GasPunkAlley

I plan on digging this model out and separating the chassis from the floor. I found some great pics on a C'd chassis the Mercury Charlie makes for the 1 to 1 scale cars. That will solve a lot of problems, but a lot of work ahead of me! I was locked out of my email and this account for some time now and finally got back in!

I was thinking of pearl white naugahyde and black carpet. maybe '65 Mustang Twighlight Turquise or '68 Rord Gulf Stream aqua.

Here is my progress so far, I removed the beltline trim, marker lights to make the truck pre '68. Started removing the marker lights removed trim, hinges and marker lights filled in door handle mounting point, swing away spare mounts and filled in holes beneath tail lights rounded off rocker panels and added material below

I was inspired when I got this new kit and started to look for some possible famous first Gen Broncos. I remembered that Mr. Kimble from Green Acres had a '66 Bronco Roadster. So my search went on for reference pics. I saw the other reviews so far and agree with the wheels are too small. I don't mind the tires, the rim size really is a bummer. I also agree with the sides being too flat / straight. I have attached some of my references. Mr. Kimble's Bronco Roadster with street tires. Note the turn signals Note the front fender badges. Note the top of the tailgate.

I just made a mold of windshield and the radiator / grill assembly. The next steps will be making the chopped grill that is extra deep. The Leg Show T appears to have a triple core radiator so I will be making the appropriate adjustments. With a cast windshiled placed on the body I can start adjusting the MPC Switcher T bucket 2003 Richta show reissue roof to fit the body.

I got the body in primer and ready for mold making.

Rat Rod, yes I do. I have the 1915 cab and turtle deck up on Ebay as well as up for sale on my Facebook page. Look up Gas_Punk_Alley. I have some t bucket parts and I will have more coming soon. I will have more of the smaller parts available only on the Facebook page since Evil Bay hits you so hard with fees.

Did you see the latest Scale Auto article on making scale wire wheels? That would really trick out the front of the car with scale correct wires.

I decided to remake all body reveals and I used Evergreen strip for the top of the sides and on the rear of the cab. I went to my local Maker Space and used the laser cutter to make the new raised door panels. The details can be seen in white plastic. I also ground down some ugly tooling blobs on the inside of the body. The original kit has a tub style interior ad would cover that. Since I do not know what I will use for an interior yet, I smoothed it out. I also smoothed and filled / molded the cowl.

I am going to call it now, but I think the next big phase will be 1970's Resto Rods and Fad T's. I have seen a bunch of 1970's rod and custom barn finds show up in popular magazines and on Facebook. I have bee following the large scale Carl Casper Phone booth T on this site and the late 60's and early seventies are getting a lot of attention. I dug out of my stash my Tognotti King T and did some research that a lot of the Fad T's were based on the 1915 glass body. The King T is a supposedly stock bodied 1915 T... Wit a little bit of mold making magic I made the cab and turtle deck. I then proceeded to chop up the body to follow the famous Leg Show T. I cut behind the doors straight down. I cut the top of the body off front of the cut. I removed an additional 6 scale inches and re glued the cowl on. I made a template of the new curved sides and matched the back to the new, lower body sides. I shot a picture of a casting of the Tognotti T and my work. I am glad it took the pictures. This showed me two things, firstly the body sides were spreading out which I quickly straightened out. The second thing I noticed was the body leading edge sloped upward on the passenger side. Both the original body and my project body had it so i adjusted the body to even things out. I had to remove the body reveals and replace all of them.

Strange minds think alike. I found the same sketch you were inspired from as well. I have been collecting parts to to a similar build myself.

I have been collecting MPC Switcher kits and later releases and I found that in the reissue of the '32 ford deuce from the Boyd Coddington kit, the reissue of the American Graffiti coupe have roadster up tops and are two pieces. The problem is that the converted kits only have the horizontal portion and not the back of the roof. I was lucky to get a mint 32 coupe Switcher kit with all of the original parts and I have a full roof. The style looks more like a cabriolet roof than a roadster but would make a good starting point as well. I picked up the current is use of Street Rodder and fell in love with both roadsters on the cover, the original red McGee roadster and the tribute car.

I do have this AMT record, but not the kit it came in. I assume AMT's records are all like this, it's made of coated cardboard not pressed vinyl.

I just won and received a nearly complete Aurora 22 Model T double kit! I have a lot of stuff I want to make out of the three bodies I have now. Two fenderless rods and one I am going to use the Buttera chassis for a resto Rod look!

Pontiac Bonnaville

Bill, I am doing a roadster pickup for this build. I just got in the mail today a cache of VW kits from Evil bay. Finally I got two cheap Revell VW Street Machine kits and a Skip's VW Cabriolet. So I have 3 Cabriolet to cut up, 2 sedans, a Revell Hi Roller van and parts from the original Samba Bus. I got Cushenberry's dune buggy from Revell that has both engines, VW and Corvair. I am looking for VW hi performance parts. Here are 2 more pics with some more work done on the back of the cab and the nose.

