papajohn97

I airbrushed several plastic spoons & knives with the Scalefinishes base paint as well as some Alclad Chrome over black lacquer to test the Mr. Color clear coat, will give them an extra day to cure before I test the CC. I may apply a few scrap decals onto the spoons and knives to verify that the Mr. Color doesn’t react with them. While waiting for my spoons to dry/ cure, I did a little work on wiring the engine and finishing up the interior: I noticed in the reference magazine engine photos that, like most other BBC’s, the plug wires are routed over the valve covers and between the header tubes which I won’t be able to do until after I mount the headers to the engine (which I have to do while installing the engine into the chassis! Warning!: Finger and tweezer gymnastics job ahead!!!). Sounds like a good situation to dry-fit test first?

Nice job Walt! I particularly like the PE grill, valve stems on the rear wheels and the neat & tidy BMF work. So what’s with the rod passing through the oil pan? Did you make the front wheels steerable by adding pins to the front axle hubs and adding a tie rod?

I’m also looking forward to ordering a few of both the standard and AWB kits so I sure hope they are both still in the pipeline. I have decals for a Dick Landy “Landy’s Dodge”, a Gary Dyer “Mr. Norm Grand-Spaulding” (the blue one) and a Bob Harrop “Flying Carpet” all waiting for these kits. If I finish these three versions and still have the itch for the AWB one, there’s always the Ram Chargers car, Dave Strickler car and Bud Faubel’s “Hemi Honker” along with a bunch others I’m probably forgetting….so thankful to Moebius for doing these ‘65 Mopar kits!!!!

Thanks Pierre, you’re a very talented builder so your compliments made my day! I bought these resin elbow fittings a few years back to use on some 1/20 F1 builds, I think I ordered them from Hobby Link Japan (HLJ.com) and they are manufactured by Top Studio: In checking both HLJ and one US dealer, Scale Pro Shop, it looks like they’re all out of stock. BNA in Australia has some and you can order them thru their eBay listings. BNA is an excellent shop, they don’t gouge and shipping is amazingly affordable and prompt.

Today I masked and airbrushed the reddish-orange onto the lower sides of the body: I mixed three parts of the Poppy Red with one part of Regal Red - It look about right to me for what I was aiming for although who knows how it will look with clear coat applied? I failed to spray a few plastic spoons with the white and orange paint to allow testing with a new clear coat I’m thinking of using. I usually spray Tamiya TS-13 Lacquer over Scalefinishes base paints but I’m thinking of trying this Mr. Color UV Cut Super Clear which I’ve read is easier on decals: Scalefinishes website says their base coats are not compatible with Mr. Color Self-Leveling thinner but I was planning on using their standard thinner to thin this clearcoat. Let me know if anyone’s tried this stuff over Scalefinishes basecoat. John

Lots of airbrushing today: I put a few coats of Scalefinishes Chevrolet Arctic White basecoat on the upper surfaces of the body. I need to knock-down the gloss of the Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black (X-18) on the chassis and driver’s seat, it’s amazing how much this paint can vary in sheen from bottle to bottle. I’ll use Dullcote or Vallejo Satin (my favorite lately). Tomorrow I hope to mask the upper white on the body and basecoat airbrush the red-orange. I’m thinking of mixing some combination of these two Scalefinishes basecoat paints I have in my paint collection: I would just use the Poppy Red but I have a Gas Ronda Thunderbolt already painted this color and I’d like this Seaton car to be a slightly different color (redder?). Color period photos of this car (actually two cars?) are all over the place in hue but most of them appear in the reddish orange range. I welcome any thoughts or if someone happens to know the actual color they used. John

Not my favorite drag car period either but you did great job on this one, particularly on the chassis mods. I believe Don dropped out of funny car racing in the late 60’s due to how crazy dangerous they became when supercharging was introduced, he was a devoted family man and had the good sense to know that the risks were just not worth it. I wish there were good kits available for Don’s “Eliminator I & II” Mercury funny cars (not that horrid AWB AMT kit!), that’s about the latest drag subjects I’d like to build.

Great job Michael on this ‘62, the kicked-up front end looks perfect. I was really impressed with the quality of this Revell kit and would like to build another one someday, maybe a Dave Strickler’s/ Bill Jenkins “Old Reliable”? Can never have too many ‘62 Chevys (Impalas or Bel Airs!).

