Dennis Lacy

Thanks, guys! No, the taillights will stay as they are and use the inserts and bullet lenses from the out of the box. One of the whole points behind using the Ala Kart bodywork is that all the customizing is done for me.

UPDATE I had a little bit of time to hang out at my work bench today and I made a little bit of progress on this thing. I started by modifying a pair of Caddy headers from Monogram's Blue Bandito '29 Roadster Pickup to pin to the heads on the Revell Caddy engine then added angle cut extensions to flow alongside the cowl. Then I worked a bit on the induction. The molded carburetor scoops got their centers hollowed out for realism, I filed away the mold seams on all 3 carbs and also drilled all 3 for future fuel hose. I also built a basic round fuel supply log from .060” rod and mounted it to the intake manifold just below the middle carb. I also swapped on the finned valve covers from Revell's Cadillac parts pack engine and drilled the spark plug locations for future wires. Not a “ton” of work but it's some fiddly stuff out of the way. Progress is progress! Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki

Ha! I totally forgot they had one of these in Hunter. I'm pretty sure my Mom's had red interior, though. I used to watch that show all the time. Stepfanie Kramer was pretty hot!

Sweet! My Mom had one of these brand new. I was about 5 at the time and thought it was the greatest thing ever. Hers was dark red and silver twotone with the red stripe around the middle. Very hard to find a nice, low miles example these days.

The Replica Model. Fabricated and Painted / Weathered by Jon Ferren. Assembled by Me. The model went together extremely well. Everything fit like it should. There were a few parts missing such as the steering gear, upper and lower radiator hoses and finishing out the intake manifold. I found it interesting to assemble someone elses work because we all have our own techniques, which meant I had to adapt myself to some of his. Most of the assembly was handled last weekend with finishing touches taking place today. To say that Jon accurately captured the look and feel of my old car is an understatement! Even my Wife's jaw dropped when I showed her the finished model. If anyone would like to know what any of the parts used are, please ask because I'm sick in the head and know what every single one of them is! Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki

My 1927 Ford Roadster Hot Rod Starting in May of 2005 and spanning until June of 2007, I built a 1927 Ford Roadster hot rod for myself. The car featured a heavily modified 1932 frame, dropped original 1934 axle and split 1934 wishbone, 1934 rear axle with “T” spring, 1935 flathead V8 engine with Thickstun PM-7 intake manifold, Stromberg “81” carburetors, tubular headers with 2” exhaust and Smithy mufflers, 1935 transmission, 1939 Lincoln brakes, 1941 wheels with 1946 hubcaps and Firestone bias-ply tires, 1948 truck steering gear and 1940 steering wheel, modified 1934 Chevy dashboard with early curved-glass Stewart Warner gauges, chopped windshield, chopped 1929 radiator and shell, 1927 Chevy sedan gas tank in the trunk, BLC headlights and 1939 taillights. Every component on the car was a genuine old part and it was constructed to a very exact degree of period authenticity for a Southern California roadster that could have been built in the late 1940's. Many times observers thought that it had been built in the 40's, found and “gone over” to put it back on the street. Their reactions were priceless when I would reveal that it was a newly constructed car! Despite its weathered “patina” appearance, the car was also built and finished to high professional degree of workmanship, function and safety. With this car I was also a member of the historic Pasadena Roadster Club for 6 years which was re-activated with the blessing of the surviving original members in 2002 as a continuation of the original club which was active from 1946 – 1953. Club rules dictated that for a roadster to qualify it had to be of 1936 or older vintage and built from only genuine components not newer than 1953. The purpose of the club was to preserve and promote early hot rodding. After my time in the PRC I also ran a San Bernardino Krankers club plaque given to me by some hot rodding friends from that region. After thousands of miles and daily use over a span of 5.5 years, the car was sent to it's new caretaker in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It was far from an easy decision but a necessary one as I had a growing family and another project that I wanted to get to and financing had to come from somewhere. Below are the last photos I ever took of the car, the morning it was transported to a shipping service. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki In late 2011 I had started befriending a fellow named Jon Ferren from Hollywood, Florida. Jon is an extremely talented model hot rod crafter who I discovered when I joined a forum called Traditional Rods and Kustoms – In Scale back in 2008, about a year after returning to model building after many years away. Extremely impressed with Jon's skill, particularly in creating realistically weathered and worn models I told him that I would like to see him make a model replica of my roadster. He really liked the car and instantly agreed. It wasn't a commissioned build, per-se, and I never had any intention of “owning” the finished model. I really just wanted to see him build it. Also, not wanting Jon to be out any of his choice parts, I sent him a care package consisting of a Jimmy Flinstone roadster body, a set of wheels, a set of Modelhaus resin tires and some other key ingredients. As luck would have it, Jon's profession sends him out to Anaheim, California every January for a trade show and the Anaheim Convention Center is only 30 minutes from the hot rod shop my Dad and I have. That being the case, in January of 2012 Jon was able to take an afternoon off and come out to see the roadster first-hand, go for a long ride around town and even drive it himself. The experience amped him up for the project, to say the least! The experience also solidified our friendship and we have made a tradition of hanging out every January when he is here for his trade show. Nothing like two grown men hanging out in the garage geeking-out over models! Below is a photo of Jon and I with the roadster and him about to take it for a solo spin. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Jon made excellent headway at first handling all of the fabrication and painting of the replica model. Then, as it sometimes happens, he ran into some builders block. When he ultimately snapped out of it he was on to new projects and the little roadster never managed to get finished. When he was out here in California in January of 2014 he handed me a little shoe box containing the stalled project. He apologized for not completing it but thought that I might enjoy putting it together. I accepted the challenge and up until last weekend the poor thing sat on my bench in that lonely shoe box needing some love. Jon is scheduled to be here again next month and I made it my mission to push everything out of the way and finally get this little guy hung together. Below are a couple of pictures. The first is how I received the project and the second is taking inventory so that I could plan my attack. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Continued...

