revell 36 ford coupe/convert.

[phil]

Hi Guys I just got the recently released revell 36 ford. Although on some level it is kool. I feel that using the basic mono. kit from the 60's,they could have made it better. The motor is not up to the current standards of revell. Basically my question is what revell kit has a separate frame,and more accurate flathead that could replace this kits. There are no separte exhaust manifolds and pipes and the heads are terrible. The motor could have been replaced with one of revells (newer) and better flatheads. I feels that would have been more of an improvement than the donk wheels they did add.

[Art Anderson]

Hi Guys I just got the recently released revell 36 ford. Although on some level it is kool. I feel that using the basic mono. kit from the 60's,they could have made it better. The motor is not up to the current standards of revell. Basically my question is what revell kit has a separate frame,and more accurate flathead that could replace this kits. There are no separte exhaust manifolds and pipes and the heads are terrible. The motor could have been replaced with one of revells (newer) and better flatheads. I feels that would have been more of an improvement than the donk wheels they did add.

To have changed, or updated the engine in that kit would have meant a lot of retooling, not always feasible, certainly not inexpensive to do, as pretty much, those parts were all tooled into the same block of hardened tool steel as all the rest of the parts. Certainly, it's not an option to just "drop in" say, a complete engine tool from another kit either, as they tend to be tooled in a very similar fashion, plus, few kits have all the engine parts on the same parts sprue or "tree". With the Revell-Monogram '36 Ford, you are looking at a kit whose basic design and tooling was done more than 45 years ago, when the design parameters, and modeler expectations were a lot different than they are today. One thing to bear in mind is, that model car kit tooling isn't always done in a fashion that allows many parts to be changed out, about the only parts that can readily be removed and replaced from such tools being the wheels, as those were created separately from the rest of the tool, and simply inserted into the mold base. Sometimes, that did happen with engines, even things such as cylinder heads or other parts, IF the original designers felt it would have been advantageous to do so, but more often than not, certainly decades ago, those things weren't considered important.

That said, take a look at the chassis in the Revell Monogram '37 Ford sedan, coupe or convertible kits. In real life, that is the very same chassis that was introduced by Ford in 1935, and carried over into the 1938 Standard series ('38 Standards were 1937's carried over into the next year, with some styling updates). As for a better flathead V8 in 1/24 scale (all Monogram car kits of this size were done in 1/24 scale until the advent of their 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible done in 1992, and most of their flathead V8 engines were also tooled in the 1960's, some better than others, of course. A modern-tooled 1/25 scale flathead might look more than a bit undersized in that kit, given that Monogram tended to be right at, or perhaps a bit larger than 1/24 scale, while most all 1/25 scale model car kits tooled newly today, are pretty close to that scale all over. However, with a bit of work, you can probably get away with carving off the molded on exhaust manifolds, and either making up a pair of 3-branch headers (flathead Ford V8's had but three exhaust ports on a side, the center port carrying the exhaust gasses from the middle two cylinders in each bank), or adding separate manifolds from a 1/25 scale kit having that feature.

Art