OldNYJim

Well, that’s because everyone else was smarter than me 🤪😂 I WOULD like to build this variation too though…

Dug out this old resin Bonneville kart today…picked this up at a show and really didn’t want to build it without having at least one copy of it: It’s a modified version of the AMT streamliner kart; unknown caster but I’ve never seen another and my research came up dry…so I’m making myself a mold to make a second: Nothing sadder than a racecar without a buddy to race…

Another few days at the bench, another few little bits of progress… I decided that the next piece that I needed to tackle that I hadn’t already was mocking up a radiator. I’ll probably actually end up modeling this in 3D and painting it, mostly because my skillset currently with brass isn’t good enough to make it as well as I can draw or print it… Irony is, a lot of these rads WERE brass so that would actually be a good material to use for this one. Fun challenge to make one of the few not-brass pieces look like brass with paint though, good chance to text my faux-metal painting skills… Here’s a real one - they have that distinctive extremely-protruding upper portion that I want to replicate: I used some prototyping foam to approximate the curve of the upper tank, plus some styrene sheet and bar: I’m really using the piece as a physical prototype to make sure everything fits ok before I design a MUCH more detailed version in CAD: More on that as I get to it, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to run out of room. A real Offie is longer than the simplified kit piece so I lost probably 1/8” or more with my to-scale version so I needed a physical piece to play with to make sure I can make this work still. Modified the tracknose a little so the leaf spring will fit: And while I was messing with the front end, I cleaned up the front nerf bar and made some mounts for it: Now, mounting it to the front axle didn’t really sit super well with me…that is how it is on the kit, but I figured that was for simplicity of molding’s sake. Did some research and found a bunch of earlier cars where they did exactly this. I guess the contact (and cars) would be light enough and the old Ford/steel tube/ whatever axle is strong enough that the uprights or nerf bar itself would bend before hurting the axle too much. That said, seems like this practise went away as you got into the 60s and they’d mount with a more complicated arrangement, but for the sake of mirroring the kit design and keeping things simple I think I can live with it. I’d hate to take any more slices out of that tracknose than I have to… Finally, wheels and tires. Had a little time to work on those today. I have a bunch of these kits to build, and I want a solution to replace the one-piece wheels and tires on all of them so I cheated again and modeled them in CAD so I could print some test pieces and easily make more in future: Left is front, right is rear (still need to make knock-offs for it though) and the center is a front with no lugs, for an experiment. Probably need to lose the domed center from the middle one, come to think of it…need to research 50s Midget wheels and hubs Thanks for looking all - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Awesome! Glad to see this one coming back around!!

That fact I was familiar with, yes - I figured the kit would have to be much larger in scale accordingly…thanks for confirming about what I suspected! Definitely want to add one of these to my collection! Ah yeah; it says right in the listing, duh - thanks for clarifying that Cool build, @magicmustang! Of course, Midget racing is still a thing today - Kyle Larson just won the renowned Chillibowl event last month…and 3D file designers have one covered if one wanted to build a more modern iteration: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/various/dirt-midget-1-18-scale-model

I, too, never heard of solder balls before - every day’s a school day!

If it’s 1/20 scale, which is what I most commonly see it listed as, the wheelbase scales up to 78”, which is a little long compared to standard. At 1/18 the wheelbase would be 69.5”, so a little short. A standard Kurtis chassis was 71.5” wheelbase although they would apparently adjust the wheelbase to your preference if you asked them to. BUT, Monogram never claim this was a replica of a Kurtis car specifically, plus it was their first ever plastic car kit, so…I’m not holding them to perfection. The wheels either scale up too large or too small compared to the wheelbase depending on which scale you go with (12” was apparently the standard size for most of these), and the Offie’s block is too short and 50 other things…plus the driver has no legs 😂 I’m doing a more detailed build of one of these right now (in the NASCAR WIP section) and I found Kurtis plans online that I partially used as a reference for a frame, scaled down to 1/20th. At that size everything will fit about where it’s meant to and the body hugs the taper that these frames had at the rear really nicely, so I’m happy with that for what I’m trying to achieve. Definitely NOT a kit to pick apart too hard (unsurprisingly, given the age) but I REALLY like how they look when you see one built up, even as basic of a kit as it is…

This is exactly the kind of thing I was interested in finding - thanks fellas! It’s this one, I’m guessing… I found some pics of those online last night too! I’ve GOTTA find one of those! Any idea on scale? More rabbitholes to look into! Thanks Mark! LOVE that build you posted! Thanks for sharing!!

This is looking great - Finnegan would be proud!

