Trumpeter Ranchero build up

[SteveG]

Well you saw all the parts a few days ago, this will the start of the build up. I have to say after comparing this kit to some of Trmpeter's other kits like the 60 Pontiac and the Chevy Monte Carlo. There has been some noticeable improvements. Not to say there isn't room for more, because there is. I will cover the issues that I found concerning as we go. Gladly I haven't found anything I can't get past and that's a good thing.

My goal is to work with what's in the box, using basic skills and materials most modelers have. I'll leave the kit bashing and super detailing to someone else. All my builds are done in a similar fashion, I put together as much as I can without paint, checking how things fit together along the way. When I'm satisfied, I'll break it down, add paint and detailing and then put it all back together again. Sounds easy right ....

Like building a 1:1 car, I'm starting with the floor pan, interior tub and the bedfloor. The front inner structure is next along with the basic engine parts. The engine is just resting on the subframe for now. I also glued up the bench seat halves while I was at it. All these parts go together without a problem.

I went ahead and glued the front suspension to the front sub frame but I'm only dry fitting it to the floor and the inner front sheet metal for now. I'm going use some tape to hold it in place. I'm also going to tape the rear axle housing in place and slip the tire and wheels on, also dry for now.

Once that was done I flipped the chassis over and added the basic interior tub and bed using more tape as needed to hold it togther dry.

Now it was just a matter of slipping the body over it all by slightly spreading the lower sections. Amazing ! It's looking like a Ranchero already, not bad for a couple hours work. If you look closely I started block sanding the hood, it has some very slight sink marks from the underside details. It's nothing I can't handle though.

You may have noticed the engine in not in place yet, thats because I want glue the subfame to the floor and still be able to slide the engine in and out as needed but not so fast. There's a small problem that I caused not following the instructions. Next time I'll show you an easy fix that will let me do that along more of the build .... For all the photos just follow the link.

Stay tuned .....

-Steve

http://public.fotki.com/SteveG26/trumpeter-65-ford-r/

Edited September 1, 2011 by SteveG

[Dr. Cranky]

Wow, that looks like a great sweet kit to build. Can't wait to see more.

[W-409]

It looks good, nice kit! Needs to get one, that would look really good with steelies and wide tires. Your project looks good so far, keep pictures coming, I'll watch this one.

[Dr. Cranky]

Keep returning to this one. I hope you are making progress.

[SteveG]

One change I wanted to make is to glue the subframe to the floor before installing the engine. On the 1:1 cars this piece is part of the welded unibody and not a bolt on subfame. A test fit showed that one the interior floor was attached transmission mount would lock the engine assy in place and I wouldn't be able to remove it.

My solution was to simply cut the transmision mount off and attached to the transmision. Then I glued a filler strip made from one of the part # tabs where the mount was on the crossmember. A little filing was needed to allow the engine and trans assembly to slip in and out from the crossmember. I highlighted the changes with a pencil as shown below.

Now I can attached the interior floor to the chassis to paint it as one assembly. Before I do that I going to make one minor change to the interior floor. You'll see why in the next post ......

-Steve

[Tom Kren]

Looking good Steve!

[James Flowers]

I would think the whole transmission cross member between the subframes would be removeable on a real one. Plus that would make it much easier to build the model while checking the fit of the engine and transmission. I look forward to more of your build.

[Guest Johnny]

Doggone your hide!!! Now I want one too!

[SteveG]

While photographing all the parts I noticed that a column shift was included along with the correct '65 dash. Since this is a bench seat car, I decided to remove the stick shift mounting area shown in the shaded area below.

I simply filled in the hole and sanded down the raised area. I could have just trimmed off the column stalk and left the floor shift but I wanted go with a "three on the tree" which fits with my choice of the poverty caps and blackwall tires.

With the interior floor pan finished I primed and attached it the chassis. I also painted the lower chassis areas with Red-oxide primer. I will be adding oversprays of body color and semi-gloss back to give that fresh from the factory look. Once that's done I'll hand paint all the steering and suspension parts in correct looking colors.

Speaking of the Poverty caps, here's a preview of how the'll look installed and my choice of a body color.

More to come ......

[Danno]

Good stuff, Steve! Keep it up.

Man, those 'caps look great!!

