Hoffman

Sharing pictures of cars I built back in the late 80's. I did a series of Chevy's with blacked out trim and 409 engines. This is the old Revell two-door post kit that had the opening hood, doors and trunk. I created a chassis from scratch and adapted the Buttera suspension to it. The dashboard is from a '69 Chevelle. Paint is Toyota pickup blue, from bottles of dealer touch-up paint, thinned and shot through the most basic Badger air brush. f

This is a combination of Monogram '30 Model A Coupe and AMT '32 Victoria. First, an example of what the full size car looks like, then the 1/24 scale version...

Built from the AMT kit.

Built from the AMT kit.

Hello Folks. Just thought I'd share some T with you......shots from my collection, built over the years. Enjoy! First, cars built from the AMT '25 T Roadster, the '23 Depot Hack, Delivery Van, and Coupe. Below you see a stock AMT '25 Roadster on the left, the Roadster Pickup version of the same kit in the center, and a Touring car adaptation on the right. Next up, cars built from the AMT '27 T Touring car..... Out of the box...... Roadster conversion. Tudor Sedan made by combining the AMT '27 T with the Revell Buttera '26 T sedan. Coupe made with the Revell sedan body, cut down, trunk made from balsa wood and Bondo. Sedan Delivery version created from AMT and Revell kits combined. This is the AMT '27 Touring, combined with a modified version of the street rod chassis in the AMT '25 Roadster kit. The front suspension is Revell Model A dropped axle. The flathead V8 is AMT. Wheels and hubcaps are from the AMT '53 Ford pickup, with trim rings from their '40 Ford, on Revell two-piece tires. And one more street rod for good measure; this is the Revell '26 T Touring converted to a roadster pickup, using AMT '25 T bed. The wheels are Centerline Champ 500's. Remember those? They were super popular in the early '80's, when I built this model. The fronts came from an issue of the Revell '55 Chevy coupe. Wider rears came in a version of the Revell '29 Ford pickup, the fronts in that kit.

Beautiful, agreed!! Fine job. Love the darkened panel lines, super interior, and great under hood detailing.

Dave, Spex84, echo, Tulio- Thank you, Guys!!!! I appreciate all your kind words and excellent feedback. By the way, check out Tulio's '57 T-Bird. It's beautiful! Thanks again, guys.

Thank you, Draggon! Yeah, those tires really don't want to stay together. The solution I came up with is kind of funny. Look at the end of a new garden hose before you screw it onto the hose bib. There's a black rubber washer in there. They sell replacements at Home Depot. Those things turned out to have just the right width, ID and OD to pop inside the Buttera tires and do a good job of holding them together and the wheel inside. By the way, the rims are from the current Revell '32 sedan with photo etched spokes added from Herb Deeks. The hubs are brass brads from the craft store. The drums you see from behind the spokes are Monogram 1/24th '32 roadster drum/backing plates.

In terms of style, color combination and so forth, I still love the '70's resto-rod look of chrome Borrani wire wheels with big and little tires, mixed with stock bodies on a nice rake and a modern V-8 under the hood. However, as I've gotten older, I've developed a fondness for perfectly restored classics from the 30's, and sports cars from the 50's and 60's. So, you'll notice this woody has something of a classic English sports car flavor to it. The headlights are '32 Ford from the older Monogram 1/24 roadster, but I added amber bulbs inside and a black and chrome dot in the center, mimicking Marchal lamps, or PL700's. The curved, ramp-like sheet metal added below the grille shell is like a '30 Chevrolet, but also an MG TC. Same for the vertical chrome split in front of the radiator. The black painted radiator inside the shell isn't the standard Model A mesh pattern either. The vertical ribs are meant to look more like an MG. And finally the colors; my inspiration here was a rare Maybach at the Nethercutt museum in Sylmar. I noticed the warm tan color is a close match for the color of maple wood. On a stock Ford Woody, the sheet metal color is very different from the wood, in a basic tan shade. My idea was to have the sheet metal on the cowl and hood be much closer to the wood color, but not an exact match, as would be the case on a full size car. Similar to the Maybach, I really liked the green fenders and top and substituted those colors on the model in place of the standard Ford Model A black. For contrast, I added the lighter shade of green on the seat inserts, suspension, and drivetrain.

