Spex84

I was wondering when we'd start seeing electric resto-mods on modelcarsmag! This is a cool idea and executed well. Nicely done...I like the clear panel and detailing in the new engine bay (motor bay?), and the overall concept is awesome. I have a Monogram '41 Lincoln I want to build as an electric conversion, better get to it before someone else does!

Wtf lol. That's some film magic right there!

Holy smokes Fred, I have some Ninja Turtles to sell too. I'd better get to it ASAP!

Awesome, thanks for sharing these photos and the story behind the project! I'm glad you were able to save your old kit. Many of mine got too chopped up to save... I have to laugh at the complaints about your using parts from too many different kits. I distinctly remember feeling put-out as a kid "hey, no fair, these guys must have 10 kits to pull parts from, and only have two!" Then I'd continue attempting to make a hot rod out of a VW beetle (because that's all I had), taping tires together to make slicks, and generally butchering everything to try and emulate what I was seeing in the magazines.

Beautiful work on the cooler and thermos! I really want to copy them...I have a thermos much like that, purchased from a garage sale. My parents and grandparents had them too--but theirs are more green than blue. I always assumed they were 60s-vintage.

I wish I'd known the A coupe would become unobtanium. I was planning to be buying one or two a year for a long time :/ *edit* oof, that sentence is rough. What I meant was, I was looking forward to many years of occasionally buying the '30 coupe. There we go. Still, glad to see that the shambles is knitting itself back together somewhat, and Revell will continue to produce those American subjects.

Love it! Lots of creative parts-sourcing for this cool little UFO and the color is perfect for that '50s vibe. Just remember to move your belt buckle to the side before you crawl in, so the paint doesn't get scratched

This is all interesting discussion. Thanks Pico for the reference links to the printers you have employed for your projects...that "Supersonic" is incredible. RE: Photo previews of items: For Shapeways vendors, this can be tricky for a couple of reasons. One, this means vendors have to buy at least one of every object they offer in their store, and then photograph it. For some vendors, who offer the same part in multiple scales, this would be totally cost-prohibitive. Two, the parts are made of a translucent resin that doesn't photograph well at all. A coat of primer helps. Three, taking photos of such small parts requires a good camera and lots of light, something I need to improve upon! ////Here are some photos of recent test prints from Shapeways that I've been fiddling with. I'm trying to find out how little clean-up I can get away with. On the topic of surface texture: some 3D printed objects, like these, will have surface texture that is SO slight that it's difficult to see with the naked eye, and doesn't even show up in photos very well. I had to cherry-pick photos and adjust lighting specifically to make the texture look as bad as possible in these shots. With the right lens, it's possible to get super-human closeups that would make any scale object look terrible, haha. Pictured are S&P-top Stromberg carbs, Y-block lakes headers and finned valve covers, and Buick-script nailhead valve covers. Working on getting the S&P tops and headers smooth enough to chrome with Molotow, the ultimate surface finish stress-test for 3D printed items. I tend to soak the parts in alcohol, give them a light buffing with a toothpick to knock down the fuzzy white texture left by the support material, and give flat areas a light scraping with an X-acto blade if necessary. Then a shot of primer so I can assess the texture..and from there, it either gets a light sanding or a couple coats of gloss paint to drown the slight surface irregularities. Objects with heavy stepping will require some filler-primer and sanding first. Either way, view 3D printed parts as a means to an end, rather than a 100% perfect "out of the box" solution.

Since we're dreaming, in addition to the '27 roadster/coupe and '34 Ford 3-window coupe ideas mentioned by Bill, there are a few subjects I'd love to see...but are less likely to ever appear in scale. Might have to just create 'em myself!: 1.Studebaker 2R pickup 2.NAPCO Stude truck 3.Ford Comete 4. Brubaker Box The Comete is like a '49 Ford that has been sectioned, turned into a coupe with the cockpit moved rearward, sectioned trunk, pancaked hood, Ferrari-style eggcrate grille, wire wheels, taillights that look like '50 Pontiac...it looks like something Valley Custom could have built, but came from the factory that way! The Stude is an eccentric but striking truck that would look good stock or customized. The Brubaker is a wacky little thing that fits on a VW pan and would be excellent fodder for driveline swaps, custom paint, electric conversions, etc etc.

