1959 Chevy Impala----Just a tease! 4/9/16

[MrObsessive]

Do you prefer to use polishing cloths over polishing pads, or do you use both for different applications?

Chris, I'm a big fan of the polishing cloths as they're more versatile to me. The pads are nice, but you're limited to broad flat surfaces such as a roof or hood, and then you have to be careful about any creases or ridges getting the paint wore away. The cloths at least I can fold up and get in those tight places if need be. 

I still have the foam block from years ago, so the pads to me are a bit redundant.

[MrObsessive]

Work continues on this one albeit sometimes at a slow pace. I snapped a couple pics with the wheels on one side as sort of a "mock-up" to check the stance. So far it's sitting well, and not too high like a lot of Revellogram models are wont to do. 

I finally got the glass in as well! One of the biggest hangups which had this project hamstrung for literally months is outta the way! I tried to get the "tint band" that I've seen on '59's, but it didn't look right to me, so I let it go. It might have something to do with the shape of the windshield as it's a super compound curve-------the tint band seems to defeat the purpose of what the windshield was supposed to do........give maximum visibility with as little obstruction as possible.

OK, here are a few pics.................

Considering the glass was homemade by me via vacuforming, I tried to get the glass to fit in the opening with as little a gap as possible..........another foible that drives me crazy!

I thought I'd try my hand at painting the very outside rim of the wheelcovers to match the body color. Not bad so far..............just keeping a steady hand is the hardest thing with this task. Still have yet to put BMF around the windshield frame. I'm going to heavily tape off the glass-----I don't want an unfortunate slip of the blade and all that work be for naught!

I want the door particularly on the passenger side to close more just a teeny-weeny bit. I painted the door jambs with just a bit too heavy a coat, and it's made the tolerance just a bit more than I'd like. 

I'm fighting with the interior now as I'm trying to get the rear side panels, rear seat and rear window shelf to play nice and not make any interference with putting the chassis back in. I can see where the chassis frame is still peeking just a little bit under the rocker panels. Oh well------that's another task I'll have to to better next time as Revell kits are too prone to stacking, which IMO leads to them sitting too high at times.

Also, I'm making plans to get the chrome sent out to be replated. Little Motor Kar Company is down the road from me in Reading, PA and I want to contact him to see how much he'll charge to plate some stuff for me. I've sent things to Dale years ago, and I found his plating to be most excellent. Turnaround time was short, and his prices were certainly reasonable.

Hopefully, I can get this done in time for NNL East which is in April. Updates will be very few, in fact, I probably won't be posting again until it's all done and "Under Glass". 

Thanks for tuning in.........it's been a loooooong road, but I finally can call this one done soon!

[crazyrichard]

sweeeeet !

[1930fordpickup]

Another awesome model from Bill. 

[Ramfins59]

Great work as usual Bill.  I look forward to seeing it in person at the NNL.

[Foxer]

Most excellent! I see the shotgun window is down .. !

[MrObsessive]

Most excellent! I see the shotgun window is down .. !

Ahhh, I see you noticed the extra trim I did for the rear pillars!

Yes, I had to add that as a lot of these I've seen built always seem to be missing something. That something is the trim for the rear quarter windows that make it seem like the roofline is disjointed, but that's the way GM did that for their hardtops back then. When all of the windows are rolled up this trim isn't as obvious but it's there.

Roll up windows were originally on the menu for this one------it's the reason you see the rear brace for the trunk hinges shaped the way they are. Life got in the way not long after I started to build this and somewhere along the away I let that detail go and just wanted to get it done. 

I'd still like to try a model where all four windows in a closed car roll up and down in 1/24-25th scale. 1959-'64 GM two door hardtops are a bit unique in how the rear windows roll down...........they have to scoot back a bit then the leading edge of the glass rolls down in the channel. In fact, I believe any car that has its quarter windows that go past the trailing edge of the wheelwells has their windows roll down this way for a hardtop.

I had this all drawn up on paper originally, but as I mentioned I'm at the point where just getting it done is close, and I want move on to another project soon.

Edited February 21, 2016 by MrObsessive

[Speedfreak]

Man, that car is looking good Bill. Just screams in that red, and , I love the color difference between the engine and the body color, looks very realistic. The red ring on the hubcap looks awesome, really pulls the whole thing together somehow. 

Gene

[Dogfish_7]

Nice touches!

[Greg Pugh]

Looking good Bill!