Thank you, Gentlemen!! You made my day! This was a long term project. How long? Well, I got the idea when I was a kid in 1975. The year before, Revell had re-released their '31 Ford Model A station wagon as the "Woodstock" kit. I loved that kit, but it's pretty fussy, fragile, difficult to build it and have it come out looking as nice as the model on the box. I was 10 years old at the time. I started it but never finished it. In '75 Revell released an all-new kit of Lil' John Buttera's ground breaking '26 T street rod. That's an awesome car and a pretty good model to this day. My idea as a kid was simply to combine the best elements of the T street rod with the stock A Woody. Simple, right? Fast forward to 2015, me in my 50's now, and I'm finally feeling up to the challenge of this "simple" exercise.

Looks great, Alan!

TBill, very clean build! Interior looks great. What kind of paint did you use for the green on the seats, door panels and dashboard? I notice it looks glossier on the seats and more semi-gloss on the dash pad? -TIM-

Beautiful work, Patrick! Thanks for sharing.....

Excellent work! Thank you for sharing all the how-to details. I've got these same parts in my collection and you've given me plenty of food for thought on how I might use them. Thanks again!

Hi Mike. I'm looking forward to seeing your CHP Buick. Actually, that was the great part of the old TV series "Highway Patrol" with Broderick Crawford; the cars were the stars, at least to me they were! I've seen a couple of Buick replicas. There was one that was actually a pro street car with steamroller tires in back, but on wide steel wheels with dog-dish caps. The shield graphics on the door said something like, "back alley patrol". It was black and white with lights and a siren on top, but the interior was gutted with a race bucket, if I remember correctly. Interesting mix; something like the old Monogram Cop-out Duster funny car.

Thank you, Geno! I'll post some more orphan examples in the weeks ahead.

Thank you, Russel! Your cab collection is impressive!

Here's a small collection of orphan diecasts I've been restoring lately. Typically these are purchased in damaged condition to varying degrees. First up, a Danbury Mint 1932 Cadillac. This one had quite a few missing pieces. I ended up using the windshield frame from a Monogram '32 Cadillac Phaeton. The shape is more accurate than the Danbury Mint piece anyway, plus it includes correctly shaped wind wings. The top boot was made from a Johan 1931 Cadillac piece, widened and modified to fit. Many other missing pieces were taken from a Danbury Mint '32 Phaeton. And lastly, D.B.M. did not include a luggage rack on these models for some reason. Every fullsize '32 Cadillac I've seen has them, so I modified one to fit and added it, color coded to match, in the manner Cadillac originally did them. Next up, this Neo 1933 Cadillac had "some assembly required" as they say. That's ok though. Actually, when I first bid on it, I lost, but the buyer backed out and I got a second chance. I was SO glad I won the 2nd auction. I was able to make all the necessary repairs using the pieces that came with the model. (Thank you, Replicarz!) the only exception was the front axle. I ended up using a metal front axle and springs from a Danbury Mint '32 Phaeton. So, I fixed everything, made a new chrome windshield frame, added photo reduced 1933 California license plates and called it good. Third little orphan is this Danbury Mint 1932 Ford roadster. This one didn't look too bad in the auction, but it arrived with the windshield frame broken in 6 pieces and a few bits knocked off. I could tell it had been damaged and repaired before, and it just didn't travel well. I was able to piece it back together without too much trouble. I modified the convertible top to make it sit properly on the windshield posts. And, looking at pictures of a fullsize '32, I decided I really didn't like the whitewall tires. The cast in color of the wheels seemed a little off to me too. Plus, the diameter was just a shade too small. So, I mixed up some craft paint in a nice shade of yellow, painted the wheels, and expanded the rims by painting on the whitewall too. Then I painted the rest of the whitewall black, reassembled the wheels and tires and voila! Add another photo reduced '32 license plate and she's ready for the 1/24th scale road...... Final installment this evening is a Danbury Mint 1932 Ford 3-window coupe. This one really didn't have much damage to repair. It's just that I found I liked the roadster so much better with black walls, I decided to paint the tires on this coupe as well. Here are pictures of each style. The first version with white walls isn't the exact car I bought, a little nicer, but very close. The second one is mine, with black walls. See which one you like better.

Pat, I keep checking every so often to see how your project is coming along. Beautiful work! Thanks for sharing it with us. -TIM-

Looking good, Damodelguy. I did one years ago using the Monogram '30 Coupe and a modified AMT '32 Victoria.