Peter Lombardo

You did a wonderful job in getting everything to fit properly. Nice work on a car we don't see very often modeled, but I see on the road all the time. I have often looked at the resin "add-on" kits but have never bitten, maybe I should re-think that. Anyway, very nice work...P.S. the color looks perfect on it.

Ok Chris, I pre-ordered the Hasegawa kit, so we can do a comparison review when they arrive. I think in the end, I will also get the Tamiya kit. I have every 1/20 scale F1 kit made by Tamiya, I don't want to have a "hole" in the series now.

Chris, not that it is a big deal, but the Lotus 79 is a Hasegawa kit. Both Hasegawa and Tamiya are to be releasing kits of the same car, in the same scale (1/20)at about the same time.....very strange. I know there is not a lot of interest on this forum for these cars, but the F1M site I belong to has a lot of buzz about this kit. Most feel that Tamiya is not that interested in 1/20 scale F1 cars any more. The Hasegawa kit has more options and detail (they all think) than the Tamiya one. And based on the two Ferrari 312T and 312T2 releases, Hasegawa has their act together. I just pre ordered the Hasegawa kit for a July delivery. One more thing, there is a 15% discount if you pre order on HLJ.com now till 5/11/2010

Well John, this is really something different. The paint looks great with the cobb-webbing effect. The back sure sits pretty low, but regardless of the paint and look, the engine is what sets this baby apart. The weathering, as slight as it is, is just perfect....really well done. I am impressed, but all of your work is impressive, so that is no surprise. Nice work.

Tom, great pictures! That 50 Merc, Blue Mood, looks perfect. Thanks for posting them, there are at least a million great building ideas in there.

That looks really nice.....I think the engine painting and detailing that you did sets it apart from the others. Personally, I like the stripes and spoilers on the car, but yours looks a lot meaner and more aggressive without them. Very nice work. How do you go wrong with a Mustang in Blue? You can't!

Greg, that is really nice. Simple and to the point. I really like the color choice....burnt orange with white works all the time. I like the cut down '32 grille surround. I keep meaning to build a t bucket rod and just don't get around to it, but you did and it looks very period correct. Nice job.

Ken, thank you very much for finding that article. I only found the one picture and it only referenced that it was a right hand drive car. I thought it most likely came from Australia. I love the fact that the article answers many of the questions that I was asking myself. I thought the fin was extended a bit and I suspected that the headlight and taillight surrounds were also extended a little. I was thinking that I could not fit the rear seat in my car because of inadequate headroom but I think it will be ok after I test fit it. We'll see.

As usual, you did a great job on an old and somewhat tired kit. Good to see you getting back into the swing again. I'm looking forward to your next build. Are you getting over to NNL East this year? You have been "tardy" lately.

News Flash!!!!! Modeler accuses himself of pilfering Intellectual Content! So this morning while drinking my morning cup of coffee, I was looking around the internet for any pictures of 1958 Thunderbird's. You know, I am always open to ideas, and if it is a really good idea, I am not totally apposed lifting some portion of it. I am in advertising, and there is a very old, but dear saying in the industry (well, at least I have been told this on numerous occasions) “Every good ad has been stolen, well, at least some of it hasâ€. ( I am listening to Neal Young’s “Harvest†album while I am writing this….I forgot how great that album is. I had the “8 trackâ€â€¦.remember 8 tracks?? Of this album way back in 1971 when I was in the Navy…I used to play it all the time in the chart room when I was not on watch on the Bridge when we were steaming around the Gulf of Tonkin chasing Aircraft Carriers.) Anyway, I am looking around for any additional ideas or painting ideas and low and behold, look what I found. Strangely enough, I think it looks the same coming or going. This is a 1959 Thunderbird….same as the 1958, much the same as the ’58 and ‘59 Vettes are virtually the same with the basic exception of the “washing machine†on the hood of the ’58. Anyway, this may be an Australian car or perhaps an English car because it is a right hand drive unit. The obvious similarity to the car I am building certainly would have me wondering? I mean, I think I will have to launch a full investigation. It begs the question…..Did I steal the intellectual property of someone else? Did I see this car in a dream and not realize it when I stuck the Stealth roof on the 1958 I am building? This looks to me to be a late 50’s early 60’s GM roof, or at least a portion of one. I think it looks pretty good on the car, although I think the Stealth one will look equally as nice. “Heart of Gold†just came on…man that is really a good song. I guess I can’t paint mine orange and use wire wheels on it without having guilty pangs. Anyway, I have the roof on, and much of the putty sanded, but there is still a ways to go on the smoothing front. I think I will use the chrome front bumper on this but I will have to de-chrome it to match the rear bumper. “Old Man†is now on…I really liked that song back in 1971…still sounds good. I will cut out the molded in grille and add some mesh to it. I think, I am thinking that I may extend the grille opening outward a bit…we’ll see how that looks.