What a fabulous collection and a fitting tribute to a legendary racer/ tuner who was also known as one of the nicest guys in the sport. Based on your past postings Michael, you must have a huge collection of classic super stock model builds. I would love to see a few pics of all of them laid out like a pit line-up to the staging lanes at a mid-sixties drag meet. Thanks for another cool posting!

Punched out a hole in the hood for the FI velocity stacks to protrude:

Made a few more little parts, scratch-built a Hilborn fuel pump (probably not to scale but roughed out totally by eye, intended for mounting in front of the block) using Evergreen styrene rod and sheet: Scratch-built a fuel line routing block using Evergreen sheet styrene and a resin fitting to hang off of the left side of the FI manifold: Drilled out right .016” holes on the inside of each intake tube on the manifold to install fuel lines later: I would have liked to drill out two axial holes running down the base of each of the two rows of four tower inlets on this resin manifold to allow running wire down each row for butterfly axles but I was afraid of turning this delicate resin part into Swiss cheese as well as well as the near impossibility of keeping the drill centered thru each tower. Maybe I can bond short pieces of wire between each tower later to simulate these butterfly control axles? I primed all the little parts as well as the chassis and interior tub: The roll bar shown above was out of my spares box but I had to widen it by .20” by splicing in some .08” Evergreen rod so that it would adequately span the interior tub. It’s supposed to finally warm up to the 70’s to low 80’s here on the So. Cal. coast over the next few days so I hope to finally be putting some colors on these parts. This is mostly a “done by eyeball” build but so far it’s still pretty simple and fun (compared to the crazy over-engineered tank model I’ll building in parallel). Thanks for viewing my slow progress! John

Trimmed and sanded the sides of the styrene sheets added to the deeper oil pan: Made some progress on roughing out the headers: I’ll drill out the ends before priming and painting these. I will have to place these over the upper A arms on the chassis before assembling them to the engine block. The plugs are below these headers so I’ll need to finesse some wiring holes at the bottom of the heads to block area, not totally accurate but you won’t be able to see the plug end once the engine + headers are assembled to the chassis. Making these headers took about 3-4 hours of trial and error scratch building. They’re not pretty but they’ll be good enough once I airbrush them with Tamiya XF-1 or XF-84 (my favorite these days for exhausts). John

A little progress today…. I finished roughing out the weird Hilborn FI set-up and checked the rough appearance with the engine/ chassis/ body….looks about right? I then started the mods on the oil pan to deepen it by 3” (.12” scale) by sectioning it with a razor saw and then bonding three .04” thick Evergreen styrene sheets. I’ll flush out the sides of these bonded sheets after an overnight cure: I’m planning on using a Detail Master aluminum distributor on this engine and so I drilled out a .062” hole in at the rear of the FI manifold and block;: The next big mod is to scratch build the headers which my Car Craft magazine reference describes as 2” tubing, 40” long, individual tubes with no collector. I’m planning on using 2 mm diameter solder wire and will need to make a header plate out of styrene sheet with holes for the tubes spaced at the 4.84” (.194” scale) cylinder spacing. I made similar headers for an Arnie Beswick ‘64 GTO a few years back: It doesn’t appear from reference photos that these individual tube headers on Seaton’s car extended out to the outer edge of the body like on this GTO, I’m hoping I can approximate how long they were based on the 40” length (1.6” at scale), these GTO headers look closer to +2” long. I did similar scratch-built headers for a ‘65 Chevelle A/FX build but with collectors: Scratch-building headers can be a laborious time-consuming trial & error effort so bear with me if I disappear for a while. Making them symmetrical is the hardest part. Thanks for following along! John

Nice job on Landy’s “last stock wheelbase” drag car. I’m particularly impressed with the painting of the black raised wiring details within the engine bay, not an easy detail to paint.

Thanks Mike. Like other drag cars at the time, they raced on a variety of wheels on this car. The triangular slotted Howard’s mags were on several of the pics I’ve seen and unfortunately with the closure of Modelhaus they are now likely unobtainium. I decided to use these Fireball oval slotted wheels because they are close to a few of the photos I have and I prefer the look over the triangular slots. I hope to apply a unpolished light magnesium/ dark worn aluminum Alclad which should contrast nicely with the white & orangery-red two-tone.