I found a cool magazine while on a family vacation up in Canada. It is a Canadian Rod publication that had a VolksRod coupe in it. That got me wanting to build a VolksRod myself in scale. I started with the old Revell Skips Fiesta Cabriolet VW in 1/25th scale. I know there are some better quality Japanese kits but they are 1/24 scale and none seem to have any speed equipment. Also, AMT came out with the Manx kit so it just seemed right to me. I start by hacking off just 2 mm past the door and cut off the fenders up front. The leading edge of the front trunk looked too blunt so I added some Milliput and rounded it off. I just didn't want a flat rear bulkhead so I found in my scrap box the back of a Revell '50 Ford cab and added it to the VW cab. I extended the bead line on the center bead to the bottom of the cab like the outer two beads. I also filed into the back bulkhead the body line seen on the belt line. There was some awful seams around the hood / front fenders that I am also fixing. I have been monkeying around with this body between other projects. Any tips on some cool engine hop up parts that are available for VW kits?

I also had an Arii '72 Thunderbird. The body was closer to 1/20th scale with tiny 1/24 scale rims. I sold that dog off years ago. It was designed to have more of a toy like quality with a motor so the interior and chassis was garbage and of only curbside appeal.

Some other disappointing kits are the MPC '69 Mustang and the Revell '69 Mustang. The MPC kit uses parts back to the '65 kit. Each generation MPC stretched the chassis. The small block engine is crude for mid to late '60's but the big block is decent. The hood is a bit misshapen. Now the Revell kit has a good engine, chassis, interior but the front end is a smacked flat in the face mess with the grill too flat. AMT's body and overall kit had good body proportions. Why Ertl, and the later incarnations use that MPC body and not the AMT tooling is beyond me. I haven't checked out the special editions Revell '69 yet. AMT supposedly made a real stinker of a Bonilla from the early '60's and sold it in the late '90's and it was roundly panned. I do own a 1970 Mustang Mach I from Palmer and the body and wheels look great. They made a hard to find version of the GT rims without the GT symbol. The body was good, but the engine and chassis was weak. I was going to put it on the newer Revell chassis and drive train.

My dad has an old Mustang fastback he built back in the day of a '65. It is awful, a toy at best. For me I received for my 10th birthday the Revell '59 Ford Retracrable. I loved the white and yellow box art and followed that look. I stopped and started it so many times. I did get it done by the time I was 13 or 14 years old. I still have it in storage. The body was too wide and I had to hack up the rear chrome trim across the back to fit on the car. I was very disappointed in the build and the roof never worked right. I was too young to have tried it. I built AMT's 40 Ford and it went together without a hitch for me. Another awful Revell kit was a Turbo 1980 Mustang. Revell used the tooling from the Capri and said it was a Mustang with fender flair and slapped on a Mustang front and rear end treatment. The engine was a lump, the interior had a ridiculous granny and drive shaft hump and not much detail. Just all around bad. Kits I got and looked at and reshelved: AMT '67 Cheverlle- A pillars just wrong on either version. The Pro Street version had a nice chassis to steal, through away the body. Revell '34 Ford... looks more like a British Model Y Ford. I have built one other Buttera chassis, but I am always fixing the front suspension. Something I am screwing with now is trying to build the Revell parts pack Caddy engine. Not liking how the bell housing goes together. I cut off the pieces of the upper bell housing off of the top of the engine block and I am Making one bell housing part and filling the seams. I have an original and the new piece has a lot of sink marks I am also fixing. The new chopped Merc engine is pretty lackluster in the detail department compared to the 50 year old Revell tooling.

Yah, it is a pretty crazy set up. I am most likely going to use the Outlaw set up. Three zoomie pipes with a cut out to duals out back.

I worked on the chassis a bit over the weekend filling in the frame rails where I made the "C" channel kick up around the rear end. Any ideas for a more detailed front suspension to use on the car that would be period correct? I was thinking of using some AMT Mercedes front end and make the wheels posable.

Doing more boring stuff. Filling in seams on the engine block. I also removed the upper bell housing from the block and attached it to the transmission assembly. A lot of fiddly seams to deal with. I am now able to get the transmission to fit better against the block. Still doing some clean up on the frame rails as well.

Clean build with this classic kit.

Thanks guys! This was the last model car I built. I started on a '49 Ford sectioned coupe (which i have posted in the workbench section on this site) amongst others and those projects have languished until now. I did a lot of garage kits and figure models over the past 17 years and mostly all acrylic paint work. It will be interesting to see if any of my Testo and Pactra paints are still viable after all of these years. The slow dry time for enamel always bummed me out.