Dennis Lacy

Chop looks really good and you can never go wrong with maroon on a ‘40 Ford.

That’s why I went with an automatic transmission. Free hand to hold my beer!

No, it wasn’t. 1988 was and they had the same flag mirrors on the doors as convertibles. ?

UPDATE! I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve had an update on this project and I assure everyone it has not stalled. I’ve been chipping away at getting the body and interior parts not only in primer but in their final body-worked primer coat, ready to paint. Below are all of the parts except for the interior tub which turned out nice but just needs some touch up around the big floor patch and a fresh coat of primer. Here’s a small group of parts that are painted including the spare wheel, squirrel mascot, subwoofer faces and scratch built amplifiers. I couldn’t be happier with the amps! Lastly, here’s some aftermarket goodies that recently came in the mail to finish off the interior. Billet gauge panels with digital gauges, speaker grills and radio faces. That’s all for now. Next time I make an update should have parts in color. Stay tuned!

It totally wasn’t planned, either. I have a strong feeling that after this Mustang I’m gonna need to do a bread and butter hot rod project.

Thanks! And no worries. It will be fun having a side by side build going on based on the same kit.

What a great idea! Considering the Fox Body Mustang Convertibles were made from cut-down coupe bodies by ASC it already looks natural. Looking forward to following along.

UPDATE! Yesterday I spent some quality time at the bench. The way this kit is made has the floor pan, front frame rails and lower core support as one piece and then the engine bay side panels, upper core support and interior floor as another. Now the full size car is a unibody so the frame rails and engine bay are not separate, they are a constructed unit. The thing I don’t like about the way the kit has them separate is it leaves the frame rails flimsy and also without any positive locating tabs at the front it makes keeping the rails and bay together and aligned a pain. After studying the situation for a bit I found no reason why these two big pieces can’t be permanently joined now to make life easier during construction. It just means a bit of masking when I eventually get to painting. I’d rather deal with masking later than clumsy separate pieces now. The only thing is that when you place the two parts together there is a gap between the frame rails and bottom of the engine bay walls. If you push them together they will touch at the front but still leave a wedge shaped gap. There’s also a gap at the back edge where the frame rails should butt against the lower part of the firewall. To remedy this I added strips of .010” Evergreen to the tops and back sides of the frame rails. The excess was trimmed and sanded flush and then the floor/frame rails piece was permanently joined to the engine bay walls/interior floor piece. Now the chassis has some sturdy structure to work with. Moving on, the next thing was to figure out how to lower the front of the car. After mocking up the tubular k-member and struts I realized I only needed to get a 1/16” drop to have the little bit of tire tuck I want. After some staring and thinking I realized I could cut the “spindle” area off just below the raised D-shaped registers for the brakes then cut the “spindles” off at their base from the unused stock k-member piece, graft those pieces onto the tube k-member and create a set of “dropped spindles” which actually do exist in the aftermarket for these cars. I added some support strips to the backside to strengthen the graft. I’ll clean those areas up some more later. Tube k-member left and stock k-member right. See the pencil cut lines on each: Modified “dropped spindle” and tube k-member on the left, Unmodified “spindle” and tube k-member on the right: Support strips on back side of modified “dropped spindles”: For use with the tube k-member the kit gives a set of front struts rendered with coil over springs. With the “spindles” made taller it means that the struts are too long. I shortened them the necessary amount and inserted .040” rod into the tops. The kit has these locate inside 2 shallow circles up in the bottom of the strut towers but it’s not a positive locating fit so I drilled shallow holes for the pins that I added to the struts to register in (circled in red.) Here is the left front held together. With the struts pinned this is now a sturdy assembly. And here is the resultant tire tuck with the wheel lined up on center. Just right! The last thing I accomplished yesterday was building some front motor mounts to hold the engine in proper location. These are not prototypical (that would be a big undertaking) but they get the job done and sit on the mount pads of the tube k-member. In the end I will paint these so that they look like something. Thats all for now. Next I will move on to the rear axle and suspension and determine if the rear stance needs to be lowered. After that I’ll address adapting the wheels and a rear disc brake conversion. Stay tuned!

I remember you telling me that story. I’m sure it was fun while it lasted!

I had totally forgotten about this one @Kit Karson and @Rocking Rodney Rat Awesome that someone was able to take it on and get it finished. Looks killer as a two seat sport coupe!

Turned out really nice, Jim! That’s about the best (basically) out of the box ‘30 Coupe I’ve seen yet. Beautiful shade of red, restrained flames and just enough extra details. I also think the Nailhead engine suits the Coupe better than the Chevy (and the Chevy suits the Roadster better than the Nailhead.)

Man, this looks awesome as a Pro Street car! Looking forward to following the build and can’t wait to see it finished. I’m a bit nostalgic about these SS Impala’s. One of my good friends had a low miles, mint condition teal ‘96 SS about 15 years ago. Only modifications were dark window tint and Flowmaster exhaust. He was fanatical about keeping it perfect. He kept towels covering the carpet at all times and if we were out to lunch he wouldn’t let us get refills on our drinks to go. ?

Black walls for sure considering your theme and back story. Looking good. That metallic red is killer!

I mocked this up a couple of weeks ago when I picked up my Mooneyes kit. The AMT chopped ‘25 T body fits down over the extra frame nicely. The front tires are original 60’s Revell parts pack that were made to fit the extra Halibrand front wheels in the Mooneyes kit.

Thanks, Steve! I’m not sure if the front will be quite as low as my mock up as there’s some limitations the way the front suspension is made. There’s probably only one vehicle from the 70’s I might actually see myself building and that’s a ‘77 Trans Am SE because Smoky & The Bandit is one of my favorite movies. Naturally, it wouldn’t be factory stock if I did… As for the 80’s, my 42nd birthday is next Friday and I have it on good authority that one of my kids picked me an ‘88 Mustang GT kit so if this one goes well I’ll have to dig into the GT.

Nice to have you back and you can’t go wrong with a pair of ‘30 Coupe hot rods to get you jump started back into building models. It’s hard to see in the pictures, how “metallic” is the metallic black?

That is a huge advantage for me, true. Between my own Mustangs and the vast amount I’ve helped many of my friends build over the last 25 years I know them down to every last bolt. Is that the 1995 Cobra R kit from Tamiya that you have? That’s a kit I’d love to get my hands on one of these days. I remember seeing them on the hobby shop shelves back as a teenager in the mid 90’s and passing them up because I was put off by the odd Tamiya brand name that I knew nothing about, LOL!

THAT might be a tight squeeze. Probably need a shock tower delete!

Don’t do that to yourself. Just build them and don’t worry about it! ?

Hi Andrew. Depending on the situation I use a tiny drop or two of CA glue (Zap-A-Gap) that can easily be snapped apart or a drop or two of white Elmer’s glue. I also pin a lot of parts which allows me to mock things up over and over and always get them located exactly the same.

That ‘80 Turbo Cobra would be an awesome kit bash with the ‘90 kit. Definitely do that!

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!!!