Monogram Little T Restoration

[jbwelda]

See introduction thread in "on the workbench" forum...continued here:

this began as an attempt to rebuild a partial kit that i acquired on ebay, and have been trying without luck to scavenge parts here and there to complete it. just last weekend a friend of mine sold me a nearly perfect example with the chassis and running gear already built to a pretty nice, out of box, standard.

so the idea was to complete the car "out of box" and by that i mean exactly that: out of the box. no paint, no smoothing, just fitting the parts together cleanly and as smoothly as possible. i chose to use the rarer turtle deck instead of the "big T" pickup bed but didnt modify anything nor add any wiring or plumbing or even detail painting. the two exceptions were i used a red sharpie to color the taillight and a silver sharpie to color the side lamp lenses.

one thing i learned is that this is a very very nice kit especially for its time. fine engraving and sufficient parts count, and all the parts (possible exception: soft top fit) fit like they were supposed to and the thing assembled very well in a very short time (for me anyway). the castings were flash free and nicely detailed though still rather simplified. decals were still good but i only used the ones shown on the box art: the "little t" box graphic on the sides and the "8 balls" license/club plate in the rear.

i had earlier bought one of those super kool hobby store display replicas from a chap on the bay and the car looks perfect on it!

really fun build and caused newfound respect for some of the older kits, really went together like a dream and looks great even in monochrome red and white! if you look close you can see where some of the parts were separated from the sprue but with no paint i didnt want to scuff them up too much so i didnt apply my usual standards. the chassis was already largely built but required the tie rod and some other parts...even they fit perfectly with negligible fiddling.

really a perfect relaxing project for a rainy weekend!

[Draggon]

It looks beautiful, and I like that you used the turtle deck! That display is pretty cool too. This kit is one of my "grails" and I just picked up and unbuilt on a few weeks ago. Its great how you did it right out of the box, like it would have been done way back when.

[HotRodaSaurus]

WoW, this shows why we bought those kits back then. Built to a good standard, who needed paint when the body colours were just right.

Alas the grey plastic mouldings of today don't shout it out do they, then a gain the buying public has moved more to adult modellers than kids.

John

[oldscool]

That's perfect. I miss the colored plastic sometimes - especially the black.

[Greg Cullinan]

William,very nice build and the display is a great addition.