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Don Nicholson '61 Impala OS/S.


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Thanks Dave and Gene, I appreciate it!

Gene - Yep I used a brush on the gloss black. I don't think I could mask those flat black areas away so that I could paint the glossy parts with a spray can since chassis has so many shapes that my maskings would leak from somewhere for sure... :lol:

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I understand that very well, it's not always easy to lay a good paint job with a brush. I still use brushes pretty much, though. Usually only body and then chassis plate are painted with spray cans and pretty much everything else is painted with a brush. Sometimes my engines and even interiors are painted with spray cans though.

Maybe the reason why I use brush so much is that it takes a lot of time and effort to mount the parts for painting and then they need always Primer etc when painting with spray cans... :D

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  • 1 year later...

Well, it's been a long time since this build has seen the bench, but I want to say a late Thank You to Carl, Cliff, Joe and Michael. The kind words are highly appreciated!

While it's a bit cold outside (something like -8 Fahrenheits now) I'm unable to shoot a second color coat on my Ford Thunderbolt or clear coat my '55 Chevy Gasser, so I decided to take this one back on the bench to do something.

Next step was to figure out the stance. On my previous mock up, front end was too low so that had to be fixed first. I cut short pieces of plastic rod and drilled a proper size hole to mount them to the spindles. A Same size hole was drilled to the inner wheels too, so now the front suspension is in the highest possible place with the original kit spindles.

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Next I had to do the same thing to that rear axle. The problem was that I couldn't drill correct size holes to the axle, because the axle is glued together from two halves and when I tried to drill a hole in there, those two halves just came apart. So, my rear inner wheels had bigger axle hole in them than the axle itself, so as a solution, I installed that plastic rod on my motor tool and filed the other end smaller so that it fits inside the rear axle, while still the other end is a tight fit to the inner wheels.

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And now when I was able to mount wheels and tires properly on place, I decided to do a mock up to see if more adjustments are needed. On rear, everything except the wheels and tires are stock and I think that the ride height on rear is pretty good. Front end is a lot better than on my previous mock up too, and I think it's actually pretty close to what the real car was.

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(That last pic was borrowed from George Klass' site.)

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  • 2 weeks later...

When surfing in the internet I found a picture of Dyno Don sitting on the driver's seat of this Impala. It's the only picture where the interior can be seen a little, and looks like I guessed the seat colors correctly! That's some good news, as I originally just guessed that "they might have been this way"... This also shows the dash and steering wheel colors, so now I don't have to guess that either when I get the dash from paint stripping.

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The real car had Chrome Reverses on front and regular silver Steel Wheels on rear. So I painted the front wheels with "Chrome Silver" and rears with regular silver spray paint. The front wheels could be just a bit brighter, but that's the best I could do for now. Next up is some detail painting and minor black washing to make the wheels look good.

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Most of the chassis components were painted so I decided to install front and rear suspensions on place. The fitment was really good on both and gluing them on correctly was easy.

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I added a short piece of brake line to the rear end too. The rest will be done later, but this had to be done before installing the axle on place. It's made out of thin copper wire, the fitting that connects that rubber part of brake line between the chassis floor and rear axle and that regular brake line together was scratchbuilt from styrene rod.

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One thing I never liked on this Lindberg body is that the lower rear window chrome trim is missing. Well, rest of the chrome trims are not perfect either, but this would have been impossible to foil smoothly as there was no chrome trim molded at all.

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So the only choice was to add that chrome trim in there. Luckily I had some styrene rod in proper size that I just glued in there. Now I'll let the glue dry a bit and then smooth it out with some putty. Now I should have no problems foiling this one.

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Here's a minor update on the Impala. Those lower body panels (Whatever they're in English.... Valance Panels?) were glued on place to both front and rear. It wasn't a major surprise that the fitment wasn't very good so something had to be done to make them fit better before painting. Those panels were a bit too wide to fit perfectly to the body, so first I roughly removed most of the excess material with a hobby knife. Then I sanded them a bit smoother and so that they match the body shapes a bit better. This operation was done on both ends.

Here is the rear body panel before doing anything...

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Smoothing it out and correcting the fitment...

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Then I applied some putty to smooth out the glue joints and that rear window lower trim I did earlier. In this picture you can also see my new decal sheet that just arrived. I bought it for the cauge decals as the ones from my kit's original decal sheet got destroyed when I removed paint from that dash a few days ago.

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Thanks Chris, I appreciate it coming from a Master like you!

Here's a little update, I've done a bit of progress with the tires and wheels. Those separate molded in plastic white walls looked too much like plastic when they weren't painted, so I shot a few coats of Tamiya white spray paint on them. Now they look a lot better and they're not too bright white. For the wheels I also painted bolts and nuts with grey and wheel centers semi gloss black. I added a bit of black wash to the wheels to give some depth and I think they look decent.

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Thanks Tom! There are never enough X-Frame Chevrolets so I'd say get to it! ;)

Unfortunately he is not selling that much those resin parts, once I asked if he'd consider selling a few to the States but he didn't want to do that... You see the business is very small and it's done as a hobby between real work, other life and own modeling projects. He is a nice guy and his resin parts and kits are top notch quality. I'm sorry to say that I can't help you with these wheels.:(

 

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