bill-e-boy

A nice looking rod Ismo. Particularly like the angle cut on the A pillar as it makes it look longer. I have been following the current 32 Roadster build that Aulis has on the HAMB -very talented builder

Working on more small stuff and getting paint on them A bunch of parts ready to come out of the hot box And chrome parts that were originally painted with Alclad and now overcoated with Molotow. The pix is a little dark but the finish on the parts is really good Got some time on the motor tonight. Now partly dressed Looks like I may have to redo one red sleeve. They are all yet to be painted black but left it red for the photo - black on black is very hard to photo A lot of parts have been or are about to be painted. The paint is Testors Jade Green in the little square jars - this was the original paint colour and I luckily found 3 jars in my stash. It is quite thick and needs to be thinned about 200% so goes a long way The next on the list is to paint the body again as there are a few areas that have not been covered properly More to come

A modeler friend who had a Unimat 3 replaced his with something similar a while back. Said it is a lot better as it has a lot more features like the ability to screw cut and has a proper chuck. He does serious modelling like scratch building a 1/32 of a Caterpillar D8 dozer and lots of steam stuff.

Cool project and an excellent result I have a Unimat 3 which is about the same size and it certainly has added another dimension to my modelling. It has a drill/milling attachment that I have used on occasion as well

Further to my post above I sprayed some Molotow a couple of nights ago and below is the result Thinned 100% with lacquer thinners and spent 24hrs in my hot box. The results are very good. most of these items had been painted with Alclad a long time ago and the finish was below what I was after so I reprayed with Molotow. The is one new part which is the flathead oil filter In real life they are not as dark as in the photo

I use 30ml refills sprayed my air brush. I do thin it up to 100% with lacquer thinners. I lay down a light but full coat then come back 20-30mins later with a fuller coat and it come out nice and shiny like chrome. I let it cure in my hot box for a day and do not touch it for at least a week as it seems to harden with age. I use lacquer thinners or brush and roller cleaner for clean up as well I gave up on Alclad as the finish is so variable and the difference between enough build up and too much is one coat. It is also quite dark as compared to Molotow

More work on the small things like carb air horns. Heat bent some plastic tube, cut to length on the inlet side and hand reamed out with Dremel cutters held in my big pin vice Dash board and seat from last time I worked on this - maybe 10 years ago. The seat pattern was scribed into a sanded down plain seat using guides for the corners and a straight edge for the straight parts Slowly getting all the small bits finished and painted More to come

Looking good guys I just noticed that the donor A pickup kit I am using for the Royce Fisher build has smoothy hood sides - takes a bit of work out of cleaning up the stock hood sides And some period wheels and graphics - I think I will forego the graphics

Thanks Kit. Fab work is a norm as I live a long way from the aftermarket suppliers. I have been "Kit Rodding" as I call it for a long time now and I don't always have the right part to fit the job at hand. The purchase of the lathe added another dimension to my model fab work - don't know how I got on without it Cheers Bill

Thanks for the kind words Been hammering away at the small stuff Needed and crab style distributor so made one up. Took a couple of attempts to get it there. Started with some sprue that I machined to the needed diameter then filed a groove for the terminal posts. The posts are insulation striped off some some small wire and cut to length. A cap was glued over the groove and insulation then cut to length on my lathe with a stub to fit into the hole in the front of the engine block It is now complete but the pix will have to wait as the pix fairies dealt to the photo The next thing to sort is the fan belt and generator. As a 2 carb manifold is used the generator needs to be moved to one side - in this case to the left hand side of the block. A matter of cutting up fan belts and pulleys, fab up a bracket for the gennie and idler pulley. Royce used the front of a generator in the stock location for the idler A bracket was made up for the oil filter and pinned to the LH head Meanwhile while the glue is drying on one part we work on another - The brackets for the pickup bed are made from 1mm square plastic rod. I did these last time I had this out but they all needed regluing and trimming to length. The next thing to do is paint and chrome so that some assembly work can be done on the chassis. The list is still long More to come

