Wild Child

I recently came across a couple pics I thought I would share of the LA Hooker and Nelson Carters Super Chief. Carter sold the Super Chief to the Beaver brothers, who turned it into the Hooker.

Thanks guys. Mike, while I have scratch built some pumps, this pump is the pump in the Polar Lights kit. Some need 3 lines, some 2 depending on the car and tanks. Also, different injection setups use different lines....some basic like these, some multiple. What I usually do is cut the tips off the pump, drill a tiny hole, insert .015 or .018 piano wire in, then slide braided line over followed by the fitting (which presses on), both with a dab of super glue gel. Works great, though a little time consuming sometimes.

Thanks Scott. I appreciate you taking the time to say that. Some of these custom builds are a bit tuff, so it is especially gratifying to know people like the finished results.

Two of my favorite 1969 era Pontiac Funny Cars in my collection include these two custom builds, Lew Arington's Brutus '69 Firebird and KS Pittman's '68 Firebird (Pittman's car was actually raced as a '69 but really had a '68 body). Both cars feature modified standard kit bodies including modified hoods (which use the street machine open center hood with a section of the 400 hood molded in), modified spoilers, modified wheelwells, cut windshield, filled grille areas and more. Paint finishes were very similar in color, with the Pittman car being slightly more orange, and both have hand rubbed finishes. Extensive modifications to the interior panels was also required. The chassis are both Polar Lights units which have been shortened to fit the bodies. Correct wheels with valve stems and accurate graphics were used. The motors are fully wired, plumbed, and have linkage. While most Firebird's ran Canadian Pontiac motors (aka big block Chevy) in 1969, these two used Chrysler Hemi's. Pittman used one of their modified gasser 392 Hemi's while Arington used a 426 Hemi. Side Note - In the early '60's, Mickey Thompson made Pontiac aluminum Hemi heads for the 421 Super Duty engines. Around 1964, Lew Arington purchased the leftover heads from Mickey, and ran Hemi headed Pontiac motors for a few years very competitively. When these were finally used up, and no replacements available due to GM's anti racing ban, Lew switched to Chrysler Hemi's.

One more pic of the '69, showing a bit more of the upper paint accent and the hood pinstriping. As mentioned earlier, these Slixx decal sets are made for the Comp Resins longer bodies, so once you have your standard kit body modified, the Slixx decals have to be carefully cut and aligned so all the patterns and dimensions match.

Thanks guys. If you get a chance to check out the Tommy Ivo dragster that "Magic Mustang" (Gerald ) recently saved, it looks pretty cool too. Always cool to save these old cars when you can, especially Funny Cars and Dragsters.

Very nice. I am a big fan of re-doing or saving old kits. This Ivo car looks cool.

Thanks Evan, I will check it out regularly.

Evan, Thanks for the input and info. I have seen a lot on this truck thru the years on the net both before and after the restoration. When I built my '56, I used a few good pics I had seen over the years, though I did take a couple liberties on my build. Here is some useful info. 1-The hubcaps in the kit are indeed correct spinner caps looking at my original pics. They are a little small as they should cover the entire wheel though. 2-I used the rear bumper for visual purposes, but Ed did not have the bumper on in any of the pics I have seen. Looks naked without it though. 3-The truck came with a single exhaust, but sources I know who knew Ed claim he had duals on at one point. However, none of the rear photos I have ever seen have ANY exhaust pipe outlets showing, so I do not know what you would personally deem correct. 4-The dash top and front face had custom paint applied. 5-My motor compartment does have the correct hoses, line, linkage, oil tube and chrome air cleaner. Motor color I chose. 6-I did trim the mirror down a little, just looked hideous as tall as the kit mirror was. Also, there is a Work in Progress (WIP) section here that you can post your project and show everyone what you do throughout the build. Hope this all helps a little, and good luck on your build

