Chris D

Thanks much Richard! Chris

Hi Al, Thank for the kind words. I too am a big tire guy too but in this case I am trying to follow details from the 1:1 car. Regarding the stance, I just realized that it isn't going to matter in the end for this car. The model will be displayed as a diorama launching off the starting line as shown in the 1:1 photo above. The front wheels need to be about 6" off the ground as it did in real life. Chris

Very creative detail, I like!

Richard, This whole diorama is just superb! That angle grinder is amazing. Usually anything I am working on that small ends up on the floor and can never be found again. Can't wait to see the rest of the tiny little detailed things you add! Chris D.

Hi Brandon and Rob, Thanks for the kind words. Rob I have a special camera that hides my many mistakes ;-) Chris D

Just amazing detail!!!! Chris D

Chris, Definitely not too big! It gives it that Bad boy look, very cool Chris D

That is a very creative build! Chris D.

Fantastic job on that car, great colors too! Chris D

Sooo much better than the standard plastic pulley/belt components! Chris D

I love this car, especially the view from the back where the tires look almost as big as the car. Lots of great little details. Chris D

Great car, like everyone else said - great paint job too! Chris D

Hi Michael, Looks great Michael, we have similar tastes in builds right now. Chris D

That is a wicked 55 Chris

Tyrone and John, thanks for the feedback! Chris D

Stephan and Classified, thanks much for the kind words - very much appreciated. Chris D.

Thanks Dan, much appreciated! Chris D

Hi Fred, Thanks for the input, I will see what happens on my next mock-up. I suspect your are right now that I think about it. Carl, thank you for the kind words, much appreciated. For today's efforts I got a few things done on this car and spent some time on the other two as well. Here is the car mocked up again with mini-me in the drivers seat and the beginnings of the roll cage. I also stuffed the tires under it to get a feel for the attitude of the car. This is the roll cage completed. On the 1:1 car, it was only a bracket racer so I didn't need a lot of roll cage protection like on pro-stock cars etc. The 1:1 car had a much more elaborate side brace by the driver. Luck worked for me and I could only fit the straight piece as shown. Mini-me, without arms fits and there appears to be enough room for his arms. Another cheat was that I used the roll bar section from the kit and only had to fabricate the other fore-aft supports. I started working through some of the suspension components. I had to shorten the rear axels to get the tires to fit within the wheelwells. I also put together the coil over shocks from RB (not shown). Now I need to order up the rest of the suspension parts for the 4 link suspension. While there isn't room on the model to place coil springs at the front in the proper place, there is a place to put them on the two posts that are mounts for the K frame. Wrapped wire around a 1/4-20 bolt, painted them clear red (1:1 didn't have red springs but I thought it would look better this way). The 1:1 car had a "moon" tank in the trunk and I bought one that didn't fit so I picked up a fuel cell and battery box. Those are shown painted and ready for plumbing and wiring. That is all for today, back to work tomorrow so I won't be able to work on this again till next weekend. Thanks for looking and by all means, comments are welcome! Chris D

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! Chris D

Hello again, Now with the "easy" stuff done, I had to figure out how to work on the floor pan so I could still utilize the stock door panels and dash board supports. Again, I tried to scratch build it first and failed so back to working with the kit floor pan. The 1:1 car had an aluminum floor but I kept the stock door panels in place. So the model needed to incorporate all of this. After getting more styrene from the hobby store, I developed a plan on how I could cut away the majority of the model's floor pan but keep the perimeter for mounting the door panels etc. After some cutting with the dremel and a lot of shaping and filing, I had the starting point of the floor pan. I then fabricated the back section and "trunk" floor from styrene. By placing the items in the chassis, I was able to glue all the pieces together to get all the angles just right. I also used different thicknesses of styrene so that I could have flexibility in the unti to facilitate installation/removal. Here is the floor pan in its rough stage. I needed to get the floor smooth and flat like the 1:1 car so I added more styrene and did a bunch of sanding. To get the surface smooth on the top and bottom, I then veneered .005" thick styrene to the top and bottom of the floor pan. Now with smooth surfaces, I needed to refine the shape of the transmission/driveshaft tunnel. As I discovered later, I made it a bit too wide in the drive shaft section. Getting a worried things might not fit together I thought it would be a good idea for a test fit with the body. Things fit good except I ran into another problem. On the original model the height of the body in relationship to the chassis is controlled by the wheelwells. Without front wheel wells I have to come up with a way to hold the body up on the front end of the car - Suggestions are welcome!!! Next up was making the transmission/drive shaft tunnel. The 1:1 car had a square tunnel (I was a machinist at the time, not a sheet metal worker so a rounded tunnel wasn't in my plan). Working again with sheet styrene, I first fabricated the top panel which. This was easy as I just traced the hole in the floor pan onto the styrene then added more to the size to accommodate the wall thickness of the side panels. After measuring the length and height of the side panels, I cut strips of styrene and glued them onto the top piece. I scored the back side of the sides in the area where there needed to be a bend. Now I had to contour the bottom and back edges of the tunnel to fit the contour of the floor pan and the slanted section at the back. After about an hour of sanding and fitting, I got it close enough for a model. I then sanded up the rest of the tunnel cover to make the seams look like bends. The front of the tunnel has a fairly abrupt transition to the original area. I can't recall what I did in this area of the 1:1 car and as it can't be seen real well when assembled I am going to try and forget detailing that further - hopefully it won't bother me too much. At this stage, I have about 50 hours in the model including preparing the body and priming it. You may have noticed that the fake vents on the body (located behind the doors) are missing. On the 1:1 car, I used camaro quarter panels instead of the firebird quarter panels. That took a lot of work to fill in as I am finding body work on plastic models is not as easy as it would appear! Next up I have to start building the roll cage. This is going to require a lot of fitting and testing. With the transmission tunnel being a bit wide, I don't have much room for the seat and the side brace for the roll bar. I may have to make a smaller scale seat to fit which could be a problem if I put a driver in the car! Does anyone know how to shrink styrene? Chris D.

