mustang1989

Prayers sent up every day. Hope everything is ok Harry.

These guys have pretty much covered it all. Wow. I will say this Jaime, you are an awesome person. He's a lucky guy it sounds like. Merry Christmas to both of you, Joe

I got the engine installed this morning but before I did I mounted the cooling fan up and made some minor adjustments to the radiator. I've never seen a cooling fan installed..........on the crankshaft pulley???? Too weird and I didn't like it and besides, the OOB fan was too dang bulky and big anyhow. I went with a cooling fan from Revell's Pro Stock Thunderbird kit and it worked great AND I installed it in the "normal" position at the water pump pulley. Criminy! I'm also in the process of stripping all the chrome from the fuel injector stack bases so I can apply gloss black to them and shoot a coat of Alclad chrome over them. Anyhow here's this morning's progress report...............

Looking good and I'll be interested in seeing what you're gonna toss inside of that camper.

I've gotta say that this one looks just way too cool (pardon the pun) . I really like the way you've got it looking with all the graphics and knick knacks here and there. If there was one thing that I disliked about the OOB kit was the front wheels sticking so far outside of the wheel openings but you're managing to pull off a good looking build in spite of that.

Thanks James. Yeah this one was supposed to be an OOB build and I get ribbed a lot in good fun on some of the other sites about not being able to build anything OOB. I argue back that it'll at least be 80% OOB.

That's definitely a guy who not only likes his rigs but builds great models of them as well. Out of this world builds.

Okeedokee folks. On page 3 I left off with the OOB engine with no timing cover, water pump....nothin'. Man did that look blank! I was initially going with a Hemi that I built as a kid and then backed out of that one just because of all the mods I would have to do to get it looking right and fitting. So I took the timing cover and water pump from that engine and put over onto this engine first of all. Secondly, I couldn't leave the engine with now ignition system given all this effort I'm going through to "enhance" things a bit so I added some wire's from Lex's after drilling out the distributor cap and going through the usual process of installing wires into the cap and routing and all. The current progress with the L/H OOB injector stack test fitted and a dang timing cover on the front of it for cryin' out loud. Lastly, speaking of injector stacks, while I like the idea of those on this kit I strongly dislike all the seam lines and flash associated with the parts that AMT used. From a distance they look great and the stacks are at least not molded together but close up they are a complete disaster that would require total reworking to straighten out! Let's zoom in a little closer.... So I'll start fixing that by cutting off the stacks from the bases.... Here's what I'm going to use instead. I picked up some aluminum tube from HL and will cut each stalk in half, chuck it up in a drill and spin it up in the steel wool there beside the stalk here to start a base for the shining process and then switch over to spinning it up in a polishing cloth with some Mothers Aluminum polish to "polish" things off. Sorry...............couldn't help the pun. I needed locators in which to create a strong adhesion and to help line everything up so I chose some smaller diameter brass rod that slips right into the aluminum rod perfectly. and in one photo I'll illustrate the process. I drilled into the injector stack base at each outlet to create a pilot hole for the brass rod which fits snugly inside each hole, then will slip the aluminum rod over the short lengths of brass rod like so............. and then slid it on down to it's "home" position like so..............and do 7 more like that and I'll be home free with a lot better looking stacks than I started out with.

Nailin' this one the whole way! Great work Mark.

Neat idea.....and I agree with Mark........that bug deflector looks great.

That's some good modeling right there Luis!

Wow man! Waaaaay off the charts!!!

Thanks Carl. Ok I'm back with today's update. Folks I had to ditch the front wheels as well. First off , I just didn't like the way they looked. Secondly , these things, no matter how much I cut them down on the back of the wheel where they mounted up to the axle just stuck out way to far outside of the body. Here's where I started at this morning when test fitting the body onto the chassis to see if everything was going to work out ok. I'm glad I did because I wouldn't have been very happy with this.......... After cutting the backs of the OOB wheels down it wasn't too much better........... So I scrapped the OOB front wheels and went with some Cragar SS's I had in the spares bin. Now THAT'S more like it!!!!!!!!! The engine? Well it's probably the most primitive Hemi engine I've seen but there aint no way in HELL I'm going to use my Ross/Gibson Hemi on THIS build! lol I painted the engine metal flake blue , drilled some holes in the rocker covers for ignition wires and while I was on the rocker covers , applied a little Tamiya Smoke to them. Engine progress for this morning....... After looking at it for a while I don't know if I'll use this 426 Hemi or another OOB Hemi from 30 years ago. Will be thinking on this part....

I managed to work on my "OOB" build this morning. I didn't like the front tires from this kit because they were just too wide so I used the skinnier one's from the AMT '67 Chevelle kit. I chucked a 12mm socket up in my cordless drill and mounted each of the four tires up, one at a time on to the socket and spun the tires up on some sandpaper to rough up the tread araas some. I also treated each of the wheels to a coat of X-22 Smoke for that true metal/ chrome look. After that I installed all four wheel and tires. Here's the progress so far:

I'm a bit late to the game but I'm in. God Bless you Harry

I saw on the "I am in the Hospital" thread where you thanked God for us which to me means you are a spiritual man. Bob's got it right with the gratitude Harry, and through God is where it happens. I'll be sending prayers up for you and hope that whatever path is laid out for you that you'll walk it hand in hand with Him one day at a shot. Serenity prayer is key. I hope and pray the best for you and your family brother, Joe

Man that is one fine truck you've got yourself there Tom!!! Five star build man!!

Man did I totally miss this one!!!!! Wow!!! Modern art masterpiece pal! Way ta go................

Cool build! I love how these cars look.

Whadda paint job!!!! Man that car looks nice Jim!!!

Awesome detail, great color and spectacular building! There's nothing wrong from where I'm sittin'.

Nice work on a great subject!

I love these old Firebirds and don't see enough of 'em. I like the way yours turned out here. Nice work.

Yeah it seems like that scoop says it all alright. Nice idea and good work.

Nice lookin' Stang and cool classic look. As a kid all the cool cars looked like this it seemed like.