OldNYJim

I’m glad Lefty was reunited with his arm anyway - must’ve been tough changing gears for him ?

Thanks fellas! You’re right…I have a plan… I had a super productive week on this thing - been working mostly on getting the frame figured out and finding stuff to attach to it… First up, modifying the frame…I tacked it together with that angled zee originally but I was always going to need something more upright to be able to get the seat position and interior how I wanted. Also started roughing in a scratchbuilt grille… Going with a 3d printed drilled Deuce axle, leaf spring and some parts box linkages on the front end…I’ve left myself some wiggle room to shim the axle downwards a little if I need more ride height… As you can see, also added some parts-box T headlamps…I wanted to use a curved mount like the Black Widow has but I was running out of space… Rear end is a Revell 9” with a parts box leaf spring and linkages: Those parts-box shocks will get upgraded somewhat, but they fit right in there like they were meant to be… On the subject of tires, as @espo mentioned the tread pattern on this old 60s tooling is pretty distinctive, but luckily it’s also about a perfect match for the front tires in Revell’s 29/30 kits from a few years back…I like the big oversize look of the rears but the fronts were a little overpowering for the long-low proportions I had in mind for this build so I switched them out: I needed some backers for those wheels - some spares from the Monogram Badman fit almost perfectly…just a little loose, so I ran some styrene strip around the rim, trued them on my lathe and then added a little round tube to the centers to get them to fit my 3D printed front axle: Meanwhile, I don’t have the heart to chop up original 1960 plastic to make the kit seat work, but the one in the aforementioned Revell A kit is very close in design and looks and will drop right in: Front end will run disk brakes - printed some nice in-scale drilled disks that have separate calipers: As you can see, I also printed some finned drums for the rear, but haven’t figured out rear wheel mounting quite yet so no on-it’s-wheels mock-up…but here’s a quick one from my bench as I wrapped up for the evening tonight: Can’t wait figure out the rear axle so I can get it on its wheels - more soon, soon as I’ve done more! Thanks for looking!

Great work Mike! You nailed making the little changes to make this thing a better replica of the 1:1. Great work!

A water tower and a mail box - same company also makes a billboard kit, a lighthouse and a skate-ramp:

Did a Hobby Lobby run today…picked up a fresh AMT T kit (got more T Buckets that I want to make), some cheapo acrylic paint (I like this for washes, or brush painting the inside of stuff), some artist’s acrylics that I think will be useful for weathering/rust projects at some point, some Vallejo paint plus a few tools. I like their file set, I’ve been using it all day on some scratchbuilding I was working on!

Can’t see this pics on this one anymore, just as a heads up…

Those copper parts look brush-painted to me, but who knows…

Another little update from Atlantis on that one: The color they chose reminds me of the color the Rommel’s Rod was molded in!

I picked up a bunch of Monogram Black Widow parts on eBay a while back to piece together a nice stock build, plus a detailed-up version: I’ve got some little background projects to do on that (I want to redraw the original decals and improve on them a little, for example, and source a couple of pieces) but in the meantime I started daydreaming about a much more extreme version using the same parts, loosely. Just how low and mean and extreme looking of a hot rod can I make by hacking up the worst parts in my Black Widow parts stash? Quick mockup of some key components: I’m actually thinking a longer wheelbase and even LOWER if I can make it mechanically feasible, but I’m getting ahead of myself in the story here… First up, selected the worst body of the bunch…it’s actually not bad, but has some glueblobbery and made a mess of my photo booth: A wash in my ultrasonic cleaner followed by some cleanup and we have a less smelly and dirty starting point: Still needs a little work but good enough to get rolling…as you can probably see I removed the bed too so I can drop the body nice and low and get a heavily zee-d frame up in there. Something like this probably: Lots to do on the frame obviously, and I suspect that lazy laid-back zee wouldn’t be idea in a real world scenario with the angles, but it DOES allow the body to drop right in place and retain the kit bench seat: As you can see, I’ve printed a coupla three parts…the kit engine (complete with no transmission) wasn’t going to fly, so I printed a fresh new resin Small Block and tranny: And fabricated some simple motor mounts to lock it in place: Plus, referencing the kit design, a front axle with dropped spring: And something for the rear - not totally set on using the Quickchange but it’s ok for mock-ups anyway… Maybe a tri-5 Chevy axle would work well? Fits the time period… Only just getting going on this one so plenty of scratchbuilding and kitbashing and hacking to come…more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Huh! I love learning little facts like this…I wasn’t aware of this…I should blending those gaps! Great tid-bit of info, Bill - thanks!

