck bed. I also read somewhere that the Defiance were not used that much as the Allison engine didn't cooperate and didn't run well all the time, so it was mostly displayed on a stand with the front wheels up in the air.

Nice work as allways Alan. I have tried BMF for masking when I did stripes and it works well without bleeding...a bit expensive maybe but it works fine and you get sharp fine lines. One thing tho'..you have to use regular masking tape a bit away from the actual line, then the BMF right at the edge where you want the line to be andmake sure it's overlaping the regular masking tape some, otherwise you can get in trouble when you want to unmask, but with the overlap you pull up the masking tape and the BMF follows so you can get hold of it and it's easier to take off. Another way is to mask as usual and first paint the stripe with the same color as the base coat, or you can even a clear coat, this is to seal the tape, when that paint has dried you paint with the color you want the stripes to be, that way the under bleed will be the same color as the base coat...or clear if you use that.