OldNYJim

Thanks so much fellas! A little more progress this weekend… I wanted to figure out the steering so I could figure out the headers - the MPC kit doesn’t really have any kind of steering arrangement besides a trackbar between the front spindles, so I fabbed up a steering rack… Made a couple of mounting brackets to lower it to meet the spindles and fit under the oil pan: Just need a link back to the firewall and to print a mini u-joint or two and that’ll be ready for paint. Once that was handled, I could play with headers. I wanted to use the ones from the MPC kit but since I shortened the wheelbase on this thing they didn’t clear the front tires as well as I’d like. Couldn’t find anything I liked in my spares stash, so I ended up printing some that will work…I actually did try scratchbuilding a set but I’m just not as good at making them as the printer is… Need to figure out routing them out and away from the frame next, but these allow some decent steering lock at least: As you can see, I added some cooling - just used the AMT kit radiator, modified a touch to mate to the other kit’s frame - need to make hoses next and then that’s another piece ready for paint and detail… The stock firewall was all lumpy and bumpy and had hoses and wires and wiper vacuums and all kinds of non-racecar stuff so I replicated it on some sheet styrene for a cleaner look…not a super interesting piece, and not really necessary, but the stock part looked ugly to me…. This car WILL run brakes, so I printed a nicely detailed master cylinder, and I MIGHT mount a battery on there somewhere for easy access (although probably the trunk would be a better spot, so maybe not…) The kit seats are perfectly ok, but when I was printing some other stuff I ran some aluminum bomber style seats: Not at ALL typical of what people normally run/ran in these cars but I DO love how they look. I’m not going for a replica of any particular era or car, so I may or may not allow myself this indulgence for the sake of having some nice shiny polished aluminum in the interior to fancy it up a little… I don’t need a rear license plate, but a parachute would look cool back there, so I found a not very well cast resin piece in my stash that was a perfect fit: By the way, that rear panel had some pretty bad sink marks to contend with, it was a real treat filling that concave rear panel… And final job for this weekend was fabbing some simple wheelie bars. Not sure if this thing COULD pickup the front wheels, but it has plenty of motor and rear tire and not a lot of weight out front so I guess it’s feasible… They’re just mocked up here and need final gluing and straightening but I was excited to see how they looked on there: Yep, I think I’m ok with them….i was worried they’d be too over the top, but look at those rear tires…that ship already sailed… Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I have a pro-street build in mind, and these seem like a popular starting point… Looks like the frame would be easily adaptable to all kinds of other builds, and while I’m not gonna build a Nova I DO have a non-prostreet Nova idea in mind too…

They make a 3d printable rubbery resin that’s perfect for tires 👍🏻

I’ve had this idea in my head for a while, and at the last show I went to someone had donated a bunch of Vette kits to the raffle, and I won a bunch, so here goes nothing… Starting with this: I want to build something a little bit street-freaky, a little bit legit street-racer and a little bit gasser… This kit isn’t super detailed (I actually won a Revell kit of about the same era Vette that is a LOT nicer, but I’m not going for a stock build so that stays in the box), but I also won THIS: Now, this kit is notorious for the flipnose body being REALLY tough to get aligned nicely, but it has the stance and racing-y parts I want, so I was pondering whether I can just drop the later body onto this frame. One way to find out… Quick white-glue mockup to get the frame on it’s wheels: Looks like it WOULD work if I just take a few scale inches out of the front of the frame to shorten the wheelbase - it’s basically a perfect fit aside from that. Sliced the frame right in front of the motor mounts (so I can leave the entire drivetrain to assemble as intended): Added some pins for strength and alignment, and reassembled: Tada! I think this’ll work: And with the body: Now, I’ll need to do a LITTLE fabrication to properly mount the body to the frame, but the interior tub fits like it should, the motor is in the right place…couldn’t have asked for it to work much better so far. I’m gonna use the MPC kit for about everything that isn’t the body and interior and HOPEFULLY this won’t require days and days of fabrication (famous last words)… Credit should go to my buddy Tim for this build from probably a decade or more ago that I’m shamelessly ripping off: Which itself already inspired another build by our sadly departed mutual buddy Paul: And…that’s about as far as I got so far, besides printing a nice blower: Plenty more to come - thanks for looking!

