bigbluesd

This kit has been sitting in my stash for a while, I am going to be building it mostly OOB (at least that was the intent when I started). I had a can of Testor's Lime Ice paint that has been sitting in the bottom of my spray booth for a while that I will be using, bought it on sale and this seems like a good car to use it on. Stripes will be black and will be painted on rather than decalled. This WIP thread will be in a slightly different format than what most of you guys do on here, just to try something new. I will include new updates at the top of the thread and move older content down as I go. INITIAL UPDATE 12/10/2014 I am not normally one to worry too much about precise adherence to accuracy but there were a few things about this kit that bugged me. To start though, here are the colors I'll be using: The first thing that bugged me was that this kit must have been based off of a prototype as Dodge got rid of the side exhaust for this year's Viper. The kit is strange as it does include the rear exhaust tips (and directs you to install them) but the housing for the side pipes is still present on the body along with a cover for the exhaust port. The production car has a bulge along the side skirt where the side pipes used to be (as the exhaust still runs through this area). To fix this I trimmed down the protruding edges of the side pipes and puttied over them with Tamiya putty. I'll sand it smooth and although it won't be a perfect representation (the wheelbase on this kit is shorter than the actual car anyways, making the area in front of the door shorter) I think it will be close enough for rock and roll. The other thing that really bugged me was that there was a mold line running between the back window and trunk edge that was clearly not representative of a panel line. I did find one elevated photo of the trunk area that showed panel lines running between the trunk edge and the rear edge of the doors (there are surprisingly few photos of this area of a Viper on the internet by the way!). To create the absent panel line I used some copper wire to get the contour right and then traced the curve to Evergreen to use as a template. I cut out the template and superglued it to the car in order to cut the new panel line with my hobby knife. Still a little cleanup to do but looks much better!

HALLELUJAH! RUBBER ON THE ROAD! It has taken me two weeks to get to this point. I don't know how some of you guys have the patience to stick with a real modification project, this alone has me ready to stick it back in the box and start something I can actually paint within the next year. Suspension is in place, I did some more modifications including using some 12 gauge Romex conductor for front and rear shocks: Tacked everything up using the superglue sparingly, here is how she sits at the moment: It's not perfect but with the time it has taken me to get this far I can live with it... further rebuilding of the suspension is out of the question. The front wheels sit too far out just because I haven't made the mounting pins fit just right yet, once they are finalized they will be at about the same offset as the rear wheels.

Some minor progress... since I have never done any modification like this I am painfully slow. Front end lift is nearly done, the brackets worked well: I have a couple more components to modify to finish that part up. Loosely checked the ride height and it looks about right on both front and back, won't know for sure though until I get further into it and can hold everything together enough to turn it right side up. Decided that I didn't like the wheels that I stole off of the Hot Wheels monster truck (since it was not practical to drill them out) but I had a set of wheels from a consignment store NASCAR kit that I parted out that looked like a more detailed version of the original kit wheels. They were just about the right size to fit the monster truck tires but there is a small gap around the perimeter so I'm building sleeves out of Evergreen to close it up and give them some depth as well. One problem I have is that my thinnest Evergreen is too flimsy so I had to bump up a size, but now the Evergreen is too thick to fit just right. I could sand down the rim but I feel like I'd be better off opening up the holes in the tires a little bit instead, any suggestions on how I can do this uniformly? It doesn't need to be made much bigger, just a little bit. I played around with a round file as well as scraping it with an Exacto blade last night, worked fairly well but the result is not perfectly round. Also, what is the best way to fill the gap where the Evergreen meets after you wrap it around the wheel? I have Bondo, Testors Putty, Tamiya Putty and Milliput at my disposal.... my plan is to use the Tamiya Putty very carefully.

I'm salivating over that race version, incredibly terrified by the decals however!

I wanted to but I think the design of the wheel is going to make that impossible, have not paid that much attention yet.

Actually there was a large piece on that side of the spring that I removed, taking into account that piece plus the thickness of the mount tab came out to right at 7mm. If the rear really is lower though you make a really good point, the rear of that spring would be a good place to compensate to bring the pinion angle down for the driveshaft! I've got to get a little bit further into the lift before I can get everything stable enough to test fit tires, right now getting everything to stay in place is a bit dicey.