Ok -on with the modifications The original motor was mounted via a plate to the rear of the head stock As this would not be the case with the new motor I mounted the motor and the lathe on a piece 3mm ally plate. The motor mount holes were slotted to allow belt tensioning. The plate has rubber feet to stop the whole lot moving around the bench when it was running The motor and the lathe were dully mounted onto the plate The motor wired to the VSD and a control box mounted on top of the motor with the run/off switch and speed dial pot The VSD is set up to run at a maximum frequency of 80hz as above this motor power tends to fall off. With the speed up ratio of the pulleys the top speed is the same a the original motor of 8000rpm at 80hz I rarely run it above 40hz and can run it right to 10hz without any issues The mods have been well worth the effort and having the ability to change speed at the touch of a button is magic The lathe as it is today And with the milling head attached The only job I have left to do is make up a cover for the belt drive - must get around to it - one day Thanks for looking

Thanks for replies Bruda - I take note of comment re title - but not sure on how to change Peteski - 3ph motor may be overkill as far as size - its just the smallest motor I could get hold of. The main focus of the exercise was to have variable speed but without the drop off in torque as happens with the original motor. I could have sourced a smaller DC motor and drive but as I already had an AC drive available I decided to go down this route Ace-Garageguy - my big lathe is about half way between yours and a Unimat 3 or SL

I am not sure if this is the correct Topic to put this post under but it is the closest I can see where it would fit In a nutshell I scored a used Emco Unimat 3 mini lathe via the local (NZ) online auction site The lathe was complete with all the usual fittings and had the milling attachment as a bonus. Also had lots of extras like tooling and other little doodads that often come with second gear. It was a little tatty though. The milling attachment is at the top of the photo I cleaned it up and freed up some stiff handle knobs. I did not take a chance so I replaced the main shaft bearings following the instruction manual for setting the required bearing pre-load At this point I had used the lathe a few times but I was not happy with having to change pulleys al the time to change speed. The motor is two speed but the way this is configured there is quite a drop in power when using the slower speed. I work as an industrial electrician in the real world. I had to hand a suitable single phase to 3 phase variable speed drive unit but no small motor. I then went about looking for a small 230V 3phase motor. I ended up buying the smallest 2 pole motor that the local motor importer had. It may be small in 3 phase terms but is quite large next to a mini lathe As I intended to keep the original drive unit to be dedicated to the mill head I needed to machine up some new pulleys for the motor and lathe. I did this in my big lathe as the Unimat just would not have the power to drive a form tool More to come

Hi Alan, thanks for the kind words Royce was close to 6ft tall and he had issues with the cramped confines of the cab but he still drove it around. I remember he and another rodder drove from Palmerston North to Auckland in the middle of winter to enter into a show. Auckland is about 500km from Palmy. He also went to the South Island in it too. The guy who has the pick up now said its pretty hard to get into and out of I just remembered the back section of the body is the remainder of the top of the 26 T When I made up the buttons I made heaps as stretching sprue is an inexact science. I see the occasional 26 T on the local auction site, either sedans or the delivery. Your project looks interesting

Pix of lathe - it has had the original motor replaced with a the smallest three phase motor I could find and fitted with a variable speed drive.

One of the major stumbling blocks that I could see was the headers. The originals were made from Holden car tail pipes and snake around the radius rods. The collectors were made from flathead oil filter housing. This was a novel idea but filter housings in 1/25th are few and far between. The other block was chrome plating. When I first started the model just 20 years ago there was no chrome paint systems available. My first attempt at the headers was not a great success but a couple of attempts later I ended up with that in the pix below. The motor is from an AMT 40 Ford but this has now been replaced by the Revell flattie. The oil filter that came with the Revell flattie has a big hole in the rear - quick solution machine one from some plastic rod. While I was at I need a couple more for the header collectors. First the oil filter It looks huge but the main body dimension is just 5mm Next up machine the collectors. This needed a different machining approach. First turn the barrel part then change the lathe over to mill function and drill the header pipe entries, the back to lathe operation to machine the cover end of the collector. The lathe/mill is an Emco Unimat 3 which I picked up second hand awhile back with this job at the top of the to do list but such is life other jobs came first. Pix below is the drill out of the collector for the header tubes. Its a bit hard to see as the white plastic was difficult to photograph More to come