What a beautiful Buick! I love the paint job.....smooth and a mile deep....it still looks wet. I love the wire wheels too. Great build...very impressive.

Rick, that actually looks really sharp. I much prefer the Chevy rear with the big lateral fins to the Thunderbird's small fins. Good move removing that piece of the bulge on the door, it looks much smoother. I think it looks great without roof. I don't know if you are planning to use that roof or not, but as a convertible with the big fins it looks so "period" correct. I look forward to seeing progress on this one. Especially since, purely by coincidence, I have begun a 1958 T-Bird too.

Back in 2002 I picked up the Revell ’58 Thunderbird Convertible kit mainly because it was a new release. The truth is, I never really cared much for the style of that car. I know it reflected the typical styling cues of the Ford lineup of that era, but to me it just didn’t work. I love the ’55 thru 57 two seat’ers and have to admit to really liking “torpedo†style of the early 1960 models, but this interim style has always left me cold. So I brought the kit home and left it somewhere in my huge stash of kits that may or may not ever get built. A few weeks back, I dug the kit out because I wanted to see if I could make a vacuum form copy of the bubbletop unit. It worked and I put the kit back in the pile, but now it was on top. A few weeks later, my son showed me a “glue bomb†Dodge Stealth he picked up and a light bulb went off in my head. I made a vacuum formed copy of the body and roof and removed the roof from the body. I then placed the roof on the Thunderbird body and thought it might actually look pretty good together. So my plan here is to finish cleaning up the window openings and to set the roof down “into†the body. This will be converted into a two seater with a little extra space behind the futuristic interior I am planning for this one. You know the style, laid back tuck and rolled seats, a long center console and maybe a cantilevered steering wheel set up with a big flowing dash panel. I grafted on the kit supplied hood scoop extension. I will clean up the “goofy†little trim pieces on the body to further smooth things out here. The doors will be modified at the top to have a cleaner line where the “a†pillar joins the body. I grafted on the rear roll pan which will be smoothed and cleaned up. I plan on a smooth front roll pan and I need to do something interesting to the headlight area, I am just not sure of what that will be yet. I think some nicely molded in side pipe units below the door with the exhaust outlets just in front of the rear wheel wells. I plan on dropping the car down as low as I can get her and I think I will buck my current trend of using large wide mag style wheels and go with a traditional wide whitewall tire with a “period†correct wheel cover. I also plan on doing some kind of crazy paint scheme to play on the many lines, creases and accents of the late fifties design. When this is done, I am aiming for a strange juxtaposition of 1950’s “fin and flair†style and 1990 “slick and smoothâ€. I have also begun work on the wood buck for the customized “stylized†Studebaker Commander which will have a two part vacuum formed body and a roof, oddly enough from the Dodge Stealth, only this will be the opposite of the Thunderbird in that it will have a Vacuum body over the chassis, engine and front wheel drive set up of the Stealth along with the roof from the Stealth grafted on. The Thunderbird has the vacuum formed roof added to the plastic body of the Bird.

It looks fine....when it gets painted, I am sure it will look just right. Watch out with that glue....true story, a female friend of mine was having some dry eye problems a few years ago, her mother handed her a small white bottle of eye drops, the only problem was that it was a bottle of super glue. It took her years to get most of her eyesight back in that eye. So all of you guys who use eye drops regualerly, don't leave them anywhere near your CA super glue bottles.

