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Lindberg 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster


Johnt671

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Somebody explain to me why the door panel lines on this kit stick out from the surface instead of being recessed. The only possible "reason" I can come up with is a massive brain freeze on the part of the people who cut the tooling. Even back in the Stone Age when this kit was tooled, door panel lines didn't stick up from the surface!

Some older airplane kits were tooled like this back then also...I guess they didn't have the technology in the ancient times to recess panel lines.

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Some older airplane kits were tooled like this back then also...I guess they didn't have the technology in the ancient times to recess panel lines.

What do you mean, they didn't have the "technology?"

The "technology" required to have a recessed panel line on the finished piece is a corresponding raised rib on the tooling. If they had the "technology" to correctly tool the fairly intricate detail on the grille, the hood, the seats, the spark plug detail on the head, etc... they obviously had the "technology" needed to correctly tool up recessed panel lines.

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Hopefully not. And hopefully, that's one of the fiberglass replicas.

Nope, that's a real Auburn....well at least what was left of an original. James Hatfield from Metalica had that car built from a total wreck of a car he found in a swamp in Florida. From what I understand there wasn't much of a car left to start with.

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Nope, that's a real Auburn....well at least what was left of an original. James Hatfield from Metalica had that car built from a total wreck of a car he found in a swamp in Florida. From what I understand there wasn't much of a car left to start with.

Sorry...wrong. 

It's a fiberglass Glenn Pray "continuation" car (built between '68 and '81) that had seen better days, and the real story is fascinating.

http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/1136srp-1936-glenn-pray-auburn-852-speedster/

 

 

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Hopefully not. And hopefully, that's one of the fiberglass replicas.

See above. It's built from a derelict fiberglass Glenn Pray "continuation" replica.  http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/1136srp-1936-glenn-pray-auburn-852-speedster/

The shop I work with is currently building a car for the custom Auburn's owner, James Hetfield.

Quoting from the article at the above link about the "Slow Burn" custom Auburn pictured above...

 

"Glenn Pray Auburn 866 Speedster

The Speedster featured on these pages is a fiberglass recreation of the classic Auburn Speedster. The original Speedsters sell for extreme dollars, with the last one leaving an Indiana factory in 1937. But that's where our story begins.

Glenn Pray in 1960 purchased the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Co. and moved it from Auburn, Indiana, to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Around 1959, he quit his job teaching mechanics at Tulsa's Central High School to take control of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Co., making him the youngest president (age 36) of an automotive manufacturing company in the world at the time.

He designed and manufactured, among others, the Auburn Speedsters and phaetons. Pray owned the rights to produce and title these cars as Auburns. He used the real Auburn hardware and design, making his fiberglass reproductions strikingly authentic to the original car.

n August 1967, the first Speedster was viewed at the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Club event. It was designated the New Auburn 866 Speedster and available to the public in 1968 (and produced through 1981) with a retail price of $8,450. Pray referred to his 866 Speedsters as Second Generation Cars or Auburn Continuations, as he believed they were never meant to be replicas of the originals. Again, he believed his cars are modern-day versions of the original Auburn Speedster.

 

Pray was able to get Ford involved and the original chassis and powertrain came from Blue Oval; a 428 Ford engine, automatic or manual transmission, and rearend was used on the Auburn prototype. Other items, such as the functional supercharger-style exhaust pipes (two pipes per side), along with the likes of power steering, power brakes, and air conditioning, made this car unique. Pray modified the original body design to accept the Ford convertible chassis, featuring an extended wheelbase of 127 inches.

Because Pray had the original tooling and surplus parts he believed 100-125 Speedsters could be trimmed out in original N.O.S. Auburn parts. He produced 138 Auburns and sold an estimated 90-100 Speedsters that were in various stages of completion."

Picture

Glenn Pray died on March 24, 2011.