[Randy D]

Hi Bill, Not a fan of this style of car but I am a big fan of your modeling !!!!!! Beautiful paint and details as always. Randy

[Oldmodelmaker]

Bill, This is the first time I've seen this thread as I'm new to the forum. Even though I'm new, your build is the most amazing job of modeling I've ever seen and I'm am truly inspired. I read the thread in its entirety and it was amazing. Great work and I look forward to seeing more builds and trying some of your technics to my builds.

Pierce

[John Goschke]

Outstanding work, Bill! The window and rear window look phenomenal. And your roof swap makes the car. Good call on not doing the upper edge tint on the windows, I think, as when it's done on a model it's always seems distracting. On a 1/1 car they're never that obvious.

For those protruding inner rocker panels – is it too late to simply cut them off flush with bottom edge of the body, and cap them with some thin sheet styrene? Every build of this kit I've ever seen has that problem!

[MrObsessive]

For those protruding inner rocker panels – is it too late to simply cut them off flush with bottom edge of the body, and cap them with some thin sheet styrene? Every build of this kit I've ever seen has that problem!

Hmmm-------I had an idea to grind the rockers down with my Dremel Moto tool, but I'm loath to do that as everything surrounding that is already painted and looking neat. The problem lies with the sides of the floor pan being modeled too tall where it could stand to be a few scale inches shallower than it is. 

I may just repaint that area red oxide primer (it's been marred from me handling it so much), and leave well enough alone. I tried to make the chassis sit up further in the body, but then I'd have the floor itself sitting too high above the door jamb.

Remember that I did quite a bit of cutting away of the original interior tub as that really made things sit too high already for my tastes, and real cars don't use "tubs" anyway for interiors. All the pics of the '59's interior that I have show the floor about flush with the door jamb, save for the step-down for the rear seat footwells. I guess GM was able to do it this way because this particular car had no side rails of the frame to speak of. Just that burly X-Frame running down the middle. 

I'm wondering if Buick and Olds were designed the same way as they were still using a perimeter frame AFAIK back then?

Stay tuned, I may bite the bullet and do this---------have to put my thinking cap on and figure out how to possibly do this and not set this back any further. 

[MrObsessive]

Bill, This is the first time I've seen this thread as I'm new to the forum. Even though I'm new, your build is the most amazing job of modeling I've ever seen and I'm am truly inspired. I read the thread in its entirety and it was amazing. Great work and I look forward to seeing more builds and trying some of your technics to my builds.

Pierce

Well thank you so much! And welcome aboard! I can tell you that the next WIP won't be anywhere near this intense, but the one after that...............weeeellll, just wait and see! 

[SfanGoch]

Bill, you might find this article about GM X-Frames interesting.

[Codi]

That's just beautiful Bill.  Cheers

[MrObsessive]

Bill, you might find this article about GM X-Frames interesting.

Stan, thanks a bunch for the link! I almost forgot about that website with the X-Frame history as I did have it saved deep in the recesses of my hard disc! Very interesting story about the whole development of it, and it's interesting that certain GM divisions used this while others didn't. Strange!

BTW, there's an interesting shot of a '58 Chevy on the rack, and I couldn't help but notice the very sides of the floor pan. It's flat with no "underhang" below the rockers that's prevalent on the '59 kit (and more than likely the '60 also).  I also see what looks to be drain holes in those very sides. No doubt as that was a notorious area for rust as water collected there with ease.

I believe I have the low hanging floor problem licked as I did (carefully!!) take a Dremel to the sides of the floor pan and shaved it all down. Putting the chassis back in the body, you can barely see the floor hanging below the rockers. I'm going to have to do some heavy duty masking, and airbrush those sides again with the red oxide primer. Interesting that the Revell box art car is painted black with a shadow underneath, but if you look closely, you can see how badly the floor pan is hanging below the body.

Hopefully before the week is out, I'll post more pics of how it all looks, and I will say that to my eyes so far, it DOES look better!

[charlie8575]

Without question one of the most talented builders in America today, folks. 

Bill, I hope we'll see you at NNL-East and this will be in tow.

Charlie Larkin

[John Goschke]

Yay, Bill! I knew you could fix it! Looking forward to seeing the result.