Had me fooled for a few......looks great.

Guys, thank you very much, I really do appreciate the kind words. I know I have said this before, but I really appreciate it when you, fellow modelers have words of encouragement for me....it means a lot because all of you guys "get it". We all understand the hard work and the passion we put into our builds. We all know what it takes and the pride we have when one of our builds get a positive feed back from guys "in the community". Thanks again. Curt, I thought you would appreciate this build, being one of the guys who has posted some absolutely beautiful F1 builds. Thanks.

Thanks....I saw a lot of ideas for future models in this album. Great job.

This is some really nice work. It is a shame you have to invest so much money these days to buy all of the aftermarket parts. It is insane. You are doing a great job on the chassis here...very realistic. I am impressed. I love the detail you are putting into the under side of the hood. I will watch this all the way through. I can also attest to how nice the spray adhesive works. I use it at work all the time and tried it and it works great as the vinyl roof material.

I know, this is long and tedious, but so was this build. I also know F1 cars are not that popular here, but I enjoy building them along with customs and concepts, I will throw one in from time to time. You are welcome to just look at the pictures, but I highly recommend taking a few minutes to review it. It was quite a growing experience for my skills. I had a self imposed deadline of the NNL East for this car to be completed by. I beat my deadline by a few weeks and that makes me happy that I didn’t have to rush “it†at the end. A few months ago, I posted the genesis of this project. Basically, I wanted to update the Tamiya 1/20 scale 1977 Tyrrell P34 kit, kit number 20053. I think Tamiya took the cheap way out on this car and modeled it as it appeared in the 1977 Monaco GP. That was just a sponsorship and paint scheme variation of the 1976 all blue elf car. It has the short cowl bodywork with the engine completely exposed. I wanted a version of the car with the full cowl bodywork. I figured that it would be a snap to make a buck for the body and bang out a vacuum form body. While it certainly was do-able, it was anything but a snap. I chose Balsa wood as the model buck medium and actually that was a good choice. I laid out the measurements based on the 1976 Tyrrell car that I had built a few years back. I built the buck and made a vacuum form body and began work on it. As work on the body cowling progressed, so did work on the chassis and engine. As the chassis came together, it was becoming increasingly evident that the body work proportions were off a bit and the body was not going to work as planned. I had made the front area adjacent to the front wheels too wide, although on the very last version of this car, the front track was indeed wider; I had the proportions out of sync. I went back to the buck and made some adjustments and re-formed a new body. In the end, I had to mold the body 4 times before I was happy enough with the outcome….I never expected that to be the case on what I thought would be a simple body to mold. As it turned out, this body, which I painted (the paint job was the paint job from Diablo), I mean I had to strip the paint because of one teeny tiny imperfection, but as it turned out, even with all of the sweat and toil, this body was not right in that the back portion did not adequately clear the intake trumpets so all of the paint work was for not. Back to the buck, and a few more changes were made. This time I extended the raised area in the back to better clear the engine plumbing, but I also made a change in thinking at this point. Now, one thing I found as I researched this project (I amassed a huge stack of pictures of it in its various forms from the internet)…..( let me ask you, how did we ever do the research prior to the internet???….I know, books, magazines and photos, but really, the internet is a lifesaver for this kind of stuff) was that this car appeared differently in just about every race it competed in. The car was in a constant state of improvement and changes ranged from the subtle to the bizarre. The hard part for me was picking a version to model. The car I modeled in the end was not the car I set out to build. In the beginning I planned a car without the front oil radiators, with the two lower cowl air intakes set back and low and no windshield. As you can see, that is not what I ended up with. The more I looked at the research the more I liked the idea of the front oil coolers. I really liked how the oil lines ran down below the outer body, on top of the inner body, plus it was much more of a challenge for me to build the radiators, the plumbing and have the openings line up correctly with the radiators. Also, I like the plumbing connections and the colorful anodized pressure connectors. Then I thought I would also challenge myself with building the windshield, so it was incorporated into the build. So, when I re-vacuum formed the new body, I also made a body in clear styrene also. The clear body was going