papajohn97

Just now joining the crowd watching this WIP. Very cool car Tom and amazing Swiss watch maker detailing that you’re doing on this one. I love the pic of the pink primer undercarriage with the black frame and all the eye candy details. I have always loved Tamiya’s Pearl light red but have only used it on a custom I once built, never thought of it for a drag car. Looking forward to seeing this one finished.

Enjoying your WIP on these Mopars Ron. Love the look of the silver with the mags on your last posting. I’ve built three of these Lindberg/ AMT/ Round 2 ‘64 Dodge kits (as well as two of the Plymouths) - I love ‘em, they’re great BUT….the plastic axle pins on all four wheels are crazy weak and may eventually break on you. I’ve had some success drilling out the front spindles and rear differential/ axle housing and replacing all four plastic pins with 1/16” OD brass rod or tubing. I’m hoping your plastic pins survive but if they don’t, rest assure it’s an easy one to fix, good luck!

Thanks guys, John - the AMT ‘62 Bel Air kit comes with poseable front wheels. I wish AMT included extended arms with pins on the spindles and a tie rod like Revell does, one of these days I need to add one to this and a dozen other AMT builds I have with pigeon-toed front wheels….

Pro-mods are generally not my cup of tea but I love this build, not just because of the craftsmanship and details but the styling transformation that you’ve achieved with this ‘64 Dodge body, it really works as a stretched front end, chopped roof, boxed rear spoiler pro-mod. Fabulous!

Love today’s B-T-C car Mike! How did you kit bash this one? Reliable Resin body and Polar Lights engine/ chassis? Beautiful blue paint and decal work, overall appearance and stance came out looking very accurate! I have yet to model a first gen. flipper FC but your builds are motivating me to give one a go. I got to see the original 1:1 of this car with JJ behind the wheel win the night at OCIR (in ‘69?) when I was a pimply 16 yr old and “Age of Aquarius” was climbing the Bill Board chart. 45+ years later, I encountered this same car at the “World of Speed” auto museum near Portland, OR before they shut the place down. Wished I’d taken some pictures of it!

What! No magazine cover? Just kidding Mike, this is a very nice build of legendary JJ’s pre-funny car period gasser. When I picked up the Moebius Chevy II gasser kit, this was one of the cars I thought I might build so it’s great to see a finished one. Also, I don’t think I would have even noticed the black/ white decal overlay issue if you hadn’t mentioned it, look’s fine as is. I’m thinking now of doing the Moebius kit as an altered wheel base car, Doug Thorley’s “Chevy-2-Much” but procrastinating because of the extensive body/ chassis surgery required. I also still want to build a “Seaton’s Shaker” with two of the Revell Chevelles, with all the cutting and puttying, maybe another “binge build” is in my future? You and Altered Ego (Jeff) with your amazing productivity, you’re leaving the rest of us in the dust here!

Thanks Jeff. Four of the five are posted here. The fifth build I did in my “binge build” was a sloppy version of Dick Brannan’s “Lively One” ‘63 Ford 427 using the recent AMT Round 2 re-issue with the one-piece chassis and pin-in-sockets replacing the four old self-tapping screws. Among other issues, the front end slight jacked-up stance came out all wrong so I parked this one on my shelf-of-shame…. John Witzke did an A+++ build of this same historic stocker which he posted here and which I’ll just say I was hoping to do at best a B grade version with the kit chassis but ended up with a D minus. If anyone wants to model this car, I recommend copying John’s build using a ‘60 Starliner doner chassis along with the correct resin interior and the excellent Slixx decal set.

Agree with others here on your color selection David, perfect for an early period gasser. Turquoise was really popular in the 50’s/ early 60’s and it really clicks with the satin black. Nice job! Please build and post more classic drag subjects!

Yet another beautiful cover car! I’m blown away by how quickly you knock these builds out Mike and each one is a very clean and high quality build. Do you display your collection with the mag cover behind each one? It would constitute an easy winning “collection” entry at a model contest someday (and an article in MCM?). So does the body flip up on this one? If so, post another pic or two. Much thanks!