Yeah Dave, doors are a pain. Fit them first. I cut off the inner door pins on the backside of the door the hinge goes to so I could line door up, then glue hinge to wherever the best location inside the door was. I used Amazing Goop because it sets fast, and I can pull it apart if I need to. When I put the truck together, the inner motor compartment side inner fender rears go over hinge to hold it in place. After a couple trial runs, I determined that the front edge of the door was not ever going to fit right that way, so I left the rear part that covers the hinge a little loose, or not tight to the hinge. The hinge moves around like this but seemed to fit more flush to the truck. So I wedge glued a small bit of leftover plastic in the top area of the hinge (on the door side) which pushed the door inward and made it fit fairly well. Trial and error, and a bit of patience, will eventually pay off. Once you get into it, you may even come up with your own way, or yours may even fit better. And we have not even got to the flame decals yet!!!

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the cool comments. And Ken, I also like the old Ed Roth stuff and often attend car events sporting a vintage looking Rat Fink shirt. Sometimes takes a little explaining to younger folks, but that's alright. ALSO, I finally got around to posting the '56 Ford shop truck separately (in the pickup truck section), and mentioned the pitfalls of doing this kit.

Nice cars, always liked the Dyno Don cars. I like the theme you use. Several of my Funny Cars I posted in pairs too, just looks cool.

As a fan of all the cool 1960's custom cars, one of my favorite builders was Big Daddy Ed Roth. In the Model Cars section I recently posted my Ed Roth cars with Shop front display, and I mentioned I would do an additional post on the '56 Ford shop truck build. This truck came out pretty cool overall and features a highly detailed engine, hand painted woodgrain bed, custom painted and pinstripped dash top and face (as original), and a nice, glossy, pearl white paint finish. But the main points I wanted to touch on is the difficulty in doing some things related to this build. First you will notice this truck has opening doors, which is cool but also poses its own problems. The doors, once put in position with hinges in place, fit terrible. There are long hinges that glue to the door, then are held in place by a section of the inner fender. Problem is, if put together correctly, the front of the door pops out too far and looks bad. Leave the back fender well a bit loose, and the door flops around all over and fits terrible. The solution was to leave the back fender well a little loose, or not fitting tight, and then glue a wedge in the top area of the hinge prying it back a bit. This moves the door inward at the front, then keeps it at least reasonably snug. Overall not perfect, but pretty nice. Second is the wild flame graphics. If you are not a drinkin man, you might be after doing these! There are over 20 different sections which must all be aligned perfectly to each other over multiple separate body panels. It will take nearly 1/4 bottle of Decal Sol and a lot of patience, and probably a couple afternoons. Because of all the various body contours, and the fact that many of these flame decals roll around the edges of the wheel wells and hood, I found there were just too many variables to get these things to lay down nice. My solution was to trim the decal a little around the rolled edges, then just brush paint around the edges of the wheel wells and hood lip. Another note is that from the pics I have seen, the hood emblem was either not on the truck, or painted over. My suggestion after doing this truck is to just sand it off first so the hood flames will lay down nicer. Hope this info helps for anyone doing one of these kits. You can modify my ideas to come up with your own solutions to some of the difficulties in doing this kit. But it really is a cool kit.

The Fokker DV single wing fighters and these D VII planes came from the factory with this style camo referred to as a 'Lozenge' pattern. Some pilots overpainted this with various personal markings, as well as various unit markings. The white tail, nose and wheels identifies the unit while the white stripe with spade is a personal marking of the pilot. All the planes in this unit would have usually had this same white tail, nose and wheels. While some planes could have been overpainted darker for night operations, all the planes should have come from the factory with this Lozenge pattern. The Fokker Dr1 Triplane used a different pattern alltogether which was just a basic brush wash over the fabric. To see several different versions of markings on the same plane, look up my 1/28 Fokker Triplane post. You can see what several units and personal markings look like on the same camo. Cool stuff.