to donate the section where the windshield is so I could build a car with the windshield rather than one without. Along with the windshield, that body has its air intakes, on the cowling, in a higher, more centralized location. I cut out the openings for the vents, crafted angled side pieces and then glued on the back so the air is funneled in to the cockpit, around the driver and then to the engine intake. I drew out the window area on the body and then cut out the clear styrene very carefully so it would fit into the opening. I “painted†the black area with a sharpie marker and set that aside to wait for the body painting to be done. To paint the body, first after the body modifications were complete, I primed the entire body, it was lightly sanded when dry and then many light coats of white lacquer paint were laid down. Once that was dry, it got two light coats of clear lacquer and that was allowed to dry. Once good and dry, I painted on a heavy coat of liquid masking and allowed that to dry for two days. Once dry, I very carefully, with a new #11 knife blade, cut the line where the two colors of the paint scheme come together. Then I peeled away the masking from where the blue was to go (lower body area). The rest of the white area was taped off and 3 coats of Tamiya blue were laid down. Once that had set up, I very carefully removed the tape and liquid masking to reveal the two tone blue and white paint scheme. Once this was completely dry, the body received countless coats of clear lacquer to seal the paint. Both the nose piece and the wing were painted with the Tamiya Blue and also clear coated with clear lacquer. The Tamiya decals (they are great on this kit) needed quite a bit of modification to work on this re-built car. The elf up front was cut-apart and repositioned without much bother. The number 4 up front also required a bit of tricky cutting, but it was not that difficult. The trick part was the “FIRST NATIONAL CITY†decals that are in a straight line in the kit form, but needed to be curved around the newly fashioned front cowling. Cutting them apart was tedious as there is very little room between the letters, but the harder part was getting the spacing correct so that the name was balanced properly on the body. I did not want it to be uneven so I was very careful to get that right. The windshield was glued in and the decals finished and the rearview mirrors attached. That was it for the body, but the chassis got almost as much modification as the body. In the kit, the front wheels are not made to turn. I incorporated all of the linkage so that all four wheels turn together. I had built the 1/12 scale version many years ago and always loved how the wheels worked together, so I needed to modify this to do the same. Now they don’t turn all the way, due to the limitations of the space provided, but they do turn in unison. While I am on the front wheels, I replaced the wheel spindle with small brass bolts and nuts so the wheels can be un-screwed and removed. I also included the red air ducts for brake ventilation. I fabricated the supports for the two front oil radiators and the necessary plumbing, mentioned earlier. I added most of the electrical wiring to the dash panel and driver area…..while mentioning the driver, he was modified too. The kit, for some strange reason has an abbreviated driver leg area on the driver figure included in the kit. Now, regardless of the version you build, the driver legs are clearly visible, so why would they be amputated just below the knee? I could not allow that to stand, no pun intended, so I drilled holes into the “stubs†and inserted a piece of wire in each leg. Then using the Tamiya two part modeling putty, I gave the drive some huge elephant legs. When dry, they were grinded down and shaped to represent the lower leg and sneaker clad feet of the driver. The driver was painted with a custom mix of Tamiya flat paints and when dry, top coated with “dull coat†just to help soften the look. The helmet was painted also with Tamiya paint and decaled, and a visor was made and installed with small brass nails into the helmet. The engine is pretty straight out of the box with the addition of wiring. I used some really neat “spring†wire that I got from the HLJ.com site that is intended for Sci-Fi modelers. I used it for the coolant piping from the engine to the radiators mounted on the outside of the engine area. I fabricated forward radiator supports from a small piece of a diet-coke can and mounted them to the body and when secure, the radiators were attached and plumbed. I had to build the fuel tank sides and fabricated the fuel pick up lines down the side of the tank. I also made the connection plates where the body attaches to the chassis with straight pins. Overall, I am very happy with this build. I set out to build a version of this car that no one else has and I got to further my Vacuum Forming technique’s too. I challenged myself with a few things and accomplished those tasks. As I have said many times before, I want to challenge myself to improve and broaden my abilities and horizons. No pain, no gain is just as true with modeling as it is with working out.

