Alan Barton

I may be a hot rodder through and through but I can really appreciate a showroom stock 48 Ford and you have done an amazing job. I'm very impressed with your custom colour that is like a factory colour but with a bit more zoom! Cheers Alan

That took a lot of commitment to take so many risks! Congratulations on a successful completion of your concept - it is a credit to you. Cheers Alan

My favourite race cars - open wheel oval track. I've built numerous examples of both and I really like your version also! Cheers Alan

I missed this the first time around so great to see it today! I started one about ten years ago but got bogged down building a new frame. This is just the inspiration I need to get it going again. Great proportions and I love the colour. Cheers Alan

Your Ice T looks great - it really responds to a colour change. I never could get with the yellow (was it something to do with not eating yellow snow maybe?) and did mine in pearl white with blue fogging. Really liking the Ice Blue. Cheers Alan

I'm posting this under glass but I think after a while I will be taking this back off the shelf and doing a rebuild. The car is based on an AMT 34 Ford Tudor body, fenders and frame with an AMT Parts Pack Allison engine. The rollcage, bellhousing body mounts and front of the exhaust is scratchbuilt. It has been a very challenging build for me. The body, which I am now quite happy with, took a lot of work to get the chop right. I actually chopped it twice! The side windows in particular took a lot of reshaping to get them close to photos of the time. Like I said in my W.I.P, I changed the colours a bit, for different reasons. The darker blue body is similar to what I remember of the restored car in Garlits museum back in 1992, and I really like the colour. The real car was lighter and it wouldn't be hard to repaint but for now I am keeping it in the Tamiya Dark Pearl Blue colour. The engine should be black but I was blown away with the detail that AMT engraved into this mould back in the sixties. It is a wondrous thing and I couldn't live with hiding it in black. Instead I used some hardware store Eucalyptus Green Colorbond paint that gave a nod to it's aviation origins and I like it a lot - you can see all the detail as it deserves. Finally, the frame. It is bright red in the photos from Hot Rod Deluxe magazine but it looked a bit too loud for me so I went for a maroon instead. The reason it might get a rebuild is because of the frame. There is a lot less reference material on this car than you would expect and I had to guesstimate a lot of things, imagining how I would do it if I had built the real car. Reference material stated that it was a '34 Ford severely narrowed at the rear. I now believe I should have also narrowed the front crossmember as well and tucked the centre of the rails in much closer so that the engine mounted to the top of the rails, not inside them. I did try to correct this but it has introduced a twist into the front crossmember and the wheels no longer sit accurately in the front fenders. I found it very challenging to mock this car up prior to paint so final assembly has revealed a lot of problems. The biggest being that despite three attempts, I could not fit the Moon tanks alongside the blower or even in front of the engine and still have the body fit over them. I also had to do some carving on the exhausts and body to allow them to fit and it is very tight. No-one will ever mistake it for anything but Big Al ll but after several decades on the bench I wish it would have finished up just a little closer to the real thing in regards to the frame. If it turns out that I have a spare frame I might start a new one sooner than later. I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Vern Scholz of Calgary, Alberta, who provided much of the reference material and inspiration to build this car. Cheers Alan

That's so sharp I just cut myself! Cheers Alan

After several months of putty-sand-primer-repeat routines, here she is! Some details are not exactly to the box art but I am very happy to finally have an example of this model on my shelf. Paint is Tamiya flat white with three coats of Tamiya Clear. The stretchers are lengths of Evergreen tubing with the ends of toothpicks for handles. A big shout out to Craig for enabling me to capture this elusive model! Cheers Alan P.S. I chased a gluebombed Hearse with a Curse last month. Not as bad as this one but still needed massive work and parts replacement - I gave up at $107 US when my total would have exceeded $250!!!!! It makes no sense.

Restoration consisted of prepping all the undamaged body panels and making templates to recreate the missing sections of the rear of the ambulance body. I ended up removing most of the heavily damaged gutters and remaking them with thin Evergreen. Evergreen was also used to recreate the waistline moulding. In case you are wondering, well-assembled Aurora models are very brittle and prone to exploding if any sort of force is applied. As a result, dismantling this model for repair was not practicable.

After a day in caustic soda this is what was revealed! That grey primer could have been used on the nose of the space shuttle - it is indestructible and was rather character building throughout the exercise! The rear conversion was completed with what looked like dried up Tootsie Roll but I am told it was most likely a wood putty from the hardware store. Fortunately there were some critical parts remaining of the roof and back door to assist in the restoration.