Thanks, that really helped a lot. Making slow progress, I am a very slow builder. Mainly because my build time coincides with wine time. And I am smack dab in the middle of wine time so please excuse this post if anything doesn't sound right. Built some new springs for the front end as well as some custom brackets out of Evergreen. I drilled some holes in the brackets because it seemed like the thing to do. I know they are way bigger than they would be on a 1:1, but the Evergreen is soft and somewhat flimsy, they needed the extra meat for support. Still have a few parts of the suspension to scratch and haven't cut the notches yet in the brackets (that's why wheel connection points are not straight yet) but this was the hard part. Still waiting for the FUBAR moment, I'm certain it is coming. From the side: Front end looks like it is riding a lot higher to me but I think it may just be the angle, not stable enough yet to really take any meaningful measurements. Maybe that will be my FUBAR moment. Any comments, suggestions, criticisms, insults are welcome and greatly appreciated.... this is uncharted waters for me, I appreciate the input of the more experienced! - B

It blows my mind how some of you guys can build this cleanly. Looks amazing.

Does Hobby Lobby carry Moebius? We just got a Hobby Lobby in the last month or so finally, I was absolutely amazed at the size of the modeling aisle but I don't recall seeing much other than Revell/AMT?

YES! THANK YOU! that is perfect! Ordered!

I actually think I already have the wheels... off of a 1:43 Mustang that I built with my son and he long ago grew tired of. Still need to find tires to fit them though. Of course I haven't done the math yet so maybe they are too small. Where do you buy it? Is this like the stuff they use for floral arrangements? That coupled with vacuum forming would appear to be a pretty straightforward method...I really have a hard time envisioning using thick sheets and sanding as a few others have said, they would have to be about a half inch thick it seems in order to work and still have enough surface area in the joint for a decent bond! I don't think the picture I included represents the amount of curvature accurately... the edge on the outside of the headlights is probably about a 8" - 12" radius.

Thanks for the compliments. DOH. To be honest I thought it was supposed to be black. Not sure why I didn't catch that looking at reference photos. Just checked the instructions and they say nothing about it being black either. I guess it just seemed right to me? This is a Ferrari 248tbBB, it's pretty obscure. The BB stands for BigBlue, special edition. With black engine hood. Yeah, that's it.

After about an hour of trial and error and two glasses of wine I've now established that I am shooting for a 7mm height increase over the stock suspension. If I'm doing the math right that works out to about a 7" lift 1:1. Although I know it's probably not mechanically sound or incredibly realistic (and may be chuckled at by those who are far more skilled than I), I opted to get the height increase on the back by reversing the mounting of the leaf springs (they hang from the top of the frame, I figure by swapping the side of the chassis tabs not only do I gain some height but also a little bit of rigidity after it's put together. Tomorrow night I will tackle the front, not sure yet what my plan of attack is. The only certainty at this point is that it will involve scratch building shocks and springs. Not sure how I should go about raising where the arm meets the chassis. My inclination is to use Evergreen to build up that wall that the mounting post sits in although I know that would be silly in terms of replica (but as I read somebody else say here, I display mine with the bottom side down!). This is how it is set up, any suggestions?

Took the tires off of the truck I bought this morning, for the benefit of anybody else reading this thread who likes the idea of using the Hot Wheels monster trucks for tires, this is the method I used, god bless this kid for being the only one on the internet to record himself pulling these apart: The axle is just a straight rod with a texture end: Here is a mockup of the ride height I'm shooting for with the new wheels/tires: And beside the old tires for comparison:

Don't, he thinks it is pretty awesome too.

1:24 or 1:25, I will probably try to secure the wheels and tires first and then build to whichever scale they fit most closely lol! If I were to build those body panels with Evergreen how would I round off the edges to such a big radius? That's my hangup on that approach... for a golf cart the Yamaha bodies are incredibly curvaceous.

Here is my golf cart that I love like my son: I have been in the thinking stages for a few months of trying to build it in 1:25 but being a novice I'm not sure how I'm going to approach it. There are no kits to my knowledge that can be used as a base, so that leaves me having to pretty much scratch build everything. I can handle the majority of it but building the body still escapes me... it's not very boxy so I would think that Evergreen is out of the question, my next thought is maybe sculpting it in clay and then using that as a mold? I would think that shrinkage of the clay would be an issue with that approach but don't know, have never done it before. Just curious how you pros would attack this build.....

