mustang1989

What a cool project!! I was trying to remember where I've seen one of these before and after a bit it came to mind. I'll be danged if it wasn't from the claymation short "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town". I'll be watching this one Ken.

Looking forward to seeing that Fabrizio.

That was a good try on getting the headlights to work like you wanted them to Dave and I'm sorry it didn't work out for ya man. I do have to applaud your efforts on trying in any case. Looking forward to seeing your progress in moving forward brother.

Thanks fellas! Welp.....now that the holidays are over I'm resuming progress on this one. Today I was able to spend about two hours in painting this thing and got all of the wing and stabilizer upper surfaces done. I was also able to do some of the top fuselage and nose area as well. I received my fine detail Badger airbrush over the Christmas break that is helping me immensely with free handing the camo borders. I've got the paint on thin enough so that the modulation will bleed through some on this which is exactly the look I was going for. I thought I had the correct shade of blue for the sides but....I did not. Ordered that today and it should be here in a week or so. Till then....I'll be working on other parts of the built like the prop, landing gear and canopy.

\ Thanks for the good comments fellas. Dave I don't know if I'm gonna show 'em the meaning of Ultra Detailed or not but I'll try to do better than what they've got in the box. lol Here's with the trailing arms, front radius rods, rear shocks and front brake rotors installed. The suspension on this thing has a TON of parts and most are visible once it's all finished up. I also painted up the intake butterfly center shaft which help set that all off a bit. Progress continuing on with this finicky steering linkage. There are mere pins that hold the steerable linkage in place with NO backings. I had to fabricate my own out of spare styrene to keep the pins in place. I ended up having to use a slightly larger sized needle on one side to be able to pose the front wheels in any kind of alignment as the OOB pins had the wheels toed in slightly. Radiator and headlights were a bit of a trick too but managed to get everything lined up nice n square. The one thing I did NOT like about this kit was those stoopid "dots" in the middle of the headlights with the locating pegs sticking out of the rear of the lens. I simply cannot stand that feature on auto builds as it gives such a "toy" look. I sanded the rears of the lens and while there is a small half circle in the lens now, at least there's not a visible "peg" and they have a more modern clear appearance now. On the sprue: With the radiator/ grill and headlight bars in place. I also mocked up the car body for kicks.

Looking good so far Fabrizio. Engine detail and weathering are top notch man. Following......

I like the way this has shaped up for you Len. Keep fighting the bear brother as she's coming together nicely buddy.

This is taking on some good shape Ron. No worries on posting things twice......it happens to me more than I care to admit. The size of some of these hoods is downright crazy but that's the way a good number of them are. Lookin' good buddy.

I can't tell you how much fun it was to follow along with this one Dave. One thing I like about aircraft/ military builds is the ability to add weathering to add not only interest but to bring out some of the normal wear and tear associated with a wartime subject. In my case, weathering also doubles to cover up any boo-boo's that I make. lol Very well built, painted and weathered and I absolutely love the shark mouth on this one.

Brilliant work on this and I'm really liking the whole LED light deal that you pulled off with the dash, tail and headlights. Color is choice as is the shine of it Don.

This beauty is coming along verrry nicely so far Dave. I like the ivory top that you're looking at too and was just wondering if you're are going ahead with the red for the interior?

I hear ya Dave. Being a pre-painted model also meant that the engine block was all one color too. All of it. Orange starter, orange oil filter......all of that stuff. lol Continuing on with this one. I managed to get the front and rear axles into place and still have some work to do to the brake rotors to adapt the Tru Wires to this car. I've already cut the stubs/ axle mounting bosses off of the front hubs and drilled holes for the new axle / wheel retainers. Engine is all mounted up as well. That was a feat in itself and required grinding of the "engine mounts" to slide the engine into place as it wasn't fitting into the mounts at all. I had ordered lug nuts for the wheels so now I can start on getting the wheels together at any point.

Off to a great start with this one Topher! Watching..........

Make that two of us!!

YESSSS!! Dann’s back!!

Let's get started.....shall we? I didn't like the rather predominant seam going right down the middle of the oil pan as well as the top and bottom of the transmission, so I glued the engine halves together instead of using the screw supplied in the kit to join the halves. Then I busted out with the sanding sticks and went to work removing all seams and primed everything in black. Started here with the pre-painted long block freshly sanded with all seams and sprue joins removed. It was a shame to remove all of the pre-painted orange from the block but I think I've got just the right shade of orange to go right back on. Then black based everything. No more seam lines! http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t469/bf109g430mm/Emotiocons/Chewy_zpsdjygjnjt.gif And shot the engine color right back on..... Here's after a couple of touch ups with some Tamiya Smoke applications over the kit chrome, painting a few details on the engine and adding some eye candy like a lettering decal on the blower drive belt and an AC Delco decal on the oil filter. I also spent some time picking out some of the details on the drive belt pulleys. I've still got some things to do in the clean-up department. Believe it or not, this kit comes with a prewired distributor and blued chrome for the headers right there in the box. Pretty cool feature and I'll be adding that coming up next. One thing I did NOT like was the blower drive belt idler just hanging out there with no kind of bracketry. Can't win 'em all. lol

The work that's going into these two builds is nothing short of amazing. I finished a 67 fastback in early 2022 and now want to tackle a Bullitt Mustang after seeing this thread. Highly inspirational stuff going on in here.

You're gonna have to let us know how the presentation turned out Steve. That shot of the interior and engine bay are just mind blowing and I REALLY like that 8 track player. Dad had one of those aftermarket players mounted to the bottom of his dash on his old 62 Chevrolet Stepside truck. I think we must've listened to the two 8 tracks Charley Pride-Greatest Hits and Elvis Presley-Blue Hawaii a million frickin' times.

I know a few other folks who use the 2K clear with some VERY good results like what you have here. I may be switching to this stuff.

After a looooooooong awaited silence on this thing.....we now have......paint!!! Using Vallejo Air colors on this and you can see all of the prep work if you look at the colors closely. I'm liking how it's turning out so far....

Truthfully, the only thing that's really an "extra" in the whole box is the pre-wired distributor and the blued exhaust headers Dave and it's surprising to me that these would go for that much back then. These need a little help in the "ultra detail" area. lol

That is the one reason I took up the T-Bucket build of mine was to get at least something completed by years end. Fingers crossed man........I'm hoping to pull one build off this year!!!!

Alright gang. We start...... Those of you who know me, know that I can't leave well enough alone.....even for a pre-painted kit. For starters, I had to do something with the wheel and tire arrangement on this. This is not to say that the ones that came in the kit were all that bad BUT.......I've been itchin' for an opportunity to use some wheels and tires that I've had in the parts stash for such an occasion. The wire wheels included in the kit are among the best I've seen in plastic, and I will keep them around for a future build. What's really going to help throw this build over the top is the use of these Tru Wires from Minicurtr8zing. A quick side by side comparison will show that the kit wheels aren't all that bad but these Tru Wires are definitely "all that". Rear wheels in the kit were a Cragar SS design but I had something more in mind. I got these from Teds Modeling Marketplace and these IMO are the best wheels anywhere in being aluminum and PE. I also had a set of 1/25 tires in the parts stash that these will fit perfectly in.

This is one way of doing just that FO SHO Dave.

Mister.......that is some really clean paint and BMF work!!