Dennis Lacy

I think going forward with the cleaned up resin block is the right move. Neat work fitting a belt drive between the front mount plate and the blower. I’ll let someone else guess where the trans adapter came from because I already know the answer!

Exhaust cut-outs have been on my mind since doing the initial work Sunday. ?

The trans is definitely starting to look like a ‘37 La Salle. I love all the plastic shrapnel in the background. ?

If the u-joints actually articulated I do believe you are right. But the long-time solution on a back yard build has always been to take a ball peen to it! ?

Nice chassis, Phil! Certainly looks the part!

Along those lines, one of my customers had a 1932 Ford 5-Window in high school in the mid-60’s. Car had a blown Chrysler Hemi, LaSalle gear box, Halibrand quick change, disc brakes and magnesium Americans. He got caught street racing (who’d have imagined!) and his dad sold it as a punishment. He said he didn’t talk to his dad for a month! ?

The dad in my backstory, while largely irresponsible, couldn’t quite bring himself to turn his teenage son loose with a blown BB out of the gate. Maybe I should build a scale box or crate with used blower parts and set it on the floor board like they’ve just picked up an upgrade kit… ?

The slicks are wider than the pie crust slicks in the kit and the wheels are deeper so I already know they aren’t going to fit. You have think under the circumstances of my back story they wouldn’t hesitate to carve on the car as needed.

Thanks! The kit has only been getting into peoples hands for 2 weeks (ish) but I’m still surprised one or two didn’t pop up immediately after all of the anticipation.

Thanks! It’s definitely cool being close to such a killer hobby shop. I’m only 15 minutes away.

Yesterday I ran down the road a few miles to Pegasus Hobbies and picked up the all-new and much anticipated Moebius 1964 Nova SS and 1965 Chevy II Gasser kits. Even though I had studied the contents in @tim boyd excellent reviews I still had to dig into both as soon as I got them home. And, as I perused all of the parts my wheels started spinning and I had my parts bins open. My original thought was that I’d build the gasser basically out of the box (at some point) but those of you familiar with my model projects already know that’s an impossibility. I mean, just look at what happened with the AMT ‘63 Nova Wagon! I know there’s going to be plenty of 60’s era builds based on this kit so I wanted to do something a bit unpredictable and the theme I landed on was a (somewhat privileged) high school kids (somewhat) beater Street Freak with a healthy rat motor. The kind of impractical all-business car a gear head dad would build with his son in the late 70’s/early 80’s. A while back on eBay I bought the complete Chevy Big Block engine out of a Revell 1967 Chevelle Pro Street which comes with a dual quad intake, velocity stacks, tuff looking Moroso valve covers and long tube headers. When it first occurred to me to try the BB I didn’t have any expectation that it would actually fit and to my surprise it did! It’s tight, for sure, but it does fit and the slivers of clearance scaled up would be acceptable. In the first picture is the kits front motor mount cross member and you can see (look close) the minimal areas needing trimmed colored with black marker. Then following is the basic engine and headers sitting in place. The transmission cross member has a raised half crescent piece sticking up for the kit trans to register on. I removed that and added a .040” thick block then added an alignment pin in the center that registers in a corresponding hole I drilled in the transmission. Since this car would be a teenagers local driver it couldn’t stay open headers or he’d be asking for constant harassment from The Law. The new ‘64 Nova SS kit builds factory-stock but as we saw in @tim boyd review there are extra parts in the kit not mentioned in the instructions, one of which being a very nicely rendered larger diameter full aftermarket style exhaust system. The extra exhaust is for a later version of the kit and is clearly designed to mate to a set of long tube headers. As luck would have it, the spacing at the front matched the big block header spacing exactly, the pipes just come up a bit short. I don’t care for the way the header collectors severely neck down so I chopped them off and replaced them with some resin pieces from my friend Ed at Drag City Casting. Then I trimmed them to the appropriate length, drilled and inserted alignment pins. The two Nova kits share the same floor pan and just need to have the exhaust system mounting holes opened up. Then it occurred to me that I should check the fit of the steering gear/shaft. I did the equivalent of denting a real header for clearance by using a round file to make a slight relief on the front tube. Otherwise, it fits perfectly! Here you can also see that the engine clears the firewall just fine. So that’s all of the actual work I did. As you can imagine it took some time of trying this and that before I settled on the plan. Lastly, here’s the wheels and tires I’ve chosen. The wheels are Cragar Super Tricks found in the restored AMT Double Dragster double kit. The little Pirelli front tires and big M&H slicks come from various modern AMT parts packs. Also a couple of super rough mock up pictures. The quarter panels are going to end up getting trimmed and the slicks will poke out a bit so try and picture that. So, other than Tim’s build review of the pre production kit a couple of months ago it looks like I’m the first one on this forum to dig into a production version.

I’ve never had any version of the Henry J kit but having just gone through this threads it makes me want to get one and build it. You cured the biggest issue of the kit by ditching the very poorly done Ford SOHC engine and the replacement blown small block looks perfectly suited. I also really like the color choice. I used Brilliant Orange as an accent color on one of my models and will use it for the main color when the right project comes along.

That turned out really cool. Great stance and proportions. The color choice looks awesome, too. Not a color I’ve ever seen used on a scale hot rod before but it sure does work!

Thanks a bunch! I’m super happy with the color. I can’t picture it anything else. Now I just need to stop distracting myself and get it done!!! ?

Thanks a bunch, Steve! I assure you I’ve got that squirrel under control!! ?

That would be challenging since you’d have to create the body but it certainly could be done.

