Dennis Lacy

Thanks! It’s early on but I think I have a pretty solid plan. We’ll all find out together! ?

I was ecstatic when it was announced years ago that Revell was coming out with an all-new Mustang LX Coupe kit (never would have imagined) but like many people I was very disappointed when I saw the mis proportioned body on the test shot pictures that surfaced. I stayed out of the poo slinging arguments that resulted but was as frustrated as anyone else. Despite that I bought a few of the drag race version a while back because at the least they have some really nice parts, especially the 2 in 1 drag race version. I’ve gotten to a point, now, where I’d like to go ahead and build one despite the issues with the body. These old 5-liter Mustangs are very near and dear to me because I bought my first one, an ‘88 GT 5-speed Convertible in the summer of ‘95 when I was 15-1/2 years old from my Stepdad. That was my daily driver until March of 1999 and by then it had all of the typical bolt-on mods. My current driver since February of 2013 is a near mint condition ‘87 GT Hatchback with a handful of mods and more to come. In between those two Mustangs my daily driver from March of 1999 to February of 2013 was an ‘88 LX Coupe! This car was heavily modified with a fully built motor and road race suspension. It made 320 HP and 335 TQ to the wheels on a Dynojet, would hit 113 Mph in the quarter and saw many open track road course weekends. For 14 years this poor car took every bit of abuse I could throw at it. It was built entirely by myself and my close friend at the time, Zak. My favorite era for these Mustangs is the 1990’s. The styling trends and performance parts from that decade are where my hearts at so I’m going to build this model to reflect the later part of that decade. Specifically, 1998. The first order was to choose an era correct set of wheels. It just so happened that not too long back my friend Wes Salazar built Revell’s Super Stallion Mustang kit but put aftermarket wheels on it leaving the kit wheels and tires up for grabs. That kit happens to have a set of one of my favorite 90’s 3-piece wheels ever, Speedline 978’s. Wes agreed to send me his unused set. The only problem is that the tires are the same size all around and looked a little wimpy out back. I don’t have anything in the way of late model car kits to find tires in but I do have this one that my friend @Kit Karson sent me in a large care package of kits a few years back, Revell’s Alternomad Caprice Wagon. At the time I didn’t think I’d have any use for this kit or it’s parts but as it turns out the tires are a just-right larger size with nearly identical tread and the wheels fit them, perfect for the back! So here is the initial mock up with the Speedline 978 wheels, larger rear tires and the kit provided cowl hood. For the engine I’m ditching the pushrod 5.0 and replacing it with the ‘96-‘98 SVT Cobra 305hp DOHC engine found in AMT’s ‘32 Phantom Vickie street rod kit. The detail on this engine is very well done and by the late 90’s these Cobra engines became popular swaps into the earlier cars when an unfortunate donor would bite the dust. In fact, a friend back in about 2003 had an ‘89 LX Coupe with the entire drivetrain, big brakes and wheels from a wrecked ‘98 Cobra swapped into it. What was so interesting to us was that drivetrain was significantly faster in the ‘89 shell than the ‘96-‘98 Cobras were. Figure that one out… I assembled enough of the engine to be able to do necessary test fitting. The ‘90 LX drag race kit comes with an aftermarket style light weight tubular front k-member along the likes of UPR, D&D, etc. As luck would have it this piece provides just enough clearance for the new engines oil pan allowing the motor to fit down into the car. (The stock k-member piece is a no go as just on the full scale swaps, there’s nowhere for the the oil pan to go.) I was able to slightly modify a set of the headers from the Small Block Ford engine found in all of Revell’s ‘32 Ford kits and they perfectly snake around and clear everything. Not exactly prototypical headers for this engine but they won’t be as visible in the finished model and I couldn’t ask for a better fit. Here’s the engine fit from the top side. That’s as far as I got today. Most of today’s effort was mental vs physical, brainstorming and thinking things through. Much more to come!

It’s more like if this was a full scale high-end build there ain’t no way anyone is drinking ANYTHING in my expensive custom interior! LOL!

LOL! My friend @Rocking Rodney Rat said the same thing when I texted him and @Kit Karson pictures as I was building it. Y’all are gonna peer pressure me into cup holders!!!

Thanks a bunch, Steve!

Thanks! I’m really pleased with how the amps turned out. They look darn near just like the amps in your diagram!

Thanks! Just after posting this update tonight I ordered Detail Master speaker grills and radio faces. Not sure how I’m going to lay out the speakers yet and it didn’t occur to me to put any in the console, but I could…

UPDATE: Today was a good day at the bench. Happy to say that the interior fabrication is complete, finally! Stubs were installed on the door panels made from .080” Evergreen rod to space the photo etched window and door handles and give them a surface to mount on. I decided that there definitely needed to be a center console so I build one from .040” Evergreen sheet then made some armrest pads from some of their rectangle stock. Lastly, to complete the stereo components in the cargo area I needed to come up with a pair of amplifiers. I put my biggest thinking cap on and then it hit me. I grabbed a pair of the custom finned air filters from an AMT ‘53 Ford Pickup, cut the rounded ends off so that they were a 1/2” long, thinned down the backside some, glued some rectangle stock to the top and bottom edges, glued some .020” thick strips to cap the ends, trimmed and shaped as desired then added a .020” thick base plate with material left at each end for mounting flanges. I think the results are actually pretty darn convincing! Here is the final interior mock up. It sure has come a long way from stock! The amps will get some basic power and ground cables routed to better bring them to life. If you look close at the picture with a red circle you’ll see that I also included the little squirrel mascot that comes in the kit. Like the ‘57 Chevy Custom I recently finished I’m gonna make it a point to use these little guys when provided because no one ever does! In this case, since the car is a 4-seater I’ll say that the scale owner has a young daughter that takes her squirrel stuffed animal everywhere she goes. Next step, primer and paint!

I found one local yesterday and it followed me home. Very pleased with the contents and looking forward to digging in very soon.

Thanks Alan! I’m having a lot of fun building this wagon. It’s been pushing my creativity because I have never built a model of a 60’s car before so I’m totally winging it here! That’s an interesting idea for the speakers that I could see working. Especially on something with limited visibility into the interior.

Wow, at this stage in the game I would never have expected a body correction. This is awesome! I never said anything about the window height being short when everyone else was frothing at the mouth, it wasn’t gonna keep me from buying and building one so I stayed out of it. But, I could definitely see it and was prepared to help it using Tim Boyd’s suggestion. Now I won’t have to! Big applause to you for stepping up and correcting it. You just guaranteed a TON more sales.

Thanks, Tim! I’m still smiling about it!

I actually get that reference!

I got mine yesterday and was absolutely blown away to see a 2 page spread with HUGE pictures on my ‘27 T Touring hot rod. First ink I’ve ever had. Whoever made that decision, THANK YOU!!! ?

UPDATE! Another constructive Sunday afternoon at the work bench. Added a modern tilt steering column from Revell’s 1937 Ford street rods. Added raised design to the door panels made from .020” styrene sheet and .040” half round rod. This took a lot longer than you might think considering it’s simple design. Actually, a good amount of the time was spend staring at it trying to decide what to do. Put a little notch in the floor next to the spare wheel opening so that I could fit the wing nut. Lastly, I created the subwoofer box out of .040” sheet. The back of it was made to match the angle of the rear seat backs. The sub faces were made from a pair of trimmed down Revell ‘57 Chevy air filters and a pair of Revell ‘37 Ford Pickup hubcaps of all things! Not 100% accurate but they do the job. Here’s the interior all mocked up. Very happy with how it’s turning out! One more afternoon should get it done. Left to do is to create a pair of convincing stereo amps, build a full length center console and add some little circular nubs to the door panels to mount the photo etched handles to.

Wow, that’s a huge order! What Ed considers “blemished” to most would look like a perfectly viable production part. He has very high standards for his products. I created the masters for the ‘32 3-Window and 4-Door bodies for him (also a 5-Window) so I hope to see them get built here on the forum. It’s funny, he was apprehensive about casting the 4-Door because they are typically less popular and if I’m not mistaken it turned out to be the best seller of the three ‘32 bodies we collaborated on. The 4-door IS chopped a scale 3” as it comes, BTW. ?

This looks like it will be an interesting model to watch come together. I never knew that AMT had their own O’Connor Eclipse. Did they do any of the other movie cars? I’m not a F&F fanboy but I was 21 when the original movie came out and I saw it in the theater with my friends (and we left making non-stop fun of it because of the awful dialogue and we were all 5.0 Mustang guys!) ? Now 20 years later I look back on the first movie with some nostalgia and enjoy watching it from time to time. These tuner cars had a certain style and charm in the late 90’s and early 2000’s that I enjoy now too (but also made fun of at the time!) A few months ago I randomly came across Craig Leiberman’s channel on YouTube and have watched almost every episode. Getting the back story on all of the original Hero cars and the movie in general was really fascinating.

Your creativity when it comes to nostalgia drag cars never disappoints. This thing looks bad ass from any angle!!! ?

No. The engine also includes a dual 4 barrel carburetor intake, carbs, small round air filters, standard timing cover with water pump, belt drive and fan.

Thanks man! For such a simple kit I sure keep finding a whole lot more work to do on it! ?

I’m really surprised you got that engine in there without carving on the firewall!

@ModelcarJR The Hemi engine in the Revell ‘32 5-Window IS a first generation Chrysler (a very accurate one at that) which had the distributor in the back. They can’t call it a Chrysler unless they are willing to pay Big $$$ for licensing. The big 4-speed attached to it is also Chrysler.

I did mention it in the previous update but a picture is worth a thousand words.

UPDATE! Happy Halloween everyone! Before taking the kiddos Trick or Treating tonight I had a productive afternoon at the workbench. The first order of business was to come up with a solution for the rear seat. I don’t have anything that would make a proper looking bench that would match the front buckets in any kind of way which is why I mentioned in my last update the idea of replacing the rear seat with a custom stereo enclosure. If the car was a 2-door I would have done that no problem but given it’s a 4-door I really wanted it to have rear seating. Digging through my bin of interior parts I came across another pair of Speedwagon front seats. I grabbed them then spent some time studying how to best make them fit with the step in the floor and around the wheel wells. After some careful carving I made them fit nicely. Continuing on, out of the box the door panels have some almost indiscernible engraving “detail” which worked to my advantage since it was easy to sand smooth. Before doing that I scribed all of the door panel gap lines that didn’t exist. I also filled then sanded all of the seams for the floor patch. Borrowing a detail from @Katsusauce recently finished and very cool ‘63 Wagon, I opened the spare wheel cover in the cargo area to display a matching Centerline Champ wheel. I used a small Dunlop tire from Revell’s 32 HiBoy Roadster which I had to cut in half and then sand down around 3/4 of its circumference to fit. Here’s some mock up shots with all four seats in place. I tacked them in so that I could also get a look with the interior up into the body. I’m very happy with how the seats worked out. Next will be to finish the door panels with some 90’s looking inserts, billet handles & cranks and making a subwoofer box for the cargo area.

Man, this came out awesome! Love the paint scheme (just now noticed it carries over onto the frame side rails) and the car looks super aggressive thanks to the stance, wheels & tires and injected Nailhead.