350 replies to this topic

[ShawnS]

Hi all. To everyone who hasn't seen this on the ozautobuilders forum this is for you.
This is my current project and the only thing that I've been working on for almost a year now. I'm about half way through the whole project so I'll fill you in with where it's at and how I got there.

THE CAR
It's a 1983 Ford XE Falcon S-Pack. The XE Falcon model life lasted from '82 to '84 and it was one of the most popular cars for it's time. The S-Pack was powered by Ford's trusty 4.1L (250) 6 cyl and was basically a stripes and interior trim upgrade over the base model My parents and my grandparents both owned XE S-pack Falcons so they were always part of my childhood and hold many memories for me. It's armed with these memories that I embarked on the most ambitious model project that I could think of and that was to build one (or both) from scratch.

This is my parents car.

THE BUILD
I searched high and low to find a model to base it on but I soon realised that any modification of an existing model would require just as much work as building one from scratch. I thought about it for a while and when I was going through some old car brochures I found a small basic side plan picture of an XD (the Falcon before the XE). I scanned the pic and enlarged it, cleaned it up and made it to 1:25 scale.


I drew that onto a sheet of evergreen twice and cut them out.
That's when I started adding the detail, first the upper kink in the sides and then I scribed some detail in the sides.

Although the real car looks totaly boxy it is has a lot of subtle curves so I had to massage some roundness into the lower areas. The next thing I had to do was to make it thicker to stop it from warping I added thick evergreen into the inside to act as a spine and make it sturdy. I also added more evergreen to the lower inside section later.

I scribed the door handles too.

The next step was to make something for the window frames and pillars to stick to. The 'L' shaped piece is a spacer that goes inside to bring the windows away from the body.

At this stage you can see a strip around the wheel arch that will give me something to stick the putty onto for the wheel arch flares. I made the window frames and pillars from evergreen strips.


To be continued.

Cheers
ShawnS

Edited by ShawnS, 14 May 2013 - 01:17 AM.

[ShawnS]

The next step was to putty the wheel arches. I'm not the neatest putty user but it did the job.

Then sand them back. It took a little while to get the shape right but I was happy with them in the end.

Then it was time to start thinking how I was going to join the two halves. I made steps at either end to glue the hood and trunk to.


I made a jig to keep the body sides at the width that I required and glued some bracing inside.

I started with the back end.

Then I made the hood.

Before I glued the hood to the body I made a vent grill from evergreen strips.

and glued it in place.

The hood had a nose that was added at that stage. Along with a small grill.

I was happy enough at that stage to glue the hood onto the body.

To be continued.
Cheers
ShawnS

[glenn]

will be watching this closely-great work,isn't the parts box bringing out an xd falcon soon?

[ShawnS]

The partsbox car will be an XB.

[DANB]

I will have to try this ozautobuilders forum out. Your doing a prety sweet job mate!

[Tony T]

Fabulous scratchbuilding there!!

[dodgefever]

Real scratchbuilding, that's impressive!

[brett]

guys, you have not seen anything yet, keep watching, it only gets better

[Cool Hand]

X2 with what Brett said.
Have seen this being built on the Oz forum and have to say Shawn is very highly skilled and this build is one of the most impressive Australian scratch builds I have ever seen.
Wait til you guys see the amount and the quality of scratch building he has done.

Edited by Cool Hand, 09 February 2012 - 02:01 AM.

[Dr. Cranky]

Oh boy, talk about beautiful building from scratch. Definitely pure eye candy already and the results are looking excellent. Keep it going, please.

[vwrabbit]

Great googlymoogly that's fabulous work! Don't keep us waiting!

Tim

[patami]

THE CAR
It's a 1983 Ford XE Falcon S-Pack.


This is my parents car.


Cheers
ShawnS

Looks alittle like the Ford granada that we here in europe had about the same time. It thou got an Colone 2.8L V6 as the top end configuration. But the side line and the back light apears to be the same.
I have ovned one and have to say it s the best car i have had so far. So yes i vill follow this very closely and have to order a copy if PB starts to sell them.

[shucky]

VERY awesome job, cant wait to see more. Keep the updates coming + thanks for sharing.

[espo]

This is truely amazing. This man has "SKILLS".

[Darin Bastedo]

in-freakin'-credible! Love it. You have some skills!

[Duntov]

WOW..... a "REAL" modeler at work....this I have to watch!!!!

Regards
Bill (Duntov)

[ShawnS]

Thanks everyone, There is a fair bit left to show you so I hope you will enjoy what I have to show. Although I have taken hundreds of pics so far over the course of the build (and will probably take hundreds more), you guys are getting the edited down version.

Looks alittle like the Ford granada that we here in europe had about the same time. It thou got an Colone 2.8L V6 as the top end configuration. But the side line and the back light apears to be the same.
I have ovned one and have to say it s the best car i have had so far. So yes i vill follow this very closely and have to order a copy if PB starts to sell them.

Yeah I've had a few people tell me the same over the last 12 months and I can tell you that although the Falcon and the Granada are from the same family and have similar styling cues, they don't actually share any parts. Also TPB won't be selling these. It's all mine and I probably won't sell them either but I haven't made up my mind on it yet.

Back to the pics.
I glued the hood on first then I glued on the windscreen. The thick strips that you can see on the side were there temporarily to keep the body sides in position in the jig while the glue dried.

I then turned my attention to the rear end treatment. The first thing to do was to bend a wide thin strip of evergreen and wedge it into the space around the tail light section. This was then trimmed down to replicate the trim around the tail lights.


I made the rear bumper.

The tail lights were made by scribing the lines into a thick evergreen sheet and then I cut and glued two pieces together into an L shape. This photo was taken in the prototype stage and I later re-made the tail lights to fit flush with the sides of the body. I will cast the tail lights in clear resin later.

Then I moved on to the front bumper. I cut out and glued together 3 pieces of evergreen sheet then added the sides and the front. I later added the centre section where the licence plate sits. You can see that the top section isn't cut down like the two pieces under it, I did that to keep it solid to reduce any potential warping.




To be continued..

Cheers
ShawnS

[ShawnS]

Then it was on to the lower bumper section. I made the sides.

At this stage I was a little bit stuck as how to do the complete airdam so I got some of my modelling clay and made a mock- up of how I wanted the whole nose to look. this also gave me the chance to check the proportions. It was at this stage that I found the whole front end was way too big so I spent some time cutting, sanding and re-making every part of the nose until I was happy with how it looked.

I eventually found a way to build the airdam. The bumper itself will be cast as a separate part.

I added a grill section to the inside.

and made some lights from some mirrors that I found in my spares box and little bits of evergreen.



Tomorrow- The roof.
To be continued..
Cheers
ShawnS

[LAone]

wow, im so looking forward to how this turns out.

[hotrod59f100]

Wow, your just amazing . I wouldn't get past the idea of wanting to build one. Lol . Are you going to cast it when your done?