papajohn97

Thanks guys for the nice responses. Here are a few photos I got off of George Klass’s excellent website (georgeklass.net) that captures the type of car I was attempting to model. The first photo (#973) is Carol Cox in her class winning ‘61 Ventura. I have an AMT ‘60 Ford Starliner kit which I hope to build soon also as a showroom stock drag car to park next to this Pontiac. What fun those good old days must have been when a blue collar guy could take his street car to the drags on a Saturday, remove the wheel covers and air cleaner, win or loose a few and then drive home.

I wasn't sure whether to post this one in "model cars underclass" (stock) or here. This is my interpretation of a mostly showroom stock 61 Pontiac Catalina with some mild mods that I believe would fit within the NHRA rulebook for "stock" class (class S/S for 0 - 10.59 lbs./ hp, I figured 368 hp (dual carb 389?) for a 3750 lb. car and came out with 10.19). Dual carbs (Holleys) and the hood scoop (actually a Ford truck part that Pontiac had to assign a stockroom number for) were around then but not on the standard order form as I understand it. I used an actual restored car posted on the web, a beautiful Bamboo Cream colored Super Duty 421, for the "appearance" prototype for this model (here) but wanted this model to be closer to a car driven off a car lot and taken directly to the drags (think Carol Cox's NHRA winning '61 Ventura (first woman to win an NHRA class!)). I'm sure someone might find some errors in my interpretation and the execution of this build but it's just a model car for goodness sake and I had a lot of fun building this one. This is the excellent Moebius kit mostly OOB but I added the resin carbs (Fireball), aluminum distributor and air cleaners (Detail Master) and misc. solder fuel lines and wire linkage and brake line. The carbs and air cleaners are likely over-scaled but I'm happy with the over-all look of the engine. I scratch-built the hood scoop using Evergreen styrene sheet and the tach using Evergreen rod and tubing. I airbrushed Scale Finishes base paint for the Bamboo Cream with a Tamiya TS-13 clear coat and masked and airbrushed the tri-color interior using Tamiya acrylics. Remaining areas were painted using Tamiya acrylics and Alclad Chrome over black enamel for the window frames. I used BMF to do the two super thin trim spears on each side as these were too thin to try to mask and paint with Alclad/ enamel. I'm down to a 1/2 sheet of my "good" older BMF and not sure what I'm going to do when this is gone, the new stuff is terrible. I've been building mostly sixties SS'ers since 2019 and wanted to do an early car that reflected the years when they were driven off of the lot and directly to the strip without a lot of mods, true super "stock" drag racing. I'm happy with this one, hope you like it too! Cheers, John

Nice job Mike! You did a great job on moving the rear wheel wells forward on the body, can barely see any remnants of the “surgery”. Also based on color reference photos, you’ve nailed that orange- red color, do you remember what paint you used? The decals came out beautifully and the wheels you used are a perfect match to reference photos. Your post is ”timely” for me, I have two of these Revell stock Z16 kits and am about to start cutting the bodies and chassis to build this same drag car. From what I’ve read, this car had both front and rear wheels shifted approx. 12” forward to maintain the stock wheelbase and so the body was essentially moved rearwards on the stock chassis. References I’ve read have also described this car as very squirrelly to drive particularly due to extreme chassis torquing at launch. Despite the lack of factory backing, this car was very successful in match-racing against the dominating Mopars in ‘65-‘66. Hoping my results come out half as good as your build here. Thanks for posting!

Great idea! I would paint the seats in a lacquer or enamel base in the desired piping color, then spray the seat color in acrylic and once dry, remove the acrylic paint on the piping with a Q-tip or foam swab dampened with Windex. Masking the painted seats with piping exposed and then dry-brushing the piping with colored enamel might be another possibility?

Nice job on this AWB poncho. Love the look of the red tinted windows with the candy red. Did you move the rear wheels forward on the Revell GTO kit body or use a resin body for this build? I’m hoping to build an AWB ‘65 Chevelle (“Seaton’s Shaker”) and am assuming that I’ll need to use two Revell kit bodies to shift both front and rear wheels forward and fill in the missing gaps behind each wheel well.

I remember that color on mid-sixties Chevies and you really nailed it. A very clean accurate looking build - would love to see more photos taken and posted with the car outside the case.

Gorgeous build Trevor, especially that interior! I love your piping technique, will have to give that a try. I wonder if you can do colors other than white by just running the edge of a colored marker or thin paint brush along the edge of the bonded piping and then touching-up any excess piping color with the seat color paint? Love your photography as well.

This Impala bubble-top is one nice build. Black is hard to get right and you really mastered it on this one. First class interior detailing, bright work/ BMF and overall clean meticulous workmanship. My favorite part are those thin-walled tubing exhaust pipe tips…what a difference that makes, gotta try that on a future auto build. Beautiful!!!

A 23rd Century Tyrrell Six-Wheeler! Powered by Dilithium Crystals no doubt. I love it Pat! Bet the masking tape companies love it too!

I was there, a great show! Everyone in a joyous mood, felt like life was finally returning to normal. It was interesting about the huge number of auto entries and the shockingly small number of the other categories (AFV’s, figures, aircraft, ships). I expected a lot more models to be entered in general due to all the pandemic builds and two year contest hiatus. Looks like everyone just built car models while stuck at home? 😁 The other interesting observation was the lower prices at the swap meet - I saw 1/25 auto kits that’s I’ve paying $40-50 online for $15-20. Good Revell and AMT 1/25 kits for $10. Ebbro F1 1/20 kits (Lotus 49C, 72C) for $45. WNW 1/32 aircraft kits that go for $300-$1000 on eBay for $100 -$125 at this show. Maybe kit prices are finally dropping due to the end of the pandemic and all those unbuilt kits?