With hot rods being my number one automotive passion, I have set myself the goal of obtaining and building one example of every hot rod model kit ever built. Áfter 45 years on the job I am doing pretty well, having only one more 1/32nd scale hot rod to find (if you have a dead Hearse with A Curse - call me!) and less than half a dozen 1/24th or 25th examples to find, to the best of my knowledge. Early this year Mr Metallic, Craig Stansfield, gave me a tip off about an Aurora Meatwagon on eXpensiveBay. The Meatwagon was based on a chopped 37 Packard Ambulance, just your typical surf rod from the early sixties. It's one of the three hardest Aurora hot rods to find. With our Aussie dollar being worth only 60-65% of the US dollar, extortionate overseas shipping rates and our ever-caring government with its hand out for import tax, it was never going to be a cheap exercise. The model that Craig spotted was certainly interesting in its own right. It appears that the original builder attempted to make a police chief's car from the ambulance. He did a pretty good job for the time but the build quality and materials used (paint and putty) suggest to me that this conversion was done a very long time ago. Missing were the original bumpers and four spotlights, the engine, radiator and exhaust pipes top and bottom and the rolled up stretchers from the roof. The front wheels were from a Monogram T bucket and I don't recognise the rears at all.The box and instructions and decals were probably missing since the sixties! The back of the body had been replaced with the rumble seat of an unknown model and the louvres on the hood were filed off - judging by the scratches, he may have used a chainsaw to remove them! Landed in Oz it owed me just over $120 Aus! Here's what I got for the money

I believe this to be my oldest build, an AMT 49 Mercury from around 1971. I would have been around 13. Hard to believe it is nearly 54 years old. It was moulded in black plastic and was probably my first real custom. It is not chopped, just turned into a hardtop by removing the B pillar which seems to give the impression of a chop top. Front extensions from my first ever 1/25th scale kit, the AMT 57 Fairlane. Rear wheel arches were radiussed. It was painted in about six coats of brushed on Humbrol enamel. The photos, for once, hide a few ugly bits here and there but I love it to bits. I recently polished the roof with Meguiars Scratch - X and gave it a good clean. I had robbed the Monogram whitewalls and mags off it to restore another model years ago so added Pegasus chromies which really suit it. It'll stay this way forever now. Cheers Alan

Gee that's nice! I might have to steal the grille bar idea for a custom Willys convertible that has been stalled for decades - that is exactly the sort of highlight it needs! Cheers Alan

Thank you everyone for your kind comments and your patience. The Big Al ll is finally finished (sort of) but I will just put up a few more construction pics before putting it Under Glass. I took a few liberties in regards to colour. The paint is certainly darker than most of the period photos show. However, when I saw the restored body (on a street rod chassis) in the Don Garlits museum in 1992 I remembered it as being quite dark and I really liked it. The Tamiya dark blue pearl (I will check for the actual paint code shortly), is a neat colour that I thought suited the car. I briefly considered respraying it a lighter shade to match period photos but in the end decided it was my model and my choice so I left it in the darker shade - not a hard car to repaint so who knows, that may change! The actual Allison engine appears to be painted black in the photos I used. When I stripped the paint, however, I was blown away by the incredible detail throughout the model. Words cant do it justice. I am going to go out on a limb and say it might well be the finest engine that AMT ever produced. To hide it all under a coat of gloss black or even flat black just seemed sacrilegious, disrespectful to the skilled pattern makers that produced it. Instead, I used the last dregs of a hardware store green that evokes memories of military aircraft, a nod to the source of the engine. I love the look and the details really pop. There was only one element left to paint and that was the chassis and to be honest, the original bright red looked a bit "clown car" to me so I used a maroon shade of red instead. even though the final colours are not authentic to Jim Lyttles race car, I think they look good on it. Cheers Alan

So nice. I have the Flintstone body and some years ago I started a conversion using the BAd Actor roof on an AMT Elky body. Lots of work ahead of me but this model definitely provides some inspiration. Cheers Alan

Hi Michael, my pleasure!!! The first time that we displayed this diorama we had about eight participants and the second time about ten. The last time there was just me and a friend and we also had some models on loan from another club member making three. Both my friend Rob and I have about 100 dirt track racers each!!! We are fortunate to belong to a very active club and the car modellers are the most active group within the club. Cheers Alan