[Maindrian Pace]

Another choice for building this Ranchero would be to do standard or deluxe trim. As supplied, it has deluxe trim on the body and the deluxe interior with full dash chrome and fancier door panels. For a standard version, the side trim can be removed, delete the hood ornament, and the window frames and bed surround trim stay body color. They were pretty plain-jane. The dash would be a bit tricky, involving removing the trim panels except for the instrument surround piece. Door panels can come pretty close with paint, cut the horn ring down to a horn button. It would all come together very nicely with the dog dish caps, body color wheels, and black wall tires. There were tons of Rancheros running around like that in the day.

On the deluxe, the window frames get bright stainless trim, the bed gets bright trim consisting of chrome and stainless, and any wheel cover was offered. On both versions, the rear window did not have bright trim, just the black rubber gasket was visible.

-MJS

[Dr. Cranky]

Man, that's looking good!

[Rob Z]

Steve, this is moving along greatly... I have to get to the next meeting and see this thing in person... I like the simple tip you gave to us about the tranny mounting tab, thank you...

[SteveG]

it's very nice seeing this being built up essentially OOB with some tips here and there on fixing assembly flaws and issues. it would have been nice to have seen the hardtop Falcon built the same way but Bob Downie's review over in another model car magazine was very well done IMO.

keep us posted with the progress, i'm looking forward to it

I second that! A kit review based on an actual out-of-the-box build ... what a concept!

Steve, just based on my observation here, it would appear to me that eliminating that second gas cap is not gonna be particularly easy ...

I'm building a 64 Falcon Sprint at the same time, it goes together in virtually the same fashion. It's also being done out of the box. So far the only deviations are the same trans mount and how I plan on mounting the rear view mirror to the windshield which I'll show here. If there's still any interest, I'll show some in progress photos of the Falcon Hardtop after I'm done with the Ranchero.

As for that right side gas cap, I'm hoping to fill it with some 2 part glazing puty using an old body shop trick to preserve the trim. We'll soon find out.

-Steve

[Rob Z]

I'm building a 64 Falcon Sprint at the same time, it goes together in virtually the same fashion. It's also being done out of the box. So far the only deviations are the same trans mount and how I plan on mounting the rear view mirror to the windshield which I'll show here. If there's still any interest, I'll show some in progress photos of the Falcon Hardtop after I'm done with the Ranchero.

As for that right side gas cap, I'm hoping to fill it with some 2 part glazing puty using an old body shop trick to preserve the trim. We'll soon find out.

-Steve

I personally would like to see your build up of the Falcon also...

I hope you can share this little trick with the putty, I am curious to see how you may do this...

[SteveG]

Just a quick update showing the basic chassis built up and detail painted. The front inner sheet metal, exhaust and rear axle assembly are dry fitted for now. The engine and drive shaft will have to go in first before mounting the other items.

If I were to change anything it would be the exhaust, the rear section should be better flowing. Those bends are too tight behind the rear axle.

Look for another update later this week ...

-Steve

[Tom Kren]

Looking good steve hope to see at the meeting Tuesday!

[SteveG]

With the underside painted it's time to work on the interior. I already filled in the floor shift mounting location and the interior floor has been primed so I'm ready for paint. I've decided to go with a matching interior which was a typical '60s color scheme. The kit represents the Deluxe interior trim option. It's a straight foward build at this point.

I applied BMF to the door trim panels according to my reference photos, then installed them. Next up was adding paint detailing and decals to the dash. After that the pedals were installed one by one, the steering column was added to dash which was fitted between the door trim panels.

With the steering wheel installed and a decal applied to the horn button the interior is complete.

Next up is to address a couple of issues with the body, prime an paint it. Stay tuned for more .....

-Steve

Edited September 18, 2011 by SteveG

[SteveG]

OK it's time to tackle a couple of issues. First up is the extra gas door, I'm going to fill that in. You might ask how I'm go to do that without messing up the side trim and the the body lines. It's actually pretty easy if you break it down into sections. Before doing any repairs to the body, make sure it's been cleaned and all the mold release removed.

The first thing I did is fill in the small gaps in the side trim with some Super Glue and kicker. The glue dries pretty hard and it will help preserve the trim lines. The I carefully filed and sanded it flush with the surrounding trim.

At this point I'm going to use an old body repair trick, since my trim line is good I'm going to mask it off so I don't damage it. I used Tamiya tape here but any tape that has a clean edge and will follow contours will work.

I also masked off the lower body contours and then I slightly roughed up the area with a medium grit sanding stick. Now I'm ready to apply some filler. Everybody seems to have a favorite filler or putty they like to use. I prefer to use a bodyshop product which is generally known as Icing. There's all kinds of brand names but I find they all work the same way. Basically they're all a two-part catylized putty that can be applied very thin. It's designed to fill pin holes and small imperfections on the real deal but it works great on models too. The big advantage is Icing dries very fast and it doesn't shrink at all.