Those are all good solutions to your situation. But, I would just brush on a coat of Hobbico Master Mask, liquid masking film. Let it dry and after painting, just slip the tip of a #11 blade under a corner and it will pull right up. The stuff cleans up with water so it doesn't hurt anything....that is how I would do it. Also, if you do clearcoat over decals, be very careful when using lacquer paints...they can eat up decals like a bum eats up a ham sandwich.

There is no accounting for taste!

Very nice paint. I also built one of these and you are right, it just falls together. Mine is the Opal team car in white and yellow. Nice job, very smooth.

First off guys, thank you very much for the kind words, I really appreciate them. I built this car a number of years ago when I was just getting back into street cars and customs. Before that I was a race car "snob".....especially Tamiya race car kits. Back then my "stash" of street car parts was limited so I used the closest parts (wheels) I had. Thanks, Lee for the offer of the Cargar mags, but I have a set now, I am just too lazy to change them up. I had a set of real Cragars on my 1973 Camaro RS back in the day. I saved up for them for months and man, they made the look of my Camaro just pop. I loved that car and truly wish I still had it. Harry and Whale, I have to completely agree with you guys, the '66 and '67 Plymouth and the '68 and '69 Dodge Chargers were to my eyes the two best American Muscle Car designs of all time. I know the GTO and Chevelle's of the day were great, but if I had but one choice, it would be a toss up of these two cars. Back in 1966 my very good friend from my High School days had a pale yellow with black vinyl roof and interior Plymouth Satellite. The main difference between the '66 and '67 were the inner headlights. The '66 had the turn signal lights there and the '67 had the high beams located there. There were many minor differences too, but the headlights were the easy to spot difference. Any way, this car had a HO 383 V8 that really packed quite a big punch. We would take on Chevelle's, Goat's, Torino's man, you name it and we always did very well street racing. Didn't always win, but always did get respect. Fun and very dangerous memories. In 1969, Don (my buddy) traded the Plymouth in on a '69 Dodge Charger, light metallic blue with black top and interior. That was also a beautiful car. It also had the HO 383 and rally wheels. I don't recall that car being as quick as the Plymouth (weight, I think) but it was sure a looker. Many of the "young ladies" turned their heads when we would "cruise the Jersey Shore" in the summer or pull up to the White Castle on Friday or Saturday night. Trust me, they were looking at the car, more than looking at us. The girls would sometimes call out to when we pulled up, "Hey Rich", even though our names were Pete, Steve and Don. Like I said, it was the car. Back in those days, the White Castle still had what they called "curb service". The ladies would come out to your car, take your order and return with a tray loaded up with twelve cent hamburgers, french fries and soft drinks. It was the East Coast equivalent to the West Coast drive-ins without the roller skates. On weekend nights, all year round, it was one of the places to see and be seen. All of the young guys would want to show off their Iron and in so have a certain part of their anatomy and their wallets measured against the other guys. Don's dad had money, and therefore his cars always placed us at the higher end of the pecking order....that was a good thing. Ahaaaa, the golden memories....the late sixty's were a great time for fast cars, cheap burgers and lost innocents. Back then, we were happy and carefree. It didn't take much either, a fast car, a cute girl and a few cold Colt 45's and life was great. As I get older, the one aliment that I pray I never get is Alzheimer's, I want to take my memories to my grave....I want to hold on to them as long as I can.

Here, Look at this.... I just Googled it.....http://www.amtmodelturnpike.com/what_is_amt_model_turnpike.htm

Bill is right, Aluminum Model Toys. The Turnpike was a slot car product that AMT had with their car bodies on a motorized chassis where you could actually steer the cars, which was very unique for the time. I remember ads for it with Art "The Kat form AMT" Anderson promoting it. It, if I remember correctly was very expensive for the time....and it did not catch on very well.