Bernard Kron

http://www.stradasportsstore.com/page93.html http://public.fotki.com/davetoups/aftermarket_model_parts/replicas_and_miniat/

:lol: I respectfully decline, since, as we all know, we car modelers are an ornery bunch and, whereas I can dish it out, gosh knows I can't take it! :lol: (BTW, my instincts are far from infallible - I'm one of the two so far that voted for a Phaeton... )

Revell has been doing a good job in the 2000's of creating a "Parts Box" series from its '32's and the coming Stacey David car with the first non-"Fat Front Tire" syndrome release and its SBC is another in this trend. I notice in my own builds that I buy the 5-window for its deck lid and matching hood side panels, its hairpins, and certain interior elements, all of which are unique to that variation. I buy the old Roadster kit for the highboy style hood side panels, and the Tudor Sedan for the flathead. Interestingly the 3-window has little unique to offer and suffers from some small incompatibilities with the other kits - a sign that back in the 90's Revell hadn't quite figured out that they could drive increased sales by stressing parts interchangeability. For this reason I only buy the 3-window for the basic body style. Revell has tacitly recognized this shortcoming by re-releasing the 3-window as a value priced Monogram offering. I agree with Bill, they should begin to offer additional chassis variations with subsequent releases. I notice that the clear leader in the voting is the Pickup, and I think this would be a perfect opportunity to offer a buggy spring rear end and even an I-Beam front. I'm certain that with a strongly delineated difference in the chassis and compatibility with previous kits the marketplace would readily "forgive" omitting the now traditional second engine option. How about a pickup with two I-Beam front axles (stock in plain plastic and a dropped version on the chrome tree), a buggy spring rear end with an unplated stock banjo and a plated quickchange center section, stock front wishbone (again unplated) and optional plated hairpins, and a flathead with a stock carburetor setup and the tri-carbs and finned heads from the sedan? Also, proper narrow wire wheels for the stock build which would be instant hits with both the Traditional and Rat Rod builders. Those wide chromed wires in the sedan kit almost never get used because Revell insisted on perpetuating the by now out of date tires from the first two kits.

Beautiful work. What's the basis for the front half of the bodywork? The combination works out really nicely - very sleek lines. The chassis, I assume, is all styrene. What diameter rod did you use (.080"?). It scales to the eye perfectly.

Thanks guys! More progress – lots of rough and ugly hacked plastic. The interior panels have been cut. As mentioned earlier, they are based on the Revell 5-window Deuce kit’s floor panel, dashboard, and door panels. Replicating their basic shapes in .020” styrene sheet has increased the piece count from 4 to 7. The parts will be painted in an appropriate shade of steel or aluminum metalizer to imitate the look of a bare metal interior. 1 - Right interior Panel, 2 – Floor, 3 - Left interior Panel, 4 – Dashboard, 5 – Kick panel, 6 – Rear interior panel, 7 – Package shelf. Interior details: The roll bar and steering wheel are from the AMT ’37 Chevy coupe kitm the bucket seat courtesy of ThePartsBox.com In addition I did some work on the grill shell assembly. I removed the backing panel for the radiator. The car will have no radiator. Instead it will have a coolant tank located in the rear of the car with the fuel tank and run coolant lines to the engine block. In the completed build you will only see the coolant lines with the tanks hidden in the non-opening trunk. The photo below shows the front view of the grill shell with the blank grill panel from the kit to its left and, finally, the rear view of the shell showing the panel in place.

