Nacho Z

Love it!! Excellent work!

Welcome back, Dann! Good to see you back here. I hope all is well!

Now this one is just too cool!

Very nice, Gerald! Such a good looking Oldsmobile!

This will be the third and final update concentrating on the front bulkhead. As stated previously, the kit provides no detail whatsoever, only the steering rack. Let me know what you think. Here you can see that I've added fittings to the hard lines for the front brakes. Slightly different angle. From the other side. And from above. Here is a photo of the real thing. And a photo of my brake line and fittings. I am pleased with the overall results. I understand big scale, foreign, open wheel race cars don't garner a lot of love but I would like to hear some feedback on this one. I'm open to comments, advice, critiques or just some plain old discussion on this one. Thanks!

Very nice, Steve!

She really looks the part, Mario! You did a great job on this one. Nice pics, too!

This is just fantastic, Bruce, just fantastic!

I just now took a look through the entire thread. I admire your perseverance on getting all of the details right. Can’t wait to see her done.

Great looking model, Michael! To my eye, very understated, which actually makes it so appealing to me. Nice job!

Wow, Andrew! I’m just catching up on this thread. I’m a little behind on multiple builds that I was following. Anyhow, some spectacular work going on here. I appreciate all of the work going into this. Well done!

Good looking model, Manny! I love the color combo that you chose, it really works well on it. Wheels look great too!

Very nice! All of that extra detail paid off in a great looking model!

I can’t add much to what has already been said. She is a drop dead gorgeous model, Ryan! Absolutely gorgeous!

I’m not sure which bits came from which kits but she sure does look good!

Hi, Tony! Thanks for the kind words! I chose this one for the 24 hour build due to one color paint scheme, relatively low parts count and relatively, to me, low decal count. There is a good amount of flash on the parts. I knocked off the majority of it. I didn’t fill any ejector pin marks. Normally I would have stripped the chrome and shot Alclad or AK but again, I didn’t have time. I also would have polished out the paint but that Tamiya laid down sooooo nice I left it as it was. I did make a new rear axle to push the rear tires out a bit more and I did a fair amount of grinding and cutting to get the front of the body to drop down a little lower over the chassis. Thanks, Anthony!

Big update this week!! This will be the second update of three that concentrate on the front bulkhead. As mentioned last week, Tamiya provide no detail whatsoever on the front bulkhead. Again, it will be covered by a water tank and a radiator but I just couldn't help myself, I had to add a few details. This is what I started with. I filled in various openings that were not used. I made small brackets for the front brake lines. The silver steering rack is all that is provided in the kit. Here you can see the openings that I filled in and others that I created. I made an anti-roll bar from aluminum tubing and styrene. I also made a bracket to go over the steering rack. The brake and clutch reservoirs, (from last week), clear the anti-roll bar. I fitted the bulkhead to the body and filled in the seam all the way around. Here is mounted. I made what I assume are some type of proportioning valves for the brakes, front and rear. Although it probably will never be seen, I actually plumbed the reservoirs to the proportioning valves. It was ridiculously hard to do. All of the planning, measuring and test fitting that I did paid off. Everything fit perfectly! The reservoirs cleared the anti-roll bar and fit under the water tank. More updates next week!

Can't wait to see this one, Pierre! I read your introductory post and saw that you wanted to do something with the stacks. I posted mine here a couple of years ago if you want to take a look at what I did. I bought an assortment of electrical ferrules. I removed the molded on kit stacks and replaced them with the appropriate sized ferrule. I hope this helps. Good luck on your Chaparral!

Thanks, Bob, much appreciated! Thank you, David!

It is Monday night, time for another update! The next two or three updates will concentrate on the front bulkhead. The model kit provides no detail whatsoever. The only thing provided is the steering rack. To be fair to Tamiya there will be a water tank and a radiator that will cover everything up anyhow. However, this are was just begging for some detail, and well, one thing led to another. I'll start with the brake and clutch reservoirs. I will caption each photo as needed. Here is a photo of the real car under restoration. I scratch built front and rear brake reservoirs from 9 separate pieces and the clutch reservoir from 8 pieces. A reservoir mocked up. I patterned mine off of a kit part from another kit. I had to make mine a very specific size. It had to clear other items that I will be adding and yet be low enough to fit under the water tank. Hard to tell but there are 3 different shades of metallizers on these. I also add bolt heads to each mounting flange. A different background shows the colors a little better. A quick mockup. I also added two mounting brackets for the front brake lines.

Thanks for this, Bruce! Actually, these are 2 of my 4 main sites. The guy over on F1M is ridiculously talented. I have definitely poured over his thread. I use Motor Sports Images a lot also. Anyhow, that was incredibly nice of you to post those links for me. It is truly appreciated!

Thank you, Chris! I appreciate you checking in on this one! Thank you, Bruce! Thanks, Pierre, you are much too kind!

Thank you, Marcos! Thanks, Paul! I always joke that I am an average model builder but I take cool pictures...? I'm right there with you, Christopher, I love those Ramchargers! Thank you! Thanks, Chris! Oh, man, John, it is good to hear from you, my friend! You are truly the guy I look up to for dragsters of all types. I only picked this one because it looked doable for a 24 Hour Build. It came out ok and makes me want to tackle some of the others I have.

That is a great looking Monkeemobile, Bob!

Thanks so much, Jerry! She makes a nice shelf model. Because it was a 24 hour build, I didn't sweat a lot of details. The decals went on great. The parts were full of flash and the fit was average at best. It is a typical '70s MPC kit for sure.