Tim--do you happen to know what front tires you used for this truck? They're perfect. Thanks for sharing these photos. I agree that this is a well-sorted and nicely proportioned kitbash, regardless of style or era. This style of hot rod still graced the pages of Street Rodder when I first started reading it in the '90s. For a while I turned up my nose at the "pink n' teal squiggle graphics" school of rodding, but now I'm thinking it would be a lot of fun to use up some of those '90s kit parts in an authentic 80s/90s street rod build. I have 'vette suspension and LT1 engines, grant steering wheels, molded seats, tweed interior panels, a selection of billet wheels, and tons of Revell '32 series tires that would fit the bill. I wish there was a '40 Chevy available in 1/25...seems that era was awash with tubby chopped fat-fender Fords and Chevies, with cheese-grater headlights and taillights, molded mirrors, and splash graphics, and I'd enjoy building one.

Thanks for this thread. I typically buy stuff at PM hobby in Calgary (3+ hours drive away, so I get there rarely). There hasn't been much in the way of aftermarket stuff available there, other than maybe the AMT parts packs, sometimes a few pegasus wheels, bare metal foil if you're lucky. Glad to learn about Elm City Hobbies! I recently received some custom decals from WhoopieKat and I'm happy with them. All transactions are in US dollars, probably because the bulk of customers are American. http://www.whoopiekatdecals.com/

If you can stomach listening to a somewhat annoying podcast, this page has some audio with Gene Winfield explaining the incident (around the 6:25 mark): https://knx1070.radio.com/media/audio-channel/tac-126-randy-has-car-all-star-report-sema-gene-winfield-his-fall-finland In short, he was in Finland to be inducted into the first annual European Hall of Fame (with some other names we'd all recognize like John D'Agostino, Billy Gibbons and Jimmy Shine); he tripped on a power cable, fractured his hip, had surgery, and the GoFundMe helped him get an expensive medical flight home (he already had pneumonia and air travel can complicate that). He made it to the SEMA show after all of this, and last I heard is apparently recovering. I saw a couple photos from the show and he looked pretty good, so he's hoping the recovery is going as well as could be hoped. "I'm gonna keep going no matter what"--Gene Winfield

You guys just gave me a reason to buy another Slingster...last August I picked up some random parts and they included some blowers with the droopy side-draft weber manifolds. (AMT Bonneville, maybe?) I was thinking I could turn it into something like the engine below, but I'd need another small Hilborn scoop:

I'm putting the slicks from my Slingster kit under a '26 full-fendered Tudor.

I was looking at the printers too, and even if I spent say, $800 on a printer ($500 US) which is about as cheap as they get right now, I'd have to add resin, other consumables on that. Then shipping...time to set up the 3D files for printing, trial and error and potential failed prints, then cleaning the rig afterwards. Not to mention the off-gassing resin (I'd need a dedicated room/fume hood/extractor fan or something like that)...and then the parts must be cleaned of their support structure. Whew! Pretty soon those little model carburetors would be as pricey as real ones, haha. If I was going into business like Fireball Modelworks, I'd consider it. As a hobby...not yet! Large parts (frames, tires) were pricey before, and have only gone up, as Eric has noted. Spruing parts together makes a huge difference for the small parts. Instead of each separate file/model being $7.50, 4 or 5 small pieces can fit under that $7.50 threshold, within the same file.

I just remembered the skis I was thinking of are cross-country, not downhill...checked the bindings and they don't appear to have a name brand, just leather straps and hinged metal plates! Bummer about the paint mishap, but I'm sure you'll get it sorted--the suitcase looks fantastic.

Yep, nothing sounded quite like a VW beetle I'm enjoying this thread--not only are the old photos wonderful, but the attention to detail will no doubt result in an excellent model. Love the real wood skis--there happens to be a set of those old skis sitting about 15 feet away from me as I type!

Well, let's see if I can get this one done...it's been essentially "dead" since about 2002. The story begins with a '99 Tim Boyd article, where he builds a custom '59 Impala. Encountering a '59 kit at a local general-goods store, I buy it for $11. For perspective, this is grade 9 high school. Having built this kit before, I want to do a custom version and I draw an ambitious color sketch featuring candy green paint and ghost flames. Problem is, I don't have any of the tools, parts, or materials to match either my vision or the magazine article! Tim uses a 409 with finned chrome valve covers, but I content myself with painting the kit' 348 covers Testors "Chrome Trim". I don't have access to candy paints, so I pick a bottle of my favorite color at the time, a metallic forest green. Tim's Impala is nosed and pancaked, so I laboriously endeavor to do the same, using tube glue, sprue, and green putty. It shrinks under the paint, leaving unsightly divots and dooming my first airbrushed metallic paint job It goes into a box carefully padded with Kleenex, I attend university, life proceeds busily, and the Impala doesn't re-appear until 2014...when I acquire an AMT grilles parts pack and begin fitting a custom Mercury grille as per the original article. At the same time, I re-open the bumper mounting holes that I had smoothed over, endeavor to fix the bodywork, and re-primer it. The bumpers also get shaved and narrowed. At some point, it receives a base coat of gold paint. Fast forward to today and nothing much has changed..a wire has popped loose from the engine (my first ever wiring job), the glue joints on the lowered suspension have started to fail, and I have started painting a second interior pearl white to swap in, instead of the grey interior. I now have several sets of chrome-reverse wheels that would suit the car, and some Emerald green testors one-coat lacquer. Time to put this thing to bed!!