This is an awesome build - I missed it first time around, but I’m glad I found it now! Nice work!

Where do you all find these nice lit display cases? IKEA used to make a nice glass display case, but as I understand it they’re discontinued now…

Thank you!! Working on the paintjob this week - not done yet, but about halfway thru anyway… Designed and cut some masks so I can lay down some panels that compliment the shape of the body: Shot those with some fades between a pearl purple, and fluorescent pink: Next up, designed and cut some more masks: And then shot some more pink (this time a strawberry-milkshake color that I mixed) and some Ammo chrome baby blue: Remove those masks and we have this: Next up, after letting this dry overnight I cut some more masks (stars and sparkles this time) and airbrushed a black fade on the very front of the nose, and the very back of the rear ‘tins’: Then, laid down the masks and shot some Vallejo opaque white: Let it tack up, removed the masks and had this: That’s most of the graphic-y stuff done on the body before I start adding some signwriting, but before I pulled the masks I added some yellow striping to the edges to stop it looking unfinished, with some extra little dots to add to the kinda sparkly glittery theme I’m going with on this body…then pulled the masks and here’s where we’re at: I’ve got some cleanup to do, and I want to let this yellow gel ink set-up overnight before shooting some intercoat to protect my work so far - but I’m having fun with this paintjob! Oh, and I remade the pedal assembly out of brass, but that’s neither finished or as interesting as custom paint 🤪 And found a really nice crisp blower to replace the kit piece… Plenty more to come - thanks for looking!

I’m enjoying this build - really nice clean work

You’re doing really nice work on this - the mods on the frame and particularly the doors…keep going!

Thanks fellas! A little more progress this week…most of it fairly disjointed and all over the place - but it makes sense to me… Got the body in paint! Spent forever trying to find the color I had in my head and then found it in Wicked Color’s paint line…I use their paint a lot so I should’ve looked there first, duh; More to come on the paint later, I’ve got some ideas… Printed and painted a bunch of A/N fittings: Did chrome first, then that blue candy over top to give the anodized look. The kit’s parachute pack is fairly uninspiring and looks more like a tin lunchbox, so I made one out of Tamiya epoxy…just made a cube and looked at pictures of real ones and kinda gave it wrinkles and folds and whatnot until it looked about right: There’s some detailing to do on this one after it’s painted, but it’s a little more interesting at least… The kit seat is made of rubber (or vinyl, probably) same as the kit tires, and it’s not the best…sliced and diced a parts-box part to fit the frame and then played with that putty some more to add the same wrinkly kinda fabric texture as the parachute pack: I went a bit overboard with the creases and wrinkles on this one - I figure the seatbelts will hide a LOT of this but I still want the interesting texture to show, so I just kept going… Painted the tires - Createx black to start, then Vallejo tire black and then cut some masks for some lettering…I need to seal these in some dullcoat and then do the next steps: And, finally, did some work on the rear axle - designed and printed some Airheart brake disks and replaced the super-thick kit steering support with something more to-scale: Still a BUNCH to do, but I’m trying to work through the bulk of the painting so that I can have some parts dry and ready for assembly over Thanksgiving…but I'm starting to get a little pile of bits that are almost done now: Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I never saw the show (movie?) that this was from, and don’t care to build a replica with it - but I still want one! Glad HL is stocking them!

That’s so awesome of you - thanks Mike! Someone else actually said they had at least one already (which is all I need) but if that doesn’t work out I would really appreciate that! Thanks so much!

I knew ONE of those Slixx sheets would have them - but looking online most of the pics were so blurry I couldn’t tell which logos were which ? Perfect, thank you!!

Has anyone ever seen this logo appear on a decal sheet? Building an early Hemi for a drag build I’m working on…thanks!

