alan barton

Here's mine, the original "twelfth of never" project. I have been on this over thirty years but refuse to give up. A 1935 Ford phaeton that I bought at an auction as a complete basket case for $100, and then sold unrelated parts out of it for $100 the next day - yep, a free tub! This has had a huge amount of work done on it in the time I have owned it but still has a long way to go. I promised everyone that as soon as I retired I would be working on it seven days a week. No, really! Instead, I have been building models like tomorrow is the last day of the universe. I have finished eighty models in 20 months but alas, the phaeton is still sitting in the garage laughing at me. Will eventually be a fifties style custom but with 350/T400 under the hood, Holden IFS and Chrysler Centura coil sprung rear. The basic fabrication work is all done but final details like interior, plumbing, exhaust and gear shift are killing me! I want to get this car so right and not just hand it over to someone to finish. My motto is, "I can make mistakes for half the price of a professional!" Wish me luck!

This thing is so creative! I have this kit, still in it's shrink wrap because I hadn't come up with a good idea of what to do with it! You have achieved that in spades! Such a clever design. Cheers Alan

Thank you everyone, so glad that you all can appreciate an ugly duckling! Tim, the paint is Tamiya Metallic Red over grey primer with Tamiya gloss clear on top. It was all done with spray cans and then polished out and yes, I'm very happy with it! Cheers Alan

I am simply blown away by how beautiful this is! Colour, stance, wheel/tyre combo, just absolutely perfect! Has me seriously reconsidering my colour choice3 for a Vicky project on my bench. This is without doubt the best AMT Vicky I have ever seen! Cheers Alan

According to the Scalemates website, the Beachboys Little Deuce Coupe version of Monogram's ancient 32 roadster kit was released in 1989. That tells you how long it took me to finish this one! I ordered two kits on hearing that they were coming out but as soon as I collected them from my LHS I had my doubts. To quote Scotty from Star Trek "It's a Deuce coupe, captain, but not as we know it!" Yep, after modellers had waited almost four decades for a usable 1/24th or 1/25th scale 3 window coupe, they came out with a botched up mess. A coupe IS NOT a roadster with a roof - it is an entirely different body and the contours are very different to each other. Reluctantly I built one almost box stock straight away - beggars can't be choosers - but then decided to chop the second one to try and correct the roof line if nothing else. That was a bit beyond my skill set at the time so it went back in the box. It came out again about five years ago but didn't inspire me. It then occurred to me that seeing as how it was so ugly, why not go uglier? A radical custom show rod from the early sixties could hide a multitude of sins, so that's what I did. So, the recipe is as follows. Fenders and running boards and fuel tank removed from stock Monogram fender unit. Front frame rails Z' eed just behind grille. AMT Ala Kart chromed coil sprung banjo rear end. Chromed dropped front axle with spring in front of, not on top of axle - it may be a Black Widow item, I think. AMT 409 Chevy from the 57 Chevy kit with six carbs and scoops from the exhaust tips from a Hot Wheels toy. Custom front end from AMT 32 Tudor double kit, with expanded mesh insert instead of the Edsel grille. Chopped roof with angled windshield posts Deck lid filed as flat as I dared to remove some of the roadster hump Rear rollpan made from the custom cowl from a Monogram Lil Coffin Monogram whitewalls and mags. I did almost nothing inside the highly inaccurate interior because to be honest, you just cant see in there. A bit of two tone paint and a right hand drive conversion and that's about it. Thanks for looking. Cheers Alan

Wow, Pete, that is amazing. What a neat job! Cheers Alan

Looking good, Mike. I too have bought one of these superb bodies - just got to decide what theme I am going to build too! Cheers Alan

That's my kind of crazy! Will be interested to see how this turns out. Cheers Alan

Looking good Brock. I can relate to your comments about the difference between a Ute and a Ranchero because I am currently converting two Rancheros - one into an XK ute and one into an XP. There is even more to it than you think, it is not just the length! I have had to shorten the door, shorten the roof, reshape the B pillars, reshape the rear window opening and reshape the whole rear end, top and bottom. Still got a way to go but it is getting there! Good luck with your project Cheers Alan

Thank you Craig - if I had a mint kit to start with I would probably have assembled it in red and polished the plastic for nostalgia's sake. With the amount of work required to repair the body, it was a no brainer to do a different colour, for exactly the reason you stated - they're all red! Yes, Dennis, very high satisfaction value. I look at it this way - my complete unopened kits and built kits are possibly going to live on beyond me, but random parts are at risk when the estate sale starts! The more lame, three legged dogs I build, the more I save! I do however sometimes question my sanity when I look at how many mint unstarted kits I still have to build! I hope it will get even tougher when I get the Hemi sunk back to where it should be! I can see pipes coming through the cowl! Thanks everyone for looking so far, I really appreciate your comments and compliments. . Cheers Alan