 

 

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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Because, Harry, back then Raised Lines on the kit were made by engraved lines in the mold. To get Engraved lines, you had to put raised ridges INSIDE the Mold Tool. It was (in most cases) far easier and cheaper to do almost all detail by raised lines. Since Raised Detail (Lines, Rivets, Doors, ect) was the "Gold Standard" of kit detail to the 8-12 year old KIDS who bought 95% of these kits, they did not share our modern preference for engraved lines.

That why those "Stone Age" Tool & Die Men did it that way.

They were selling TOYs to KIDs. Raised Detail was Better Detail. Thus Raised Lines.

 

Hope that helps.

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Because, Harry, back then Raised Lines on the kit were made by engraved lines in the mold. To get Engraved lines, you had to put raised ridges INSIDE the Mold Tool. It was (in most cases) far easier and cheaper to do almost all detail by raised lines. Since Raised Detail (Lines, Rivets, Doors, ect) was the "Gold Standard" of kit detail to the 8-12 year old KIDS who bought 95% of these kits, they did not share our modern preference for engraved lines.

That why those "Stone Age" Tool & Die Men did it that way.

They were selling TOYs to KIDs. Raised Detail was Better Detail. Thus Raised Lines.

 

Hope that helps.

Even as a kid, I did not like things like the raised door lines on the Auburn kit. In fact I'm more tolerant of it today, than I was back then. I still don't like it. But, if the subject matter interests me, and there are no other options, I'm more willing to overlook it now. Plus, now it adds a "old fashion" charm to some of these kits.

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I grew up in Tulsa and was fortunate, as a teenager, to have Glenn Pray give my Dad and me a tour of his plant. At the time, his primary production was an 810 Cord replica (and actually 8/10 scale) made of a material called Royalite; dents and dings would pop back into shape by applying heat (supposedly). You should have seen his salvage lot with original Cords, Auburns and Duesenbergs. He had just restored a Duesy SJ, a giant car, that he let me sit in.

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I don't believe a lot of car modelers understand what Pyro was as a company and how important they are in our history.  William Lester was one of the early pioneers in injection molding and perfected the technique in the 1930s.  Pyro was a toy company and some of their products especially in Sci Fi, are very collectible today.  During WWII Pyro manufactured parts for the war effort, and after the war went back to concentrate on toys.

Pyro as located in Union, New Jersey. I researched the location and there is a Costco on the property today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyro_Plastics_Corporation

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Pyro certainly got better as time went on, and I still think their Vintage Brass kits are little jewels.  It's not like everyone else's kits were that much better in the mid 50s either.  However, the object of the exercise is still to build a model.

 

Anyway, we've probably dumped on this kit enough.   Auburns are seriously cool machines, and this is still the only game in town.   Can it be better?  I think so.

On Round 2's site, they were tailking about upgrading some of the Lindberg tooling.  Now, in my dream world, I'd love to see them invest in a brand new Auburn Speedster kit with modern levels of accuracy and detail, but alas, we live in the real world.  However,if they could see their way clear to putting in recessed panel lines, and adding some detail, that would be great.  At the very least, if they could somehow splurge on the moulds for a decent set of wheels and tires, that would go a long way towards improving things.   Likewise, a decent set of Lincoln hubcaps and wide whites for their Continental would be great, and provide kitbashing material for the traditional rod and custom crowd.

 

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Somebody explain to me why the door panel lines on this kit stick out from the surface instead of being recessed. The only possible "reason" I can come up with is a massive brain freeze on the part of the people who cut the tooling. Even back in the Stone Age when this kit was tooled, door panel lines didn't stick up from the surface!

Harry and team....same approach was taken to panel lines on aircraft kits for many years; even now new kit reviews will highlight when panel lines on aircraft models are recessed as though it is a "plus" (which it obviously is).  