Thank you! I like the old (dangerous) kind a lot more than the rear engined stuff…but they’re all cool to me! I’d love a shot at driving one of these! I’ve been prepping parts and getting stuff into primer all week long…this yellow plastic is pretty soft, which means it sands easily but it’s easily scratched, and then the scratches come back soon as some solvent hits them - took some more effort than usual to get some of these bits perfect. And, of course, the printed stuff has its own issues to deal with, but I’m getting to where I can start painting some bits finally. I DID get the frame shot in some Createx black, followed by their high-gloss clear…this frame has so many fiddly little bars and braces that I didn’t really want to have to try polishing it to make it look decent, and a few good wet coats seemed to work ok: I’ve got a really colorful paint scheme in mind for this one, and I want there to be a bunch of chrome so I opted for a simple black frame and engine block to really help the more interesting stuff pop. Speaking of color-scheme, here’s the palette I’ll be using on this one: Definitely going for a traditional INSPIRED look, but as though it’s a modern paintjob - really excited to get to work on this. It won’t be a perfect reproduction of a period correct car, but I’m hoping it WOULD be welcomed with open arms to any vintage drag or cacklefest type event… Oh, and the kit headers didn’t look like they’d be fun to try and open up OR clean-up, so I printed some better ones. They’re actually hollow all the way down, which means they should look super realistic on the car…but they’re REALLY fragile. We’ll see how many of these I ruin before we’re done ? Just a small update - but I got a big pile of parts here ready for paint! Can’t wait to get to it!!

Lot of work went into that, it looks like…that’s awesome!

Appreciate all the pics, Tim! I know it’s no easy task to photograph and upload all of those - thanks for making the effort!

In my local store, it was by the glitter shakers and the kid’s bracelet making supplies (beads and elastic cord - that kinda stuff)

Anyone ever notice the HUGE jars of flocking they sell? Decent range of colors - $5 a jar…I now have enough to carpet every single build for the rest of my life, I think…

Thank you so much Bill! Fascinating! This opens up a world of possibilities I LOVE finding out about products like this - thanks for taking the time to post that information!

I’m familiar with making molds, but not using them for metal parts - would love to see a tutorial as and when you get to this project!

Good shout on the 48 wheel - suits the car well!

Great link - there’s a bunch of cool stuff on that site! Thank you! This is a render of that block - I’m no Hemi expert and I THINK it maybe be a few years too modern for this era of build…but it’s better than what came in the box at least. I’m sure it would be ok for a Cacklefest car at least: A little more progress - I really wanted to get this thing roughly mocked up before starting to add layers and layers of detail, so I had to figure out the exact wheel and tire situation… Fronts were easy…printed some cycle tires to fit my wire wheels: The kit rear tires are okkkkkk-ish, but the sidewall is way to square, and they have different manufacturer logos depending on which side you look at… These still need some post-processing, but I think they’re a bunch better: Quick mockup with my new tires…looks like a dragster to me! I needed to finish off the front suspension linkages - the kit ones are a little rough so I printed some rod ends and just made my own: WAY crisper! Note: excuse those jacked-up tires and wheels - I’m using the failed prints for all of this mockup work so I don’t ruin the good prints… As you can see, I’ve started messing with the body a little also…this kit isn’t really designed with having the body panels be removable in mind - so I started the cutting and shutting today so that with the frame completely assembled I can (hopefully) add and remove the body panels as I see fit. I did toy with running the bare minimum of a body - but I want some surface area for a nice paintjob too… Still have to finish locking in the exact mounting position for the motor, figuring out the steering and a couple of little projects and then I can start really going back through this thing and doing some fun detailing…thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

…we get an extra hour of bench time this weekend*! Good chance to start those fall projects or straighten up or do some research! *unless you’re married to my wife and she already planned a bunch of stuff to fill that hour and THEN some ?

Some great leads and insight there - thank you!! I found a banger forum online that has a BUNCH of cool photos on there, including a thread of ‘World Final’ paintjobs…amazing the amount of effort that goes into them!! Murals, hand-painted lettering, airbrushing…there’s so much cool inspiration there!