Thanx everyone! However, this build is definitely going non-linear on me which is why I haven’t posted in a while. The issue is the bellypan. The interior will have to be built, painted and glued in place before the bellypan is installed. In order for things to be relatively well finished this implies that all the sub-assemblies for the build will have to be fabricated, painted and built up before assembly. Now I know that that’s the theoretical best practice for any modeling project, but personally I’m a pretty improvisational builder and planning that far ahead isn’t necessarily something I always do. So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thrashing around determining what the sub-assemblies actually are, the sequence of assembly, and what will need to be touched up or repainted after final assembly (notably the bellypan). I have gotten several things done, however. First off, after looking at the car some more I realized that the Ford 427 V-8, which dates from 1964, and was expensive and rare at that point, just didn’t make sense for the type of car this was turning out to be. The general vibe is more 1962 and relatively modestly budgeted, rather than mid to late 60’s. So I decided to change motors. I settled on the blown Nailhead from the Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit because I could be sure the motor would be narrow enough to fit within the bodywork. That, and it was period appropriate. I built it up with some minor changes to make it look more utilitarian. All the chrome parts were stripped, the stock valve covers were painted gold and the block red with Tony Nancy style red trim on the blower. I’ll be using the block hugger headers from the AMT ’40 Ford Sedan Delivery kit, again stripped of their chrome and finished in stainless steel metalizer. Despite the fact that I’m using Hilborn 4-port injectors rather than the taller Enderles from the Nancy kit, it appears highly likely I’ll have to cut a relief hole in the hood and install a low scoop over it. With the motor largely built it was time to cut and install the bellypan to test for fit and clearances. The basic bellypan was made from .020” styrene stock and glued in position. The motor was then mocked up into place. It was immediately obvious that a relief panel would be needed to clear the oil pan. This was fabricated from various shapes of styrene and molded into the bellypan itself. I then filed the edges to shape and broke the bellypan out from the bottom in order to allow access to the interior. The pan will be re-glued into place during final assembly, any gaps filled and smoothed, and, with the entire rest of the car masked, painted to match the bodywork. The interior will be based on the stock Revell 5-window parts. However, I’ve decided to make new parts rather than using the kit ones so that I still have a relatively complete 5-window kit for future use (the body for this project was a spare). I’ll be cutting and fitting the panels in the next few days. The interior will be bare bones sheet metal with a single aircraft style bucket seat. Below are a couple of pictures showing the bellypan and the motor. Thanx for lookin’, B.

I think it's quite clear that Revell has been listening. I for one came mighty close to becoming totally obnoxious about the "fat front tire" syndrome on the Deuces up to this point. Not that my voice counts for a lot, but I was far from the only one on the message boards expressing concern. Obviously Stacey David's voice is by far the loudest of all; after all it is his "intellectual property", regardless of what one may think of its overall appearance. It's unimportant to me whether the kit is a "new-tool" as, apparently, Revell themselves are saying, or whether it borrows extensively from the rest of the Deuce series. Despite the "new tool" claim, there is considerable evidence for the latter, i.e. the front suspension, the hairpins, the tailights, the absence of hinges on the bodywork, perhaps the rear suspension as well, although difficult to make out in the pictures up to now. But either as a complete replica of the Rat Roaster, or as a parts source that runs very deep and wide indeed, the kit is a huge success IMHO. In fact the whole 1st half 2013 offering is creating a great deal of positive buzz for Revell - good on them I say.

Incredible!!! No wide front tires on the Deuce!!! In fact it looks like the wheels and tires from the Orange Crate re-issue. Look's like the standard Deuce front axle and disc brakes, though. I wonder if it has air bags? Still, no wide front tires, a SBC, trim on the grill shell, body color headlight buckets, and is that a chopped windshield (??). Overall, this may be a well balanced refresh of the venerable 90's street rod roadster.

Wow 7000in5th, that's sure to be oldest. Amazing that you not only have the original build, but that you have reconstructed such a fine example of the original kit. Nico, Draggon and Foxer, you may be decades apart, but those are all mighty nice for as young as you each were. And Drew, all that hand lettering is just beautiful! Here's my oldest build (which I've shown before, so apologies for those who have seen it). A fuel dragster built from both chassis in the Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit when it was a new release. Wheelbases were getting longer by the month back then.. No plastic sheet existed so I used to build my bodies from cardboard index cards. The motor and some of the decals are from the original Revell '55 hardtop kit, although I don't know where the scoop came from. My mother glued the car to a display base she bought after I went away to college, and eventually mailed it to me, which is where the case and model got damaged. It's followed me around ever since. A few years back, when I decided to start car modeling again, I dragged it out with thoughts of restoring it, but by then the tires had melted and I became seduced by its ancient prehistoric funk - .so I decided to leave it as is. I plan to build a modern duplicate of it but am missing the blower drive and decals to get it done. Hope you all dig it:

Hi Bill. Looks very nice. The proportion and depth on that pan looks just right! Since I can't use CA at all I am always on the lookout for alternatives. And I have not exactly been in love with most hobby-level fillers, so this approach has caught my eye. Can you give us more detail on the epoxy/cotton thing and maybe the rigid foam thing, too... Oh, and the fine glass cloth, which I have seen you use before but have neglected to ask about... Presumably all this is held together with your epoxy weapon of choice. Thanx!

