LennyB

Tried to do an experiment this week with the fender welting, a sort of proof of concept Have to admit it was a bit of a failure. Looking to compare two styles of welting I took a junk body and after creating channels for the welting on each front fender I put .020 round stock on the drivers side and left the passenger empty. Shot some paint on the body and after drying attempted to run scale spark plug wire on the passenger side. The failure was in trying to attach the spark plug wire to the already painted body. The wire wants to stay straight and not conform to the fender. And needs a glue that you can wipe off any excess without harming the paint. What I finally did was use some quick setting epoxy, which is dark grey in color when it dries, to attach the wire. It's a bit tedious as you can't leave any exposed glue and you need to hold the wire in place while the glue dries. In this case I taped down the ends of the wire until the glue set. Can't really do that on the finished model as you can't wipe off any excess glue under the tape. On the passenger side I covered the styrene rod with black BMF. Which is also tedious in it's own right. The spark plug wire welting actually looks better in real life then in the pics as you can't see the little bit of exposed glue, at least I can't with my old peepers. And I think the wire looks better then the black BMF. The BMF has a gloss to it while the wire is more of a mat finish. The end result IMHO is the wire looks better but is a risky proposition on an already painted body. I don't like the sheen of the BMF. I think I may just go with the styrene rod and just mask and spray some matte black on top of it in the end.

C'mon Greg, we know how accurate this kit is. AMT couldn't have done a poor rendition.? Almost looks like they tried to replicate a servo cover on the passenger side, guess no-one told them this is a manual transmission?

And I started this because I thought it would be an easy project, boy was I wrong. I hope we're not still tweaking the nose 12 months from now.?

That is why it was put up in the attic, I've already lost my mind on this '41 nose.?

Why do I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forwards. Greg, I really like your idea for the grill. I had moved the vertical moldings outboard to cover that awkward section of grill (which made the center section wider when it was already too wide to begin with). Your method solves two problems in one fell swoop. So I guess I'm going to have to steal that idea.? Just be careful about moving those headlights inboard. After I put the fender welting on this one I found the headlights sat on top of it. Luckily on this one I'm not going with the stock lights. And Jim, there is an easy way to fix the windshield opening. Chop off the nose and put a Woody behind it ?

The whole time I was trying to convert the '41 to the '39 my father gave me grief saying they are completely different cars. And yes, he was right. Picked up a 3D printed '39 off eBay a while back. Stuck it up in the attic once I received it as it's going to need a lot of work. Besides being very thick the roof is flat, headlights are wrong, fenders too square, hood is concave..... MAH09908.MP4

I'll get right on that?

Back in 1999 for my parents 40th wedding anniversary.

OK, I'll have to see where my father has it. I don't remember the last time I saw it and I'm sure it's not too accurate. In the meantime here's the real one I restored.

Thanks for the input. I'm pretty sure it's Testors enamel, but the 80's were a long time ago.

Does anyone have any experience stripping paint off a resin body. I've stripped styrene many times using the old standbys but never resin. Don't want to destroy the body in the process. Have an old Modelhaus 1968 Torino HT I painted years ago and then stuck it in a box. Any help is appreciated.

Maybe I was right the first time I built this kit by turning it into a 1939 P8

Greg Thanks for the feedback on the seats. I was going to go with a pedestal or something as they are a bit too wide, just like every other seat I tried, to fit the floor because of the center hump. So they have to be raised a bit to fit. And I like the idea of pinching the nose but I'm too far into it at this point to change things. Maybe on the next one. As the emblem is so faint as it is recasting it isn't a bad idea anyway. Or maybe just casting a whole new nose piece. I don't know, starting to sound like too much work ?

Those were the one's I was leaning towards.

The Coupe Next I did some interior remodeling. The interior in this kit leaves a lot to be desired. But one of the real things that bugs me is the underside view. There are huge gaps on either side of the interior tub and show outside the chassis frame rails. I decided to fabricate some floor sections to bridge the gap. Found some flat stock which was about the same thickness as the four pads on the bottom of the tub. Removed the pads and glued on my panels. Trimmed around them to give them some character. Still needs some adjusting and a spritz of black paint. But it's sure better then looking up at the drivers arm pit. And since the chassis is in place we can do a proper mock-up. But one last thing before I go. I want to replace the front bench seat with buckets. Digging through the old parts bin I came up with a few candidates. Opinions anyone? That's the kit bench on the far right as if I need to explain that.

The Coupe Been bouncing around a lot on these two projects for the last week. Waiting for paint to dry, parts to arrive, you know how this is. Didn't feel I was really making any progress but as I step back I guess I did better then I thought. Working a bit on the chassis. Wanted to go old school on the wheels and pulled some bits from the parts box. Also wanted to "represent" discs on the front and drums on the back. For the rear I dug out some backing plates which I fit over the wheel stub. Lousy pic here but you get the idea. For the front I shopped around for some aftermarket discs but everything seemed too large for my rims. Purchased a set of Gopher Racing 15" discs, but they turned out to be too big as well. Finally cannibalized an AMT 50th Anniversary Camaro for the discs, still kinda big but workable. Gonna pretend the back side of the disc is the dust shield. Just go along with me on this one OK. I don't want to have a metal axle running across my engine bay so I fabricated short stubs from round stock which will be cut to size later. Next moved on to the suspension. I was missing a bunch of the parts for the front so I used real springs to replace the missing kit parts and stole some spindles from another kit. Drilled out the spring pockets and epoxied in the new springs.

Very cool build, I'll tag along for the ride. I took one of these years ago and used it for parts to turn an AMT 69 Torino Modified stocker (where they took the annual kit and modified the wheel openings) back to stock. Used the wheel openings from this as well as the chassis, which was better then the AMT chassis. This was long before they reissued the 1969 "Cobra" kit.

Picked up a resin body of a 42-48 a while back. Needs a lot of work but was clearly based on the AMT '41 kit. It's a very thick casting and it is incomplete in the nose along with being warped. Not sure if it's a good starting point or if starting from scratch would be better.

Wow, nice work on this, looks really great. Almost makes me want to start my own if I didn’t have so many other projects going already ?

Very cool project, love to see things apart from the norm. Coming along good so far, I’ll be watching.

Looking very nice. I love this era Ford/Mercury mid sized. Find the chassis work especially interesting. Have a bunch of original AMT’s and this chassis looks like it may be a good upgrade for those kits.

I started the Moonraker Space Shuttle years ago, never got far and not sure what ever happened to the kit. Lost somewhere in the attic.

Thanks Charlie, appreciate you checking in.

THE COUPE Wanted to step away from the body work a bit and concentrate on other areas. Pulled out the chassis pieces as I've been thinking about wheel combinations and a narrowed Ford 9" rears. Had totally forgotten I had done chassis work a couple of years back and had already selected old school Cragars. Not going to start all over with the chassis so I guess we will just go old school. Ran into a hiccup however. Found I don't have any spindles for the front end, am missing one coil spring and both the front sway bar and tie rod. That's the risk you take resurrecting a builder. I think I'm going to go with real springs for the coils and guess I will fab the rest. The kit calls for a metal axle which is OK for the rear but I want to eliminate that for the front. So new spindles would probably be needed anyway. Also have to drill out the spring pockets as they are filled with glue, can you say glue bomb? So for now let's just do a quick mock-up to get an idea of stance.

Just about ready to drive to Mel's Diner.