Speaking of X-frame cars, I've owned both '58 and '59 Pontiac four-door hardtops. The '58 was a roomy, comfortable car. The lower '59, with the flat floor in the front and a lower seat, took some getting use to. Drive tunnels, particularly in the '59, were huge, making an uncomfortable ride for passengers in the middle of the seat when carrying six passengers, or ones girlfriend sitting close. The '61 Catalina I had, with its perimeter frame, was a much improved vehicle in every respect.

 

[MrObsessive]

As was mentioned earlier, I needed to do something somehow with that low hanging floor. Well, I do believe I have it licked and it's something to keep in mind if I ever do anymore '59 Chevy variants.

So here's what happened...........

This turned into somewhat of a setback as the chassis still wasn't sitting right in the body after much test fitting. I'm loath to have to keep putting the chassis in and out like this------it's a very tight fit and have to remember each time how it goes in to minimize overflexing the body too much. I want no more drama with this thing till it's all done. Nearly four years is long enough!

The problem lies in that Revell molded the chassis sides too tall, and no matter what you do, the chassis sides want to hang below the rocker panels. There's no '59 Chevy I've ever seen that shows that much of the floor hanging below like that. One pic I have of a direct side of the car shows a little hint of the rear part of the chassis floor showing, and this would make sense since there's that dip-down for the rear footwells. Soooooo............I got out the Dremel Moto-Tool, and veerrry carefully shaved down the sides of the chassis.

Of course, I had to airbrush the red oxide primer all over again, and carefully so since everything around it was already painted. The clear covering you see is Parafilm.............very handy for covering surfaces around curved areas where tape doesn't always want to play nice and bend.

OK.........that's out of the way for now.......I set this aside for awhile to let the primer fully dry without any smudges or smears. While I was at it, I used the airbrush to touch up scratches and such that were on the gas tank and mufflers. One reason you saw the Parafilm on the chassis in earlier shots-----this gets handled so much and it's really great to minimize mishaps.

One of the things that almost left my mind is that the interior needs a headliner. Revell sorta molded one in the roof of the car with very faint "seam lines" but I want to add a bit more depth to that area, and made one on my own. The kit gives you side interior lights, but I don't care for those, and I've seen '59's with the single dome light which I wanted to make as you see here.

I cut a piece of aluminum tubing to size that I thought would look in scale for the headliner and light. The clear part was cut from a length of clear tubing (I have no idea the diameter, just looked "right" to me). After polishing the end of the tubing with my Dremel before it was cut off, I fit this inside the aluminum collar.

Using some .010 plastic sheet with the seams filed in, I cut it to size to fit inside the Chevy's roof.

Here it is all painted up with the dome light epoxied into place. The light was painted with an RC color I have called "Fascolor", and the paint is Faspearl White. To me this looks better than just plain bright white which jumps out at you too much.

Now the final fit.......looks good! Later on before the chassis is put back in, I'll BMF the sides of the roof rails (inside), and touch up some spots here and there.

Ok........moving back to the chassis issue for hopefully the last time, this is looking MUCH better than before with the chassis floor hanging too low.

Before pic with the floor hanging too low.........

After with it all fixed.............

The little flea bites in the paint from handling this so much will be taken care of before I call this all done.

Well, that's all for now! Next step is to get the rearview mirror in, get the dash brace put in, get the dash to sit in the cowl correctly, and then get the rear interior panels and rear seat in. Finally, I can put the chassis in for the final time, and be on the downside of getting this one finished. 

Thanks for tuning in!

[72 Charger]

Bill I have followed your Impala build from the very beginning and its hard to believe that its been nearly 4 years . Im so impressed with your attention to detail and your methods . I would like to say thank you for such a great build . I have learned so much from you and ive been building most of my life (35 years) I don't think I will ever reach your standard of workmanship but I will keep trying keep at it .

[59 Impala]

Bill, I love your 59.  It looks a lot like the 1:1 that I used to own and wish I still had.  I can't wait to see it done.  I'm going to remember what you did to the chassis to fix the problem of the floor below the rocker panel.  I have a 2 coupes and a convertible to fix now.  I still have the 60 with the roof you sent me and will be building that soon.  I already fixed the trunk area where the spare tire well is and installed the roof to the body and filled in the indent on the top where the chrome piece goes.  Do you ever build one that is rusted s little bit?  I want to build one that has gone thru a few winters here in Ohio and rusted somewhat. 

Dan

[tomsheehy]

Impeccable workmanship...but that's the definition of all of your work.  It says so in the dictionary right next to your name. 

[Randy D]

Now that is how to fix a problem !!   This is looking great Bill

 

Randy