Something we always try to do with our club dioramas is make them easy to transport and store. This is basically just a flat board with mud stuck on - the fences and other items are pinned on and easily removed. The models go back to the homes of their respective builders and we plan for next year. Meanwhile the board takes up minimal space in someone's shed in case it gets a second outing! Cheers Alan

Thanks everyone, great to see renewed interest in our club's diorama from a few years ago. Cheers Alan

Mine will be the same one I've had for at least ten years, probably close to twenty. I resolve to build models that come from a box with just one model in it. Let me explain. I have a stash of about 250 model boxes but there is considerably more models in those boxes than 250 - probably closer to 350. Since I retired I work on my models pretty much every evening plus I have the luxury of painting during the warmer hours of the day when necessary. In the three years that I have enjoyed retirement, I have completed just over 100 models, something I'm pretty proud of. The problem is, while there are 100 new builds on my shelves, there are not 100 spaces on my shelves where they came from. I bought about twenty kits this year but that is not the problem - the problem is that I seem to be building lots of kits from parts, so while the number of models finished goes up, the number of full boxes does not go down. Making it worse, my two rooms full of floor to ceiling cabinets for my toy and model collection is bursting at the seams - if I could get rid of some boxes off the shelves in my build room I could have more space for new builds. Yeah, I know, first world problem but it is frustrating to me! Cheers Alan

It's that time of the year to spread good will amongst all model builders so I give you ...... Santa's new ride! It's an MPC Big Rig Rod, built mostly box stock with a few upgrades. This kit is copyrighted 1978 and it came from an era when MPC cobbled together a lot of " new " kits by combining parts from existing models - a factory kitbash if you like. In this case, the lightly reworked fender unti from the Don tognotti King T is badly fitted over the frame and running gear from the Switchers series 27 T coupe/pickup kit with a shrunken stake bed thrown into the bargain. I needed to build a Christmas themed model for our club Christmas party so as I had no special plans for this one I decided it could be made fit for purpose. Modifications include AMT parts pack M&H slicks Cragar SS mags AMT 25 T bucket radiator and grille Revell Model A hiboy headlights Right hand drive conversion. Stacks from a Lindberg kit - the stacks from the MPC kit were very lame! Body and engine moved forwards on frame, with a section of the rear of the fender unit removed to allow it to snuggle down on the stepped frame. I finished it off with an assortment of mini Christmas decorations and my own wrapped presents using wooden blocks and chocolate wrappers. Colour is Tamiya bright red with Tamiya clear, all from spray cans and polished with Meguiars Scratch-X. Hope you enjoy - it is not one you see built very often! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to my modelling friends all over the world! Cheers Alan

I didn't have many photos of the full track in my first post so I found these taken in October when we displayed at the WA Classic Speedway Spectacular. It was a great day and the display was well received by the patrons. A lot of our models are replicas of actual Western Australian speedway cars so the drivers showed a lot of interest as well!

A stunning model, even more so considering what a challenge the Testors/IMC multi piece body is to assemble! You have really shown your talents with this achievement! Cheers Alan

Hi everyone, MichaelF asked about this display that he could see in the background of our Modular Hot Rod Show diorama that I posted last week. The club has displayed this track about four times now in both our annual NNL, the Model Car Spectacular, and the WA Classic Speedway Club open day. Like all our displays, it is designed to be knocked down for easy transport and storage. The fence is made from strips of MDF that were wet and then forced into a curve with ropes and weights and allowed to set in the sun for several days. It took numerous applications to get it right but it does the job well. The dirt came from the ultra fine dust found in the Australian Outback, commonly referred to as bulldust and universally hated because it gets into every nook and cranny f your car - once there it is there forever! I collected a couple of kilos of it on a road trip so that we could use it for displays like this. Being so fine it works out nicely to scale ( and colour) for a dirt track. It is sprinkled over PVA ( white glue) and then a weak mix of water and white glue is sprayed over the whole thing to lock it in place. About eight club members contributed to this display. In case you haven't guessed we are pretty keen speedway fans and try to model all classes and eras of dirt track race cars (and bikes!) We built both American and Australian style race cars. Cheers Alan

Every now and then I see a model on these pages and I think "I have to build that!" This is one of them. What a sensational model, capturing all the flare and spirit of the original car. One of your best, Phil! Cheers Alan

Al, it was built by a local guy, a resin copy of a 3D print. It came out very nice but not ready for market just yet. Cheers Alan