Nice clean build Mike on this R code racer. I really like the side profile slightly jacked-up look you achieved in the front stance, did you use the lower front axle holes provided in the kit chassis or did you have to adjust them? Some kits tend to be too jacked up IMO, yours looks just right. Just when I thought I had all the mid-sixties SS kits I would ever want, now I gotta look for one of these!

Yep. I’m addicted to ‘em. I remember your Zintsmaster, Tom, it was an A++ build!

Thanks Bob. I masked around the scripts and then dry-bushed them using gold enamel. This technique is probably be too dull to use for chromed scripts but I think it works pretty well for the gold.

Thanks guys! Hi Mike, I probably had the same grainy pic that you had. I read somewhere that this car was painted a bright yellow (more “mustard”?) that was factory color on Chevy trucks in the early 60’s which I wasn’t crazy about this shade even if more accurate. I sprayed mine in a Porsche 356 light yellow from Scale Finishes that I had left over from a previous project. On the decals, I believe the SMP set that I used is intended for Don’s white ‘63 Impala Z-11 and so are not accurate decals for this ‘62 Impala but that’s all I could find and I wanted to build the yellow ‘62. Often times I build for fun over accuracy. I was also not crazy about the litho-like rastor graphics art that SMP uses for their decals (vs Slixx’s crisp clean vector graphics) but at least their decal film is nice and thin and they look ok from a foot or two away. Decal availability seems to drive the drag subjects I build and I need to get back to making me own on a future project.

Thanks guys! All my photos including the interior shots were taken using my iPhone 13 (non-pro) with the ultra-wide angle lens. I always forget to take photos of the interior before final assembly so this feature on my new cell phone came in handy. The distortion reminds me of the advertisements of that period where they made the interior look as wide as a bowling ally. Those “wide track Pontiacs” looked like they took up two lanes!

Thanks guys! Good question Stef! The ‘62 NHRA rules for all stock classes including SS and FX for exhausts requirements were: AMT’s instructions show using either the stock exhausts OR the racing headers + extensions but I decided to install both to comply with the period rules. I probably should have shown a bypass junction between the header extensions and the stock exhausts between the mufflers and the engine but just got lazy (building five at a time can do that to you!). I just installed the front end of each stock exhaust up between the engine and engine bay with no connection to the headers. I have yet to see an undercarriage photo of this or any of the ‘62 409 SS drag cars showing the exact exhaust configuration, maybe someone here has a pic they can post to help clarify what they actually did. May have just been two short bypasses off the exhaust pipes near the trans?

This is the one stock build I completed while simultaneously building four other 1/25 drag subjects (I don't recommend doing that unless you like mixing up radiator hoses and batteries!). I heard that this AMT kit was very nice and was not disappointed, multiple engines, separate components for the chassis, exhausts, gas tank, inside door panels on the interior. Felt like I was building a Revell kit! The exterior was painted in metallic "Orchid Grey" from Scale Finishes, the brightwork trim in Alclad over black enamel or foil, all other colors in Tamiya acrylics. I think these first year Starliners are beautiful but then I also really like GM's '59 - '60 bodies, they still look so futuristic to me. If Don Draper got demoted at Sterling Cooper and had to trade down from his Caddie, I can see him driving to the office in this lavender Starliner. Cheers, John

This is the third drag car I built as part of my "build five at one time" madness, Dyno Don Nicholson's '62 Chevy Impala 409 powered super stock. I used Revell's 1/25 kit and decals from SMP along with Fireball resin carbs and Detail Master distributor/ plug wires and some scratch-built fuel lines and linkage. I highly recommend this Revell kit, I encountered absolutely no issues and it looks very accurate IMO. Cheers, John