Won this on eBay for $0.99 plus shipping, my first non-Revell/AMT/etc. kit. It was partially started (they had pretty much finished the suspension/chassis so I didn't bother redoing any of that, wanted it to be a quick build because I had been heavily involved in my last one and I get bored quickly when something sits on the bench for too long) and for some reason it smelled like an 11-year old girl, like a bottle of strawberry something exploded in its vicinity. I was excited to put the primer on to get rid of that stench. Had to clean up some glue gore where they had put the mirrors on with what appeared to be a glob of plastic cement (as the door trim there was melted), other than that it was fairly clean. Also I opened up the vents on the hood, that took a while. Paint is Duplicolor from the can, clear is also Duplicolor from the can. Wheels are Testor's Metallizer aluminum, I was really proud of those, they look perfect in comparison to the reference photos I found online. Overall I'm satisfied although it could have been sanded/polished better (still trying to get the hang of that) and my panel lines look sloppy and rough where I deepened them (any suggestions for that? I'm using dental tools).

I picked up this kit on eBay in January and it has been sitting in my ever growing stack of kits awaiting my skills to improve to a point where I can do it justice (have a soft spot for Broncos, first car was a Bronco II!). Finally ready to tackle it. My intent with this build is to try my hand at some minor modifications and scratch building, to this point I haven't done any real scratch building and have done very few modifications at all to any of the previous kits I've built. Here is the kit: And this is the direction I want to go: With a color scheme similar to this: I'll be scratch building some body trim (drip rails and the chrome trim on the side of the body), exhaust system (going for dual Cherry Bombs!) as well as running boards similar to the ones in the second photo above. I'm also going to have to scratch build some suspension components for the lift kit although I'm still trying to figure out how I should go about it. The wheels that come with the kit are pretty puny (shown here beside some toy truck wheels from my parts box that I really like except that I can't figure out how to make them not look like toy wheels!)... ...so I went browsing in my son's playroom for inspiration and realized that these are absolutely perfect: I picked one up at Walgreen's on the way out of town this morning. Less than $6 with tax (cheaper than I can even buy just the rubber for on eBay)! The body is missing a few details but is not bad, my biggest irritation is the way that they handled the rear roof. It is "removable" (meaning in MPC talk that it doesn't attach to anything) and instead of being cast as one piece they separated the lower window surrounds so that you have to glue them to the remainder of the roof. The lower surround is the piece on the table in that picture, very small and flimsy. To strengthen it for putty/sanding/etc. I put some Evergreen strips on the back side of the main piece for the smaller pieces to sit on. It worked well but the whole contraption is overall still flimsy, I will put some more strips on the bed rails of the body for this part to lie against once I install it. I'm also considering installing some kind of cross brace so that I can work on this piece without gluing it to the body, would make paint masking much easier. I'm going to glue it in place (no "removing"!) at completion anyways and tint the back glass (which will also need to be scratch built I think) so I'm not too concerned about how it looks behind the cover.

I posted this question elsewhere as well but I'm going to repeat it here because I assume you do a lot of this since you are into lifts.... what do you use to glue your suspension parts together for mock-ups/test fits? Also, went digging in the playroom and found that the 1:64 Monster Jam trucks have IDEAL off-road tires! Don't have the heart to steal one of his because he loves them but they can be had for about $5 at Wal-Mart so I am going to pick up one as a donor for my latest project.

I see a lot of you putting together the chassis and body prior to ever starting to paint/build/etc. in order to check ride height... just curious, what type of glue do you use when you are doing this? It seems to me that CA would be too strong and would risk breaking parts when you pull them apart again and plastic cement is out of the question.... I'm assuming Elmer's isn't strong enough.

Yes i do, and there are a few toys in the playroom that i am waiting for him to get tired of (No pun intended)! I have also been visiting the local consignment stores occasionally inn hopes that there will be a couple of toys with good tires for a couple bucks but not a ton of luck yet.

Great info, thanks! I've been watching eBay for the larger tires and have seen the ones you are talking about for about $9 with shipping. Maybe I am just cheap but that seems like a lot of money for rubber on a model! Of course then you've also got the guy selling used sets for $40 plus shipping -- I don't understand that, surely nobody buys them for that kind of price, right?!?!

Looks great Adam, I always enjoy your writeups.

Thanks!