Dennis Lacy

Who is Rusty? ?‍♂️

Very cool! That swap would be sacrilegious in the full size world but that’s the beauty of models. Love the repurposed spoiler into a chin spoiler and the Saleen wing out back. Metallic yellow paint and the bark BBS style wheels look great together.

Not yet…

UPDATE! Did a little work on the sister Roadster Pickup yesterday. Started addressing getting the body properly smoothed out. I left the doors functional on my closed cab but since this is a roadster and the interior can be easily viewed I felt it unnecessary. The notches for the hinges got filled and the doors were glued in with liberal amounts of Zap A Gap. Once set I smoothed everything out and then scribed the door gap lines back in. I also permanently installed the lower half of the firewall and filled the slot where the original steering shaft passed through. On the bottom side those two rectangle holes were filled and the rear floor generally smoothed out. The radiator shell had its Ford emblem and lower crank access cover smoother and the radiator cap slot at the top filled and smoothed. Lastly I started working on fitting a dashboard. This one is from the Monogram ZZ Top coupe and features a period correct billet gauge panel. This could change but so far I think I like it. Thats all for now. It felt good to make some progress!

Our friend @Kit Karson has suggested that I create a group thread in the Under Glass for pickups where we can all share our finished Tim Boyd tribute trucks. Sounds like a good idea to me so look for that soon. I realized that the finished pictures I took of my truck weren’t the greatest so I figured out a good background and lighting so that I could shoot new and improved pics that show the finished quality of my truck much better.

Weekend before this last one it was disgustingly hot outside which led to spending most of it inside bored looking for something to do. One thing I ended up doing was going back through this entire thread as it’s unbelievable to me that it’s received over 40k views! I never would have guessed when I started it and then invited others to join in that it would hit the numbers of views and postings that it has! Yesterday I was out at my bench and going through project boxes to access and remember everything I had going. If you guys remember I had actually started a sister roadster pickup version to go with my closed but then I focused on and finished the closed cab while the roadster took a back burner. Looking through it yesterday and I didn’t remember it being as far along as it is. Perhaps it’s time to join back in and work it to completion? I think a couple Sunday afternoons would have it ready to go to paint. Here’s a quick & dirty mock up from yesterday to jog everyone’s memory’s.

Alan, I went through this whole thread for fun today and I don’t know how I missed it but I’m just today seeing your finished truck! ?‍♂️ I really like the finished result! Every bit of it looks absolutely period perfect. I love that you dared to be different with extended cab and hopped up V6. With the extra cab you had the advantage of room to use those Buttera seats as-is where I had to modify them to straighten up the seat backs so they would fit. I also like how you finished the back end with the tailgate, graphics and billet taillights. Did you do an Under Glass post? Got a link to it?

Cool project! The front wheels depend on if you want to make this adhere to actual racing class rules? If so the best class to aim for would be Gas. In which case it would require functional brakes on the front and that would eliminate the 12 spoke wheels. Coming from a perspective of traditional accuracy the steel wheels up front would be a good match for the 5 spokes out back.

There are so many pieces grafted together for that belly pan it’s hard to conceive of how you even got started.

Forget the model as a whole, the belly pan on its own is gonna be a work of art!

The more T Buckets the better! The late 60’s and 70’s saw them get really dorky. Do your worst! ?

Excellent Ivo tribute, Dave! ? Clever work on modifying the headers to fit the Nailhead and I love your solution to make the top fit properly. That makes a world of difference!

Thanks! The slicks will definitely be black wall. I did see @Dave Darby Ivo tribute T. Very cool!

Now there’s an idea! Maybe I should give it a try? ?

UPDATE! A little more work on the T Bucket. Added a slightly modified Revell ‘40 Ford steering gear box and a pitman arm of unknown origin. I will wait to build a drag link rod up to the front axle until after the chassis is final assembled. Changed the steering wheel to a Cragar 3-spoke from the old Monogram ‘32 Roadster. Decided to glue the bed to the cab and I’ll fill the seam. Many of the full scale buckets had the bed molded to the cab wether made from original steel or fiberglass. Inside the bed I added a heavy reinforcement strip and a smaller one on the underside. Did other busy work like smooth out the underside of the interior tub (unused alignment posts, copyright, etc), smoothing the frame rails and knocking down all their sharp corners and various other clean up. Here’s some mock ups with the latest work which looks much more tight and fitted to my eyes than previous. Time to knock it down and put *some* of the chrome in the stripper (yes, I’m actually going to leave some plating on this one!) and do final prep on the rest.

Totally bitchin, Alan! All of your changes make the truck everything it should have been. It’s a serious looking drag strip truck now! Especially love how the dark center Americans look against the shiny red paint and the Blue Streak slicks.

That’s the target year. The later into the 60’s you go things get goofy. That’s exactly what many people did back then. I don’t think they cared because the parts were easy to come by.

@Speedpro I had one of those Ford F-150 kits back in the mid 90’s. Had a green truck on the box top with all the custom body parts and billet wheels. I still remember the Predator carb and air filter set up from it. I held on to that and the Holley valve covers for years but the parts went MIA along the way. ? Would love to have another set but no way I’m paying current asking prices for those pick up kits! ? Anyways, excellent choice! I tried to think of an induction set up to suggest for you guys and completely forgot about this. It’s actually kind of a PITA coming up with small block Ford multi-carb set ups. Last Christmas I got one of the MPC now AMT ‘88 Mustang GT’s and I was stoked to find an optional dual 4 barrel induction.

Stance is perfect!

Thanks! I’ve been needing to get back to hot rods. Not that my streak on newer cars is over. I very much intend to finish the ‘90 Mustang and ‘65 Nova. Just needed a simpler project as a breather. As for the rear spring over the axle, that’s how all Model T’s and A’s were arranged from the factory. Common practice in hot rods since the beginning, too. It’s also fairy common to put the spring ahead of the axle. All depends on packaging constraints but you will get the best right quality with the spring behind.

It’s been on my mind for a while now to build a proper mid-60’s traditional ‘23 T Bucket. Basically ever since I picked up one of the many reissues of the old Monogram - now Revell kit for the first time EVER last year. Yeah, hard to believe I’ve never had one of these kits! Then again, it’s only fairly recently that I’ve taken any interest in T Buckets. I thought forever that they were dumb but then I saw a few pictures of some done just right and realize how cool they can be. For what it’s worth, I started with this issue: The first thing was to come up with a plan. All the recent issues of the kit suffer from 70’s era “updates” which don’t do the car any favors. Here’s a rough mock up with the front wheels and tires from the recent Atlantis (former Revell) Mooneyes dragster along with rear mags and slicks from Monogram’s Boothill Express show rod. The kit small block Chevy has the blower from Revell’s ‘29 Roadster precariously stacked on top. One of the things I don’t care for in this kit (regardless of issue) is the front axle set up, specifically because of how ridiculously WIDE it is due to the spindle design. I thought the car would look much better with the track width narrowed. I trimmed out the original front frame area and fit the tube cross member with bitchin perch detail from the extra frame in the Mooneyes dragster. The dropped front axle and split wishbones are from Revell’s ‘29 Roadster. The molded brackets were cut off from the ends of the wishbones, .040” pins inserted and then some simple tabs added to the bottom of the frame rails. Now for everyone’s favorite part of scale hot rod building, the motor! The kit comes with a small block Chevy which is good with me so I kept the block, trans and heads as a foundation. The molded timing cover/water pump lump got cut off and replaced with the finned cover/pump and belt drive from the Revell ‘29 Roadster. Also from the ‘29 Roadster is the complete 6-71 blower set up. Mickey Thompson valve covers of unknown origin with separate breathers added top off the heads. Shotgun dragster headers from AMT’s Chevy parts pack engine handle the exhaust while the magneto is from the AMT old tool ‘57 Chevy optional 409. The kit already has a quick change axle with split wishbones and early Ford brake plates so I will use all that as is with one tiny modification which was to shorten the tabs on the spring to suck it down against the axle to lower the back just a bit. Got the basic chassis rolling on all 4 tires. Thankfully there was plenty of room for the blower drive behind the radiator! And here’s a full mock up with body in place. I’m quite happy with the stance and proportions. I think it looks like a traditional T Bucket should before they got weird with lanterns and other paraphernalia hung on them. That’s all for now. Next I’ll be fitting a steering box and building linkage along with sorting out some other details like dashboard, lights, license plate, etc.

I don’t know how I missed this one, Alan, but I’m glad I found it. Everything is so right-on. Stance, proportions, color, parts choice. You nailed it!

@bill-e-boy Chassis is looking fantastic! Also really like how you finished the bed floor. Very nice! @Speedpro The small block for KK’s pickup is turning out great. I like how you picked out the brass core plugs and “plated” the servo cover on the side of the C4. Looking forward to seeing what induction you change to. Needs a “billet” air filter.

My intuition tells me it won’t look nearly as cool as a hiboy. Great looking mock up. I’d just go with that.

So neat that you got to see the Ingalls in person. As Ed purchased the car it had been fit with a 283 Chevy small block mated to an early Ford 3-speed trans. After some maintenance he took it to Monterey and ran it in that configuration and said the Chevy performed excellent and temps stayed cool and solid. After restoring it and installing the Flathead the car was plagued with overheating issues that kept him from fully enjoying it because he would have to bail out of every race session. Out of frustration he quit running it and put it up for sale. Fun Fact: The 283 small block that was removed from the Ingalls now resides in my own ‘32 Pickup and to this day every time Ed is around my truck he shakes his head and says he never should have changed it! ?