Bernard Kron

Many thanks for the opportunity! Getting back to an old set-aside like this is always a bit concerning in case I might have "lost the plot", so to speak. In this case I was surprised how far along I had gotten. The original motor was giving me trouble, especially with headers, and the paint had concerned me. Switching to the Caddy and working with well-cured paint for clean-up and touch ups made the difference.

Just thought I'd revive this great thread with a '29 I just finished. Find more here at my build thread: It's a fictitious car inspired by the Tony Nancy 22 Jr. and the Muuray & Waters Triple Nickel 555 car.

Thanx Bruce! Here are the final "beauty shots". Thanks for starting this thread and providing an incentive to "get 'er done". If thinking about other unlfinished projects in my stash that might fit in the 3 weeks left in 2019... We;ll see. And again, thanx to all who followed along, B.

Thanx Rusty! Here are the final "beauty shots". Thanks for starting this thread and providing an incentive to "get 'er done". If thinking about other unlfinished projects in my stash that might fit in the 3 weeks left in 2019... We;ll see. And again, thanx to all who followed along, B.

This style of modeling applied to a traditional hot rod subject is far less common than one might think. Often the rolling stock, colors and detailing are overdone and inappropriate. That's not the case here. A modern rod done just right, in the modern ultra-detailed modeling style, and virtually flawlessly executed at that! Paint, plumbing, and every detail down to the nuts on the ends of the radiator braces, are all as they should be and a pleasure to view. Thanks for this exceptional model, Don.

Thanks Wayne! This Project is now complete except for some minor cleanup. Final “beauty shots” should be done tomorrow. In the meantime here's a cutaway teaser. Thanx to all who followed along, B.

This Project is now complete except for some minor cleanup. Final “beauty shots” should be done tomorrow. In the meantime here's a cutaway teaser. Thanx to all who followed along, B.

I did several small but important tasks on the way to finishing this up. Most importantly I made an additional layer of decals to outline the numbers in black and add a drop shadow. This serves to highlight the numbers which looked a bit washed out before. Now the gold really up shows up against the body colors. I also added a push bar, constructing a bracing structure and bar from styrene tubing and rod. Lastly I added team and car names. The entrants, Nichols & Dimas, are on the hood. Thus the car number and the car name, “Nickels & Dimes”, a hat-tip to the inspiration for the project, the Triple Nickel. Now to finish up the grill and fit the hood and then wrestle the tonneau cover into shape. Shouldn’t be long to completion now. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks! I did several small but important tasks on the way to finishing this up. Most importantly I made an additional layer of decals to outline the numbers in black and add a drop shadow. This serves to highlight the numbers which looked a bit washed out before. Now the gold really up shows up against the body colors. I also added a push bar, constructing a bracing structure and bar from styrene tubing and rod. Lastly I added team and car names. The entrants, Nichols & Dimas, are on the hood. Thus the car number and the car name, “Nickels & Dimes”, a hat-tip to the inspiration for the project, the Triple Nickel. Now to finish up the grill and fit the hood and then wrestle the tonneau cover into shape. Shouldn’t be long to completion now. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks Bruce and Alan. I'm on the homestretcg now, working on final decals and detail assembly. I should post something in the next few days. Wow Alan! That tonneau would indeed be ideal. Beautiful replica build. Meanwhile I'll continue fiddling with my version in the hopes of developing a workable, repeatable technique for future projects. But don't forget me, LOL!

Saw FvF the other day in a theater with excellent screens, audio and seating, pretty much as good as it gets. So my impression of the movie didn't suffer from poor presentation. Overall it was enjoyable and entertaining, and taken on its own terms deserves the success it will no doubt have as a family-friendly holiday movie. As far as auto racing dramas (as opposed to documentaries) it's among the best, which, unfortunately, is a list of not-generally-very-good cinema. These movies tend to be period pieces that don't age well, so first impressions count for a lot. I came away from FvF happy I had gone and found the racing scenes thoroughly enjoyable with the wheel-to-wheel action right up there with McQueen's Le Mans flick which, IMHO, still holds the belt for best racing recreations. But Le Mans is just barely a fictional drama. Of the more recent racing flicks I thought FvF was better than Rush, primarily because of the acting talent, which was uniformly a step-change upwards from the cast of Rush. Rush suffers from a terrible blandness, primarily because of Daniel Brühl's incredibly flat portrayal of Lauda and Ron Howard's wooden directing. FvF, as noted earlier, is essentially a buddy movie and, like many of you, I was ready for another Christian Bale tour-de-force, but was more than pleasantly surprised by Matt Damon's Shelby, which has only slightly to do with the real Carroll but works just fine in the movie. The fact is that the whole story is inverted in the movie as compared to historical reality. Henry Ford II was a serious Europhile already swept up in the glamour of late 50's jet-set life when he met his 2nd wife, Maria Cristina Vettore , a confirmed jet-setter herself, in 1960. which led to his first divorce and they're marriage (their 2nd in each case) in 1965. FvF happens during this period. Sports car racing was the epitome of jet-set glamour. Buying Ferrari out of near-bankruptcy was just part of his life at the time. Of course there's no way that Italy's Agnelli family would have allowed it, and Enzo Ferrari knew it. The rest is history. Ford (via Roy Lunn) was already active in European racing circles and Carroll Shelby was on the make with his struggling A.C. Ace hop-up operation, buying small block Ford V8s. The whole thing was Meant To Be, obviously. And that's where FvF picks up, and it does a fine job doing it. Only the most die-hard aficionados will notice (or even care, if they do) that no-one except Bale as Miles even looks faintly like who they're supposed to be. The script and acting are strong enough so that the movie works on its own terms with first-rate photography, special effects and editing. Like Days of Thunder before it, it has about as much to do with the historical Miles and Shelby as DofT had with Tim Richmond. But as a racing yarn and buddy flick it works great. See it! The Deuce & Cristina, Le Mans '66 (with young Edsel Ford in tow).

The motor is built and installed. As mentioned earlier, it’s a Revell Parts Pack Cadillac 354, built pretty much out of the Pak with the 6-carb option. A sheet metal “doghouse” flame protector for the carbs was fashioned from sheet aluminum and the exhausts extended using aluminum tubing. The fuel tank is from an AMT ’59 Ford kit with a gas cap added. The suspension is completed and installed. The front wishbones are split Model A items from the AMT kit and the rear traction arms are from a Revell ’32 Ford kit. The Pitman arm and steering link are scratch built from styrene stock. The rear slicks got switched out one last time, this time to the 2-piece pie crust items from the recent Round 2 ;36 Ford Coupe re-issue. They’re just the right diameter and width. Below are pictures of the completed rolling chassis and a mockup with the body in place. I made a new “soft” tonneau cover to replace the original item. It’s fashioned from thin styrene sheet and masking tape. It has yet to be painted and I still have to work on fastening down the edges. Besides the tonneau cover, I have to work some more on the graphics and paint scheme, but I’m quite close to done now. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks Bob! The motor is built and installed. As mentioned earlier, it’s a Revell Parts Pack Cadillac 354, built pretty much out of the Pak with the 6-carb option. A sheet metal “doghouse” flame protector for the carbs was fashioned from sheet aluminum and the exhausts extended using aluminum tubing. The fuel tank is from an AMT ’59 Ford kit with a gas cap added. The suspension is completed and installed. The front wishbones are split Model A items from the AMT kit and the rear traction arms are from a Revell ’32 Ford kit. The Pitman arm and steering link are scratch built from styrene stock. The rear slicks got switched out one last time, this time to the 2-piece pie crust items from the recent Round 2 ;36 Ford Coupe re-issue. They’re just the right diameter and width. Below are pictures of the completed rolling chassis and a mockup with the body in place. I made a new “soft” tonneau cover to replace the original item. It’s fashioned from thin styrene sheet and masking tape. It has yet to be painted and I still have to work on fastening down the edges. Besides the tonneau cover, I have to work some more on the graphics and paint scheme, but I’m quite close to done now. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks for the follow up. I'll definitely be looking into it.

Thanks. Metalizers rub off easily until they are fully cured - about 24 hours - when applied directly to plastic. But then they are quite durable. It sounds like the Vallejo paints are quite different. I may give them a try to see how they could be used.

Beautiful! I'm assuming you're airbrushing it. Any thoughts about hand brushing it for smaller parts? That's something I have done with some success with Testors Metalizers.

Thanks! Yep. There's mainly the motor and final decals and trim to do. The suspension bits are already done and waiting for final assembly.

If you're still taking entries I just got back to a project I started in January 2014. It's under Drag Racing Models here: Here's where I left it off back then (I only posted once before running into some paint and motor issues that made me put it away: And here's where I'm at today: Like Dan Himmel did with his knockout Junior Fueler, I'll post updates here as well as in the original thread from six years ago (yikes!).

Overall, I tend to finish most projects I start. But over the years I’ve accumulated a fair number of unfinished projects. Like most of us, of course, I intend to finish them “someday”, but some projects stick in my mind more than others, and I intend to finish those sooner rather than later. This was one of that category of stalled projects. Now, some 6 years later I at last am on the path to completing it. What stalled it was some minor paint flaws and problems getting serious about the motor, originally a small block Chevy which was slated to be injected. But the Triple Nickel is more of a classic late 50’s car rather than an early 60’s machine like the Tony Nancy 22 Jr. ’29 roadster with its injected Buick nailhead. It’s roots are in a dry lakes/drag hybrid rather than a pure dragstrip car like the 22 Jr. This is especially true since I chose to emphasize some of the earlier 555 details in my version. So when I resumed this project the other week one of the first changes I made was to choose cubic inches and big torque over light weight and revs by going with a Revell Parts Pak Cadillac 354 with 6 ‘97’s. The other change I made was to use AMT 8” M&H slicks with their higher profile and larger diameter rather than the Ma’s Resin 7” pie crusts. They sit in the wheel arches better and are more in keeping with the big cubes/big torque approach. Other than these two changes I was pleasantly surprised how much progress I had made before I put this project aside. The chassis had been finished out and painted, the tin work cut, fit and painted and the basic suspension completed and fitted. So far I have finished up the suspension, fabricated the steering parts based on the steering gear from the Tony Nancy dragster part of the Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit, .completed and finished out the wheels, and begun the final fitting of the body and chassis for final assembly. The big Caddy mill has been started and will feature 6 Stromberg ‘97’s in keeping with the late 50’s theme. The pictures below show most of the new work except for the suspension arms front and rear and the steering gear. These parts are completed but missing from the photos. The gold numbers are from a set of numbers I had printed earlier this year. I’ll add gold striping tri and, team and trade decals during the finishing up phase. Next is .building out the motor and then final assembly. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Many of the photos from my original post have been wiped out by the Photobucket debacle so here is a repost of the introductory material from back in 2014. Next ;up is the update from this evening as I finally pick up this long stalled project. I can;t edit the old post so here are the photos from the original post. The second Murray & Waters roadster which became the first 555 car. The Triple Nickel car as it stands today as featured in the current TRJ. This was the third car the team built. Here are the wheel sub-assemblies before finishing. Here’s an early picture of the frame before the roll hoop braces were added. … This is a composite picture showing the status of the build just before starting the paint process. … This is the body in basic paint. …

Monogram has always stood out as the premier plastic model kit maker when it came to documenting the Golden Age of Hot Rodding. The 'Lil Coffin, as awkward as it is to build, when done to this level, demonstrates how faithfully their designers could reproduce these iconic cars in scale. Beautiful model. Congrats! On a side note, this is such a fabulous Parts Kit that I've never actually had one stay intact long enough to consider a straight kit build. But this is one kit that deserves it, as your version so clearly shows.

Beautifully turned out detail build. Even the metal tones are spot on. The close-up photography is merciless. The fact that everything holds up to this as it does is proof of the excellence of your skills. Where did you get the blower belt decal?

Nicely done, indeed! Good to see the Phantom Vicky cowl graft while still under construction. Amazingly good fit! The hood graft is virtually the one remaining parts use from this gold mine of a parts kit I hadn't gotten a round to. Like you all, I have several of the pre-paints in my stash. For a while you could pick 'em up, brand new and unstarted, for less than 10 bucks... Those days are gone now, but it's still a treasure trove of superb stuff.

Really nice fabrication work, You're approach to a symmetrical louver pattern for the hood is so simple and, now that I've seen it, so self evident. I'll be looking forward to the completed hood. It would make an ideal solution for a well-proportioned top side louver set. Oh for a proper resin copy..., LOL. In any case, the Flintstone body caught me by surprise. I had always assumed it was an AMT re-pop but it appears that it's design to fit either the Phantom Vicky chassis and/or perhaps the Revell series (judging from the work you're doing). How is the overall quality, and what have you determined it's designed to fit? Looking forward to seeing more, more, more...!!!

I enjoyed a long-distance friendship with Barry over the years on this and other forums. We shared a mutual interest in hot rod modeling. When I first resumed modeling now more than 10 years ago it was Barry who saw the potential in my early efforts and offered enthusiasm and encouragement. He had a unique gift for a stylish and impeccably turned out model which I always found inspirational. I tried my best to let him know how important his models and his comments were in my development. From all the kind words expressed here I suspect I was only one of many. I will miss him. As so many have said, he was one of the good guys...