alan barton

I like the look of this one. I had already started a cab and had planned to use the AMT fenders and frame as I have an abundance of them. Seeing yours on the Revell frame I think maychanged my mind! I am also considering using a Monogram 1/24th scale 29 pickup bed. A friend on the other side of Australia has a real one using this combination, in Kermit Greem with whitewalls. Quite tempted to do the same! Cheers Alan

Looking good Bernard - I'm really enjoying that side profile. Cheers Alan

This is one of your best ideas ever! But wow, you must be up kinda late for a school night! Cheers Alan

Paul, for headlights, maybe consider the shapes that a 39 Willys, Graham Paige or Chrysler used in the late 30s. I think this design would really lend itself to some sculptured art deco inspired headlights rather than plain old round ones. Cheers Alan

A beautiful conversion on a legendary kit. The attention to detail really brings this one to life. It is such a great canvas for a seemingly endless list of racers and , yes, we had a bunch of them over here in Australia as well. Tim mentioned the lack of radius rod nerf bars - for me, I would have loved to have seen a chromed rollbar included so that the model could have been updated to a sixties or seventies racer. The nerfs are easy to scratchbuild but getting a smooth symmetrical rollbar ( I am using TIG wire for mine) is very challenging. I don't want to be a negative Nellie but with the way things have panned out in the corporate world, the Kurtis and Model A kits may just have been the last time that we see this calibre of model engineering in topics near and dear to our hearts. I'm glad I grabbed six of each but I can see the day when I will want more! Thanks again for showing us your work Steve, those last shots sitting on the trailer are awesome! Cheers Alan

You ain't scared of nothin, are ya? What a cool mashup! Mind you, it is what I have come to expect from you, Claude. You take a crazy idea and then massage it into greatness. Me, I have two of these Lincolns and while one will be a rare ( for me) box stock example, the other needs some serious surgery! Cheers Alan.

What a perfectly channelled roadster! The Monogram 32 is my all time favourite hot rod kit with eight examples on my shelf and another three on the bench. I never understand why people avoid it, other than those who are 1/24phobic. This just proves what a great blank canvas it is. Like the others said, the colour, stance and wheel combo is perfection. Thanks for sharing it with us all. Cheers Alan

Add me to the list of people that missed this one! I know it's my problem, no-one else's, but when I see Model Truck I think of Kenworths and Peterbilts, not Model A pickups. The only time I remember to look in here is when a hot rod truck pops up as the first post when I get online. I suspect I might have missed a number of cool hot rod trucks as a result. And yes, I love your truck! In the WIP section I said I wouldn't change a thing and my opinion hasn't changed. I haven't even opened my Tudor kits so it is neat to see what you can do with the wheels in that box. This would look right at home in an Aussie rod run. Cheers Alan

Hi Jim, that is a very challenging project you have on your hands there. I only just stumbled on it today and have read through the entire thread. It makes me laugh when plastic model builders turn their nose up at diecast model builders - I have done a few and they require an entirely different skill set to plastic, plus you have to take the things apart before you can even begin making all the changes, and a lot of them are not designed to be taken apart! Going back to your first project, and please forgive me if I am overlooking something or teaching you how to suck eggs. The problem that I see in your melding of the Transam chassis with the Sunstar body is all about the shape and location of the wheelarches. When I see your photo of your real racecar, the wheel arches are a lot closer to the top of the fenders, plus the tyres are sitting inside the wheel openings, not through them. The racecar body sits far lower to the ground than the street car body, and the streetcar body will never go any lower until there is room for the tyres to travel upwards. From your side on photos just before you parked it, the distance between the Transam floor pan and the Camaro rocker panels is very similar to the distance between the Transam rollcage and the roof. I don't think you need to make many more changes to the Transam chassis, but you do have to cut those wheel arches much higher into the body and at the same time bulge the fenders out at each end of the car to match the Coke bottle shape evident in your 1:1 photos. I too am a big fan of JB Weld. If it was mine, once I had got the wheelarches hogged out with a Dremel and confirmed that the body will indeed snug down on the chassis without that gap evident now, I would then use flat styrene to build up the bulging contours of your vertical surfaces on the fenders, attached with JB Weld and then contoured with Bondo or similar. You made such a courageous start on this project, maybe now that you have had a a break from it, a fresh set of eyes might see you get that model of your real racecar back on track! Good luck, Alan

Depending on how accurate you want to be, utes from '35 onwards had slightly abbreviated rooves - the five window section tucked down a bit faster than a coupe roof. Still uses five window front door but the rear window panel is noticeably more vertical. In general for anyone wanting to do a factory style ute of anything, it should be noted that with the exception of the XA, XB and XC Falcons of the mid seventies, all utes were designed with a narrower four door sedan front door. Also, most utes, from the fifties on, had a fair degree of styling involved on the b and /or c pillars - they didn't just cut the cab in half and stick a window on the back! I see a lot of model conversions that claim to be "Aussie ute" style but in fact look more like "Aussie Farmer Cut down the Old Family Car" style!!! Finally, with the exception of the last generations of Falcon utes, the rear quarter panel is continuous from the door jamb, with no separation at the bed ala pickup truck. Hope this helps. If you really want to know everything about utes,, Larry O'Toole wrote the definitive book on them and it is still available from Graffiti Publications in Australia. Cheers Alan

So here is what happens when someone devotes a ridiculous amount of time to a total basket case and does justice to the original design. My fellow clubmember and friend, for nearly fifty years, Greg Foulds, handbuilt brand new quarter panels to bring this one back from the dead. If you compare it to the original photos you will see the bed has been shortened to improve the proportions. He also radiussed the rear corners - the original hss a flat rear panel that was quite crudely attached to the side panel with tacks onto a wooden frame. The tailgate and lower pan is all hand fabricated. Notice that the Aussie windshield frame is taller than the US car and the rear quarter windows are a different shape - also they lean slightly out instead of slightly in when viewed from the rear. Hope you enjoy it! Cheers Alan

O.K., here is Tony's resin body conversion and next is a conversion of the AMT kit that I started while living in Canada 25 years ago and never did quite get done. Please not that these two models are both based on an American five window coupe and as such DO NOT accurately represent the Aussie factory body. ON the other hand, they do look a bit more natural! Aussie utes tend to have a very long tail and widen as they extend rearwards - they look better if they gently taper back in towards the centre.

Yeah, that happens sometimes. Doing a custom right now that I didn't chop or section to reduce bodywork - and that has now been ongoing for nearly every night for the last two weeks - may as well have chopped the thing! Love the radius rods - I need to do that on a project soon! Cheers Alan

That is looking dead on for an early low bucks race car! A few years ago I built a 57 on a very similar theme but not as beaten up, maybe it was it's first night rather than the end of the season? I would never have thought of doing a black wash over the entire body - I really like that effect and will be trying it on my next dirt car.. Could I suggest a light wipe across your decals in the damaged areas with a piece of 240 wet and dry would add some scuffs to show where it had been hit? I think it would add a lot to the wear and tear you are representing so well here. Can't wait to see it finished. Cheers Alan

Just a great kit straight out of the box, especially when build as cleanly as you have here. It is the first time I have seen one built with the Chevy and Halibrands - looks real nice Paul! Cheers Alan

Serendipity right there, huh? Opposite sides of the world and all that. When I have been fortunate enough to travel to other countries, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and catch up with local modellers, it never seems to amaze me ( and my long suffering wife) how instantly in tune we all are. One minute you are chatting with some guy you just met in a show or maybe at a hobby shop, next minute you are in his house looking at models, pulling out boxes and then some-one (usually a partner!) says, "hey you guys, it's 2.30a.m. some of us have to work, ya know?" We belong to an international brotherhood and the only condition of membership is to make sure you tell the guy next to you! I think I first met Jim via sending letters across the continent in the early eighties and then went to visit him and his brother Roy in Sydney in Jan 1985. His collection is amazing, actually both the boys' collections are amazing. For starters, they are all hand painted with brushes and Humbrol enamel and they look gorgeous! Jim produced three fabulous editions of a catalogue of vintage model advertisements from the sixties and seventies and then went on to print a book on classic Australian service stations which includes some of my photos. He contacted me last year about a column I did on the Monogram Big T. Cheers Alan

That just might be the nicest build of a Lindberg roadster that I've ever seen. Sometimes box art is all you need to make it pop. You really know how to make a Lindberg pop! I restored one many years ago but it does not look anywhere as impressive as this. I chose a light mauve spay can but while the paint came out all right, the colour does it no favours at all. I am currently restoring the T roadster they did. After seeing your cool version i really need to look at this model again. Funny how so many of Lindberg's 1/25thish models were copies of AMT models and also how the box artist never really knew what he was painting. The picture here shows a beautiful rendition of a 29 A roadster when the kit wants to be a 32 , except for the Model A gas cap! They called their Model A bucket, copied from the Ala Kart, a 29 Model T. Maybe because it was a Model A front and a Model T rear? Then they had in their 1/32nd range a 34 phaeton with a Model A grille. The box art shows a Model A phaeton with a 34 grille! Cheers Alan

I have done a few trans Indian Ocean flights on Qattar Airlines in recent years. The endless chest thumping promos when you are trying to watch the in flight entertainment pronounce it "Cutter" or even "cutta" if you like. So I guess if they pronounce it that way, maybe we should? Most Aussies would say "Kuh- tar" but that's not what the airline says. Cheers Alan

Tony Ashton from AAA resin does one here in Australia - look him up on Facebook! I have one in my stash - I will dig it out later. The first photo is a recreation of the prototype that a Ford designer named Lew Brandt built. As Casey suspected, it was an Aussie 33 sedan roof on an Aussie coupe cowl and doors. We still had locally produced wooden framed bodies at this stage and you will notice the sides of the body do not extend down to the running boards, typical of all our 33 and 34 Ford passenger cars. Sadly Lew was killed in this recreation in a head on collision about a decade ago if my memory is correct. The production car in the B&W photo uses a complete coupe front half of body with one piece bed sides grafted on from the door pillar back. Cheers Alan

Just found this thread and I am in awe of the skills you display by designing , fabricating and detailing your parts. if I could ask a question, when you are making something as multi dimensional as your windshield frame with the beading wire, how do you avoid getting the inevitable kinks somewhere along the way, and is there a trick to getting each curve the same radius as its opposite counterpart? I enjoy working at the level you are here but often am disappointed or frustrated by trying to get that sort of detail perfect. Also, I just started work on a pair of 28/29 model A phaetons, one in 1/24th and one in 1/25th. When I saw your name a dim lightbulb went off that makes me think you once built a dark green showroom stock version of this car, maybe it was in a contest annual? Was that you? Cheers Alan

Congrats Jim, that looks really neat and is a very original treatment of a 34 Pickup. I love the finish on this one! . Ironically, your premise for this truck, something nice to go to church in, was exactly the inspiration for the great Aussie ute. Back in 1932, a farmer wrote to Ford in Geelong and asked if they could come up with a vehicle that he could take the wife to church in on Sunday and haul pigs on Monday. The 1934 Ford Coupe Utility was the result and was a staple in Australian passenger car ranges for the next 80 years or so. Sadly, we no longer have an Australian motor manufacturing industry so those days are gone. Every importer of European and Asian vehicles to Australia keeps calling their light trucks "utes" but they are not - they are pickups. A ute has passenger car styling and with just one exception, has the cargo compartment ( bed, box, tray) incorporated into the sides of the cab. Cheers Alan

Gotta a bit of push-me-pull-you action goin' on there, Ray? This will be interesting! Cheers Alan

When the Korean company Hyundai first started selling cars in Australia, they had a TV ad imploring us all to "Say HI! to Hyundai", with the pronunciation being approximately High - oon - die. Some years later all the TV ads began saying Hee-un-day. Hard to get it right when the guys flogging them don't know which way to say it! And throughout my childhood in Australia, it was always Nestles as in the verb.. An American acquaintance living here for a few years challenged that, saying the ads back home always said Ness - lays. A few years later, our TV ads changed to Ness Lays. Again, hard to know when the company doesn't know! Ahh, the peculiarities of language. Don't even get started on Australian slang! Cheers Alan

O.K., I'll play. Yep, it's a hot rod but there is no reason why a stock option couldn't be included. It would be ideally suited to Revell's 21st century approach of multiple body styles sharing multiple running gear options. As far as existing models go, I'm only aware of one inaccurate 1/43rd diecast, a radio controlled plastic toy cloned off that diecast and a high end 1/24th mint diecast which is no longer available die to the demise of mint models. No 1/24th or 1/25th plastic, no 1/64th or 1/18th diecast. And yet, it ahs been a very popular choice at an extremely popular choice at hot rod events and inside hot rod magazines ( remember them?) all over the world for at least the last forty years. In fact, at these events, it would be close to the most popular year model of its marque. Popular enough that you can buy brand new fibreglass bodies and brand new steel chassis. Think how much these proud owners would like to have a model of their car sitting on the mantlepiece? Any guesses? It's a gap big enough to drive a 1934 Chevrolet through!! A 5 window coupe, roadster, and Tudor would be a perfect start and a delivery and a tourer wouldn't be out of the question. I'd love to see a chopped Tudor but then that would eliminate the vintage police car option, so maybe not. The 5 window coupe is better left unchopped anyway but a chopped tubbed 3 window coupe would be cool.. A small block is the obvious choice of powerplant but a big block would be nice too, plus a six with maybe split manifolds and twin carbs. But then, AMT isn't doing new moulds and the Germans have probably never seen a 34 Chevy so I guess dreams may be free but they are still just dreams! Anyone else dream like me or am I the only one? Cheers Alan

That's the one. Of course, I love Model As and it has the same wheel and tyre combo as my real roadster so what is not to like? I have to build this one, whether it fits the challenge or not! Cheers Alan