Fan-freaking-tastic! All of your changes work awesome and the color scheme fits the car perfectly. Definitely one of the best from this new kit, yet.

My area of modeling interest matches my full scale automotive interest which is early Ford hot rods, typically in 60's or older period styling. I'm always thinking about different cars and how I'd build them. Ideas pop into my head at random while at work, driving, eating breakfast, laying in bed, taking a shower or even sitting on the throne. Naturally, there's times where real hot rods provide inspiration, too. There's also times when sitting at my work bench that I'll start screwing around mocking frames, bodies , engines and wheels together and next thing I know a new project is born that I hadn't considered 5 minutes prior. The only problem is that the ideas come to me a lot faster than I can build them so it takes a lot of discipline not to steer (too far) off course.

No offense implied but I honestly don't understand this. It sounds awfully OCD. My wife is very supportive of my hobby but if I started doing things like this she'd probably commit me.

Looking good! What's that shade of blue on the body? Are you gonna leave it flat?

It's really neat to see all 3 possible versions of the Little T together like this. All of them are very cleanly built and look fantastic. That being said, the blue one is my favorite by a large margin!

Some people do reverse the firewall to gain clearance for larger engines but that trick only applies to '30/'31 Model A's which have full one piece firewalls. Despite the way that the kit firewall is, it doesn't represent an original '28/'29 which was 2 piece with the upper portion being built into the cowl top / tank assembly.

The reworked (and now much more traditional) chassis looks great and with the body in some color other than white the "look" of the car is coming together nicely. It captures the look and feel of a late 40's or early 50's lakes-car quite well. Looking forward to seeing it in color! It's funny. I've been so programmed since birth that hot rods have bigger rear tires that when I see one (especially an open wheeled one) with same-size tires front and rear that it's really hard to wrap my head around it. Although, it does appear that in your first reference picture that the car has nearly identical tire sizes front and back.

Thanks for all of the positive comments, guys! The Ala Kart is a bit of an odd ball so it's neat to see so many people showing interest. Thanks for the idea, Tim. That's a truly nice piece and I've seen it put to use quite a few times. In this case I'm going to stick with what I have because I can have the cowl reworked a lot faster than I can get one from Norm.

I like the color scheme you have planned. I still find it comical that Revell included whitewall decals for these tires, considering that Firestone (and now Coker) never made them that way.

Thanks! You can check out the T Roadster here: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/106763-27-t-roadster-retro-drag-updated-11115/?page=1

UPDATE - Continued Here are some full mock ups with all of today's work. I cut a notch in the nose to fit around the axle/spring and installed mounting pins to positively mount the nose to the front of the frame. I'm also considering using this neat V-shaped windshield from AMT's '32 Phantom Vicky kit. The cowl will need to be reshaped but I think that this windshield goes better with all of the custom styling much better than the Ala Kart's stock Model A windshield does. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki I thought I should also include a picture showing how absolutely perfectly the frame from the new '29 Roadster kit fits up into the bed. Hosted on Fotki

