CanadianKronik Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 Cool lil car, Im a big fan of Ed Roth's builds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 (edited) so, had some time to spend smoothing up the body a bit more, shooting it white primer in prep for the yellow i will hopefully soon be laying down (i love my airbrush!) and polishing the primer to keep things smooth! edit: note that hatch on the front is only taped in there! and i see some irregularity in the rear roof posts i hadnt noticed before. give thanks for macro lenses and knowing how to use them! its getting there though and that nasty seam has been filled and smoothed and i have even attempted to give the edge a fairly sharp look. thanks again for looking! would probably work just as well as "workbench" photos eh! Edited April 30, 2012 by jbwelda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Most Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 Clean work on that body seam- I'm not looking forward to that on mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobthehobbyguy Posted July 24, 2012 Share Posted July 24, 2012 Jbwelda, Did you ever get this painted? I've pulled my surfite out and building it. Your build has been helpful with me building mine. bobthehobbyguy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted July 25, 2012 Share Posted July 25, 2012 Looks like it had Mini banana arms for the rear suspension too. I had no idea the Surfite was based on old Mini guts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedgehog Posted July 25, 2012 Share Posted July 25, 2012 Wow it looks good ready to surf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted July 26, 2012 Author Share Posted July 26, 2012 hey thanks for bringing this up! yes i have yellow laid down on it but its in a pretty rough state, i dont do much model work during the summer so i have not been progressing much past that but one of these evenings i will color sand it and get it ready for some clear. the painting could have gone better. as i mentioned i used my airbrush which while i get more confident every time i use it, i still havent mastered it. the gloss finish i was hoping for out of the brush didnt happen but then i put some reducer into my cup and shot that over the kinda frosted finish and it caused the paint to flow out nicely (or at least nicer), the only problem there being i got a little heavy handed and had a few drops forming on the lower surfaces, so i wicked then off with a bit of paper towel and set it aside to dry and shrink down. i used tamiya acrylic yellow and their reducer and that trick really did work out pretty well though i have not really sat right down in the light and examined the body, but from across the room it looks alright. thanks again for noticing this thread and bringing it back up, it kinda jars me to get this thing done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted October 5, 2012 Author Share Posted October 5, 2012 well paint just needs a bit of polishing in a couple places (one dirt speck and some minor crinkling of the clear laquer overcoat) and then fill in the window edges with a sharpie, make some acetate windows for front and rear, do something with the indents for accent stripes and taillights, and ought to be good to go. look for continuing saga in dioramas section if you can find that because i am including Rabbit Fink so i assume that makes this a diorama. thanks again for looking! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skip Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 What kind of engine is that? According to the Rod & Custom article, it's an Austin 850 cc engine sitting in Mark I Mini subframes that Ed Roth welded together to become the frame for the Surfite. The suspension uses the standard rubber cone "springs" which is another give away that it came out of a plain Jane Mini. Had it have been out of a Mini Cooper "S" it would have been "wet" hydrolastic suspension and the 948, 1098, or 1275 cc engine. The Mark I Austin Seven and Morris Mini Minor Minis came standard with 850 cc engines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted November 21, 2012 Author Share Posted November 21, 2012 under glass: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66751 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted February 2, 2013 Author Share Posted February 2, 2013 after a couple months, i decided to do a couple of improvements on the original kit, suggested and executed by my friend Jody when he built the kit some years ago: the real car has three step rail things on the rear deck to step up on to enter the rear window area, the way you get into the thing, and there was a well hidden headlamp underneath the sculped part of the front edge of the body. also i didnt really dig the surfboard theme i had going on there, so i decided to redo that more like the ones that appear in the abundant photos of the car in later years. i think it looks a lot better; great project for pulling out the airbrush. anyway just thought i would update this thread with some pics i took tonite, will post in the under glass thread when i get done here; still have to do a final clear coat on the board and put it back on the chassis. thanks again for looking! theres the single rectangular headlamp down under there: the little step rails on the rear deck: finally a profile look at the new (original) board design: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazyrichard Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 whow thats awsome , love it !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Geiger Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 Very cool build! Here's mine. I built it back when the kit was reissued. I didn't have much in the way of reference material, thus the light yellow paint with pearl coat. My favorite part of the build was the Tiki Hut! In speaking with Bob Paeth of Revell, I was able to dispel the rumor a rumor that the Surfite was never reissued due to a spat Revell had with Roth. Bob said that after the initial release, it never got out again because it didn't sell. He also told me that the Tiki Hut was an after thought because the Surfite itself was so small that it looked like you got short changed when you saw the parts in the standard Revell box. So the Tiki Hut was devised to fill up the box! I'm glad they did that. As you said, the kit was typical Revell of that era. Fiddly with tons of ejector pin marks and mold seams on nearly everything. I stripped down all the suspension parts because of that, and before Alclad, painted it all with Testors Metalizers. I do like that you built yours for the body to come off, there is a lot of detail lost when I you glue it down. I never thought of that, I was so concerned on just getting the darn thing built! Other challenges are that the interior had a gap around it when you put it into the body. I remember adding plastic around the edge to fix that. And the hood is just a bit of a potato chip! Once you add paint to the body, it didn't fit at all. Still, it's my favorite Roth car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RatRod Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 Bill, that looks way better man!!! I've Got an "almost" finished one sitting here that I started some twenty years ago, maybe I'll have to finally finish it. If I remember right it went together nicely......Thanks for the inspiration pal! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbwelda Posted February 3, 2013 Author Share Posted February 3, 2013 (edited) tom thanks for posting your build in this thread, i love seeing others build of what i am trying. yours turned out real kool too and yeah i love the surf shack, kit wouldnt be the same without it. i had the same issues with the interior bucket leaving spaces between it and the body but i filled them in with my favorite trick: black india ink in 5 minute epoxy flowed into the gaps. works great and you dont even see it. i didnt think the surfite never got re-issued (back in the day, 90s did see a reissue obviously) because of a spat with roth over something; i was always more believing that when ed became "the supply sargent for the Hells Angels" (according to Look or Life magazine back then in articles on "hippies") Revell cut him loose because he was harming their "family values reputation", which i thought was a pure crockocrap...more like ed was living the rebel image he had cultivated. thats the problem with corporate sponsors of "rebels"...they tend to rebel and corporate types are by definition anything but rebels...and tend to look at rebels when they do what they do best as hot potatoes to get out of their hands asap. at any rate from reading later books on roth it was obvious he was moving way ahead of his time using smaller engines in smaller vehicles along with the choppers and trikes he was building. i have to say i didnt really feel it back then too much but in later years his genius became more apparent. just the fact this surfite was based on an austin mini when no one here hardly even knew what that was, came to me as a revelation. pure genius that guy. now i wish revell would engineer some of his later cars like that one he drove up to alaska in or even the yellow fang dragster! Edited February 3, 2013 by jbwelda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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