Alyn

Thanks, guys. Here's another evenings work. I like the look of the old lever action friction shocks, so I decided to see what I could come up with. These started with a slice of 1/8" styrene rod and a matching slice of aluminum. The end of each rod was drilled with an .022" bit prior to cutting so there would be plenty of material to hold in a vice. These disks were matched up with a thin plastic lever arm and a star bolt. All parts are held together with CA. Here's another shot of the final part. The gold part will be glued to the frame rails and a small metal rod will extend from the hole in the lever arm to the front axle. Now that they're assembled, I not sure the red and gold were the right way to go. Kinda gives the shocks a circus look.

Thank you both very much for checking in. I hope you'll like my recent progress as well. In keeping with the home built theme, The grill was pulled off a 32 Ford at the local wrecking yard. The last of the dark bue is long gone, so matching paint will have to wait for another day. For now, we'll just run her as-is. Following the ruddy brown primer in a previous step, I dabbed on some water with a drop of liquid detergent, followed by a few pinches of kosher salt. After the water dried, the ruddy brown primer was covered in gray primer. This gives the part a layer of rust followed by what will be considered the actual primer color. Another drying cycle and then a layer of white, more drying time and then John Deere yellow topped off with a dusting of Krylon satin meringue yellow. This picture shows the John Deere layer. For the grille, I cut some 1" pieces of silver 24 gauge beaders wire. This wire loss its sheen shortly after I bought it and even began to show signs of corrosion. Not too cool for some of the uses I had planned, but for this car the corrosion was just right. I cut a groove across a piece of styrene and laid in a horizontal piece of wire to act as a cross brace. This is around 32 gauge beaders wire. I would have liked something slightly thicker, but the groove to accommodate it would have been too deep, causing the plastic to break. 15 pieces of 24 gauge wire were glued in place to form the vertical ribs. Here's the grill inserted into the shell with another piece of 24 gauge wire surrounding the assembly. The shell has been sanded down to reveal some wear, but some additional painting will follow over the chipping to create some rust. The original layer of ruddy brown didn't hold up well when the salt was removed, so the rust will be hand applied.

Yes, these are close-up photographs of some of Chuck's dioramas. No matter how close you look, his work looks real. I've seen some impressive models, but with Chuck's work, I just shake my head in awe of his talent.

For those of you that don't frequent the Auto Art section of MCM, do yourself a favor and check out Chuck Doan's post. The realism of chuck's work is as good as it gets. http://www.modelcars...showtopic=35479 don't be bashful, leave a reply and tell him what you think

The machine shop looks great. The sepia ages it nicely. As a kid, I use to lay on the floor for hours reading a set of old books called the Book of Knowledge. That machine shop photo would have looked right at home in those old volumes; a great depiction of the early twentieth century industrial age. The gaps in the floor boards and the heavy dust look perfect.

I love (I mean LOVE), your work Chuck. Flat out the best I have ever seen. Is the tractor displayed in true colors, or is that filtered? It would be interesting to see some of the other pieces done in black & white, or sepia tones. Extraordinary in any color.

Thanks, 45 72 69 63 I'll be looking forward to your 57 49 50. 41 6c 79 6e

What a deal, man. I was just posting a comment on your green 32. We must of been typing at the same time... I appreciate the compliment coming from one of my favorite builders. Thank you

Shane this is just another reason why your posts are "auto click". No need to even think about it; click and there's always something interesting and cool. This one is no exception. I like the way you try things that you may not have done before, and don't know for sure if they'll work (but they do). I love these roadsters that squat down low like they're mean and ready for anything. Not cut and slashed drastic like a rat rod, just tastefully low. Nice to see this one come back up to the surface.

Now that I know what the radiator will be, the coolant pipes have a place to connect. These pipes are built from 3/32" aluminum rod. I like to use the rod rather than tube as the bends don't collapse. There's a 1/32" hole drilled in each end to insert a section of 1/32" aluminum rod. This helps locate the end so it doesn't move when glued into place. Here you can see how the engine end of the pipe is filed to a 45 degree angle to mate up with the head which has a 1/32" hole for the locating pin. It's a lot of extra work pinning the ends of the pipe, but it makes installing and gluing easier. Here's the coolant pipes in place on the engine.If this were a rat rod, I'd like these a lot. But, it's not. It's a period build so these won't do. They are too high and hide the carb stacks. I'm going to build another pair and try to get about an 1/8" or more out of the vertical section rising up from the head. They'll probably end up getting in the way of the fuel lines (not in place yet), but I think that's the lesser of two evils.

Paul, I'll have to pass on the race. You have a definite advantage with the blower; no contest. Thanks for checking it out, James. By the way, the pedals are 1/2" steel nails. I'll probably look at this thing on the shelf in a few years and the pedals will be rusty Luckily, on this car that won't matter much. I figured out what to do for the radiator. Here's the three choices it came down to, the kit 29 shell (chrome would be stripped or peppered with surface rust), the cut down 32 shell I built early on, and another 32 shell cut down more like it would have been back in the day; The shell on the right wasn't short enough on the first cut, that's why you see two. The 29 radiator fit like a glove after some minor sanding to narrow the sides. This is a resin piece that I poured. Still getting a few bubbles in some of my casting, but they'll stay to add a little character. Here's the shell in a coat of ruddy brown primer as a base coat for some weathering.

Your right, Paul, the steering box is a bit large, but that pressure pump next to it is a great touch. That's a great looking rod with tons of neat features. It's the kind of build that the more you look, the more details keep popping up. Nice heat staining on the headers, and I noticed the exhaust stains on the axle too. The seats are great and the door latches are an especially nice detail. I also like the way you folded down the windshield. I may have to rip off the eight ball shifter. Now that I see yours, I think that would have been a better choice for mine. The cycle fenders are a great choice too. Thanks for posting the pics. I really like it. Our 29's seem to have quite a few things in common.

What a great break from the world of wheels! You picked the perfect body for this car vehicle. The Stude really lends itself well to the smooth sides and missing wheel openings. Cha-Ching. Another winner

Thanks for your very generous comments. glad you like it.! I'm trying to decide what to do for a radiator and shell. That plus a few engine and chassis details and this one will be done.

Interesting to watch a commercial vehicle for a change. You are making nice progress so far.

Nice subtle tweaks to an already great design, and what looks to be some stellar paint choices. Can't wait to see how you use the green.

yep. I spliced on the trunk and back half of the rear quarters from a resin Merc, then added more to the fender caps to create Lincoln taillights. Finally the continental kit was scratch built for even more length. She's a real land yacht.

Thanks, Raul! I really like working on this 29, but I had to take some time for a special project to turn this 53 Ford into a Merc lead sled and I"m not done with it either...

This car was set aside for a while to get to some more pressing things. I managed to get back to it the last few nights and made a little progress. I was struggling over how to handle the dash. At one point it was going to be covered in a sheet of .015" aluminum with some round gauges mounted into some 3/32 and 1/8 inch holes. I gave up on that and decided to just go with the gauge cluster included in the kit. First the chrome plating was stripped off. Then, to get a flat surface for decals, I drilled out a couple of the molded in gauges and replaced them with some round styrene rod. After the glued dried, the part was shot with Dupli-Color chrome. Some miscellaneous decals were rounded up in the appropriate size and layed into place. These were then covered over with some Tamiya X-22 acrylic clear. The knob i the middle of the cluster was sanded away and replaced with a scratch built knob painted with Testors white enamel. Here's the cluster in place on the dash panel. You can see that the steering is finished up as well. I don't recall where the four spoke steering wheel came from. The horn button is made from a scrap of .015" aluminum cut into a disk and then formed over a ball bearing into a dished shape similar to a contact lense (same as the hub caps, but smaller). Aluminum tube was used for the steering column. At the last minute, I decided to add a suicide knob, so some styrene rod was mounted in the Dremel and turned down into a small handle. The back side was grooved with a round file to mate up with the steering wheel rim and glued with CA. I left if the raw color of white styrene and painted a thin line of silver around the steering wheel rim to simulate a band of metal. and one last one. These taillights are made from some brads I found at Hobby Lobby. They were slightly dished, so I was able to fill them with Tamiya clear red for lenses. I like how they look but size wise, they work out to a scale 6" which is a bit larger than I would like. They're epoxied in place so they will lhave to do. thanks for looking

Dan, here's the car I was talking about. It's obviously not the same car, as it looks to be based on a C3 rather than C2. I saw the twin bubble top and jumped the gun. I don't know what Daryl called this one, maybe Cosma Ray II ???

These headers are known as 180° headers. They combine two tubes from each side of the engine into the same collector for even firing pulses. They are scratch built out of aluminum rod however solder would have done just as well. The collectores are aluminum tube. The individual header pipes wouldn't fit inside the collectors at first, so they were pounded over a center punch to swedge one end open and then over the tip of a large phillips screwdriver to give them the squared off shape. Obviously, only one collector is on in this picture. Bends by themselves don't help create horsepower. In fact, a straight pipe will flow better than one with bends. The bends are there to keep each tube the same length. That is why the rear tube on the drivers side loops up and then back down. This extra bending is needed to keep it as long as tubes towards the front of the engine. Keeping the tubes the same length helps to space the firing pulses evenly apart for better scavenging. Better scavenging = horsepower. Years ago my cousin ran a circle track Camaro with 180's. They have a sound that is totally different from any other type of header. I wanted to duplicate his headers on this engine. This particular set was patterned after some pictures I found on-line (google 180 degree headers). For the most part, all the bends in a set of headers will have a constant radius. Tube benders typically have dies that create 5, 6 or 7 inch radius bends. I picked one of these three sizes and calculated the equivelent in 1:25 scale. Then I found a rod with that diameter and used it as a bending tool for every bend you see in the picture. You don't need to go to this length to scratchbuild a good set of headers, but at least keep the bends similar by "eye ball". You'll notice that just about any picture of headers (or the real thing) will not have long flowing bends. They will all be consistently the same radius. HTH or TMI; your call

I picked mine up the other day. They didn't have all three densities, so the guy gave me 2 15's and 2 18's. Haven't put a knife or file to it yet, but the stuff looks interesting. I was told that a 4 X 8 foot sheet of 3/4" would run around $150. He also said they only sell full sheets. They had thicknesses up to 4" with a commensurate increase in price.

This is about the only pic I have showing a blanket it process(plus some of the finished product). Essentially, you secure a strip of masking tape with the sticky side up. Then lay down alternating colors of sewing thread in a pattern of you design; green, yellow, black & white in this case. I added a single thread of black in each green segment for some added detail. Obviously, the threads need to be kept straight and tight to one another. Then cut off the excess and you have a blanket. It's a tedious process, but not that tough. There are about 240 threads in this example. I used mine to upholster some seat inserts rather than just laying it across the seat. It's pretty cool to stick your hand into the interior and actually feel a soft fabric seat.

Very creative! Reminds me of the old time customizers that chopped up cars so much you had a hard time figuring out what they started with. This one would be a tough guess for anyone that hadn't seen this thread. I've been waiting for some sort of scalloped paint job to bring in the low roof line over the door glass. Even without, she's looking good.

I thought that dash was fantastic. and you keep piling it on. cool interior fabric pattern sexy paint job chrome fender trim nice motor detail you just can't find anything about this build that's not to like.