Plowboy

Don't think about what you gave for it. Think about what you want to do with it. I'm currently putting everything but the body, wheels and tires from the Foose Caddy under a '49 Mercury.

I used to think kit bashing was just plain nuts! How could anyone take two or more kits and just build one model with them? So wasteful! That was, until I did my first kitbash. I had a '64 Fairlane and an '87 pro street Thunderbird with lousy paint jobs. I never could get the side trim on the Fairlane painted to satisfy me. So, I crammed the pro street chassis under the Fairlane body and have been hooked ever since! What I enjoy most about it is I can make something no one else has or can buy. It's my creation, good, bad or ugly.

I've done quite a bit of work on this thing the past few days even though it doesn’t show a great deal. Mostly tweaks and changes. I got the body to set a little lower on the frame. It was enough that a two scale inch rolled pan almost hid the frame. I can live with this. Where I've spent most of my time has been the front straightened out. When I did a mockup with the hood, sides and grille together, I was 1.5 mms short. Plus, I had dropped the front of the body to make the floorpan rest completely on the frame. This caused lots of problems! My fix for the hood being too short was simple. Kind of. I slid the frame back and the rearend forward. That caused some clearance issues with the rearend. With the gap closed on the hood, I still had an issue with the sides not being quite square. I had to do a little fill work to get a nice line between the sides and body. I temp glued the hood and sides to the grille and noticed the grille has a peak to it. So, I puttied the hood at the front and faded it out to the rear. I also got rid of the lip on the body at the front to make it more smooth looking. I made a new windshield frame from .040 styrene. The kit piece wouldn't come close to flush. I think I may need to thin it down a bit more. I've decided to go with the Rat Roaster engine as a backup just in case the hood somehow doesn't pan out in the end: paint doesn't match or it doesn’t fit right. Plus, a real hot rod should look cool with the hood on or off. The chassis still in the works. I used the rear half of the Phantom Vickie's floor pan to fill in the rear. Still some hacking and stuff to do.

Yeah. I didn't have a great deal of interest in it anyway.

No. I've used Clear Pearl a few times as well as the Pearl White. The Pure White is also pretty transparent. I had to strip a paint job with Pure White once when I sanded through the white primer to the styrene. I could see the difference in shade between the two. But, I thought it wouldn't be a problem. Three coats of paint and I could still see the spot.

One coat of Pearl White is all you'll need over a good white base color. Then you can add clear. This is one coat over white. Even though I painted it all together, the hood and trunk were off a shade. You can see how transparent the Pearl White is by the tape in the windows.

It sprays the same as the other TS paints. You want to use white primer or paint as a base. If there are any spots on the body that are a different color such as putty, you'll want to spray a coat of gray to get everything one color before white primer. Also, you need to spray the hood with the body even with the gray primer. I learned that lesson just recently. The Pearl White is very transparent. Any variance in shade on the base color will show through. I guarantee it!

I use a razor saw with fine teeth. Something I want to try sometime is one of the small plumber's pipe cutter. I think it would work better.

Thanx to everyone for all of the great comments! I appreciate it! This is a great little kit for a quick and simple build. The interior is kind of a weak spot. But, the body makes up for it IMO.

Pegasus makes a fairly modern set of drag front and rears with slicks. Also, look into Micro Nitro.

Very disappointing since they made that improvement to the '63 Nova wagon. There's no excuse since the grille is newly tooled. I could understand if they just refreshed the old tooling maybe. But, to cut a new grille and have the headlights molded in? I'll vote with my wallet on this kit.

I'm going to try to notch it at the top, push the rails up until the notch is closed and glue it. If that doesn't get it where I want, then I'll give it a Z section.

The frame hangs down a good 6 or 7 mms. A rolled pan that big wouldn't work I don't think.

I think you guys are right. The only thing that's really bugging me as-is is the frame hanging down at the rear. I can can cut it behind the suspension and raise it up so that it tucks under the body. I'm leaning more towards the smooth hood and LS engine idea and I want to see what the TT2'S look like on it.

Since I'm still waiting for some of the paint to come off of my '49 Mercury project, I figured I would work on this project for a minute. I've had this resin body for several years. Don't remember how I ended up with or who the caster is. It's a pretty nice casting whoever did it. I stuck a firewall from the Rat Roaster to it. This model will mostly come from my parts box. The frame, front suspension, grille, hood, tires and wheels are from an AMT Phantom Vickie. The wheels and tires may or may not stay. I also have a set of Pegasus TT2'S in 19 and 23 inch that I may use. Holding up the rear is an IRS from an MPC '84 Corvette. Right now, I'm just kinda spit balling. I have a couple different ideas. One is to go with no hood and the engine from a Rat Roaster. The other is to go with a smooth hood/sides and an LS engine from a '98 Corvette. The color is already nailed down. It will be Tamiya Bright Red over Mica Silver. Looking at it now, I'm thinking the body needs to go over the frame. It'll help cover the frame on the sides (since they're missing the reveal) and rear. Plus, it'll lower it down and place the rear wheels a little better. However, I don't look forward to having to section the interior.

Ya know, looking at these photos, the red undercarriage against the black body has a pretty cool effect.

It's definitely not from the lack of decals! Besides the script decals, that's all there is. There's decals for grocery, flower shop, phone service, vacuum cleaners, utility commission and even UFOs! For me, I'm just not interested in light commercial. I build what I would want to own/drive. I want at least one more to swap roofs with a '66 Nova. Maybe another to do a phantom El Camino.

What engine is in the Revell '68 Firebird? I was thinking it was a 400. But, I've never built or looked at it closely.

That's cool Andrew! You don't see many '56 Chevies built as lowriders. This works!

Just finished this one up. It's the newly issued kit from AMT/Round2. I didn’t do much extras on it. I got rid of the rocker trim and rounded them at the bottom to make them a little more accurate. I also rounded off the bottom of the rear quarters. I added the missing panel lines between the cowl and fenders and deepened the rest. I opened the grille. Paint is Model Masters Artesian Turquoise with a Tamiya Racing White roof. Interior is Tamiya Champagne Gold and flat black. Wheels and tires are from a Revell '32 Ford. Thanx for checking it out!

Cool project Luke! Don't see these built very often! Something you may want to consider is bashing it with the AMT '68 El Camino Street Machine version. It has a nice separate frame and a blown BBC with fuel injection that will fit under the hood. Here's a photo of the engine in a '68 Chevelle.

The dash and door panels would have been body color.

Can't believe this one hasn't already been mentioned. I've always kinda had my doubts about the SS being turned into the '65. I have both. So, I want to compare them. I could see the chassis being used. But, that's about it.

You can buy the whole dually for that price. I had forgot about the Chevy dually promo and I have two of them.

Only kit source I know of is the 1/24 Monogram '91 F-350. The wheels are undersized a bit. But, would be a little closer on a 1/25 scale model.