My guess on this is that it is related to the complexity of comparing the tooling.   On the model's body mold, it is very easy for a tooling engineer to scribe a line into the surface that when molded will result in a panel line that sticks out on the kit body itself.  On the other hand, to yield a final kit body with recessed lines, the tooling engineer has to craft a surface on the tool that sticks out from the overall body surfaces of the mold.  Much harder than just scribing a line in the tool.  I've often wondered just exactly how they do this.

One interesting point out of all this is that the model car companies adopted recessed panel lines starting in the late 1950's, while aircraft kits, judging from the reviews I've read over the years, were decades behind us.  Interesting...

Anyway, this is all just a layman's guess.  Any experts out there with firsthand knowledge, pile on if I'm wrong!   Cheers...TIM  

 

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    On the other hand, to yield a final kit body with recessed lines, the tooling engineer has to craft a surface on the tool that sticks out from the overall body surfaces of the mold.  Much harder than just scribing a line in the tool.  I've often wondered just exactly how they do this.

Exactly, and the only way to do it during the time-period we're discussing was to carve away the entire surface of the mold, everything except the panel-line, to a level slightly below the panel line (which would yield a raised panel-line in the mold that would become a recessed line on the part).

Obviously a vast amount of work, compared to sculpting a nice negative surface and simply scribing the lines into it.B)

Think about how difficult it would be to carve the Auburn body as it is from a block of wood, with NO panel lines. (I'm talking a positive image, just as the kit parts look, but with no panel lines.) You could file and sand the carved shape to get nice smoothly-flowing shapes, right?

Now think about carving the exact same shape, but having to LEAVE the raised panel-lines on the surface, perfectly formed, and you had to sculpt and shape BETWEEN them. A LOT harder, right?

Now think about doing it as a negative image, in steel.;)

 

 

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I suppose ultimately it came down to whether they thought the extra effort was worth it.  Certainly in your typical plane kit there are also a lot more lines to deal with.  In the case of science fiction models, you can say raised panel lines as late as the 90s.

However, most companies seem to have thought a proper door panel line was worth it.  Tootsietoy was selling cheap diecast toy cars with recessed door panels back in the 1930s.  Pyro's competitors released car models with recessed door and hood lines, though in the case of companies like Jo-Han and AMT, they were making promotional items for the car companies,  who were willing to invest the money to ensure they looked right.   The promo makers weren't doing it to sell toys, but to sell real cars.

On a bit of a tangent here, while the carmakers don't seem as interested in promotional models as they were, some are willing to put in the time to design prototypes for video games like Forza, so they're still trying to get potential customers while they're young.

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I can remember building one of these Pyro Speedsters way back in the 70's (no plated parts as I remember). The kit was a bit basic. Shame this subject was never used by Italaeri, Heller, or Revell/Monogram more recently in one of their classics ranges. Who knows? Maybe we will see one kitted with up to date tooling sometime. Classics seem to be the poor relation to F1, Rally, Nascars and Italian exotica.....But I guess that is where the market is!

Pyro had quite a range of sailing ship kits as well as the cars. Didn't they make a Triumph GT6 Coupe kit? I also remember them issuing an excellent small range of inter wars biplane kits (ex GB Impact Kits) in 1/48th scale when they bought the moulds. Wonder what happened to these and indeed all the Pyro tooling?

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Noel. Lindberg ended up with most of the Pyro tooling.

The Inpact Biplanes have been seen in Lindberg boxes up until the early 2000's. I have some of the kits. The Inpact molds have been very well taken care of, and comparing the most recent kits in my stash with an old original Inpact kits shows little signs of wear.

The Triumph GT6 coupe was also out in a Lindberg box with the last ten years. Had decent decals, vinyl tires, and a few options to build, but the Multi-piece body was very unpopular, and I'm not sure how well it sold.

There is a decent kit review of the Triumph over at ModelingMadness.com Look under "Kit Previews -L" You should find it.

Looking at Round2's "Lindberg" pages shows a large number of what must be ex=Pyro tools, in production. I really want the Civil War Blockade Runner and the "Q"-Ship.

HTH

Alan 

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