Joe Handley

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!

Well, as of last week, Covid! Luckily I can be back in the office by Monday and work from home tomorrow and Friday, so I’m only loosing today for income.

Well, I picked up the C1500 RCSB now too. It’s going to get more of a drop and custom work done to it, though I’m debating on if I want to go with the Pegasus Hollie’s, which look a bit small, vs either the regular Steelies or the Sport/454SS wheels on the kit tires. If I go with the steelies, they need to be stripped and painted silver as they just look wrong in chrome, IMHO.

Well, caught Covid so I won’t be going to the club Christmas party this year, also have had a hard time finding motivation to finish this build too, considering my both short and complicated history with the 1:1 ZJ I had 25 years ago. It’s gone back into the box and won’t be completed at this time, going to put my efforts into other builds instead.

Was that the Rip Tide Vette at one time?

I would still buy the Revell kit over a recreated MPC, especially if it has the chassis plate from the ‘68 Coronet kits instead of the Road Runner/GTX/‘70 Coronet kits.

Picked this up today, just to see how much of it was like the older MPC based kits from the 90’s. Not crazy about how this fits compared to the Snap Fast or Glue kits of the 90’s, and some of the details seem soft compared to what I remember, but some of that is getting removed for this lowered hauler it’s going to be made into. Thinking of using the same Duplicolor Universal Black from my ZJ project since it’s about the same for the 80’s and 90’s GM Black as well as the 70’s through probably Current Mopar Black, I’m Single Stage or Clear Coat. Not sure if I want to use the chromed factory Dually wheels or the unfinished and paint them silver like they were then or black to match then silver on the caps, though.

To me, this tooling just needs to be retired, there snap kit and the Revell ‘68-‘70 are better and a much more suitable option.

Here it is mocked up, going to redo the bumpers, need to tint the back glass too since the real one was tinted too, instead of modding the wheels to look right, I’m going to hit these with some mat or semi-gloss clear over the chrome.