I know what you mean about the offset intake, it bothers my modeling-OCD too! Don Kendall's 60s T-bucket had a 413 wedge, and still looked pretty cool. I can't find any good pics, but I think the wedge has intake port spacing that would allow you to bolt on Pontiac Hilborn injection, like the pieces Ed Fluck sells from the original Monogram '32 roadster. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/426-max-wedge-chrysler-hilborn.1047108/

I've been digging through this thread trying to find the deadline--when is it?? Because all my projects are pretty dead, and I'm thinking I should take the oldest and push it across the finish line...

I'll be on board when a basic electric "people mover" is available that charges reasonably quickly, has 500 mile range, 4WD, batteries that don't go flat in -30C weather, and isn't drowned in 15k worth of sensors, cameras, and infotainment systems. I might be waiting a while. But for luxury performance vehicle buyers, it might finally reach the point where IC engines can't compete with electric. I still think the main audience for the Challenger is mostly concerned with traditional "muscle" rather than simply going fast...and electric just doesn't have the right aura. That might change as all the supercars and hypercars in the world transition to electric, and take the measuring stick with them. In that world, a gas-powered Challenger will seem like a complicated novelty rather than a relevant vehicle...sort of like a blown hemi T-bucket is technically a "car" but the average buyer would say "you really drive that thing on public roads? ...Huh." I don't think we're at that point yet....so I could see the Challenger going electric-hybrid, with the electric motors sold as a fuel-saving and power-adding measure. "Superchargers in every wheel!!!" Sounds good to me!

Yep, that white plastic is too coarse for model car subjects...the best material for scale model subjects is their "Smoothest Fine Detail Plastic" (previously FUD or "Frosted Ultra Detail"). Unfortunately, a car body in that material is going to be pricey. The main increase is for very small objects (like most model car parts) now that there's a $7.50 base fee per object. This is fine for say, an Iphone case, but for a set of model car air cleaners the size of fingernails, it's kind of a pain. The price increase already happened--but older products were grandfathered in. As of Feb 4, even those older products will switch over to the new prices. Shapeways' reasoning is that all the tiny little parts is costing them money--they're difficult to handle, clean, keep track of etc--and their previous cost structure apparently didn't cover that added hassle. They're just correcting course. I agree that it's a frustrating change, juuuuust when 3D printed stuff was getting down to a reasonable cost. I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to my own Shapeways store right now, but any new things I upload will be bundled if possible to offset the price increase, with the possibility of grouping, say, engine parts into multi-part sprued trees. Regardless, for certain small items that are A. difficult and time-consuming to scratchbuild or B.not available in any other form, 3D prints are still worth the cost!

Hokay, that's cool, but...I'm not seeing anything earth-shattering -car designed traditionally by skilled artists -car modeled in 3D by skilled artists using VR software to review the design (unlikely that it was actually modeled in VR, but I could be wrong). -frame and suspension fabricated using traditional techniques -lots of sensors and stuff used to capture...what? Physics info? Frame stresses? Handling data? -AI used to generate a space-frame between the shell (was that fabricated by humans too?) and the hand-built frame/suspension (this is the "oh wow" tech here), kinda like that 3D printed pedestrian bridge that was completed recently. -Lots of video-editing and SFX people make a video that looks WAY cooler than the nuts n' bolts reality for promotional purposes. I'm not seeing any risk of fabrication, engineering, or art jobs going away, here!! Just a little tweak to the formula. All grumping aside, it takes vision to get anywhere, and it's cool to see emerging tech getting integrated into the design process!

This is a nicely put-together build, and I love the Navajo interior!

Amazing...too bad some of those cars are so wasted, but better than having been crushed 30+ years ago! What is that yellow/black car? It looks a lot like a Comete, but not quite. I'd love to build one in 1/25, maybe make a hot rod out of it *EDIT* checked the listings and it's a Simca. Of course!