When everything had dried overnight I took a look at the car and it looked too fat, ie, tool tall in the height of the doors. Early Monogram kits were at best twenty footers - they weren't dead nuts to scale. After some serious eyeballing I elected to saw off 3mm or 1/8th inch from the bottom of the rockers and then replace the lower moulding, both sides, with 2mm Evergreen half round. I also rescribed the lower door line at this stage. After some more filing, sanding and puttying, it was time for the first coats of primer. So as of tonight, we have a mockup. The front wheels are resin versions of the Boothill Express front wheels and tyres form thepartsbox.com. The back wheels and tyres are Ice T but probably wont stay. It's looking pretty tough but there is a long way to go! Cheers Alan

The spare cowl from the box of parts was split and cracked and missing the windshield opening. After a bit of thought I decided to start with a windshield shaped hole in a piece of thick styrene! After finessing the fit for a while< then cut way the lower section that would not be needed and glued it, slightly oversize, to the body. Once again, plenty of filing, puttying, sanding and priming followed. About the same time I tackled the swage lines or body mouldings on the side of the coupe. I was originally going to use either flat or half round styrene to form these - that seemed pretty obvious. The more I studied it, the more I decided an easier was would be to first run the whole swage line from firewall to lower rear corner using one strip of 1.5mm quarter round. When that had dried, I ran a second piece above the first piece, tapering it off as it began to curve. Finally I took a third piece of 1.5mm half round and glued it upside down in the valley between the first two pieces. The main reasons for this long winded operation was that a) the thin strips were easier to curve accurately and b) there is quite a change in thickness of the body moulding over the length of the car. Another strip of 1.5 was used to make the wheel arch. You will see that I also cut a huge gaping hole out of the firewall and cowl - hey, it was already split and broken so no crime here! These models are approximately 1/20th scale which restricts the amount of parts available for a project like this. I did have a big ol' Hemi lying around from a Monogram Sizzler so that led me to choose an early sixties altered coupe as the them for this build.

So last week, I started thinking about tackling another build. The first issue was that the box had contained three left hand side panels and 1 right hand side panel - so in effect I only had 2/3rds of the second body. There are plenty of other parts missing but I figured there was no point starting to look for parts if I couldn't replace the missing side. I started by tracing the spare right hand side onto a sheet of 1mm white styrene. Before attempting to do any shaping, I began cutting out the windows. I started by drilling a series of holes in the waste area and then trimming them to size with a sharp X-Acto. The thing is, if I was going to duplicate the window mouldings, I had to cut the window opening to the larger size of the moulding. I checked regularly with the spare left hand side to see how I was going. When I was happy with the size I rounded the edges by sanding them smooth to duplicate the mouldings. Next, I cut a piece of styrene roughly the size the side window area of the coupe and then marked out the actual window openings, Again I used drills to hog the area out but I didn't trim them to the exact size. I felt it would be too easy to misjudge their size, shape or positioning. Tamiya liquid cement was used to glue the piece on the inside of the side panel. While this was drying I clamped it to the spare side piece to aid in achieving the correct curvature of the side panel. I was now ready to cut out the overall shape of the side panel and sand it to get as closes a fit as possible. Flat Evergreen strip was added along the top edge to form the basis of the gutter. The gutter would not be sanded to shape until the body was assembled. Small strips of flat strip were glued to the front edge of both side panels and the last step for this stage was to glue the cowl onto the body and clamp everything in position on the frame - a bit of a handful if I say so myself!

Finally, after a lot more fine sanding, it was painted in a Dupli colour Mazda metallic blue with plenty of clear. Considering that this is the only one I had ever come across for sale in Australia, I was very happy to finally park this one in my collection. These old Monograms are a great window into the history of modelling and I treat them as such - I see no point in attempting to super detail or accurize these models as there are plenty of far nicer examples of these cars in model form, especially the Revell version. Cheers Alan

It took a few rounds of putty/sand/prime before the body was ready for paint. Considering what it looked like when I started, I was pretty happy with these results. The front cycle fenders also needed a few telescoping sleeves of aluminium tubing to get them firmly located on the axle.

The chassis had a broken front crossmember that needed reinforcing. Otherwise all the parts were there to get it back on wheels. I considered fitting the original electric motor but decided it would only complicate things and left it out. I was missing some of the original wheelbacks so had to use short lengths of K and S aluminium tubing to make the replacement items fit the axle. Some of the tyres had handpainted whitewalls so I did the same on the replacement one that I used. Its a lot whiter but maybe it will yellow with age to match the others? Engine assembly went well and it was great to see it all together.