UPDATE Got some good bench time in today and made some solid progress. First order of business was to choose and mount a rear axle. I thought about reworking the '29 Roadster 9" axle to have a vintage cross spring but the more I thought about it the better I thought it would be to have a vintage "banjo" axle. After offering up multiple versions I found that the axle with lowered spring from Revell's most recent release of their '37 Pickup (which comes with both stock and lowered rear suspension) would work really nice. The rear ride height needed to come down a good amount too. I started by using a round file and filing the half-round rear axle notches 1/8" deeper then smoothed out the transitions. This completely eliminated the goofy axle mounting stands. I also installed a new rear cross member made from 1/8" round tube. To install it I drilled .060" holes in the frame rails then inserted a .060" plastic rod through both frame rails and through the tube. Like the front tube cross member, doing it this way positively locates the tube and fully supports it as opposed to simply gluing it to the inside of the frame rails. I then drilled the center of the tube and drilled the center of the spring (which was thinned down some) and inserted a mounting/alignment pin. Hosted on Fotki The flanges on the ends of the axle are 1/4" diameter. I decreased them down to 3/16" then filed a flat on the bottom to replicate the D-shaped flanges on the '29 Roadster kit 9" rear axle so that the brake plates from the '29 would fit. I also cut off the wheel mounting pins, drilled the ends of the axles and inserted .060" rod for the wheels to mount on. Hosted on Fotki Here's a few pics of the rear axle fitted. I still need to fit the shock absorbers, trailing arms and cut off the remains of the torque tube as it will be replaced with an open driveshaft. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki Here's a comparison of how my modified frame looks (so far) Vs. an unmodified '29 Roadster kit frame. Hosted on Fotki Hosted on Fotki I also did a little more work on the engine, which is the early Cadillac from Revell's '49 Custom Merc. I filled the carburetor mounting holes in the intake then drilled new .040" holes which I inserted rod into of the same size. The carburetors with cool shorty, angle cut scoops are from the most recent version of Revell's '50 Ford Pickup. I center drilled their bases with matching .040" holes to fit over the pins on the intake. Later I will drill out the scoops to make them more realistic. Hosted on Fotki Here's the rolling chassis incorporating all of today's work. I decided to change the wheels to the Cadillac sombrero pieces from Revell's '49 Custom Merc. I did this for a couple of reasons. 1) I felt like with all of the custom stylized bodywork that simple Ford steel wheels with hubcaps were out of place. Caddy sombrero caps are a classic go-to choice for customs and something like this much better suits the rest of the vehicle. 2) I love the Cadillac theme tie-in between the wheels and engine. The tires are all from The Modelhaus and are # T110 front and # T180 rear. The outer wheel halves fit into them surprisingly well and the inner wheel halves needed only slight tweaking to fit. Hosted on Fotki

The front axle looks a lot better stripped and painted. All of the details are way more crisp. That's why on a lot of my models the chrome goes away.

To further elaborate on the louvered '32 trunk lid for future reference... Below is a chopped and channeled '30 Coupe that I built a couple of years back using Monogram's kit (which your resin body is made from.) It has the '32 5-Window louvered trunk lid adapted to it. The curve of the lid matches perfectly. All that needs to happen to fit it is to add a thin strip of material to the left and right sides then cut about 1/8" off of the bottom edge. Hosted on Fotki If you're into building hot rods you should have a couple of the '32 5-Window kits in stock. They're a treasure chest of good rod parts!

Great looking kids you got there, Tim! It's neat to see them all together because it's such a diverse group. I know you have more on deck and I'm looking forward to seeing those, too.

There's nothing more boring than another stock vintage 'Vette. This thing is plain BAD! Awesome work!

I'm starting to feel inadequate because I have only bought two, so far. I did just get some birthday Visa gift cards and it is the weekend. Might have to head to Pegasus so I can catch up!

Slammed is exactly how the channeled version needs to sit. Based on the position of the front axle after your frame and spring modifications it doesn't look like it's gonna be anywhere near low enough. Based on your photo shopped side view it looks like the wheel center is 1/8" + above the top of the frame rail. As beautiful as it is, the front axle in this kit (with its molded spring representing a stock, non-reversed main leaf and therefor leaving a large air gap between the axle and spring) isn't very conducive to getting a car low. Looks like you're gonna need to swap out the spring to something much flatter and closer to the top of the axle. You might also consider ditching the upside down kit front cross member and replace it with the nearly flat member from a Revell '32 frame. As it is now, it's not very friendly for mounting a radiator.