This big build came out really nice, particularly the outdoor pics. A lot of eye candy to feast on! So concerning those weird Italian “wired fasteners” securing the body panels, did they come with the kit or are they after-market parts or did you scratch-build those? Really adds to the detail. I would love to attempt this kit or the fender-less Nuvolari version or the Fiat with the monster engine but they are all so large, it’s a big one to try to hide from the wife!

Amazing how much better this Lincoln looks with the grafted on Caddy window and Ford top, they really work with the lower lines on the side profile of this car. I can imagine this car cruising into Harvey’s Broiler in the late ‘50’s. Love it!

Thank you Misha for the excellent summary/ reference photos on Corvair Funnies. I thought this Chezoom kit re-issue was the only affordable Corvair styrene body currently available but it looks like older AMT/Ertl stock kits are listed on eBay in the $30-$50 range. It will be a fun (and expensive) project sourcing the body and a suitable FC kit for the Logghe chassis to do one of these. Funny how $5 worth of extra decals can lead one into dropping $100 into more kits & parts to bash a project together in order to use the decals!

You’re doing a masterful job on this build Misha, really enjoying reading your progress reports. I have a set of Slixx Hayden Proffitt Corvair FC decals left over from a previous build (his ‘65 Comet A/FX) and I wonder if this Chezoom kit might be a reasonable base kit to attempt a build of Proffitt’s early front-engine FC (first iteration with the roof)?

Thanks Steve. I used Tamiya TS-21 Gold lacquer rattle can spray for the base color and then clear coated it with Tamiya TS-13. I tried to apply a multitude of really thin clear coats and allowed them to fully cure overnight to prevent the “hot” TS-13 from reacting with the metallic gold. I still encountered a few funny crystalline areas on this Mustang which showed up a day after spraying the final “wet” clear coat application. It’s almost as if the wet coat I applied managed to seap through the thin layers of cured lacquer and react with the gold. I have had the same problem with TS-13 over Tamiya silver leaf. I’m open for any ideas/ suggestions for a good hard lacquer-like clear coat that doesn’t react with metallic base coats (not interested in carcinogenic 2K or acrylics/ Future).

Beautiful job Zip! Smooth shiny paint! Clean foiling work! Realistic engine bay! Looks even better than the pic on the box! ‘53….last year of the flat head AND the year I was born; think I might have to pick one of these up to build for sentimental reasons.

This looks like the work of a professional model maker! Impressive and inspiring! The small proportional changes that you made in merging and adjusting these two inaccurate kit bodies are very subtle but amazingly effective! You have an amazing eye and the workmanship skills to go with it. Bravo!

Nice job on this rarely seen model and an excellent choice on the color. Are those wiper blades really molded into the windshield? I love that they’re stuck in the upward position (probably realistic for a Renault?…).

Love this build, love the color but especially LOVE that diorama background! The rusted dirty stairway/ dumpster/ bldg really makes this sparkling brand new Galaxie look even shinier. Fabulous model photography!

Cool! Thank you Ron! I knew there would likely be a subject matter expert with direct knowledge about these stickers on this board. I’m planning to model Shirley Shahan’s ‘65 Hemi Plymouth SS/A Drag-On-Lady and wanted to include these stickers on the windshield. So what were you driving and winning with in ‘78?

In researching sixties super stock drag cars, I keep seeing these on the windshields on some reference photos: Any ideas what they mean? ‘T’ for tech inspection? ‘E’ for eliminations? I have decals for these but would like to know what they mean before I put them on any builds. I welcome experts opinion on this and, lacking that, logical speculation. Much thanks!

Sweet! You really nailed the profile stance on this one, looks just like the photos I’ve seen online of the original 1:1. I also like the forward cut-out detail on the front wheel well and the decals are fantastic (Fremont Racing Specialties?). My wishful thinking is that someday Moebius will issue an AWB version of their new Chevy II kits as a base kit for this car.

That is sweet! Hard to believe it’s 1/24, it looks as good as the best 1/20 Tamiya builds I’ve seen posted. I actually like the black gloss base photos the best, especially the first side profile shot - wow! Beautiful crisp clean flawless build. I watched a hokey History Channel series recently on “cars that changed the world”. The Honda segment mentioned that they were having difficulties moving beyond motorcycles and obtaining a license to manufacture autos from the Japanese government in the 60’s. This first F1 win after several unsuccessful years finally brought them the recognition they needed to be considered a serious auto company by the Japanese gov’t and be allowed to manufacture and sell cars and ultimately becoming a global giant. Not just another race car….

Excellent job kit-bashing this resin body with the AMT Nova. I love any and all of the 60’s stockers/SS-er’s/ FX-er’s and this is one I never knew existed among Knafel’s Tin Indians. You were right about background info on this car - no official reference info that I could find. All I ran across was speculation in a Yenko car forum that the Acadian was used by Knafel because he could install a 427 Chevy and qualify as “modified stock” in some racing series (NASCAR? AHRA?) because all of the Canadian GM cars in ‘67 used Chevy blocks….hopefully someone else here can confirm or shoot down this rumor. BTW, did you include an engine in this build and was it a BBC?

You’re doing a beautiful job so far on this build. Your paint work on the front end, cockpit and yellow stripe are very nice. I’ve built four of these Ebbro 1/20 F1 kits (Lotus 33, 49B, 72C and Tyrrell 002), all of them somewhat challenging for me, particularly in getting the front and rear end assemblies to be aligned and all four tires in contact with the road. I look forward to seeing this 49 come together and hope you don’t encounter the issues I had with my Ebbro Lotus kits. I also hope that Ebbro re-pops this 49 someday so that others can enjoy it without having to take out a second mortgage!