Are they thicker than a regular decal? Coated maybe? There was an issue of the Revell 32 3 Window that had a decal sheet that had a clear laminate of some kind over the decals and they were so thick that they were nearly impossible to apply…

I wonder if we’ll ever see a reissue of the Midget kits - I think they were a one-and-done, right? I’d bet the photo etch parts that were included (and necessary to build them) add some complication to giving these another run…but I’d love it if they would! Great builds Tim!

I’ve been enjoying building the Monogram (now Atlantis) 1:20 Midget kit this last few weeks… …and I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of Midgets (weird sentence to type out…) What other Midget kits have been issued in scale? I know about the two EXCELLENT Revell kits from 2010-ish: And, from the 60s the Revell Hotshot…initially a slot car, but then issued as, I guess, a body-only parts pack at one point with the addition of a belly pan? My info is a little vague on that one - they’re apparently rare and info is scarce on them. I also remembered having a Flintstone body in my stash that I thought was a Midget but I think it’s more of a fantasy sprint car… Are there any more Midget kits that I’m missing? Even old weird stuff, unobtainable resin, stuff like that? I’d love to hear about them!

Thanks for all that you do for the site, Dave and everyone else behind the scenes!

Thank you very much Sir! Oh, I’m a total hack at brass…I can solder wires just fine, but this is definitely tougher…but thank you!! Tiny update for this evening…I want to finish up the front axle (mostly the linkages are the last part on that), but I can’t finish that without mounting the tracknose and modifying it some to clear the parts that were omitted on the original kit. But, I can’t mount the tracknose without locking the belly pan in place, and I can’t lock the belly pan in place without finishing those hairpins and their mounts…so, that was tonight’s project: All that was really required on this step was to add some styrene strip to the belly pan to suspend the frame at the right height, and then notch out a spot for the hairpins to meet the mounts on the frame. Not super interesting, but important to make sure the hacked-apart body still fits back together and aligns right. I WAS considering magnets for all the panels to make them removable, but I’m reconsidering that now…almost everything on this car will be easily visible even with the body, nose and belly pan in place, so I’m not sure if it’s worth trying to complicate matters… It WOULD be nice to show off the cool little gas tanks these cars often ran in the tail… …which is a good reason to maybe make the body removable, but there’s nothing that the belly pan would hide other than the underside of the engine and frame, and everything forward of the radiator is just…the front of the radiator 😂 Still plenty of time to change my mind, but those are tonight’s ponderings…thanks for your patience 😂

Last year I built a Crown Vic derby car and really enjoyed it…and I wanna build another one so I picked up another of the Lindberg Crown Vic kits: This particular issue came with a nice display case…but I’m excited to build a companion for this one:

Ahh, yeah, I’ve seen these upgrade kits online - they’re still available, it looks like: https://gaugepods.com/products/mattel-vac-u-form-rebuild-kit I should pick one of those up actually…

Yep, correct - Plastigoop! Not a super useful tool for car guys, but I WOULD like to get to play with one anyway…

Happy Sunday y’all! Another couple of hours at the bench… First job today was to lay out a rod end to match some reference pics that I had collected, plus a tab for it to lock into like the 1:1 frame shown in the post above. I felt a LITTLE like I should’ve made these out of brass, but with the tools I’ve got in my little home shop it would’ve taken more effort than it was worth for no real benefit when the build is done…. 3D model of the parts: 2 hours later, the parts: Now, before can lock those little trapezoid blocks onto the frame, I need to lock the frame to the body so I can make sure the front axle will line up right. BUT, I’ll need to modify the tracknose for it to fit, so I separated that from the body as a whole… …and then, so I don’t have to play ship-in-a-bottle come assembly time, I removed the belly pan and made it it’s own piece also: Plan is to make mounts for the belly pan so the frame mounts to it easily and repeatably, then everything else around it: Sure is taking me a long time to build this 15-part kit 🤪 Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Interesting! I assumed they were probably made FOR this machine, but yes, that’s true…that probably would make it easier to find replacements at least

Ok, a little more progress… Fabbed up a mount for leaf spring and got it attached to the frame, and then decided a 3d printed spring wasn’t as cool as masking one: Had two or three tries at getting a leaf spring fabricated from brass, and my efforts were kinda ok-ish, but I was looking at some Revell Parts Pack springs in my stash and liked the look of those better. Even in 1/20, it’s tough to get the scale fidelity as nice as a well done pantographed kit part. Obviously, those Revell parts packs are 1/25, but a Midget is pretty small and the part scaled right out to the size I would’ve made one: Problem is, now those hairpins look kinda clunky - plus they’re half-round, presumably due to limitations in injection molding at the time, possibly because they didn’t think that some guy 70 years in the future would be nit-picking the accuracy of their very first kit apart…but here we are 🤪 Made some brass ones instead: Next job on these is to fabricate the trapezoidal brackets that a real Kurtis frame has to mount the hairpins to: And as you can see from the zoomed-out plans, I’ve still got plenty to do on the frame to make it look like a real one: Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Oh, and if you guys like these…here’s a cool thing I spotted online this weekend - Mattel toy injection molder!