Chop looking good. For some reason the sedan looks better when you lay back the A pillar rather than stretching the roof line between the A and B pillars as you do on a coupe - either 3 or 5 window I will take note of how you did it as I have a chop on a 32 Sedan on my wish list. Did one on a AMT Sedan years ago before they became unobtainable. I layed the screen back on this. The blue windows is a nod to @tim boyd

Some more pix of where I am at The rear of the cab if upholstered in vinyl and has a mountain of buttons. The method to make these was to heat stretch some sprue and then cutting into 10mm long pieces. These were placed close to a hot soldering iron to make one mushroom head. Meanwhile the button pattern was marked out on the cab and holes drilled and then countersunk. The next step was to insert the button into a hole cut to length and mushroom with the soldering iron - it took some time from memory So we now have buttons on both sides The assembled cab The chassis is from a Revell 29 RPU and has been shortened. The motor is from a Revell 40 Convert that had a SB Ford installed into it. The distributor is wrong as the rod has a later model motor with a crab style distributor - another mission to find or make one. The rear tyres shown have white wall inserts that need to be painted and the fronts (not shown) are from a Tamiya Lotus seven. The originals were 14" rims that had V8 centres welded in that gives it a nice tyre rake. More to come

Moebius Chrysler 300B done in a restomod syle The modification list is long The car is lowered quite a bit - in the rear by moving spring shackle mounts up. In the front with dropped spindles giving a total of 3" in the back and 4" in the front for a nice bit of rake Engine has an air cleaner similar in style to the original but with dry elements rather than the water bath Engine and engine bay has been detailed along with machined brake booster, brake lines, 12V battery and cables Wheels upgrade to big inch with disc brakes Interior detailed and steering wheel changed to modern one Paint is Tamiya red mica with Tamiya clear coat - all laquer Body has scripts removed with only font and rear 300B crests remaining See WIP thread for build up details

Now under glass

Nice build Makes me green with envy

I 2nd - Is that a photo of the model, or 1:1 vehicle? Seriously - I thought I was looking at 1:1 scale. Only after I started looking more carefully at things like the wiper arm, the cowl vents, and the shape of the water pump, I realized it is a model. It looks great

Yonks ago a local rodder - Royce Fisher - built a closed cab from a cut down 26 T Tudor sedan. The build started in the early-mid 60's and was on the road in late 60's. I remember seeing it in 69 at a gas station. I lived about 45 minute drive away from the city where the Royce was based. I eventually moved there too. The NZ Hot Rod magazine article attached is from 73 and I remember attending that show. The club that Royce was a founding member of is having their 50th anniversary this year. Unfortunately Royce passed a number of years ago but he is remembered and the profile of his pickup is often used in club monograms and letterheads. I started the build a number of years ago and it is now at painted stage but I am not happy with some colour choices. The chassis and running train are a bit lighter hue of metallic green than the body - I will redo this The stumbling block when I first started the build was the chrome headers but we have a work-round for that now The kits used are the Lil John 26 T Sedan and the 29 Pickup - both Revell The sedan was cut as shown More pix later

I have used a number of different sizes of copper wire for winding springs. Typically if you strip some electronics type wire they have 3-7 cores that are fairly small. some are even tinned which looks a bit like zinc plating. Also the local electronics store has small rewind wire in small rolls. Small electrical wire can be used for allsorts - hoses, battery cables etc - and is available in all sorts of sizes - most people chuck a lot of it out You need to wind the wire around a former such as 1/64 piano wire. The scale size of a lot of throttle return springs is about 3/4-1" dia = .75-1mm in 1/25th See pix of latest build - linkages are as from the kit but the spring pops out from under the air cleaner when added later

I wasn't happy with the 6V battery so found one in the parts box and detailed it up I am impressed with the tail light detail - looks very real More work getting bling added. I now have parts A and B With a bit of work A+B+C Some more work yet before I get it "Under Glass" but it will be soon