I've used Archer louver decals for quite some time and have had excellent results with them. I use their O-scale offerings to approximate 1/24-1/25th scale. http://www.archertra...om/AR88037.html

I agree with Mark, the re-do of the finishes on the motor looks great. Indeed, everything about this is neither "more" nor "less", but just right when it comes to detail and finish. As for the "disappearing" interior, consider it a private moment of modeling pleasure. Should look real sharp when it gets its decals!

Beautiful modeling. The precise attention to finishes and detail is an inspiration. I keep a mental list under "some day when I grow up I want to model like this", to which I am adding this one. There's something very liberating about having this much control over fit and finish. It makes it possible to extract the maximum pleasure available from a model car kit, especially this one where there is much crispness of molding and small detail to work with. Thanks for sharing.

Earlier I had said Krylon Mango, but in fact it's Krylon Bauhaus Gold, a yellow-orange non-metallic solid. I'll be creating home-made team decals, numbers and graphics in red and black over it.

Thanx! As this thing comes together I'm increasingly inclined to add detail. Chances are I'll do an interior of some sort but I'm definitely running tinted plexiglas in the windows so the interior won't be a great work of art I'm sure... I just want some sort of roll bar and steering wheel to show up.

Thanx guys! But... I’ve always believed that dialing in the proper stance on a car is largely a matter of instinct and is difficult to reduce to a set of rules. The stance on this car bugged me, and as much as I knew that a flat stance was historically “correct” it didn’t look right on this particular car. It needed the nose to come down, primarily because of the curvature of the bellypan and the severe chop. The front end needed to “settle in” to the front wheels more. So this morning I took .06” (1.5 scale inches) out of the front height by de-arching the front spring and shaving the front spring mount. Below are a couple of pictures. The top one is a “before and after” with “before” on the left. The second one is a front ¾ view. As you can see the car now has a very slight rake but the shadow line below the bottom edge of the body is largely parallel to the ground line forward to the firewall and then moves only slightly upward to the grill shell. Also, the arch of the front tire now complements the ends of the louver rows. Most importantly, the little man inside my head is says “much better” and will now leave me alone to move forward on this build! Thanx for lookin,’ B.

Thanks again, everyone. I’ve gotten it up on its wheels. No rear suspension since it will be hidden under the bellypan, just a simple tubular rod connecting the rear wheels. The front suspension is the Revell Deuce kit piece with a few leaves removed. Wheels are the LSR Moon disc set from Early Years Resin. The front tires are Revell ’37 Ford Delivery Van pieces and the rear are truck tires courtesy of Herb Deeks. The level stance, typical of lakes cars, takes some getting used to, I’m so accustomed to the extreme rubber rake of street rods and drag strip racers. It makes me think some more about making up a set of drag strip tires and wheels as an alternative setup. Here are some pics (sorry about the blurry side view…). Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks everyone. I still have the bodywork to wrestle with, but otherwise it should be pretty straightforward. Bellypans are not simple or cheap to fabricate so most dry lakes participants who ran modified street machines avoided them. Once you lightened your car by gutting it and removing the fenders and put as much power under the hood as your budget, social connections, and practical use of the car would alow, it came time to attack your two biggest enemies: frontal area and parisitic drag. For frontal area you chopped the top as much as you dared (lakes cars became known for their radical - and often quite impractical - chop jobs). This left parisitic drag, the resistance caused by the turbulence which results when the layer of air flowing over the bodywork becomes disturbed. The worst of all is the layer between the ground and all the garbage which forms the undercarriage of the car. Installing a bellypan cleans all of that up, but you must fabricate a very large area of new bodywork to do it. This represents quite a bit of work both in the 1:1 world and in scale. Regarding the photos, first off Thanx!!! I'm glad you like them. Here's a quick step by step. This might seem like a lot of work but it's really quite simple and I've done it so often I can knock one out in a minute or two. It's a technique that was used quite often in the old hot rod mags, generally with a white or light colored background. Here's the original picture. I shot it using my worklights on my bench against a black card with the body held in position by a thrid hand. I work under three 60 watt incandescent spot lights. The lights are ordinary household bulbs. As you can see I keep a very messy workbench! It's a miracle I ever get anything done... Next, using Adobe Photoshop, I select various areas that will require a solid black background. In this case you can see the flare from the spot lamp and the part where the front of the car extends beyond the black card, All this will be filled with solid black color. Here are the areas that have been initially filled. The result is the body of the car "floating" against solid black. Among other things I have eliminated the third hand from the image. Next I select the entire rest of the image, being sure to overlap into the black area I have already created. The selected area is show here as the red shaded zone. After I select it I fill it with solid black. Next I select a pleasing rectangular area which is filled mainly by the image of the car (indicated here by the red outline) and crop the image, eliminating the rest of the picture. Below is the result. I often will adjust the brightness and contrast slightly at this point but that's about all the processing I do anymore. One thing I do that's very important, is to adjust the white balance of my camera for the photo environment I'm working in (in this case under the tungsten lighting on my workbench). This ensures a relatively true color in the image. The original image was 3488 pixels x 2616 pixels with a resolution of 240 pixels per inch. I resize the width of the cropped image to 1024 pixels, which is a common computer monitor image width. I set Photoshop to automatically resize the height to maintain the proportions. Then I "Save For Web" in Photoshop which creates a compressed 72 pixel resolution JPG image. When I upload the image to my Photobucket account it is set to resize the image to 800 pixel width, again a common image width found on older computer monitors and quite often the default image size on popular forums. I hope this explains what I do and that you all have enjoyed my little photography digression... Thanx for lookin', B.