This is going to be a perfect little period-correct hot rod - I love that tracknose especially (and the usual, inspiring, craftsmanship)

A couple my wife spotted and text me this week: And spotted in the lot at the local mini-golf place:

Just barely enough parts to constitute a mock-up…playing with a ‘remix’ of the Monogram Black Widow this evening…

I think it’s killer! Deserves to be finished!

That figures - thanks for the confirmation Craig! I’d like to go all the way round that big circle and make a full-detail replica of the 1:1 using the kit (but adding stuff that real cars need, like a transmission and axles and all those inconveniences)

I guess this years-old thread with it’s missing photos is as good of a place as any to ask this question… Picked up four of these from eBay recently, but not sure if they’re original issues or from the later reissue: The tires are rubber, and the metal axles have serrations to lock them into the wheels…would that indicate that these are originals? Sounds like the reissue has styrene tires instead?

Correct - MOST of the art on the one sheet I had printed was Vector (that is, artwork drawn with editable lines, for anyone unfamiliar, as opposed to a regular jpeg image like a regular photo or graphic that you’d normally see online). That said, part of what I had them print WAS just a regular old downloaded image, and they had no issues printing that for me too…the printers and software they use can handle it, it’s just not the IDEAL way to go…

I laid the names out in Adobe Illustrator, and then cut masking film with my Silhouette scrapbook cutter. If you're not familiar with Illustrator the Scrapbook cutter has it's own software that will allow simple graphics to be designed, but I use Illustrator all day every day so makes sense for me to use that...

Thanks so much fellas! I didn't take a bunch of progress pics of the final week of this project - most of it was polishing out the paint on the yellow car, and assembling (mostly box stock) the lilac one. Lilac one turned out ok, for a simple build...WAY simpler of a project than I normally like to do, but it was meant to be a comparison piece for the detailed version so I left it alone and assembled it in an afternoon last weekend: And with that done, only thing left to do was finish polishing out the paint on the Badman (that thing got surprisingly dirty at the model show, considering no one was supposed to be touching any of the models...) and then take some pics on the base: And a pic of both, like the box art... This was a fun one - definitely challenging and had to push my skills to get it together, but I'm relatively pleased with it - thanks for all the nice comments and to everybody who followed along! Onto the next one!

Not sure if I’m the person Peteski is thinking of, but I used these guys and was very happy with the quality AND service. Fast turn-around, great quality and a fair price. Highly recommended.

I like the color too - the blue works really well with the wood and tan tones.

I’d wanted one of these for a while, and a co-worker surprised me with an Amazon voucher for a lunchtime project I was helping her with…so I knew immediately what to spend it on: Micro Mark Chop-It…not the fanciest of tools, but I already know I’m going to use this a bunch, especially for those tasks where you need to cut a bunch of material to identical lengths easily.

Mine really does need a coolant flush, so I'm wondering if that might help...like you say, a little air trapped in the system maybe. It's worth a shot, seeing as it needed one anyway...

How long until the second ‘Hot Rod’ edition of the mag is out? If it’s the next issue, I wouldn’t get done in time ??

I airbrushed a little flat brown and gray around the arches for some grime on that one - plus it got a couple of heavily-diluted washes of black and brown acrylic over the whole body to add some more depth. This is only the Revell snap kit so there’s not a bunch of detail to it, but I did a short WIP thread: