Alyn

More sheet styrene was used to scratch up a tailgate. I cut out some letters the best I could with an X-acto knife and glued them on. They'll get sanded a bit to knock off the sharp edges, but I still like the way it turned out. The G and the E could use a little help.

Thanks, here's a bit more. After moving the rear fenders back a bit, I mocked up the axle and tires and found the bed sides to be slightly too wide. A half round section was removed from each side and spaced further inward. The a strip of styrene was used to fill in the gap. Finally some putty and sanding and the bed is pretty much finished and in primer.

Here's what I came up with for a grill. I took the Dodge Ram grill and cut it in half, then rotated the halves 90 degrees and glued them back together. The two halves were swept back slightly before the glue set up to give the grill shell a more rounded shape. Once the glue was dry, the small cut up the middle was filled and sanded and the shell was attached to the narrowed hood for further work. I also added a strip of styrene across the top, flat area to help round it off.

I bought this kit at a discount just to get the Viper V10 and what ever else I could salvage as a parts kit. Now that it's getting built, the V10 was pulled to make room for a Hemi. Much nicer choice for the traditional rod look. In order to use the interior tub, it had to be narrowed similar to the body. I wanted to retain the tranny hump, so strips were removed from either each side of the hump. The wheel base of the Deuce fenders was a little short so about 5/8" to 3/4" of stryene was added to move to rear fenders back. Now they will line up better with the center of the new pickup bed.

Here's a mock-up of the look I'm after. This pickup bed is from the Revell 29 ford pickup 3-in-1 kit. It's not the one I'll be using. This one is too long, too narrow and the height isn't quite right either. So, I'll be building one from scratch. Here's the start, plus you can see that I"ve rebuilt the back of the cab with a small, commercial style rear window and added strengthening ribs on the lower portion.

This will give you an idea of how much narrower the truck is after the sectioning.

my first workbench project. I'm gonna catch you guys up on a build I've been updating on another forum, so some may have seen it, but I wanted to share. (ain't that sweet) This is Revell's 99 Dodge Ram VTS pickup with some serious custom cuts. I've chopped it in all three planes. First down the middle to make it narrower by about a scale foot. Then the top was chopped 5 or 6 scale inches. Rather than hack up the top to line up the pillars, I sliced a section out of the doors. She's skinnier, lower and shorter.

That is ridiculous! I thought my roadster gauges were cool; your's are outrageously cool. cooler than cool coolier than cool South Pole Cool Deep Space Cool

Awsome work on the interior. You have the uncommon combination of a keen design eye and the talent to turn ideas into reality. Nicely executed, nicely detailed reality.

FYI: That tail is still valid today. Look at any car or bike running at Bonneville in the 200 MPH and up classes. Long tails and/or tail fins are pretty much standard design when allowed by the rules. The extra surface area, as viewed from the side, moves the center of pressure rearward. Car design 101 at Bonneville; keep the center of pressure behind the center of gravity. Cool looking car, as is the Stutz and Goldenrod.

Wow! You are really turning up the screws on this one. The detail on your brake and front end work is beautiful. I just love that color on the springs under the pedal assembly. The knurling is a nice touch too.

What a great story, and very generous and thoughful of you. I built a replica of a car my Dad had owned and that been handed down from his dad. I got the same reaction as you when I gave him the car. You would have thought I was giving him the full size version. Great for you modeling karma !

Sorry, for not noticing your post till now, Rick. Thanks for the compliment. Thanks even more for all your effort in putting on the show. We're all lucky to have guys like you that put out the extra effort to provide us a place to show our stuff. thanks!

Put "Land Speed" or "Vette" in a title and you can be sure to catch my attention. Awesome project you got going on here. I followed your Fotki WIP from start to finish; very impressive. I like the way you write about working through various problems and challenges along the way. Some great tips too. Now I"m going to have to find something that needs knurling!

Yes, it does. I started with two axle tubes from an early Ford rear end and built the center section from styrene. Considering all the individual parts, there are well over 400 scratch built. Some are brass such as the front axle, steering links, dash panel and steering wheel. The injection stacks are hand flared using 3/32" aluminum tube, Moon hubcaps are made from the bottom of aluminum Sprite cans. There are many other brass and aluminum parts, but the majority of the detail parts are built from styrene. The Vette is 1/8th scale. My wife bought it for me over 20 years ago when I had to sell off my 1:1 '85 Vette to get a family car for our new (at the time) baby. I started building it back then, and then let it sit for twenty years. At the end of 2007 I decided to get back on it and that got me to thinking that getting into modeling could be fun. I told my daughter that I might be interested in an old Ford model I'd seen at Michaels with flames on the side. The one I meant was Revell's 31 Ford sedan, but she saw the Boyd 32 which has flames on the box art and assumed that was the one I was talking about. When you open that kit, it's obvious that some scratch building or kit bashing is in your future. I guess I took it to the extreme; couldn't stop making parts... Now that I"m done with the Bonneville roadster, I hope to get back on the Vette and get it done. I'll post some pics some time down the road in the workbench forum. thanks for taking a look.

The basic frame rails are from the kit, which is the Revell 32 Ford Coupe "American Hotrod" referred to in another post on MCM as "Boyd's Turd"(and I agree). That plus the body and shortblock are about the only parts I used. The tires and seat are from my parts box; everything else is all scratch built. The only exception being a PE seat belt/harness set. Thanks for the great comments. I meant to post a picture of my roadster with the body on, but messed up. Here's a couple more. The Vette isn't complete yet. I still need to paint it and finish up a few details.

Yet another lurker that's decided to come clean. I've been admiring a bunch of the work on this site and thought I'd join the party. I didn't see a forum specifically for intro's, so I figured this is as good a place as any. My apologies if this is out of line. Like many of you, I spent my model building apprenticeship in my early teens brush painting and building glue bombs. This ended when I discovered full size cars at 16. Now, more than forty years later, I've decided I'll never have a garage like Jay Leno, so the scale versions of my dream cars will have to suffice. I got back into the hobby about a year and a half ago and and am enjoying it immensely. Assuming I do it correctly, I've attached some examples of what I've got going on so far.

I wanted to correct Bob's spelling of my last name. It's Loya, not Lyon. I walked away with more trophy's than I ever expected at the Drastic Plastic Omaha NNL, but just as important, I also found out first hand what a hard working guy Bob Black is. Every time I turned around, he was putting on another hat. One minute he was registering new contestants; then you'd see him going from table to table shooting contest pics. He was also responsible for posed photo shoots in the rear of the room for some selected cars. You'd also see him meeting and greeting all sorts of folks at the show and around the swap meet. This guy's got a ton of energy and just about single handedly kept the whole show running. My hat's off to him. This kind of selfless hard work behind the scenes and on the front lines allows the rest of us to do what we love to do. Thanks Bob!