Starting another project, another racer, and another spare parts special. This time it’s a Revell 5-window Deuce done as a full-on Bonneville racer, a highboy with a radical 6 ½ inch chop and full bellypan. Motivation will be from a Revell Parts Pack blown Ford 427. So far I have the top cut and the edges and rolled pan for the belly pan installed. I also smoothed the stock hood to get rid of the center hinge. I think the hood will stay smooth since the highboy configuration is probably tall enough to contain the top mounted blower and injectors. With the mail slot windows and the belly pan hiding most of the chassis I’m tempted to forego the interior and most of the chassis and suspension. We’ll see as the build progresses. I’m planning on Krylon Mango (a bright yellow-orange solid) for the main color with red home-made team decals. I may also make provision to display the car as a part-time drag racer with switchable tires and wheels. Again, we’ll see how elaborate I want to make this one… Thanx for lookin’, B.

Ken Kitchen at Kitchen Table Resins (see http://public.fotki....ble_resin_kits/ ) has offered a very nice one for several years now. Quoting from Ken's caption for these photos: "This engine was built by Daniel Robinson using some parts not included in the kit. The headers came from Revell Special Edition 69 Nova kit as well as the air cleaners. Daniel says the carbs came from his parts box but he believes they originally came from the Monogram 65 GTO kit. Photo by Daniel Robinson"

Now that makes me laugh! I'll have to remember it for how I feel about some of my builds... A couple of thoughts: First off, a personal peeve regarding the front tires that come in the Double Dragster kit. They're the standard AMT's and they're too big, IMHO, for a drag car. See if you can't find something a bit narrower and smaller. It would look better and might help. The other thing is, I noticed early on you committed yourself to a black on black paint scheme. Perhaps it's gone a bit too far and could stand a bit more contrast. How about using some Testors Metalizers in various shades to help pick the details out? Things like the valve covers and supercharger need highlighting, IMHO. Maybe doing the front wheels over in a none-chrome finish. You can find them at your LHS and apply it with a brush with good results. I still think it's cool and very imaginative. Definitely V. 2.0 You've got me thinking about trying my hand at one...

It really is Bug 2.0! I really like how you adapted the Double Dragster stuff to the theme of the car (like the blackened Moon tank hanging off side, for example). Very cool.

This is some heavy duty building you got goin' here, Nico. That's a mighty nice body and this is gonna be a mighty nice build. Can't wait to see more, more, more!!!!

It's been a long time since I checked this thread out. My last post was September 9th of last year (pg. 17) -- a year has gone by. Good grief! An awful lot of fine, fine quarter milers have passed through these pages since then. What a treat I've missed! Since then I've built mainly hot rods but I did get two rail jobs off, both FED's: The first is a Dragmaster Mk. IV chassis with a blown Pontiac, 1962 style. The second is from two years later, a 160 in. wheelbase AA/FD with a Don Long style chassis. Things were changing mighty quickly back then! Thanx for lookin', B. Dragmaster IV Mr. Eliminator - 160 In. Wheelbase AA/FD

A co-conspirator on the path of life! Cool indeed!