THarrison351

Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. My mom even likes it. She says it had a tan interior, but I can't find any evidence a tan interior was offered. The picture I have it looks grey and grey was offered. She also offered that it wasn't repainted blue, but had been covered in blue paint when it was shipped. I don't know, I can't ask my dad, he's been gone for twelve years. Anyhow, It's going to stay red no matter what.

Love the paint!

I'm calling this finished, but I might take the chassis plate back off and adjust the interior tub. The windows are interfering with the fit. I would also like to take some outside pictures, but it's too late in the day. This is the build thread: If you don't want to follow the build thread, this is the reason why I built this model: One of my father's few new cars was a 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix 2 door hardtop. When my parents were married, it's the car in their wedding photographs. The first pictures I've ever seen of me in a car are with that one. They are black and white, but I've always been told it was originally a red car. A photo in the build thread from my aunt confirmed it's color. My dad was in the Air Force and was sent to Germany just before I was born in 1964. We followed as soon as I was old enough. The car went too, but it was shipped in a container and unfortunately was not well secured and subsequently arrived damaged. My father had the car repaired and painted blue. We lived in Germany for a couple of years and went back to reside CONUS and the car followed. Same story with the shipping container, but this time my dad let the car go and bought a different car. A 1961 Comet 2 door station wagon. Try to find one of those! That is the first car I have an actual memory of riding in.

Thanks Randy. I'm Posting it finished. It needs some outside pics. Too late in the day. I might take it back apart and adjust the interior.

That looks great! I need to break mine out and finish it.

Thanks for the continued words of encouragement. I need them. I've never cut vacuum formed windows. I can't recommend it. What a pain! Even with small sharp scissors this was a fight. I tried my scalpel with a fresh blade, but that was mucho dangerous! I finally started making progress with a new flush cutter (sprue cutter). Not perfect, but close enough. The windows have a lot of imperfections in their clarity. Give me old fashioned clear polycarbonate. Anyways the windows are in, I painted a makeshift headliner, the spears, tail fin reflectors and wipers. Once the glass is completely dry, I'll put it together. Shouldn't take much.

Turned out remarkably well!

Thanks for all the encouragement. It's been awhile since I've done any real painting, or model building. This one's very simple, but has it's challenges. Ok, I'm finished with foiling. Not the best I've done, but better than the last model which I think was my 55 Chrysler 300 in 2017. Not too good. I did foil some diecast trucks, but they were different. I tried a different setting to see if it would help with the red and my camera. Meh. I'll paint detail the body next and see what the vacuum form window situation is.

I decided it was time to polish the paint. This is something I've never attempted before. I usually bury my finishes in Mop and Glo and I'm done. Trash in paint, orange peel, bad foiling, or whatever. It gets sprayed with Mop and Glo and I'm done. So, because this was a little more special, I decided to do two things. First I foiled the emblems before painting and then I could uncover the paint and it might look nicer. Two, I would try polishing instead of Mop and Glo. The foiling turned out OK and I'm happy with the polishing. I wish my camera was better at capturing red. Maybe once it's finished I can take it outside and the sun will give a better light. It's raining today. I start the foiling next. Wish me luck. There's a lot on this one!

I saw this at Hobby Lobby and snagged it yesterday. I kind of wish I had looked a little closer. Wheels are too small and have caps on them. The bumpers are painted silver and not chromed. Taillights are wrong. Markings aren't even close. It seems to be closer to 1/22 scale as well except the license plates, they're closer to 1/32 scale.

Hard to believe that ever left the Jada cartoon factory. Turned out nice!

Well Randy, I found my answer on how you were going to fix the missing WW stripe. Good job! Looks like new!

Look's like a good project. I'm wondering what you will use to replace the WW ring.

Hey Randy, my yellow one came complete with the side curtains, but the vinyl had aged and shrunk and would no longer attach to the tiny magnets on the windshield frame.

That's exactly what I thought, but you beat me to it!

It looks so much better Randy! Great job!

Looks "verry interesting!" To quote Artie Johnson

I'm done with the interior. It didn't go as I'd planned and I had to remove the black (acrylic) I put on after the red was dry. The red is more or less lacquer and the black came off without even touching the red. The second try is just watery black stripes. Then I sprayed the whole tub with acrylic dullcoat. After it dried, I used a cotton swab dipped in alcohol to remove the dullcoat off the baremetal at the top edge so it would shine again. I quickly threw the whole thing together to get a feel for how it is looking so far. The front bumper/grill is really a disappointment. It needs about 1/16" of material removed around both headlight bezels. Oh well, it is what it is. Next, I polish out the mistakes in the paint.

Painted the dash a bit, and realized the Phoenix emblem is about 3 times as big as it should be, but it made it east to detail. Steering wheel is finished and I stuck the mirror on the dash. Not sure if it will clear the windshield once it's installed. Foiled the interior as I thought it would be needed. Too bad no one ever made decals for '60 Darts. I put the foil down because there was a prominent amount of silver in the inserts. I'm adding a thin wash of red on top and then I'll add a thin wash of black. I plan to lightly remove the raised edges exposing the silver. I don't know if it will work, but I'm going to try. Waiting on the red to dry. I also finished the door panels. They're not prototypically correct, but it's close enough. And what a pain they were with my shaky hands and blind eye. When I'm done painting, The seats and door panels will get a coat of acrylic dullcoat to knock down the shine.

No, no plans to correct the speedometer. I agree it is pretty cool, and my dad did talk about it when he was reminiscing about the car years ago. Other than the photos that end up in here, no one besides me will ever see this car except maybe my wife and son and they wouldn't know the difference. I have been busy by doing some painting and a lot of research. My mom never has found photos, so I'm going to go off what I can see in the one I have, which looks like a solid red top. I plundered through my stash of paint and decided Valspar gloss red was a pretty good match to my eye. Plus it was relatively new. I did a thorough look over the body and sanded out what looked like any imperfections. I went over all the panel lines with a scribe to deepen them. Then I filled them with black paint and but another coat of primer on. I let that dry for a few days and sanded again with wet/dry 600 grit. Here is the result. A few bits in the paint, but overall I'm happy. Hard for the camera to photograph. The rest of the parts are painted and I've stated detailing. The chassis and wheels are complete along with the bumpers and license plate. I went through my parts box and found an external and interior mirror. Made posts out of wire for both, along with an antenna. That's all for now. I need the red and black to cure some more before I can handle them.

My wife's not a fan of my "hobby" either, but she tolerates it enough to let me keep a few out on display in the basement.

Very nice Gary! That is a nice injected 327!

First picture found of my dad's Dart. My aunt sent in to me. That's her in front of it and color to boot. I can't really be sure, but I think the top might be solid red. My mom is still looking for any photos. She hasn't looked at them in years and can't remember where they might be. Some things I can see are different than the model. The little rubber bumperettes on the front bumper and the fins on the hubcaps.

Great job on those headers. Seems like I read an article in a model magazine years ago about modifying the headers into conventional four into one style because not many NASCAR GM teams ever ran the 180° headers. I believe they were also declared illegal soon after they came into use. I've always wondered what teams gave Monogram access to copy the chassis, engines and bodies they used in their NASCAR kits. They were so advanced over the previously released MPC kits from the '70s.

Yeah, I know. I feel the same way Randy. I can remember in the past when plastic builders would question the point of diecast. I think that was the reason there was a separate section. I'll have to look where the what diecast did you get today thread went. That's one of my favorite threads.