I started a "batch build" of five 1/25 car kits over the summer in an attempt to reduce my ever growing stash, four 60's super stock drag cars and one stock Ford. Two of the drag subjects I picked were Hayden Proffitt race cars, his championship 409 powered '62 Bel Air and a 426 Wedge powered '64 Plymouth. Little did I know that Mr. Proffitt would pass away on August 19th at the age of 94 at his home in Texas while I was at about the mid-way point of my builds...weird timing. He was a legend in So. Cal drag racing in the 60's, driving Pontiacs, Chevies, Plymouths, Mercurys, a wild early "topless" funny car with a Corvair body and an AMC funny car. Both of these kits are AMT/ Round 2 and I used Slixx decals for the Chevy and Yesteryear decals for the Plymouth. The Plymouth decals were intended for Hayden's automatic Hemi-powered sedan (SS/A) but I decided to use them on this hardtop stick shift Wedge Belvedere. I added Fireball resin carbs and Detail Master distributors along with scratch-built fuel lines to both carbs. The Detail Master aluminum velocity stacks I used on the Plymouth are not period correct but I suffered build fatigue after five simultaneous car builds and decided not to attempt to scratch- build more correct lower/ flatter factory Mopar velocity stacks. Both are quite imperfect but were fun to build and look good enough to me to park next to my other 60's SS builds. I never saw Hayden Proffitt race but have read that he was fierce competitor as well as a very nice gentleman to all that knew him. RIP Hayden. John

I agree with others here, for an old mold kit, it’s an excellent one. I built and posted a stock version recently (here), the only problem I had was getting the openable trunk lid to close/ seat against the body. I finally gave up and bonded the trunk lid closed but have seen other posted builds without this issue so it was likely operator error on my part and not the kit. Looking forward to following your build progress.

I really like recent vintage Revell 1/25 kits. I’m building their ‘62 Impala side-by-side with the AMT ‘62 Bel Air (which I also love) but the Revell kit is just so much better engineered and debugged. Other standout Revell kits that were a joy for me to assemble include the ‘40 Ford coupe, ‘50 Olds and ‘57 Chevy 150. Some of recent AMT kits such as the ‘60 Starliner and the ‘62 Pontiac come close to Revell and a few of the older AMT kits such as the ‘49 Ford and Merc are amazingly good for their age. Moebius kits are also very good although a few have some challenging flaws that test one’s modeling skills (‘61 Ventura/Catalina).

Wonderful thread, thank you Gramps (Gary) and others for these posts, stirring old memories for me. My introduction to Chaparrals was a 1/24 Cox ‘2’ (2A?) slot car that my dad gifted me back when it was first issued (1965?) which, along with a Model Rectifier controller, brought big track slot car racing into my childhood. IIRC, It seemed like Cox used actual magnesium for the wheels and chassis although it could have just been corroded low-alloy aluminum? Fun times. I have yet to build any scale model Chaparrals but have picked up 4-5 of the 1/32 slot car versions that have been issued over the last few decades. The most impressive collection of scale model Chaparrals that I recently saw was displayed at the IPMS Nationals in Chattanooga in 2019: Unfortunately I failed to record the name of the person who built/ displayed these beauties when I photographed them at the “display only” area of the contest, maybe someone here knows who built these and can give them credit?

Very nice job Justin on thus ancient tooled 1/25 kit. This subject matter is really interesting to me (anything related to Dan G., a 60’s open wheel Lotus that’s not BRG, early rear engine Indy cars). I’ve been holding off picking up this re-issue because of the 1/25 scale. The photo with your Lotus parked next to the 1/20 Tamiya Ligier really shows how small this completed model is compared to 1/20 open wheeled race car models which I’m a big fan of. Now if Ebbro would issue a 1/20 kit of this car based on Tamiya’s Lotus 25 (like they did recently with the Lotus 33), I’d be all over it!

A well deserved award Steven, hard to believe you didn’t take home a “best of show” as well with this one. Absolute perfection in every way!

This satin “F6F Hellcat Navy Blue” looks absolutely perfect on this ‘49, I love how it contrasts and complements the chrome trim and glass. Very nice!

Very nice Mario! I particularly like the black wash you did on the grill and wheel covers and the toning down on the rear brightwork between the trunk lid and bumper (which the kit provides as a shiny chrome part). I’m currently building a yellow Dyno Don version of this same Revell kit and agree with you that it’s a beautifully engineered and molded model. Love all your builds, so realistic looking, particularly with the dio backdrops you use for your photos. Please post some more!