OldNYJim

I really enjoy Bill’s take on things, and his extensive knowledge that he will altruistically share with anyone that asks for help. He’s taught me a bunch without ever having met him, so I selfishly hope he returns soon

This came up when I was looking for something else, and I figured ‘meh, why not, might be something useful in there’ It actually has a BUNCH of great little bits of scratchbuilding material in there…large diameter tube, some full length sticks of some thinner rod and tube, some useful little interesting shapes, some large diameter stuff that looks perfect for making metal wheel rims…definitely pleased with the random selection I got!

GREAT idea! That’ll be a nice build (and also some good evidence to people who don’t believe that the color from red plastic can leach out, unless you are using an orange sharpie or something on that hood…)

Thanks Jim! A little more progress - and if it seems like I’m going slowly on this, that would probably be accurate…lots of fitting and refitting and reassembling to do once you start cutting stuff open…but it’s coming along ok… Next thing to handle, was how the interior tub will interface with the body and those opening panels…hopefully if I did my measurements ok then we’ll be good. Cut open the inner doors so I can re-attach them (with some upgrades, of course, now that they’ll be more visible) to the doors: Test fit of the door cards to the doors: (ignore those vent windows, they’re going away anyway…) And a test fit…the doors still close as they should and (importantly) open too: Success! Of course, the interior tub, when installed, doesn’t mate up to my door jambs…got a nasty gap to fill: No biggie, some more styrene strip fixed that: I had this idea to open the fuel filler up too, but when I looked at the original TD art, there is no filler, so I guess that saved me from myself…Bondo to the rescue! In other dumb ideas I probably shouldn’t try, I was trying to think of how I could open the cowl vents…they’re way too small and shallow to sand the inside of the cowl to open them, but I did draw up a 3D model of a replacement piece I could install in there: This part proved near impossible to print - the vents are really thin and it’s tough to print them without them warping, sagging or getting clogged with resin but after a dozen tries and tweaks I got a part that is CLOSE: It needs a few more rounds in my ultrasonic cleaner to clean out the vents as best I can before curing it, but it MIGHT be usable… And, whilst I was waiting for stuff to dry and print and whatnot I did some research on the ‘69 Winternationals, which I think was the inspiration for TD’s artwork. I found a good square-on image with the copy on that banner so that I can make a little scene for the car to sit on: I’ll make a little version of that banner to go on this base that I started fabricating (it’s too big to fit nicely in my photobooth without the insides showing…sorry about that): The asphalt is an AK Interactive product that I picked up to play with…I’m not very good at using it yet but it has a nice realistic texture and it dried pretty quick: And, that’s about my progress this past few days…will eventually run out of stuff to do on the body and move onto something more fun…more soon, thanks for looking!

I had a Miata in that color, if it's the one I I think it is...looks great!

We had Xfinity home internet and cable, $130 a month, and switched to T-Mobile internet for $50 a month and freed up $80 a month for some streaming options. My wife picked Disney, I picked Peacock (for the live NY news, mostly) and Discovery, and we already had Amazon Prime video...still making a saving and we pick and choose which service we want and never run out of something to watch. Don't miss cable AT ALL

Remember back in the mid 2000s or so when it seemed like about every hot rod was black primer, gray primer or possibly red oxide primer? With red wheels and possibly a Mexican blanket interior? I kinda liked that trend…I didn’t care for the skulls and cobwebs (just a random thought I had, that wasn’t worth a new thread of it’s own)

I suspect this little truck is pretty well ventilated - in addition to the floor gaps, it doesn’t have any windows whatsoever I still wanna drive it when I get a chance tho…

I had a Little Red Wagon

Thank you fellas! The tube I’m using on this one is by Evergreen - most Hobby Lobbys carry it, or a decent hobby store. Brass square tube would work just as well if that’s easier to find. Tiny update - I didn’t have a bunch of bench time today but I thought I’d try and tackle that hood: A lot of people like using heat for this kind of job, but I never quite trust that the plastic won’t eventually just go back to it’s original shape over time, or reset when it’s hit with the solvents in whatever paint I end up using. So…I split it down the center: And with it split in two, it sits perfectly! Just need to fill those gaps. A little styrene strip, tacked lightly in place first so I had some tweak-ability, then given an additional coat of a thin superglue, test fitting as I went, followed by a little more on the underside: And some sanding later…WAY better! A skim coat of filler should get it pretty close to perfect - as you can see I added a little strip of styrene to the rear of the hood too so I have some material to work with to shape it nicely to the opening. No hinge required here, because it’s intended to be mounted with hood pins; I drilled out the molded-in ones ready for some real ones further down the line. Just a mini update…more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Sounds like you need this guy:

Some new box art, in progress:

Shooting NEIGHHHH-ke

Replicas and Miniatures sells a little pack of blue dots - just drill out the lens and drop one in there! Or, what Peteski said ??

Thanks for all the nice comments fellas! It’s no big deal - jump in and try it! It’s only plastic, and each step of the process is pretty easy (although I’m still practicing it myself here, so whadda I know?! ?) Yes!!! Great tip (and one I accidentally discovered myself on a previous build!). It really helps! Slow progress this week so far, but I’m just messing with those doors… Got rearmost door jambs made: And the last couple of nights I’ve been playing with the fit of the front most edges of the doors to get them as nice as I can. I used some BMF to cover the openings on the body itself so that I could lay some Bondo around the edges once I’d got them as close as I could with styrene strips to close the gaps up, then laid down a little masking tape to make sure I didn’t get any filler where I didn’t want it: After letting it set up overnight - here you can see some of the BMF peeking through: What I like to do with Bondo when it’s on an edge is brush on a little thin superglue, which penetrates the filler a little and toughens it up to stop it cracking so easily…plus you can work it a little more aggressively to get it shaped how you want…not totally done here, but getting closer! Once I get that squared away I’ll need to mess with the hood…the fit isn’t the best, right now: I have the germ of an idea for a plan on those vent windows too, but that might be a job for the weekend… Just a small update (but a few hours work, behind the scenes…)…thanks for looking - more soon!