For being your first project in over 20 years you dove right in! Those last mock up pics with the modified ‘32 frame look great. Stance is right-on. This kit and it’s companion ‘30 Coupe are very good in many ways but the stance and proportions out of the box are wonky. And, we share the same opinion of the channeled version, there’s just too much free air underneath. I always equate a channeled body to go along with a low slung stance. Next you need to fix the headlight placement which, out of the box, is terrible. They need to come forward and down to eliminate the “frog eye” look.

UPDATE! Had a great day at the bench and finished a lot of the fine paint and small decal detailing. The engine is now complete except for the intake tubing which will have to be built once the engine is permanently installed. I picked up a decal sheet from Revell’s 1993 Mustang Cobra kit for all of $3.00 on eBay. Mostly I wanted it for the Cobra fender badges but it included a second set of snakes in blue which is, as luck would have it, what should be at the center of the intake plenum. The plug wires have been dull coated and if you look close I also added the PCV line from the plenum to drivers cam cover. Here’s the finished master cylinder and hydroboost unit along with the battery complete with Motorcraft decal. The finished subframe connectors and front suspension K-member painted Tamiya TS42 Light Gunmetal. Brakes have been installed front and rear and are a mixture of Testors Metalizer Steel on the rotors, Magnesium on the hubs and Model Master Jet Exhaust on the calipers. The Speedline wheels have been detailed with Testors Silver brushed onto the spokes, flat black In the lug holes and the lug nuts touched with Jet Exhaust. The interior parts have all been paint detailed and the dash/console fully assembled as well. The Mustang emblem decal on the dash comes in the LX kit while the photo etched pedal pads, speaker grills and radio face all come from Detail Master. The white Ford logo horn button decal comes from the Revell ‘29 Roadster hot rod kit. The white gauge faces were on the ‘93 Cobra decal sheet that I bought but the gauge decal is significantly smaller than the gauge decal in the LX kit. I made it work by carefully cutting the white decal into 4 pieces and fit them between the correctly molded raised dividers on the gauge housing. Here’s a closer look at the difference in gauge decals. The bottom one is the correct size from the LX kit while the top is the unused stock gauges from the ‘93 Cobra kit. As you can see there’s quite a difference which is surprising considering the ‘93 Cobra is a slightly larger 1:24 scale versus the LX in 1:25. Despite this I made it work as seen above and I couldn’t be happier! Funny thing is I would never put white faces in any full scale Mustang of mine but for the sake of the model they help further “sell” the car being modified. At this point it’s down to painting the chassis/floor pans and the body itself. ?

No way! Very cool. The white and titanium combo was quite rare and these days extremely hard to come by. When I was 16 in 1996 I bought a Chilton’s repair manual with one on the cover and fell in love. Wanted an identical GT ever since and in 2013 I unbelievably found this one on Craigslist with 57,200 miles and completely stock. It is an automatic but I didn’t care, I had to have it. It’s a factory stripped GT. No power anything, standard radio and no cruise control. Also has the 3.27 geared performance axle. Rare build specs all around.

Tri-5 Chevies sure do make killer Pro Street cars!

Frame modifications look good so far, Phil. Nice way to tweak the K-member into more of a stock appearance. I had no idea the car had the spring ahead of the axle. That couldn’t have been too common and I can visualize how it would have caused wheel hop. I wonder why Tom couldn’t have just moved it behind like thousands of other hot rods?

Sounds like I need to make a trip down the street to Pegasus this weekend! ?

Well then, you’re welcome! ?

UPDATE! Its been a minute since I’ve updated this project because I’ve been spending my time on my ‘90 Mustang. Today I spent the afternoon on this poor, neglected Nova. After brush painting all up inside of the front clip flat black I went ahead and polished & waxed the body, hood, bumpers, dash, console and sub box. As usual I used Adam’s paint correcting polish on a microfiber followed up with their buttery liquid wax. Very pleased with the results! Then I blacked out the spaces between the grill bars with a very fine brush and Testors little jar flat black. This was a tedious process but had to be done. One of the nice things about detailing with Testors little jar paint over Tamiya clear is that if you get it where it doesn’t belong just wipe it off with your fingertip (right away) and keep going. Under the hood I painted the windshield wiper fluid reservoir white and then installed the pump motor with a black line connecting the two. I also installed the brake booster/master cylinder and fuel pressure regulator on the passenger side. The interior is nearly done. The seats are still loose and will be glued down after I make and install the power cables to the amps and install all of the photo etched speaker grills. What is done is the dash with photo etched gauge panel (with digital faces) and photo etched radio/equalizer. The center console and sub box are glued down along with the sub faces, amps and spare wheel assembly. I also installed the photo etched door handles, window handles and pedal pads. So this one is getting really close to the finish line. Still left is to paint the chassis pan after I do some final details on the wheel mounting and I’m also going to lightly tint the windows.

UPDATE! Over the last work week I managed to get all of the interior parts painted except for the floor which is permanently attached to the chassis pan so that will come later. The colors are Tamiya TS33 Dull Red and their semi gloss black. Yes, that’s right. This LX is having “porno red” interior! This color is a little more brown than the factory Scarlet interior but it gets the job done. Originally I planned to finish detail painting these pieces this weekend (window cranks, glove box latch and lock) but I ended up putting a full afternoon into my ‘63 Nova Wagon project instead. So now that we know that the interior is red then what is the exterior going to be? Tamiya TS88 Titanium Silver which is darn near a dead ringer for the factory YX Titanium Frost. One of the harder to find colors and therefore sought after. Here is what inspired the color choices even though it is obviously a GT and has factory two-tone paint, the top half being Titanium Frost with matt titanium lower accent and if you look close you’ll see the red interior. So there you guys have it, the official color plan. I also painted the tubular K-member, subframe connectors, radiator, fan and brakes which I’ll do an update on soon.