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AMT 1929 Model A - Project Dusty Rose


Dave Darby

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I started this AMT 29 Model A over 25 years ago, shortly after Testors came out with their long defunct Colors by Boyd paint line.

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I stepped the frame, and cut out the stock center section from the rear axle, and added a Halibrand Quick Change from the 25 T kit. The front axle from a Revell 32 Ford brings up the front, and the body got doused with some Dusty Rose Pearl. And that is as far as it got for a very long time.
 

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I traced this out in Adobe Illustrator over a photo of a stock frame to show how to step the frame. (A little confession - I used two frames on mine.)

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And then I got bored with it. I couldn't decide how I wanted to finish it. What engine to use, etc.  Over the years I did a little experimenting with different wheel and tire combinations, until I hit on these. (Along with the interior tub from the old tool Ala Kart.) All of the above photos are 15-20 years old.

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Now we are getting somewhere. The rear wheels are the chrome reversed from the AMT 57 Chevy, with the Parts Pack Whitewall Cheater slicks. The fronts are a little less obvious... The tires are from the new tool Ala Kart, but turned inside out because it allowed me to not only use the front wheels from the AMT 49 Ford (chromed with a Molotow marker), but I was also able paint on my own larger whitewalls.  The Revell 57 Chevy 283 is a filler, but the the early Ford Toploader, along with the bellhousing adapter will end up being mated to the rest of the engine from a Revell Tweedy Pie. 

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Next up, to do something about that interior tub fit. 

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Better, but there is still a gap on the back of the seat. That ends up getting filled in with Milliput putty. Yes, that's the same paint.

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Looking better here, but there's more to come.

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Here you can see where I started smoothing that frame down, and a not so common 1/25th scale tripower set-up from a Revell 56 Chevy that Larry Moore graciously donated. Thank you Larry! (Wait'll he sees what I did to that manifold!)  The engine and transmission setup in this car  are all vintage Revell, designed by Jim Keeler. The detail and scale fidelity of these parts is even more impressive considering he designed them in the early 60s. And all the parts interchange nicely. 

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Bottom side of that chassis showing the Ala Kart  center cross-member and new front engine mount.

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Here's where we take a break, but I will leave you with a teaser photo -  a now painted chassis mockup with the assembled and painted Tweedy Pie 283 Chevy engine. 

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Edited by Dave Darby
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OK, I'm going to pick up where I left off yesterday. As I mentioned earlier, Jim Keeler's work with Revell has an almost a jewel-like quality, but occasionally there are a few flies in the ointment. As you can see from this extra Tweedy Pie engine, there is no front cover for the bellhousing. So...

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I traced around the bellhousing adaptor on some thin sheet plastic.

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When I finished it, I shot it with a coat of Testors Chrome. I'll show you a photo of it finished, later. 

Next, I turned my attention to the firewall. When AMT redid the Model A for the "A Venger" version in the mid 70s, they shortened the stock steering column and eliminated the hole in the firewall for it to pass through, presumably to accommodate the Red Ram Hemi. So I switched to an earlier issue firewall, which I ground down quite a bit for clearance.  You can also see that I set the firewall back flush with the cowl, and added a lip where the upper cowl/gas tank bolts down. Then I made a flange for the perimeter.

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Here you can see this finished lip, and how I ground down the firewall. 

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This is pretty close to correct for a Model A, but ultimately, I ended up having to set the firewall back a little further into the body. The stock hood will not fit with this setup unless the underside is ground for clearance, but the hood isn't part of the plan anymore. This is a hot rod after all.

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Next up, I had to do something with the intake manifold. As you can see (and sorry the manifolds are 180 from each other) the thermostat housing for the tripower is in the center of the intake, which is completely correct for a stock 2 or 4 barrel manifold, but not ideal for a tripower. So....

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Here is the finished Intake and firewall, along with a preview of the engine mocked up.  Again, many thanks to Larry Moore for the tri-power intake. I masked around the perimeter of the cowl and shot the firewall in place on the body. The kit radiator support rods are way too bulky, so I made my own from guitar string. If you go to a music store and ask nicely, you can generally score some used ones for free. 

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Here is where I will break off until next time. 

Edited by Dave Darby
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  • Dave Darby changed the title to AMT 1929 Model A - Project Dusty Rose - Updated 6/9

Picking up where we left off...

I don't think I showed you the distributor yet... Yep, Genuine sewing thread pulled through beeswax. (This one's for you, Don Emmons!) 

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Here, the plug wires are in place, except for the coil wire that you can see hanging down over the valve cover.

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Here is a comparison between the modified interior (left), with the unmodified interior tub on the right. Note that I have begun scribing the door lines, and have cut out the floor, to facilitate laying down some honest to God corduroy for carpet. (I think I mentioned this was going to be old school!)

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Because the seats sit a little above the top of the body, it was necessary to fill in the back portion of the seat.

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I used Milliput putty for this. It was also the first time I worked with the stuff, and of course, I used waaaay too much.

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I still have some finessing to do, but the fit is much better now. Also visible is the black covered insert on the dash, and the wood-grained steering wheel.

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As I mentioned before, I cut the floor pan out and painted the bottom side body color.

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I painted portions of the top of the floorboard flat black, in preparation for the Corduroy carpet.

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Here's the aforementioned  Corduroy, along with a shifter I made from a straight pin. It's a scaled-down version of the shifter in the Monogram Little Deuce. I may take another stab at that, as I'm not perfectly happy with the smoothness of the curve.

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More to come! Here's a teaser...