Yep, my bad, you’re absolutely right! I would be interested to see what that plate looks like on yours! I THINK the original part was plastic. This was a test to see if the 3d printed resin would hold up…only did a couple of tests so far but A-OK so far! There’s a guy on eBay who does an upgrade/conversion service on these, and that’s part of what he does. I think I want to keep this one stock-ish though - I like the self-contained simplicity…

Actually, that whole CHANNEL is GOLD when it comes to Midget stuff that’s hard to find online…I only dug into a couple of these this evening (and the accents are a little tough in places) but there’s all kinds of useful reference in those videos that I hadn’t found elsewhere. THANK YOU! I didn’t know that each Kurtis Kraft build had a little brass plaque on the dash with a serial number, for example - and there’s some great shots of the in-out box that will be helpful in trying to replicate that. What a goldmine of useful info! I researched these a tiny bit in my lunch break today - looks a very similar parts layout to this kit (probably unsurprisingly): I’m sure one of these will end up on my shelf before too long - thanks for the heads up on these kits! I almost want to get one now so I can see that trans in more detail, just to see how it looks… Barely any progress tonight - my first evening working on this one with a couple of failures. First project was drawing up a front spring in CAD; something I did for those hubs I was working on this week too. The goal of the CAD part isn’t always because I’m planning on printing it, but to figure out the measurements and whatnot when I’m trying to copy a part from photos. Then, my plan was to replicate that part in brass, but I was having a tough time getting individual leafs that were as nice as I was happy with. I need to go check the local Ace to see if they stock any K&S brass strip that I can work with (which would be easier than trying to cut strips from the sheet I have - I don’t have the best tools here for working with metal compared to styrene)…of course, I could just print some from the 3D model I made already but that’s too easy 🤪 I also did a little research into nickel plating - I would be interesting in a nice beginner-friendly process to turn these brass parts that I’m making to something shiny and silver rather than Alclading them. It LOOKS like it would be in my capabilities, but I guess until I try I wont know… Finally this evening I decided I needed to achieve SOMETHING, so I spun up some 3/4” apparently-styrene rod (which I think actually is ABS) that I got from Amazon on the lathe and found some aluminum rod in my stash ready to start piecing together a rear axle. I think the kit part is supposed to represent a banjo rear end? As usual, more research required… And that’s my no-progress for today - more soon, soon as I’ve done something! Ha! Thanks for looking!

Oh, I forgot to ask - @Ace-Garageguy - are your earliest examples of this kit molded in red, or yellow? I’ve seen conflicting reports on which color the very first run was molded in. I’m 90% certain I want to paint this one red anyway, to match the original box art, but a yellow version would probably look cool too…

I’m not familiar with that particular kit…but it would be a fun follow-up to this one! Thanks for the heads up that it exists! Sounds like the kind of tooling Atlantis could have in their stash, if it made it long enough to end up with them… That’s about what I figured, thank you sir! It’s hard to tell with some of these older parts if they’re supposed to represent something from way back that I can’t find a photo of…or if they just aren’t a very accurate representation! I got lucky on the engine, what with having a good printer file for it, but a 50s in-out box in 1/20 scale is going to be a scratchbuilding project I think. Need to find some good reference photos so I can tackle that. Thanks for the info shared - incredibly helpful as always! Tiny bit of progress this evening - a little work on the swingarms for the front axle. Yesterday I checked my design (which was based on some 1:1 reference pics) with some quickie prints, and it seemed like I got my numbers right, so today I made the parts themselves out of some brass square tube. I had ONE tiny piece of this particular size of tube in stock, and was hoping I didn’t mess either side up and end my own fun for the evening, but I got lucky: Need to make the steering arms and linkages soon as I find some nice thick (but narrow, maybe 1/16”) brass strip to bend up, but it functions like it should and will allow possible steering. The stack of round things to the right is some tiny magnets I found on Amazon - I’d like to have at least a couple of removable wheels on this project, and I THINK these are strong enough to hold everything together when they need to, but allow the wheels to be easily removable. I need to experiment, but they seem like they’ll do the trick ok, and be small enough to hide inside the hubs that I’ll make without being visible. And that’s it for another hour at the bench - more baby-steps tomorrow! Thanks for looking!