Spex84

Slick! Love it so far. Was there much work involved in getting the '33 grille to fit the '34 hood and sides?

Enjoying this project so far I recently started building a junkyard 427 chevy, and it needed a home, so it's going into a '57 vette made of salvaged parts. After checking the various classes I decided MSP would be about right...and have been reading the rules for '64 and '67 to try and get a hang of the direction it needs to take. Have also been keeping an eye on this thread... Just checked the rules and for '67 it says "Wheelbase: Modified Sports: All cars must have the stock wheelbase and tread width for the car body used". But looking at your build, the wheels look centered in the wheel arches, so I guess it gets a pass, haha.

I have a 2mm pen on the way. I'm very curious to see what the hullaballoo is about. I know it could really come in handy for steering wheel and dashboard details, and for touching up chrome (I've been using a silver sharpie like a lazy person). I'm curious to see if the finish will match vintage chrome or Alclad on small parts. It's been nice to read through this thread and get a balanced idea of peoples' impressions. I imagine it will probably fade over the years...but I could be wrong. If it saves me from having to foil wipers etc it will be very welcome.

Looks wicked so far! I agree with Ace, great proportions. I like the unusual combination of 60s dragster styling in the wheel/tire choice with a 90s hi-tech style body and a traditional deuce nose...lends it some "Hot Wheels" flavor.

Dude! That is nutso bananas! I love it! I really enjoy the various customizations and how they all flow together. Also great flow on the re-shaped grille, nose, and fenders. I dig the bed rails, especially how they terminate at the cab rather than curving back down to bed, helps keep the "speed" in the truck. The toy wheels are perfect for that "oversized HotWheels" appearance. Way cool.

Cool. I had one of those brown MPC '57s (boxed as AMT) years ago, and I wrote it off as garbage. Now I'm using many of the pieces, combined with a salvaged AMT '57 vette street machine body, to build a complete car again. Doing some research has shown me that it's not as terrible a kit as I initially thought...it's just that all the parts need a TON of flash cleanup and sink mark removal! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Lol on the "learn canadian" thing. But for the longest time I thought they spoke Spanish in Brazil (makes sense, right?), so I'm guilty as the next guy I guess. I've been finding lately that a lot of americans have more neutral accents than might be expected, even easterners and Texans. I talk with a lot of visitors from the US at the local ski hill. Californians stand out a little, perhaps because I've spent some time there and recognize the sound. I once got schooled on my pronunciation of "dude"...apparently my "dood" was incorrect, it was supposed to be "dyood". Dyud. Dyewd? Something like that. As in "dyood, I need some pahwsta". As a mid-western Canadian, my accent isn't the cliche "oot and aboot"...but I have been known to go oat fer melk.

Man, I would have bought the Vicky "dirt track" kit if I'd known it was just the regular kit inside I had no idea the box was so misleading. That MUST break some "truth in advertising" laws. Absolutely unacceptable. I don't know how they got away with it! Maybe they didn't in the end... Anyway, the mockup looks good and no doubt the kit will make for a great 60s style rod!

Incredible! Love the detailing, paint, opening features...you're turning a pig's ear into a real silk purse. I picked up a partially started 90s issue of this kit a couple years ago at a garage sale, took one look at it and thought "welp, that's a parts kit!" Lately I've been tossing around the idea of a pro-touring build, using the kit wheels sunk into sleeves. I can see now that I might have to actually build it!..would have to order some of those wheels from Zimmerman though. They look fantastic.

Love those 3-link hangars! Layering is definitely a better strategy than filing notches into solid blocks like I've attempted in the past. The quick-change rearend center section could have come from any number of kits, but a few that come to mind are: -Double Dragster -Double T -Orange Crate -Paddy Wagon (but that one would probably be gold-plated and black plastic underneath) These kits all have differing lengths of torque tube attached to the rearend, so knowing the length could help determine what kit it came from.

Beautiful work. This is one of my favorite threads right now. "Anybody know how to do a 1/8" pinstripe in 1/25th scale?" I tried that recently by taping off a pattern, then shooting a thick layer of paint in the color of the intended pinstripe, then a top-coat of the final body color....removed the tape, and lightly sanded/polished the resultant paint ridge in an attempt to reveal the stripe. Unfortunately I was too aggressive and blew through to the base layer, but I can't help but think that with a thick enough layer of paint (and then a LOT of clear on top to level it out), an in-scale pinstripe could be possible.

I appreciated that the candidates this year had a lot of subtlety going on, with attention paid to history, color, complimenting and contrasting materials, etc. All the contenders are awesome in their own way. The only thing I "icked" on was the nose on Proboscis. But heck, with a name like that, the builders/owner obviously knew they had something eccentric on their hands, and decided to call attention to it rather than downplay it. That takes a sense of confidence and humor! And I wasn't a huge fan of the yellow fade job on the 60s style show rod, but major props to the builders for entering it...probably the most "punk" car in the room that day, and IMHO hot rodding needs to keep as much of that spirit as possible.

WTF. I don't think that a regular 3D printer could have done those poor folks in...sounds like a laser sintering machine or something. Back on the wheel topic: modeling with Sketchup is pretty easy. I would highly recommend it. And I just made a set of reasonably acceptable large-diameter "retro-stock" wheels for a '48 Ford without any 3D printing by simply taking a set of chrome wheels on low profile tires and reversing them so the insides faced out, then sunk a moon disc from another kit into each wheel. That gives me a deep chrome rim offset with a slightly domed wheel surface in the middle. Center-drilled the moon discs and mounted the stock small hubcaps to them. The result is much like a "smoothie" wheel from Wheel Vintiques or the like. If you're looking for a dished shape to do something similar to the above, but don't have any moon discs, I'd recomment a paint pallette fro the dollar store: they're typically a plastic or metal dish with a bunch of circular depressions that can be cut out and re-purposed as wheel centers.

98%, woop woop. I second-guessed myself on one. Oops. Definitely made educated guessed on 3 or 4. Once we start getting into Hudsons, Essex, Graham, etc, I pretty much have to guess the year according to what they have in common with Ford or Chevy. "Process of elimination" will get you a long way on a test like this!

Some masterful tricks involved with making a car with a continental spare tire look "normal"! Thanks for pointing it out; I was engrossed in trying to figure out how you'd extended the fenders, and probably never would have noticed the shortened trunk because I wasn't expecting to see it... The way the skirts peak to mimic the curve of the hardtop is also SO nice. Beautiful and tasteful work

Wow, trad is in with a vengeance! Very beautiful cars, lots of personal favorites in that lineup. And Blackjack is killer. Very curious to see who wins...

"The tail light housing fitment to the fender is terrible on these kits." Are you suggesting that the fit is.....mediocre? I appreciate your attention to detail on this project and I'll happily devour any updates when they are available

Cool idea! I've picked up a deuce 3-window body as recently as a couple months ago, wondering if I could make it look more like a Mercedes, much like you've done here. Here's my first attempt to photo-chop it into a more "classic" shape, but keep the hot rod look:

The amount of time, money, and effort that such a creation requires...is what floors me. Wow. I'll give the owner one thing: he doesn't take himself very seriously.

Yep, those Testors low-profile tires in the Smoothster (also the Vantastic) split after a while if they've been mounted on the wheels. The soft rubber ones seem to be most vulnerable. I think there were some supercar/exotic kits that also had soft rubber tires...Ferarri F50 perhaps? I have some old Monogram bias-plies from the '53 Corvette that have shrunk slightly and the whitewall inserts no longer fit, but so far they don't seem to be oozing, sticky, or cracking. Just dried out I guess!

I like this discussion Very cool sketch Joe, and I think it's worth trying. These are plastic models, after all! No real Mercs getting wrecked if it doesn't pan out! I'm a fan of the Sam Barris Merc. The blended dogleg works best when it complements the re-shaped C pillars on a chopped roof. Personally I prefer the the stock dogleg; it gives the '49 a sense of "muscle", and your sketch takes that even further. The Hirohata is a killer re-working of the stock design. Super effective and nicely balanced. To me, custom work is worth attempting because it might fail. That's the whole appeal! It's a creative and technical balancing act, one that 1:1 designers walk constantly. Sometimes they fall flat on their faces, and sometimes they produce cars that we consider iconic, untouchable, beautiful, perfect. I'm plinking away at a full-kustom '40 Ford right now, and it's a fool's errand. The stock '40 is just too good to mess with. That's what makes it so fun! /// A couple ideas/tips: -don't let the rear skirt/fender bulge touch the rear door cut line...in drawing this is referred to as a "tangent" and is to be avoided. -in order to justify the new divide that splits the car, it might need a trim strip that follows the front fender down (a la the Hirohata), or a scoop or some teeth recessed in the leading edge of the skirt....or go the other way and emphasize the newly divided pontoon fenders with colored panels (this can backfire, see the Barris "Chrysler City Coupe" from a few years back). -some kind of chrome dagger/gravel guard on the leading edge of the skirt might work...like Troy Trepanier's "Sniper", or the '53 Ford. It might also backfire and draw too much attention. -if you move the front of the skirt back so it doesn't touch the door line, it might make the rear quarter look short...and to get that long, low look back, you might have to extend the quarters to look more like a '51 Merc. Or...section the heck out of the car and remove a lot of vertical height so the quarters look longer.

I glue my wheels, but mostly because A: I don't want them accidentally moving on me and B: I can never get the wheels straight unless I glue them that way. If I could engineer 'em so they were perfectly straight/square AND rolled, that would be neat. But it's not priority. Years ago I picked up a die-cast Impala with big fat low-profile tires (Jada, I think). One day I pushed it aside to dust the shelf and the tires squealed. Cool! I spent a few minutes "drifting" the car around my desk, complete with in-scale squealing tires. I may have made some engine noises

You're doing some great work here! The parts are working together very well, and nice work widening the Jag rearend, it's looking really good. That Brizio car was one of my absolute favorites when I first saw it in Street Rodder magazine...must have been what, year 2000? 1999? The proportions, the Jag mill, the straight pipe exhaust and intake stacks...easily one of my top 5 street rods of all time. I was obsessed with it, but had actually forgotten about it for the last 5+ years or so.

Dude. This is incredible so far, thanks for sharing it with us! Love the combo of vac-form over 3D printing. Makes me feel inspired to start a multi-technology, multi-material project. I don't have a 3d printer, but I could be making MDF/bondo and plaster parts and then vacu-forming them. Had the opportunity to try that a while back, and it worked pretty well.

I would delete my original comment as it seems to have derailed the thread, but can't get the edit feature to work.This is my last comment on the matter. Continue, gentlemen.