Alyn

Good eye my friend. I like to pin things for several reasons; a couple more of which are alignment and strength. Not much strength needed in this application, but the pins made aligning the tubes to the distributor a snap. The drivers side tube isn't even glued on and will not be. The pin and plug wires hold it securely and will even allow for a bit of movement when I add radiator hoses(which will also be pinned). Here's another shot of the motor. I tried to upload it earlier, but ended up with an X instead. Now it loads, go figure. The dip stick is 24/26 gage wire with the curled section flattened with pliers. It and the 1/16" brass tube it slides into were dipped in Blacken It for about 2 minutes. I've been leaving my brass parts in this solution for longer than the specified time, but they aren't getting quite as black as I'd like. I guess a little more experimenting is in order. Thanks for your good words and observations. Cheers

I remember back in the 70's thinking the days of performance were gone for good. It's amazing how things turned around. Cool idea to build the smog motor. Kind of an "out-of-the-box-thinking" path to take. The tubes on the exhaust manifolds look really nice. Excellent paint to.

Lots of nice work all around on this one. The paint looks excellent, as does your detail. I really like the pulleys and air cleaner. Your distributor is nicely done as well. I also noticed the placement of the plug wires. On the passender side of a 396, the plugs are just below and ahead of each exhaust port. On the drivers side they're just below and to the rear of each port. Not between the ports like a small block. I also try to start the number 1 plug on the distributor nipple that is pointed towards the #1 cylinder. That's typically the starting point on a 1:1 engine rebuild when you stab the distributor, prepping for that first time start up. I only mention it because I gather from all the effort you're putting into the detail that you'd want to know for the next one. Very nice so far. Like everyone else, I've got one of these kits too. I hope it turns out as nice as yours; especially the paint!

Many of these older motors didn't have boots at all, so I stripped back the insulation a bit on the plug wire where it attaches to the plug to give a little glint of metal. You can also see the dip stick and wire clips over the distributor end caps. I didn't think using tape as a fan belt would look thick enough for this style of engine, so I took the easy way out and used the kit front belt and pulley assembly as is. Still a lot to do such as generator, starter, fan, carbs and headers.

Retired body man huh Raul. I should have known by looking at your work! Thanks for the offer on the pictures. I took a bunch at the Kustom Kemps event a few weeks ago, but I appreciate the offer. As far as the radiator goes, I know what you mean. The first thing I think of is making sure the top of the radiator shell is in line with the cowl. My concern is how the bottom fits to the frame. I'm not sure leaving the curved bottom on the shell will match up nicely with the frame cross-member. The other option is to just cut the bottom off, leaving a flat surface to set on top of the cross-member. I haven't actually spent much time on that issue yet. It's really not that big of a problem. Here's a few more shots of some motor work. I was going to use the standard 90 degree boot style plug wires and built these. Since this is a budget build from yesteryear, no fancy colored silicone wires. Looking at my reference pics, it was obvious that many flatheads use these guide tubes for the plug wires so I scrapped plan A and decided to go with plan B. The tube is 1/16" aluminum. The boots will be cut off. There are at least 3 different styles of distributors for the flathead. This is the front mounted version on mine. The center is suppose to be metal (cast aluminum?) with caps on either side to enclose the plug wires and a cap on top that covers the mechanism (secret mystery stuff).

Well, maybe the old man was hot rodder she does look sweet, though. Usually we have an idea of the look we're after, but once all the parts and paint start coming together a little extra shows up that you never expect. This car has that something extra. I can just picture getting out of it after a quick "show off" spin around the block; knees a bit weaker than expected and kinda glad that dog down the street got out of the way in time. by the way, the front axle and them finned drums look great.

Nasty! just plain Nasty! A whole lot of motor stuffed in a nasty little sled. You don't want to see your daughter's boyfriend roll up in this ride. ... and your detail is right on as usual.

While it may not have achieved Holy Grail status, this car is definately on my list as well. Back in my junior high and high school days, my best friends brother owned one of these; a white one with blue interior and the ever popular slant-6. It may have been a differnet Mopar, but I think this is the car that introduced me to reverse threaded lug nuts and positive ground electical systems. We spent a lot of good time in this car which he called the "Rolls Canardly" It rolled down hills, but could hardly make it back up them. I ended up building a glue bomb version of this and the sister car (Dodge Dart) back in the day. The Dart ended up with a huge amount of putty on the nose as I attempted some major body mods. Unfortunately, the putty got so hard I tired of trying to sand it and never finished the car. This design has a great deal of character which present lots of posibilities for some custom treatment, both obvious and subtle. Git after it and lets see what ya come up with.

Did Arnold have a Hummer strapped to each foot ???

Well, that ought to be good for about 2 MPG on the freeway. I think your hood has a nice clean look that works well without an scoops or bulges. But, while you're on the computer testing, try some louvers and maybe small twin scoops similar to those on a 69 Pontiac GTO; half inset below the hood line, half above. If your set on adding something to the hood, either of these would be less disruptive to the design and flow of what you currently have. While it may be a lot of work, I'd also consider the later one piece curved windshield. Looking at the side profile, a little more slope to the windshield would work well with the dropped nose, but would be difficult to achieve with the short cowl and roof. I owned a gray primered 50 Chevy pickup many years(decades ) ago that was eventually traded straight across for a 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery.

Looks like you've got some great ideas cooking here, Raul. These 50 era Chevy pickups are the ones to build right now. Can't wait to see this one progress.

Here's what I hate about NASCAR. I've got several NASCAR kits and after seeing yours, I'm afraid to build one. Your detail work is excellent, but the motor is just plain killer. Your choice of finishes work extremely well. I hope the judges give it the consideration it deserves.

A week's gone by and not a whole lot more to show. I don't know much about this car, mainly just what I can see in one small, grainy, black and white photo. I don't have it in .jpg format, otherwise I'd post it. My dad, and presumably his friend were a bit young before the war to be building and driving hot rods, so I'm pretty sure this car is post war. Unless maybe it was built by someone else and bought later on. To get the front end down, it'll be getting a suicide front end. This will force me to mount the grille shell above the frame rails. I had a couple of practice resin grille shells around, so I cut one down to see if that would work. The diagonal cut was used to work around a flaw in my casting. Looking at the cut down shell, I wonder if maybe just lopping off the bottom might be the better way to go. I tend to start a kit by building the motor. The reason is probably because it's fun to work on details, and motors don't take as much creative thinking and design decisions. This will be my first flat head, so here goes. As mentioned, the heads and intake are my own resin casting. I'm still learning, so don't look for perfection. Like most motors, this one is split halves. I hate to leave the seam on the oil pan, so a couple of rounds of priming and sanding were called for. The loops in the background are plug wires and right angle boots, although I've decided not to use the boots after all. (I've seen too many pictures with bare connections at the plug).

Great looking interior detail along with some clever thinking. Hold down the "Ctrl" key and press + To reset, "Ctrl" and "0" (the zero above the alpha keys) Press + three times for a Mazda zoom

Waste not, want not. Very nice execution of an interesting concept, although the detail and form of the car is somewhat lost in a sea of Coca Cola logos. The brass is a nice counter balance to all the aluminum and red.

You've covered all the bases; great paint job, nice interior and lots of detail. Good show! I especially like the interior. Very authentic with the bright work on the details.

Thanks for the compliments, Shane. Coming from a guy with your skills, they count double. I personally don't think this is the optimum way to build knuckles. They end up a little bulky, so the next ones I build will probably be done in brass. Here's some basic info on how they were done. I started by making some eccentric bushing to fit the ends of my axle tubes. The hole through these styrene rods are crooked on purpose. A straight pin is used for a king pin. It slides through the hole in these bushings and when they are rotated, I can adjust the castor and king pin inclination. The knuckles begin with a short section of styrene channel that will fit over the axle. this is trimmed down and the tabs are drilled and rounded a bit. The inner edges of the channel are slightly slanted, so they and the tube ends have to be filed to produce a good fit. You can see the wedge of plastic added to the outer surface to provide a more vertical face for the wheel. This geometry is closer to a 1:1 design than is necessary. The end tubes on the axle could be soldered on vertically in which case the wedge would not be required. Scrap styrene is glued to the knuckles to form the basis for the steering arms. These are also drilled for the pins, and then carved, filed and sanded to the desired shape. I tried to make the arms thin, but left a bit more meat around the end around the drilled holes for strength. Here you see the knuckles roughed in. These are close to the final shape, but need to be smoothed out a bit more. And, here's the final assembled parts. I probably could have done something to the pin heads rather than just leaving them as smooth, bright metal. The tie-rod is 3/64" brass tube with some railroad stanchions for rod ends. I like the ones you use better than these, but these are available locally. I had intended on adding a small piece of hex rod at the ends of the tie rods, but ran out of the necessary "round tuits". The spindles are just Revell stub axles, but could easily be made from brass or steel rod.

In answer to your question Dave, I cut out the bottom of the can with anything I can get my hands on. This one was cut out with a cut-off disk on my Dremel. I've also used a "death saw" on the Dremel, but it made a cut that was a bit more jagged. It really doesn't matter since I cut a disc that is way bigger that the final size. While out walking with my wife, I look for aluminum cans. Most of dimples or numbers lightly stamped on the bottom, but these Sprite cans were pretty smooth. The blue circle was drawn with a Sharpie around a dime. In my case, the dime was perfect. Your mileage may vary. I cut to the blue line with a small sharp pair of cuticle scissors. Then a a short section of 3/16" round styrene rod was epoxied to the back side of the disc so it can be chucked up in a drill. With the disk spinning in the drill, you can scribe or draw a more concentric line on the disc. Trim again to this line and then back in the drill to file and sand to a more precise round shape. Finally, with the disc still spinning in a drill, sand the face of the disc to give it the spun aluminum look. If I remember right, 400 grit worked well for this. I have been able to do part of the rotary work with the disc attached to a blob of modeling clay on a rod (in the drill), but you have to keep the RPM's down and expect the thing to go flying on occasion. This is a fair amount of work for a puny little hub cap, but there's a lot of pride in being able to say you built them from scratch. At least that's my story.

Thanks Chilly for keeping Dave honest on the musical memory. Maybe it's because of my dirty basement environment, but my paint routine is built around having a wet sanding step. I try to use only enough color coats to get full coverage. This varies drastically depending on the color of paint going on. Typically, I'll shoot about three or four color coats, getting progressively wetter (the paint, not me) with each coat. Then I continue with fairly wet coats of clear; maybe two or three light, but wet coats. The clear is there to allow for a light wet sanding and I want enough so as not to break through to the color coat. This is left to dry a day or two; sometimes even a week. Then I wet sand to take care of minor blemishes, dust and dirt, runs, etc. Sometimes the wet sanding doesn't require much at all. This is followed by about three more coats of clear which, depending on how nice it goes on, may not need much help afterwards. I have a multi-step polishing system(forget the brand at the moment) and I vary the starting grit depending on how nice the final clear coats go on. In most cases, I'm only using the fine wet sanding in selective areas of the body. Then everthing gets polish. My paint jobs to date haven't been award winners, but they're pretty nice. P.S. Tamiya rocks! Love ta spray it, hate ta pay it.

All kidding aside, MR. P., you are really bringing out the best of the 40 Ford while eliminating the bad. Lot's of nice subtle little design choices; the difference between a good modeler and a great one.

Thanks alot for the great words of encouragement. The scratch building is where I get the most enjoyment out of model building; "mini engineering". Packaging is very important in a land speed type car. Anytime you have voids inside the body, you are potentially increasing frontal area, so all space should be used or eliminated. It all gets wrapped in a body and the body should be as small as possible. Here's the finished product of my scratch built quick change. Brake lines are made from beaders wire. I think the flexible line is 26g or 24g insulated wire. The moon hubcaps are made from the bottom of Sprite cans. I thought they looked too flat, so I added some dish by shaping them with a round steel ball. The track bar is based on some designs I've seen used on local circle track cars. In the real world, I'd use a longer bar to minimize side movement as the bar moves through it's arc. On a LSR car, suspension travel is minimal, so this style of shorter track bar is perfectly acceptable. It's actually solid rod, but I drilled out the end for the appearance of tubing. A bearing allows it to rotate at the carrier mount.

I'm just happy to see you were able to get the glue off the roof

OK, I'm the modeler that doesn't have one of these. But after seeing this one ... WOW! That view of the rear is outstanding! The roof looks cool too. Very nice work.

Here's an eagle eye view of the chassis layout. You can see how the fuel tank has to fit in a pretty small space. Everything you see in this picture except the seat with belt hardware and tires is scratch built.

Here's some more ... The butterfly style wheel was drilled and filed out of a strip of brass sheet stock and then bent into shape. The upper shaft is also brass; sliding into a brass tube, but the lower shaft is styrene and the joints are aluminum. This joins with the scratch built steering box in the first pic. The dash panel is also brass sheet. the small stubs of white styrene are the start of a row of toggle switches. The larger ones are the back side of the gauges. I thought these were pretty cool until Scott Colmer put me to shame with the gauge set he scratched for is Bonneville Corvette.