Joe Handley

After nearly 5 long years, the car is finally done! I was concerned that the blue was going to overpower everything with the bumpers being body color, but after painting the grill and tail light panel then adding the bright work, that concern was unfounded.

Just need to mount the door handles!

Wanna bet that there’s all 12v lead acid batteries behind the steps and in the back!?😅

Lol, yup, he does and was even more approving of my Traxxas Factory Five ‘33 Five Window Coupe that was fenderless with a VXL swap😁

Getting ready to prime the Dually and shoot its interior, the RCSB interior is in color, but need to paint the black areas as well as get interior flocking for the floors. The RCSB has more bodywork that needs to be done before I do more primer and move onto paint. The Dually won’t be as heavily modified or as low, so it should be quicker to finish so long as the weather holds out.

Getting closer, just need to reassemble for the last time and mount the door handles.

That amphibious Jeep looks like it would be built using modern plastic stock without too much effort!

Finally got around to painting the tail light panel this morning, took this week off from work and plan on trying to finish this by NYD, hopefully will get decent enough weather to get to the OBS trucks too.

Still kinda under the weather and had no ambition this weekend to work on this or the OBS trucks, so I polished this up with a bit of Meguiar’s and pressed it together to give a sneak peek before I finish it. I need to chrome paint the bumperettes, paint the grill aluminum and chrome then put the grill inserts in. I’m planning on using the door handles from the Revell ‘68 Charger and maybe that windshield too, debating about putting a flat clear on the wheel faces too.

Several years ago made a T-Shirt for the ugly sweater day at the office and haven’t really worn it since. Well we had an ugly sweater day again today so I wore it again today, but discovered on my way in the door that the green off 4 out of the 5 trees I put in it was missing, only tree left was the Charlie Brown Tree in the middle. So that Charlie Brown Tree is now flanked by 3 Stumps and the Family Tree from the movie Deliverance. All that said, I’m debating about fixing this one or leaving as is, now that it’s even uglier, then recreating it on a smaller sweat shirt, now that I have also since lost a reasonably sized human too.

That is looking fantastic so far!

As I wrap up the ‘69 Charger Convertible build, this will be the next old build to pop up on the desk. Want to put a Jeep 4.0l in it but I still can’t find one, so I’m going to raid one of my Matador Stock Car kits for the engine and change up the rolling stock and color from what I was going to do……just not sure what I’m going to do yet for those.

Did some touch up on the chassis before leaving to go grocery shopping this morning. I accidentally painted all the back parts with gloss black instead of semi-gloss black last night, so that was among the things I touched up today, then used a couple Moltow Chrome pens on the exhaust tips. Didn’t add this last night, but I picked up a can of Krylon Textured Black to use for bedliner on the OBS truck kits, found that it looks a lot like the sound deadener used in the fender wells and sprayed those before doing the rest of the work!

That does look good, though this is going to not have a clear, wanted to keep it more era correct, now other projects, I will, I really like that blue on the 2nd Gen Chargers, even without the roof!

Wet sanded the smaller pieces, did a little touch up on the body while respraying then went up and painted the bottom of the floor plate, will have to go back and touch that up after our family HyVee run tomorrow.

Well, here’s the body, bumpers/grill and front valance, very happy with how the body turned out where I had to fill in the tops of the quarters where the buttresses were, May need a slight wet sanding on the body, but will definitely need it in the small pieces as well as a respray as I have some bubbling on those.

Picked up a can of Testors Star Spangled Blue since I can’t find the can of B5 Blue my friend at the auto body paint and body supply shop mixed for me 4 years ago to shoot the car. Quick preview if the floor and body color overspray. Going to detail paint the belly after dinner.

Figured this would be a good kit for this, being a snap kit, but I will tell you, those C Pillars on this kit are THICK and I ended up using a Dremel with cut off wheel to cut them smooth those out before using the roof to fill in the quarters. I bought a couple of these, been thinking about taking another and building a what it 4dr Hardtop with the stock roofline from that too, think that would have would be an interesting design exercise.

Ok

Been working on this one’s stance and glued the hood and tailgate shut since this will be a curbside and the tailgate just won’t stay shut like the original kits did. Not picture yet, but I started working on a roll pan for the back of this one too. Kinda wish they had put the 454SS decals on the sheet for this one too. Also need to play around with the Dually some more too, work on the stance for that since the engine insert just gets in the way of dropping this things and may not work as well for keeping mi preferred stance on that, plus the hood and tailgate will be glued shut before paint for the same reasons too.

Well, the steelies were an argent silver color with composite center caps and beauty rings, kinda like the truck Rally wheels, so those would need to be stripped and painted to look right, can probably just paint the caps on the Sport/SS wheels and leave those otherwise as is.

Dug this project out to finish it……..only 4 years after it should have been completed too. Interior is done as are the wheels (sorry, no pics of those right now) just needs color coat, chrome, door handles, and chassis detailing. Now I can’t remember if I said so on here, since this is intended to be a design studio what if vs a phantom production car, which is some of why I decided to include the Kelsey-Hayes Recall Wheels in this build. My intention was to paint it B5 Blue with the bumpers painted to match, kinda like seeing if the Elastomeric bumpers would work on this car as well as being a convertible, doing this allowed me to fill in the push bar holes in the bumper, smooth them, and only need to worry about re-chroming the bumperettes and the trim around the forward edge of the grill on those parts, then the chrome on the windshield and door vent windows. I’m really liking this silhouette of the car too, should look really sharp once done and like something that they should have done, including the standard properly sized windshield vs what they used on the other B-Body convertibles.

Oh, very nice!

Thanks Steve, those were the only ones I was finding too and thought that the kit inserts probably better than these were.

Has anybody made or currently makes a correct grill insert for these Charger kits? Planning on finishing the drop top I’m building from the DoH snapper and wouldn’t mind the correct inserts for it. Thanks!