Finally got back on this one after being distracted by a 1/35 Miniart M3 Lee with full interior tank kit I’m doing simultaneously (little risk of parts mix-up!). I mounted front and rear axles/ suspensions with a .18” hike up in the rear and a .20” in the front, total eyeball estimate based on 1:1 photos. I used a lot of Evergreen rods and tubes to make these changes: Here’s a rough reality check with the body/chassis balanced on some wheel/ tires: I’m planning on using some slotted wheels from Fireball Resins I purchased a few years ago and will paint these with black base coat and Alclad aluminum. The rear wheels came with extended center hubs which I had to drill out and replace with styrene rod to simulate the flush axle ends. Here’s a shot of the wheels with driver’s fiberglass seat I’m planning to use: I’m starting to rough-out how I’m thinking of modeling the weird Hilborn FI set-up on this car. The Car Craft reference that I wrote about in a previous post stated that Seaton adapted a Hilborn FI manifold for a 427 Ford to the BBC but then another reference I just received, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated magazine (Oct ‘65), stated Seaton adapted two Hilborn FI’s intended for 4 cyl. Offenhauser Indy engines….maybe they tried both? I’m not going to sweat absolute accuracy and will just try to approximate the set-up shown in the photo in Scott8950’s post above by adding two four/hole manifold plates and short cylindrical extensions around the velocity stacks above the BBC Hilborn FI resin manifold that I have. Other than a little priming here and there, Im going to keep assembling unpainted parts/ subassemblies before doing any serious painting. Nothing worse than having to modify painted parts! John

Incredible build! How did you do that chassis? If not scratch-built, what kit(s) did you bash it from? I picked up this AMT Merc kit last year at a swap-meet and it comes with a bare-bones one-piece promo chassis if I recall. The chassis frame looks like a ‘60 Starliner but the stamped sheet metal bottom pan looks like a different kit?

Nice to see a white one built, beautifully executed! So many fit issues with this kit but worth the hassle because it’s such a cool legendary iconic race car.

Progress over the last few days: Sanded out to 800 grit and primed the puttied body using Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 white primer (nice stuff). It’s not perfect but should pass the “viewing at 18” test and hoping the final red-orange on the lower body + decals will camouflage remaining defects: I added a .28” extension at the rear of the chassis using Evergreen .040” styrene: I then attacked the two bumper guards on both front and rear bumpers (after removing the chrome with oven cleaner) using an X-acto knife and sanding sticks. Not an easy task!: I puttied the damage where I could and then sanded and primed both bumpers: I found a fiberglass type driver’s racing seat in my spare parts box which I hope to include in the interior tub along with a scratch-built roll bar, hydro shifter and column mounted tach. I also think I need to tackle the headers and the modification and dry-fitting of the Hilborn FI and stacks so I can rough-out the cut on the hood before diving into painting of the body and sub assemblies. Going slow on this one but still having fun!

Hi Ian, the Car Craft reference I cited above stated that the transmission used in this car was a Turbo Hydramatic modified by Tom Nell (a GM guy). Other references I’ve seen state that the first TH released by GM was a TH400 offered in ‘64 Caddies.