After about 15 minutes the Icing is dry and it's ready to sand. I usually start with a medium grit sanding stick or some fine sand paper wrapped around any object that will match the contour I'm sanding. As that shape gets closer I'll switch to finer grits until the filled in area is smooth and blended in. If needed I'll lift up the masking tape to check my work.

So that's the basic technique I use to make any model body repairs. Since there's more photos then I can post at one time I'm going to continue this in the post below ....

[SteveG]

At this point it's just a matter of repeating the steps in the previous post on the area above the trim line. Mask the area you want to preserve. Apply the filler of your choice, sand and smooth when dry.

Here it is, no more extra gas door ..... ready for primer. It took me longer to type these two posts and add the photos then it actually did to make the repair.

Here's how it looks with the primer applied ...... like that extra gas door was never there.

Next time I'll tackle the "floating" tail gate with an even easier fix ..... stay tuned

Steve

Edited September 23, 2011 by SteveG

[SteveG]

With the spare fuel door removed I'm down to one last problem, how to attach the tailgate. With the assembled bed taped in position a test fit of the gate shows me that tailgate sides don't touch the side jams and there is no bottom jam. My first sample also has a warp in the rear body. The back up kit I checked was fine but I'm going to fix this one.

Since I have no plans to make the gate work all I need is a some surface area for the gate to contact. Now I happen to have plenty of scratch building supplies and I'm lucky enough to have a good Hobby Shop five minutes away in case I need something. Unfortunately, that doesn't help you and If I did that I would no longer be building out of the box, what to do..... I started looking through the box at the parts I wasn't going to use and then it hit me. On a couple of parts trees there were some long sections of flat rod..... BINGO That just what I needed for a bottom jam.

I just cut a suction of the flat rod off the tree to the width of the tailgate and attached it with some liquid glue. Then I re-drilled the holes to attach the bumper. The warp was fixed at the gate had something to rest on. Easy ......

OK that's half the problem but what about the sides. Again I looked at the parts trees and decided the the number tags looked to be about the correct width so I cut away a couple of small pieces and installed them like "latches" in side jam.

That's all there was to it. I wonder why the kit designer didn't think of that ? ...... good question right ! With the body work now out of the way I can finally prep the body for paint. Yea !!!

'til next time ....

-Steve

Edited September 25, 2011 by SteveG

[SteveG]

From this point on it's a pretty straight foward build. The body was primed with Duplicolor Scratchfill Grey, wet sanded with 3200 polishing cloths and then top coated with same Duplicolor Light Blue metallic lacquer I used on the interior, wheels, etc .... I normally let my paint jobs gas out for several days to a week before applying foil trim then clear coating everything.

While the body is drying I went ahead and finished painting and detailing the engine assembly and installed in the chassis.

The engine bay was painted Semi-gloss black and then installed next, followed by the brake master cylinder and upper hoses.

Here's the body all foiled and clear coated with the glass attached and ready to install on the chassis. The instructions show to mount the bed to the floor. I found it's better to attach the bed assembly to the body first so I could be sure to get good alignment of the tailgate.

All that remains is to drop the body on to the chassis, install the tail gate and attached the chrome parts. For some reason I always wait to attach the air cleaner as one of the last steps just in case I have to modify it to clear the hood. Luckily it clears no problem, force of habit I guess. Im going to save the final photos for the "Under Glass" section.

If you've been following along, Thanks !! .... I hope you find this build up to be useful. It's hard to tell as I haven't seen any comments after the last few posts but that's the way it goes here sometimes.

-Steve

[Gregg]

Thanks, Steve!!!

Question, can you post a photo of the filler "Icing" that you use?

[SteveG]

Thanks, Steve!!!

Question, can you post a photo of the filler "Icing" that you use?

Sure can Gregg, the photos isn't the best quality but it should work. The brand I have is USC but I've tried others and they all work very well. Any place that sells Body Shop or Refinishing supplies should be able to fix you up with a good brand of Icing. Most come in the Giant tube like mine but some come in metal tins. Both come with a little mini tube of Hardener. Make sure the Hardener has a color, typically Red or Blue so you can tell when it's completely mixed. One caution, like many body shop products it has a strong smell until it cures so use it in a ventilated area.

Steve