39 replies to this topic

[62rebel]

at least the one i see is aligned with the pattern.... they're usually at some gosh awful oblique angle if they're in a patterned section, and they usually stick up a scale inch or twelve....

that's a heck of a build.... i never could understand why so many Revell kits hid their light under a bushel so to speak. so much detail forever hidden once the body is glued down....

[sports850]

I've started one of these a little while ago as well (I am mini and mini variant obsessed) , the engine is from what I believe you guy's had as an Austin American , very close cousin to what the rest of the world got as the Austin/Morris/Wolesly/MG/Riley 1100/1300 range (BMC kept the styling very similar , just changed the grille and bonnet front edges and interior trim levels) .

I love the detail you've acheived on the kit so far , how did you go getting the body panels to sit , they are a little tricky on mine and not wanting to line up too well ...

[jbwelda]

>how did you go getting the body panels to sit , they are a little tricky on mine and not wanting to line up too well ...

if you mean where the various body pieces join up, yeah they were a little tricky to say the least; i didnt bother, just got it close all around and welded everything up with thick CA glue and am currently filling and sanding the remaining seams.

this thing actually fits together pretty well, i accidently installed what was left of the steering shaft/steering box upside down and see now that it would have looked a lot better as it was supposed to be. that may be borne out in how the steering column eventually angles in the interior. but fussy as a lot of the chassis was, i have to say stuff fit like it should, which to me has been a revell hallmark: fiddly but all fits with patience.

[sports850]

Yeah , I meant the body bits fitting together , I grew several new grey hairs trying to get mine to fit right , just doesn't seem to be enough meat in the locating lugs to line up right . Still , it's mostly together now .

[jbwelda]

alright a little progress to report...the interior, such as it is, is complete. no heroics though i did make a four-piece polished aluminum steering column just cuz the kit one looked so poor. there isnt much there and its all black so a bit difficult to see. steering wheel, gauge cluster with integral brake and clutch pedals (looks totally unrealistic but its hard to see anyhow), long shift lever and non-descript shift knob, a little gas pedal, and thats all there is folks! i did flock the floorboard but again its gonna be kinda hard to tell even with the more than adequate greenhouse of the body.








and speaking of the body, its getting pretty smooth now, molded the lower fairings in and cleaned up the seams. still another round to go but then it should be ready for paint. yellow. my first real airbrush full on paint job. this is gonna be interesting...perhaps i will chicken out and stick with tamiya chrome yellow outta the buzzcan.









comments, suggestions, questions always cheerfully entertained!

[CanadianKronik]

Cool lil car, Im a big fan of Ed Roth's builds.

[jbwelda]

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 by jbwelda, 29 April 2012 - 07:11 PM.

[Michigan Madman]

Clean work on that body seam- I'm not looking forward to that on mine.

[bobthehobbyguy]

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

[Ace-Garageguy]

Looks like it had Mini banana arms for the rear suspension too. I had no idea the Surfite was based on old Mini guts.

[Hedgehog]

Wow it looks good ready to surf

[jbwelda]

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!

[jbwelda]

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!

[Skip]

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.

[jbwelda]

under glass:

http://www.modelcars...showtopic=66751

[jbwelda]

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:

 

 

[crazyrichard]

whow thats awsome , love it !!!

[Tom Geiger]

 

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.

[RatRod]

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!

[jbwelda]

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 by jbwelda, 03 February 2013 - 08:49 AM.