Thanks guys. Bruce, there were camo pattern waterslide decals made for these large 1/28 Fokkers years ago, but were discontinued as this plane has not been reissued for decades and the old kits are hard to find. I had an old set, hoping to do a plane one day. It takes a lot of decal sol to soften these to make them lay down nice. They are brittle and crack easy. You must also come up with paint to match all the colors, often hand mixed, to take care of misc spots where decals are spliced, or on wing edges. Plus, bottom colors are different too. Tuff to do, but I love the results vs the box art version which was a solid red and white plane with no camo. This version, which was more commonly used in real life, is much cooler.

Neat trailer Tony. Love the real vintage trailers too.

Thank you guys. I had an inquiry about the Ed Roth figure. The older Road Agent kits included this figure, and I think one of the other older kits may have had another one in it also (perhaps the Surfite). Review the outside boxes for this info.

Very nice car, like the color. I always enjoy looking at the dirt track full body cars. My dad raced circle track cars from the early 1950's to 1970. I built models of his 6 cars, and my favorites were his '55 Pontiac and his '64 GTO. I should get around to posting them someday. Nice Ford though!

Over the last month or so I posted several of my large scale 1/28 Revell WW1 planes, including 4 planes that were custom built. This is one of my favorites, the Fokker D VII. Many believe this was the best all around fighter of WW1, and was the only German plane that the Allies insisted on being turned over to them at wars end (to be used by various countries for years after the war). This Fokker was fun to build, and went together beautifully. The lozenge camouflage was really tuff to do on this larger scale to get everything to line up well. The personal graphics were hand applied. The pilot I changed by modifying his arm to hold a walking stick, which Anthony Fokker gave many pilots of the era and was made out of actual airplane propellers. Overall, I think it came out well.

Wow, thank you everyone for your positive comments. Many of us have grown up around these cars, both real and toy. Mike, I too love everything related to Ed's cars and the Rat Fink memorabilia. Hope to see more from all the Rat Finks out there, including your cars too!

As a long time Show Rods fan, I have always loved the cool cars built by Ed Roth, George Barris, Dean Jefferies and others. Having built a few Ed Roth cars, and a couple that were in the works, I wanted to come up with a cool way to display them all together in my curio cabinet. I wanted it to be compact, easy to set up and tear down, and easy to transport. This is what I came up with. The store front is a replica of the front showroom area of his mid sixties shop. It is fairly accurate with only a couple upgrades and is based on a couple old black and white partial pics I was able to find. I first drew up plans, then built a bass wood framework which I covered in poster board and applied brick to. I hand made the display windows, framed them with channel material, and added the windows. The roof is hand made and s like the cheap shingles used by Ed, the yellow wood sign backboards were hand cut, and the signs were also hand made. Overall I think it came out pretty nice and serves as the perfect backdrop for his cool customs. The custom cars include the Beatnik Bandit, the Road Agent, the Surfite, the Mail Box trike, Ed's '56 Ford shop truck.,and a customers cool T-Bucket. I also have an Outlaw rod in the works to add in later. The cars are all nicely detailed and feature high gloss paint finishes. The Ford truck also features a highly detailed engine with wires, lines and hoses as well as a cool custom painted and pinstriped dash, and a hand finished wood grain bed. I plan to post the Ford truck at a latter date and fill everyone in on the difficulties associated with doing this build. All in all, I am happy with this multi-car build. Plus, it looks great in my curio! T

Thanks Carl.

Thanks Mike, I appreciate the input. With the rising costs of all these kits nowadays, and the rarity of stuff we used to see all over, I think more and more people will be re-doing old kits or buying partially done old kits more often. At the big Detroit show this weekend, I was amazed at the prices of old beat up cars in baggies now that we used to buy for a couple bucks as parts cars. At least some of these shows are still around, so there are still deals to be had if you look hard enough. Redo some of the old cars or kits laying around before winter is over. Then it is time to play with the full size cars!

Nice convertible. Cool color choice.

Very cool. Kind-of Mad Max meets IMSA with a bit more horsepower. Neat.