Parked at work today:

Lordy Lordy, that interior ?

Yeah, you have to reply to all those comments otherwise you get a passive aggressive response back ? Question: when you got the body out of the dunk-tank had that paint pitted the surface or was it smooth still? That lumpy finish looked a bit like the paint being too hot for the styrene, perhaps… Wicked Colors is easy to lay down though, very forgiving…but it WILL need a primer for proper adhesion

Thanks for all the nice comments, everybody! Yup! It’s there from an earlier version of the tooling, I believe… Me too! I got a couple of these so I can do just that! I like the idea, if I’m doing some kind of racecar to do something for it to race against ? Luckily, best I can tell, it’s not too complicated on the 1:1s: I’ll have to mess with it slightly to make it work in scale, but that’ll be a job for when I’ve got the hinges in place… Speaking of which, first job today was hinging the trunk (which I tackled first because there’s only one of them…) Went to Ace for some brass rod, and bent a hinge around some styrene square tube. I like using square tube for this job rather than round because you have a nice fat gluing surface to attach it to the body… Glued it in behind the upper jamb (note the little square tube receivers I’ve got slid on there, which will attach to the inner trunk lid): Then taped the trunk in place where it needs to fall and attached the receivers: I only used some tiny dots of glue initially to tack it in place - the last thing you want to do is to get glue on the brass here…). Then, removed it from the body and fabricated a little faux latch that helps locate the lid on the lower jamb and keep it from flopping around: And then a test fit once the glue had dried - closed: And open: I added a couple of strips of styrene to the bottom of the body, behind the rockers, to help locate the frame properly every time and make sure everything stays aligned as it should do though the dozens of test fits I’ll be doing…test fit with the frame in place to make sure I’m still good: Yup, still works! Of course, I have to add all the inner trunk detail now that you can see in there, but that was kinda the point of the exercise… With that done, I could start roughing in the door jambs: Because I need space for the dash I need a flat(ter) hinge for the doors than I could get away with for the trunk, but the process is about the same… hinges made: Because door cards will cover the inner doors, and they’re fairly deep, I can get away with some sturdier receivers in the doors: I made some little brass inserts that slide into the styrene tube in the doors that I can use to adjust the fit somewhat come assembly time: And a quick test fit of the doors too, to see where we’re at: Because I had to scribe some lines and cut some awkward curves I need to add some material back into the doors themselves to get a good fit, but I had decided before I started cutting that I’d rather add material to the doors than have to mess with the body itself too much - and once I’ve got the doors fitting nice I can work on the front door jamb and then figuring out a good way to mount the dash. Thanks for looking everybody - appreciate your comments!

I’ve played with this technique too 2 you’re right, there’s some cool patterned Washi tapes out there. Some things I learned from my experiments - first, Washi tape is somewhat translucent, and is affected by the base color underneath. If you stick bright red Washi tape over black you’ll get burgundy, most likely. Second up, due to it’s thickness, it doesn’t lay down very well into something like, for example, a tuck ‘n’ roll pattern. Works ok for flat stuff tho, like the example above. I didn’t like the somewhat glossy finish of the stuff I tried - it looked like, well, tape…but light mists of a satin clear worked ok on it, in my experience

Well, arguably the most famous anyway… I was excited when this got reissued recently (and my local HL finally got them in-stock this week): Because I want to build this: The ultimate “street funny car and drag strip gasser”! Chopped roof, tinted glass, an engine that may be three different displacements (including two different sizes just in the ad above alone)…and I THINK everything to build it is still in this issue of the kit. Sweet! Sidebar: I posted this build in this section because I’ll be trying to make it loosely street-legal as Tom Daniel intended… “BOSS 55” license plate and all… First job, getting some of the tedious work done right out of the gate, removing the molded-in exhaust from the frame, because we won’t be needing those…(virgin frame top, modified one bottom): Aside from being a little boring, it wasn’t too tough to clean these up - a couple of strips of styrene to fill some airspace under the muffler and some little patch pieces and roundbar to get it back where it was before I started sanding and grinding. Speaking of tedious work, next up was a couple of hours of careful(ish) scribing to get the doors and trunk opened… And the rest of day 1’s progress was starting to make jambs - first for the trunk: …and then for the doors: Fairly humble start - tomorrow’s job is hinges…thanks for looking, more soon!

Thank you!! I probably shoulda explained that tv remote, huh? That’s the medallion - a little metal plaque that mounts to the hood of an NY cab to prove it’s legit and properly certified. That little chunk of metal would sell, pre-Uber anyway, for up to a MILLION dollars. Here’s a close-up: Because they got so expensive, NY introduced a cheaper variation for aspiring cab-drivers which would allow them to operate for a much lower starting price (but only permitted them to pickup fares in certain areas, primarily outside of Manhattan) - and they had to run this pea-green color scheme: I need to build one of those too… Yep - this one is deep into a 48 hour rotating-driver shift ?

That color looks GREAT! Nice work!

Thanks fellas! I finished this one up this week - most of what I had left to do was just attaching the last few parts to it…and attaching some good old NY grime to it too… Some finished pics…thanks for following along! Can’t wait to tackle another one of these - it’s a fun kit and it basically fell together!

I found this post by Bill, @Ace-Garageguy, whilst looking for something else, and it’s definitely worthy of reposting info THIS thread too - really useful tutorial on flipnose hinging: