CabDriver

I was looking at the themes for NNL East next year and the main theme is “Known Survivors - original old customs from our youth”. I don’t remember any customs from my youth ??. Well, maybe KITT from Knight Rider, if that even counts... I was wondering what imagery that prompt brought to anyone else’s mind...anyone building something cool for this theme for next year’s show? I’d love to build something for this, but I definitely need some help with inspiration...

Are Junkman and Regular Guy the same person?

I’ll be watching Tom! Cool looking build so far!

You’re not wrong ?. Im thinking this thing would look really cool over a set of whitewalls, something like this: I want certain elements to look nice and new and clean and well done, and some to look ratty - like someone put a sketchy body over a decent frame and added some nice touches to make something that isn’t just a straight rat rod. I’m not intending to do a bunch of detail to the frame or underside of this, but I did z the front to help drop it a scale 10 inches (!) and did some mods to the rear axle to drop that a bunch too. I’m trying to keep everything so it COULD drive and steer, even if there’s only a few inches of suspension travel at best: I imagined this thing having bright red steelies on it - all shiny and brand new looking...then my wife showed me a cool nail color that she liked so I ‘borrowed’ some of that to paint some resin wheels: Love the color! Wish there was enough in the bottle to paint a whole body, but there was enough to shoot these and the dash anyway... More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I didn’t forget about this one...but we had a straight two weeks here of above-helpful humidity that stopped me getting the clear laid down on the repainted body. Only 45% moisture in the air today though, so I managed to shoot some enamel on this thing - let it sit a couple of hours and I’m pretty pleased with how the clear is setting up! The body is all that’s holding this one up now, so I’ll give it a few days to set up nice and hard and give it a polish and redo all that foiling that I didn’t enjoy the first time and don’t want to do again ? More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I’ve been waiting for the humidity to drop so I can finish getting the clear on my stock 53 Studebaker project, so in the meantime I thought I’d start on the gluebombed kit that I had... The body wasn’t too bad except for snapped and missing a pillars, which I patched up but couldn’t get perfect enough to look good for a shiny stock build...but I did want to do something with the body. I had the idea of a patina’d heavily-lowered hot rod build for one of these kits, and this body seemed a decent candidate for that. First up, rust colors: I used a mix of Tamiya and craft store acrylics to get some different shades and colors of rust, then added a decent pinch of salt to season: Next up, after letting the hairspray holding the salt on dry for an hour or so, some baby blue Createx airbrush paint: After that had set up for an hour or so, I mixed some more of the same color blue with some opaque white and airbrushed the roof, trunk and hood a little to depict some sun bleaching of the paint (not that much of it will be left by the time I remove that salt) Then, the fun bit - removing the salt! Once I’d brushed that off I went through and applied a mix of pastels to add some more texture and interest to the rust and give it some streaks over the paint: I’ve got a tonne of ideas for this one, I really like doing a not-shiny build now and then for a change! More soon, soon as I’ve done more ??

Which guy?

They would at least make a floor or a hoop over the driveshaft right? ??

The lack of suspension on these old slingshots makes more sense now - I was wondering how to account for the axle moving around when the driver had his legs right over the top of it. I’d still like to get some suspension in there maybe, but it DOES bring up all these new issues that’d I’d have to figure out. Hmmmm...

That’s really useful, thank you! I spent a couple of hours looking at pics and doing some research but there’s so many variations and different eras I soon got bogged down. Thank you!

Looks great! Love the scratchbuilding work you did on that interior! Very cool!

Wow, that’s a lot of replies considering I didn’t do anything yet ?. Thanks Alan for your thoughtful ideas - I’m definitely going to use some of them on this. Sledsel - I think I’m good for now, but thank you so much! I’ll keep that in mind! And that info on SOHC engines will definitely be useful for this one too. I’ll no doubt be asking some dumb questions about those in the not too distant future... Made a little progress on the frame for this over the weekend - it was a tougher job than it needed to be because I wanted to make sure that, firstly, everything fit as nicely inside the body as I could get it to and secondly to make sure the body would actually fit around the frame nicely so I can assemble the car when it’s done and still have partially disassemble it for display with the body off. Got a lot of figuring out on how to secure it to the frame, but having a frame was the first step anyway... I did some research on mid-to-late 60s slingshot chassis to try and keep the design at least semi period correct - the location of the axle in relation to the seat is giving me some headaches because the driver would have to have his legs over the top of the axle to drive it and I’m trying to think of the nicest way to address that. That’s how it is in the kit, and I could use the kit interior piece to overcome that problem and just hide it all away but I’d like to make it so that the suspension and axle could function properly AND let the driver actually sit in the thing. More soon, soon as I’ve done more! Need to raid the parts box now and find a quick change or similar to use and start to think about what kind of rear suspension this thing should have

Oh wow! Nice paint job!!! Looks great!

I normally use regular old styrene sheet - you can't go too thick and expect the machine to cut right through but anything the thickness of, say, heavy card will work ok...and if it doesn't go all the way through it's easy enough to score with a scalpel blade or snap the pieces out. I'm just using a regular blade for the machine - my last one lasted probably a year and still cut ok, so I haven't seen the need to mess with the better ones that you can buy yet. For this one, because I was just experimenting, I used one of those dollar store 'For Sale' signs...I just pick the largest one I can get for a dollar! I didn't clean the printing off the backside very well, hence the red tinge around the edge of the letters, but rubbing alcohol does an easy job of removing that stuff when I'm making 'real' parts

The trick to get that part looking more realistic looking, now I think of it, would be to file the edges of the letters at a 45 degree (ish) angle so they’re not as sharp - but it was an interesting experiment anyway!

Just for fun I messed with an idea for a tailgate today for a hot rod build I’m messing with - picked a font and cut some letters out to kind of fake a stamped metal look. The negative version of the cut (eg: the part left after I separated the letters) could go on the back and make it look like an actual stamped piece of metal. This was just a test piece to see if it work work ok - definitely has some potential I think!

Yes sir!

You got it! I've just started selling some custom airbrush masks on eBay and for those I use the blue stuff - it really is the best, it lays down nicely (but its not TOO sticky), it'll bend around some curves and stuff ok and its consistent quality...but also it's 8x the price of any regular old sticky vinyl that I can pick up pretty much anywhere, so I'll use the cheap stuff often if its just something for myself

I’ve been wanting to do a nice high detail build of SOMETHING to take to NNL East next year; my first time visiting the show. I build a lot of showrods, and I’ve been trying to think of a good kit to really dig into and do something cool with. I saw this sad looking thing on eBay a couple of months back, and I think I’m going to take a shot at making something show-worthy out of this old original issue T’rantula: Now, I might not be THAT smart but I’m smart enough to know it’ll be tough to start with something as low-parts-count as an old 60s Tom Daniel kit and make something incredible out of it...but I really want to try and build something killer to push my skills and see what I can make of it. I’m thinking a scratchbuilt tube frame, some machined aluminum wheels, all the bells and whistles you’d normally see in a real 1:1 drag car - but packed inside this crazy old showrod body. Something where, if you glanced at it on the table you’d think “that’s just a T’rantula, pffttt” but then when you look there some cool stuff to spot. First, after a trip to the freezer, got it broken down far enough to start playing with it: First job, if I’m going to make a tube frame for it is to do some strategic cuts to the body (which hides almost anywhere that there WOULD be a frame pretty successfully) is to slice the body up enough where I’d be able to assemble it around a scratchbuilt frame at all without building it ship-in-a-bottle style. First up, I removed a chunk of floor from the ‘cab’ - the kit doesn’t even attempt to show a rear axle and I’d like to show some of that even if just from the underside... And, whilst I’d like to keep that ‘under tray’ that forms the bottom of the body, I started making some slices to that too to allow it to mount to a frame somehow: The real trick here is going to be to keep the kit recognisably a T’rantula (easy - it’s already shaped like one ?) but allow enough visibility of the cool mechanical stuff to make it actually interesting if you look closer. More soon - I’ve been moving mentally between a load of different build ideas for my first NNL for probably 6 months now, so I figure that if I start a thread on here it becomes real and I’ll HAVE to do it! ??‍♂️

I can't wait to see what you do with this one Dann! I'll be watching!

It makes it sound like they're not going to ship internationally after that one date (but maybe continue fulfilling US orders until stock runs out)...AND Rustoleum is stopping production and sale of Testors paints. It's confusingly worded, for sure...unless this version of that document was one sent to only international distributors and there's a variation for domestic customers of theirs saying much the same thing but with different (or no) last order dates. If they'd ever reply to any of the messages I'd sent them over the past 3 or 4 months since I first heard this rumor I could say for sure one way or the other but they don't seem to want to do that just yet

The blue stuff is Oracle masking material: I also picked up some cheap sticky-backed ‘wood’ design vinyl at the local dollar store - I think it’s designed to be put on cabinets and the likes, but the poor quality adhesive on the back of it and the thinness of the material means it works well for masking purposes too!

I'd definitely be sad if their Model Master clear went away - I just got all set up to try the Donn Yost method (enamel clear plus lacquer) and got some great results with it right off the bat...I FINALLY find a paint system that I can shoot well with and they (maybe) discontinue it

True...but I'm not sure if there's any incentive for them to tell the PUBLIC that there's an issue, if there is...same way Revell never told us what happened with the Model A tooling and why that suddenly wasn't available any more. I suspect they'd be more open with their trade customers than the general public, but who knows

Note: I added a question mark to my title because I'm not sure if it's true...I'd LOVE to hear from someone in the trade that it wasn't, and would encourage the mods here to delete this if it's definitely a false rumor (who has time to make this nonsense up anyway, if they did?) I have tried contacting Testors three times to ask them, with a mind to stocking up myself but they didn't reply any of the times so I did at least try and get it straight from the horse's mouth...