Some years ago I bought a box of gluebombed Monogram Sport Coupe parts for $25 in an Adelaide antique store. I figured there were enough decent parts in there to build one of my holy grails. recently I had another look in the box and figured I had enough to get another one out of those parts if I combined them with other parts in my stash. Before we start, for the benefit of newcomers to the hobby, this is NOT a model of a 1932 Ford Sports Coupe. It is a model of a five window coupe. The sports coupe had a fixed fabric top behind the doors, where the quarter windows are on a five window coupe. Just thought I would clear that up for those who weren't aware. The first photo shows the contents of the box. Plenty of old enamel paint, plenty of glue but the bones were there. Second photo shows the results of paint stripping in caustic soda. I got the basic body panels assembled although they needed a bit of tweaking. There were some broken pieces of plastic missing plus some fairly rugged glue joins to contend with.

Thanks, everyone. It was a fun build apart from the bodywork and it is nice to know that others enjoy it as well. Cheers Alan

Hi Brock, No, it wasn't that one but it was very similar in proportion - the B pillar extensions were not quite as dramatic as the ones on Blowback.' The HK ute was an old Jaymar fibreglass body. There is no nice way to say this - these are incredibly hard to build. The fibreglass will shatter and crack if you so much as look at it. You cant see it in the photos but the last thing I had to do to the HK was to use five minute epoxy to glue the dashboard in place. While holding it between my finger and thumb til it set, the bonnet split straight down the middle! I dont know if any Aussie caster does the HK ute these days but if at all possible get a resin one, not a fibreglass one. I have now built seven Jaymar models and they all caused a massive amount of grief because of the inherent brittleness of fibreglass and the extraordinary amount of clean-up required. Every single one of them split or cracked at some stage of construction and I would not call myself a heavy handed model builder. For my ute I made a vacformed copy of an original HK promo chassis - a very rare piece. thepartsbox.com makes a resin chassis and I think this would be your most economical choice. The chassis out of any AMT 67-68-69 Camaro should work as well. Alternatively, FullBore Models do a highly detailed 3D printed HT Ute if my memory is correct but it is a lot more expensive - they may sell the chassis unit separately as I have bought their excellent Holden independent front ends off them as stand alone parts. Hope that helps! Cheers Alan

My apologies to the hard working moderators here, not sure what happened but I managed to make a duplicate post. Sorry bout that Alan

I haven't been posting a lot in recent years as I was the columnist for Australian Street Rodding magazine's Scale Rodder column and it felt like a conflict of interest to be posting models that I was featuring in the column. Sadly that has all changed as next months #400 of Australian Street Rodding will be the last. Following the untimely passing of the founder and publisher of Graffiti Publications, Larry O'Toole, the family has decided that they will close the publication down while it is still going strong. It is very sad for all Aussie rodders and especially modellers as in recent years it has been the only printed coverage of the model building hobby available in Australia. This project would have gone in a future column but I will now share it with you all here. I was first inspired by seeing a similar conversion in the first ever Scale Auto Enthusiast contest annual in the early eighties. I recall that it was built by a Swedish modeller. I started it about four years ago when I came across a spare Monogram T bucket body and a spare Revell 27 T touring body. Some will notice that this body looks different to the real Big Tub from Monogram and there is a good reason for that. The Monogram '23 touring uses full doors front and rear. If I had attempted this conversion using two long halves of a Monogram T bucket body, the straight rear door line would have intersected with the radius of those big pie crust slicks. On the other hand the Revell body had the radiused door line that would clear the tyres. A further benefit was that the Revell body came with a roof that was a near perfect fit on this conversion and it also came with a full rear seat and interior side panels. I also used a second rear seat to create a front seat, using flat sheet and putty to fill in the missing areas. The frame was also modified quite a bit a the rear. It was extended about 1/8th of an inch and the Zee was pushed to the very rear of the frame to clear the rear seat. Extra crossmembers were added in a nod to engineering requirements. The engine is a Nailhead Buick from an AMT 40 Ford, just to be different yet era appropriate with headers from the Revell Model A hiboy kit. The grille is cut down from a Monogram 32 Ford. The colour is Tamiya Lime green pearl over white primer. Getting the bodywork tied up where the two bodies were joined caused me enough grief to put it away several times over the years but I finished it a few months ago and am very happy with the results. Cheers Alan

I almost never build anything stock - I've been a hot rodder since I was 10 years old. But seeing your 27 T and 29 A on this forum, I am beginning to question my life choices. These are simply magnificent! Congratulations on raising the bar for the construction of scale automobiles in their original glory. Cheers Alan

I've been a fan of dioramas all my life and this would be in my top three for sure! Stunning attention to detail. Cheers Alan

My first kit was an Airfix 1/32 scale 1910 model T Ford. Pretty sure Dad built it for me - I was probably about 7 or 8. This was followed by a 1904 Darracq which I may have glued a fe2w pieces to. The first one I built myself was an Airfix mini Minor, glued up windows and all. My first 1/25th scale kit was the original issue Trophy series 1957 Fairlane and I never looked back! Except that I did, because I now have a collection of over eighty 1/32 scale hot rods, plus replacements for those three mentioned above. Cheers Alan

That's a great concept. A very modern take on a classic without losing any of its character. Cheers Alan