I've made some progress at fitting that big resin TH-400 trans into this chassis: I plan to make my own headers using solder wire, should be fun going around the engine mounts and such: I boxed-in a new transmission tunnel within the interior tub using .020" thick Evergreen styrene to cover up the larger opening I had to make to clear this large resin transmission: And then I fixed the two rear wheel wells on the chassis to allow more room for the larger rear tires: On the subject of reference materials, I splurged on eBay for a rare original copy of Car Craft Magazine Dec 1965 with included an excellent article on this car. I'd love to post the article but don't want too violate any copyright laws so I'll just note the following things I learned and were able to confirm: They described the car as a "match car", not to NHRA A/FX rules I assume, although the photos of the car in the article have "A/FX" on the rear roof column on each side. A three-speed Turbo-Hydromatic transmission was used in this car. They included a floor shifter which allowed manual selection of each of the three speeds or an auto drive option (at 6500 rpm!). No front brakes, no radiator. They included a 5 gal water tank in the trunk with a small electric water pump that allowed them too cool the engine between runs Very little modifications to the stock chassis (positraction and uneven coil springs to counteract the crazy torque). The body was shifted rearwards 7" (maintaining the stock wheel base) and lifted 1" (which I'm probably not going to worry about). They used a full-sized Chevy sedan differential with 4.56 gears, I'll probably just use the stock Chevelle diff. The car/ decals label it a '396' but in actuality, it's a prototype 427 that Seaton was able to get from GM They used a Hilborn FI intended for a Ford 427 and jerry-rigged an adapter manifold. I have a resin BBC Hilborn FI manifold that I think I'll still use but I might add two four hole plates between each of the two lines of four bosses on the resin manifold and the metal velocity stocks too try to mimic the appearance of the actual BBC-to Ford Hilborn FI set-up. A 3 gal Moon fuel tank was mounted in front of the engine. Interior was gutted for racing (fiberglass driver's seat, no passenger or back seat, stock inner side panels but all hardware removed, stock dash and steering wheel with tach mounted on. column, roll bar and five point racing harness). Exhaust headers are individual 2" ID tubing, each 40" long, no collector. Oil pan was 3" deeper (need to add .12") Cheers, John

A few minutes left before I knock off for the day, I decided to box in the remaining two gaps between the engine bay wheel wells and the firewall with .040” sheet styrene so that I can prime the body tomorrow to check my putty job:

Thanks Ron for the saw name correction! I love my Tamiya razor saws, they must be +12 years old and they still work great! Today’s update: Sanded out the putty patches on all four wheel openings down to 800 grit, will test primer once my engine bay wheel well fixes are done: Bonded the two engine bay wheel wells back into the body and shifted them .28” forward to coincide with the new front wheel openings (still need to add fill-in styrene between these wells and the firewall): Removed the four speed kit transmission and bonded the resin TH-400 automatic into place with CA: This TH-400 automatic is significantly larger than the kit manual transmission so I cut away material around the front of the transmission hump in the interior tub. I’ll box in this opening with sheet styrene, hopefully a larger partial conical piece, once I rough out the final position of the engine in the chassis/ body assembly: In roughly checking the rear slick tire fit in the chassis/ body assembly, it looks like I’m going to need to enlarge the front portion of the two rear wheel wells on the chassis in order to better center the rear wheels in the new openings as well as to clear the chassis with these larger tires. I’m planning on using AMT M&H pie crust slicks on this car, my favorite period slicks and they still appeared to be used on some of the photos of this car, other photos seem to show wider more modern (lower pressure?) slicks. When were M&H pie crust slicks phased out of use in drag racing anyways? ‘65? cheers, John ps - I’m walking my dog one mile each day now so I’m making progress on my medical recovery!

Thank you Mike for taking all these pics and writing up the details, very helpful! I originally bought the new Moebius ‘65 Nova gasser kit with the thought of using it as a basis to build Doug Thorley’s ‘65 AWB “Chevy-2-Much” (I have the Fremont Racing decals) . You’re right, it’s too nice a kit to sacrifice for the front clip. I think I’ll take a look at how Moebius did the front clip and straight axle and copy the aspects of it that I like and can apply to the Harrell ‘66 Nova. I have a bag of resin leaf springs I bought from Speed City awhile back and can probably find a pair that can work. I have yet to get tired of scratch-building these classic 60’s drag cars, they are fun “puzzles” to solve and sure are a lot cheaper then messing with 1:1 vintage drag cars! Much thanks Mike! John

Thanks Mike. I’ve been incredibly healthy for nearly 70 years and was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in Feb, so I guess I was overdo for something! My doc performed a “robotic assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy” on me on April 3 and I’m recovering pretty well despite the usual side effects. My amazing wife, our family, my dog and my scale modeling hobby have really helped me get through these tough weeks. And my wife says I’m not allowed to die until I finish the +250 unbuilt model kits in the garage so I better get heathy and back to work! Thanks for the clarification on the different appearances of Seaton’s car in the various photos online, makes sense. I plan to build the initial car with the Howard slotted wheels and what looks like an aluminum front bumper. With the weather finally drying out and warming up on the West coast, I’m suddenly wanting to start a bunch of drag car builds (I.e.; my interest in your Harrell Nova ). Thanks, John