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Edited by Dave Darby
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  • Dave Darby changed the title to AMT 1929 Model A - Project Dusty Rose - Updated June 10

Great thread. Great hot rod model resurrection using the skills you have honed over the quarter of century since you started the build. The Colors of Boyd were an excellent line of paints. Some of my best paint jobs came from those paints airbrushed 60/40 paint and lacquer thinner and once polished did not require clear.

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Dave, that is a magnificent looking Model A roadster.  I am VERY biased  of course, because I drive a real red one with almost identical proportions and stance, right down to having a front bumper and no rear bumper! 

You have done some beautiful work here that is often overlooked by scale rodders. The detail you applied to the firewall makes a huge difference.  The in scale radiator supports lead your eye to it.  And I always wanted to fit the Ala Kart interior to a roadster - now I have a great tutorial to help me.

If I could add two suggestions to your build, if they appeal to you.  Firstly, run a bit of Molotow over the oval pads on the front fenders - these are part of the original headlight bar but no model company has ever moulded them to the bar so it is a detail that is often missed. 

Secondly, and I will completely understand if you prefer not to because it would be a bear to fix at this stage, there is a piece of bodywork, a trim panel of you like, that runs over the cowl under the windscreen frame.  Revell's modern tool 29 roadster is the only Model A kit in history to have this panel correctly incorporated to the body rather than the windscreen frame itself.  If the frame is still loose, you could mask off and paint red that panel. It will be more accurate to a real car and wil reduce the chrome bulk of the windscreen frame.

No matter how you finish this beautiful little roadster, I will love it to bits. Funny thing is, I built my car with one inch whitewalls and chromed rims but some years later switched to blackwalls and grey spoke Americans. Your project has reversed the order!

Cheers

Alan

 

 

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1 hour ago, alan barton said:

Dave, that is a magnificent looking Model A roadster.  I am VERY biased  of course, because I drive a real red one with almost identical proportions and stance, right down to having a front bumper and no rear bumper! 

You have done some beautiful work here that is often overlooked by scale rodders. The detail you applied to the firewall makes a huge difference.  The in scale radiator supports lead your eye to it.  And I always wanted to fit the Ala Kart interior to a roadster - now I have a great tutorial to help me.

If I could add two suggestions to your build, if they appeal to you.  Firstly, run a bit of Molotow over the oval pads on the front fenders - these are part of the original headlight bar but no model company has ever moulded them to the bar so it is a detail that is often missed. 

Secondly, and I will completely understand if you prefer not to because it would be a bear to fix at this stage, there is a piece of bodywork, a trim panel of you like, that runs over the cowl under the windscreen frame.  Revell's modern tool 29 roadster is the only Model A kit in history to have this panel correctly incorporated to the body rather than the windscreen frame itself.  If the frame is still loose, you could mask off and paint red that panel. It will be more accurate to a real car and wil reduce the chrome bulk of the windscreen frame.

No matter how you finish this beautiful little roadster, I will love it to bits. Funny thing is, I built my car with one inch whitewalls and chromed rims but some years later switched to blackwalls and grey spoke Americans. Your project has reversed the order!

Cheers

Alan

 

 

Hi Alan, I will definitely have to look into those ideas. I was already aware of the windshield / cowl interface, and it is actually still loose. My only concern is pulling up the plating with the tape if I mask it off.  It's definitely something I've given serious thought about. 

Thanks for the kind words. And I'd love to see your real roadster.

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Here you go!  I couldn't find a shot with the roof off - I get sunburnt way too easy so it stays on a lot these days. - skin cancer is no fun!

Been driving it for nearly 37 years although off the road at the moment waiting for my new radiator to arrive from the other side of the country - COVID has blown out freight times like you wouldn't believe!

Cheers

Alan

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4 hours ago, alan barton said:

Here you go!  I couldn't find a shot with the roof off - I get sunburnt way too easy so it stays on a lot these days. - skin cancer is no fun!

Been driving it for nearly 37 years although off the road at the moment waiting for my new radiator to arrive from the other side of the country - COVID has blown out freight times like you wouldn't believe!

Cheers

Alan

Mandurah Garden Island 2008 093.jpg

That's way cool, Alan. I was actually wanting to put some King Bees on mine (only with the stock headlight bar) but there aren't too many properly sized ones in scale. I had experimented with these buckets from the Monogram A pickup using 49 Merc lenses, but they were only marginally smaller than stock.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a little while since my last update, so here is the latest on the scattershot progress.

I carpeted the floor pan using black corduroy. Corduroy requires some pretty sharp cutting utensils if you don't want jagged edges. In fact even Xacto knives don't work that well on it. I picked up a carbide edged wheel cutter at Walmart for around 20 bucks-ish. Cuts through like butter.

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I have some other cars that are going to get the corduroy treatment, so for me it was a good investment. Otherwise I at minimum recommend a good sharp pair of fabric scissors.

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I cut the shifter from the Ala Kart shifter base (part of the transmission on an early Ford toploader transmission), drilled it out, and added my custom bent straight pin I showed you earlier. The clutch and brake pedals are also Ala Kart items. I painted just the rubber pad portion flat black, so that they would show up better.  I'm still on the fence about the gas pedal, sourced from the AMT 32 Vicky kit. Seems a bit big.

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Here's how all of this looks in the car. I was originally going to shorten the shifter a bit after I tried it in the car, but I like the extra height. Gives it a Stroker McGurk/Norm Grabowski quality, I think.

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Didn't notice until after I snapped the photo that the engine had flopped over. I have details to add to it, so it's not glued down yet. And yes, one of my door handles took a walk. Going to have to scrounge one out of another kit...

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That's it till next time I can spend some more quality time on this one.

Edited by Dave Darby
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  • Dave Darby changed the title to AMT 1929 Model A - Project Dusty Rose

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