Moving onto the model building... This is the 4th model car I have built in the last 40 years or so, the other 3 were of this same car in different stages of the 1:1's life which are being built now too. The first thing I had to figure out was the chassis. Original car had a back half chassis. At first I could not figure out how I was going to do the chassis and marry that to the original front stub so I build a full chassis. That simply did not work out good so I abandoned that idea. After thinking about it for a while, I decided if I could do this on the real car, I should be able to do it on the model car following a similar process. I cut away the floor pan and trunk area of the chassis. I kept the side sections of the floor pan, rear fender wells and back perimeter "sheet metal". This gave me a "box" frame similar to the real car. I then took the scratch built chassis I made and abandoned, and cut it off at the correct length to fit. I joined that to the front stub in a similar fashion as I recall doing on the original car. The same was done at the back of the car. Here you can see the chassis and back half frame joined together. The 1:1 car had steel tubs. To make these tubs, I just glued .010" styrene to the inside and outside surfaces of the original wheel wells as well as the side of the frame rails. Using the original wheel well as a guide, I shaped them to fit the contour of the body. More in the next post... Chris D

Hello all, I know my skills are not up to snuff to post here but I thought I would share the build of a 1968 firebird drag car. This is 1 of 4 versions of the firebird I am building (See my post in the diorama section for version #2). This model is based on the 1:1 car I built into a drag car in the early 80's that I used to race at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove WI. I have a couple of very bad photos of the car in different stages when it was a drag car. So, from those photos and my foggy memory I am trying to recreate the car. I am sure I will take some liberties along the way but want the end result to be a pretty close approximation of the real car. Some of the work on the model has already been completed so I am jumping in at the early stages. First a few photos of the original car... Showing the interior - sort of. Notice the roll cage, aluminum floor, street car version of the door panels. The engine was a big-block chevy (454 punched .060" over), transmission is a turbo-400, rear end is a GM 12 bolt I built a back half chassis and sistered that to the front stub. It had a 4 link suspension with coil overs. By today's standards, the car is slow, best it ran was 11.17 @ 117 MPH (numbers I have not forgotten). The car always ran good, launched good with about a 6" wheelstand and was a lot of fun at the time. More to come in the next post... Chris D

Hi everyone, My name is Chris and I am a junkie... In reality, I got started back in modeling about 6 months ago after being away for about 40 years. I started with some of the space program kits (Saturn V, Apollo kits, etc.). I then built a couple of planes (C130 and SR71). Now I have switched over to cars, something I know a bit more about. My current big project is building four 68 Firebirds showing the life of the car from new (I didn't buy it new) to when I sold it. Four cars are being built along with dioramas. I am hoping that it will help me tell a story to my grandkids about me when I was younger. You can see the first of the cars in the diorama section of the forum. The hobby has changed a lot over those years and I must admit I am very intimidated by all the incredibly talented people here - you folks do such amazing work! While I am pushing myself to make better models, I am certain I will not achieve the level of skill of most of you. With that said, I hope to learn a lot from everyone here and to share our common interest. Nice to meet you all! Chris D

Thanks for the kind words Chris and Ron. Chris D

Hi all, Not sure where to post this as it is my first post and my first car (both in real life and in models). I am building 4 firebirds showing the life of my favorite real car. I am building them out of order because I am doing what strikes my fancy at the time, so the second car gets shown first. I bought the real car in about 1978, pretty much in the condition you see it here. It was a rust bucket and every piece of sheet metal on it was either dented or rotted out. The scene in the diorama shows it the way it was the night before I parked it for rebuilding into a street car. Me and a buddy decided to see how well a firebird could perform as a mud - racer or 4 wheeler. Had some fun till it got stuck in the mud and had to get it towed out. It was a fun night of indiscretion. I took a couple of photos of the car the next day but over the past 35 years or so, those photos are in poor condition but they helped me recreate the car better than my poor memory could. Here are some construction photos of the car in progress. My first attempt at distressing a body and cutting out a door. In fact, it is my first car model build in about 40 years. Things have changed a lot in those 40 years. The paints are all Tamiya acrylics. The engine compartment is wired. The interior is flocked. Brake lines were added to the master cylinder but don't go past the bottom of the firewall. The fuel lines run from the carb to the fuel pump then back the gas tank. When I tried to replicate the dents on the car, especially the right rear quarter panel, I ended up distorting the body a bit to much so the rear window doesn't fit right - tried to fix it but failed after many attempts. The other three cars I am building are of this same car in different stages of its life. #1 = Factory original (I didn't buy it new). That version of the car is about 80% done. #2 = Mud racer - almost completed, still some more details to work out on the car and the diorama. #3 = Street car - Midnight metal flake blue, White vinyl top, 455 Pontiac engine, traction bars, Blue vinyl and velure interior. #4 = Drag car in its final version before I sold it. That will have 454 Chevy big block, back half chassis, 4 link suspension, etc. I am planning a diorama for each version of the car and have the street car diorama completed (nearly completed) already. Anyway, thanks for taking a look and taking a few minutes while I relived the fun days of youth. Chris D