alan barton

So here is the finished project. I wanted it to be fairly tidy - a start of season car rather than an end of season car if you will. The driver is carved from a Monogram sprintcar driver. Rear tyres are from an unknown 4wd kit, probably Japanese and the wheels are also 37 Chevy. Paint is Testors rattle can and I wasn't overly concerned about a sharp edge on the masking tape - this thing got painted in the driveway on a Saturday afternoon just before they headed to the track. Hope all you racers like this one and I will see if I can get some outdoors shots tomorrow. Cheers Alan

So once I cut out the roof insert, dropped in the six banger from an AMT 37 Chevy and added a bit of bar work, we were on our way.

Ya wouldn't believe it but the body dropped right on there like a bought one. I didn't do a thing to the resin piece and only had to remove the bumper irons at each end and my frame conversion was done.

As you all know, the rule when it comes to resin parts is "See it, buy it" Fortunately I bought a bunch of old short track parts from Fred's Resin Workshop before he stopped making them. I fact, I bought the 34 Chev with the intention of making a hot rod and once I saw how nice it was I thought I had better get another one to do a jalopy. As best I can tell from some clues inside it, the constructor of the master ( unfortunately I don't know if that was Fred or one of his contacts) used a Monogram 34 Coupe AKA ZZTop to start with but you would never know it. It is a nice, quality piece of resin. Now I wanted to use a Chevy style frame. I was thinking it might be easier to kitbash one from a Ford frame but I went digging through my stash to find only three early Chevy frames, the MPC 32 Chev, the AMT 37 Chev and the Monogram 39 Chevy frame. That was it. All the 32 and 37 frames were already earmarked for hot rod projects and there was no way something as big as a 39 Chevy Delivery frame was going to fit under a 34 Chev......or was there?

That's a lot of '32's and all of them very well done! Where did you find the girl with the dog in this one? My wife and I had a dog that looked just like it. Craig, without having the packaging handy to check, I'm pretty sure she came from a range called Motorheads. This one was from a set of five girls in a variety of poses. They are pre-painted resin and easily the best off-the-shelf 1/25th scale figures I've ever come across. And Pete, that blue Vicky is - I don't know, words fail me , I'm going to just say I think that is the best build of an AMT Vicky I have ever seen. Gorgeous! The coupes are pretty cool too but the Vicky - ahhhhhhh! Bernard, don't you love thepartsbox.com resin? I know Jason and Michelle very well and the products they produce are just fantastic. That coupe has a killer stance, gotta love it! Cheers Alan Cheers Alan

Love how this is going Bernard. I hope to soon past a Bernard inspired roadster on this forum but it is not quite ready yet. It was a hiboy that I started years ago and it wasn't quite talking to me - and then you posted your "big seat roll" roadster and that's when I knew what I had to do. And the distressed leather look I finished about a month ago looks very similar to what you are showing us here. That rear rollpan is really cool! Cheers Alan

Snake, I love how sensitively you restored your time capsule. I have one more Vicky body left in my stash and I intend to build one like this but there are other more pressing projects in the queue. Draggon, no photos here either - would love to see them! Steve, i don't know how to say this gently but for the first time in my modelling life, I had the Duplicolor silver that I was using craze the plastic through the Tamiya grey primer on that gorgeous body you sent me. There were tears on my cheek that day, i can tell you! So from time to time i pick up the body and gently sand a small area with 600 wet and dry. The window surround are obviously going to be the biggest drama. I am getting there but it is going to take time because I don't want to risk getting fed up and rushing it. Slowly slowly catchee monkey. The crazy thing is , it attacked the blue plastic of your body but not the yellow plastic of the nose. The Lola Deuce is just stunning! So far out of left field and yet it works.You did a very delicate job of integrating the too quantomly different bodies into one. Tom, yeah, I'm always here but to be professional I like to leave a gap between when my articles are published and when the model appears on the net. Those deadlines come around awful quick so I have been concentrating on hot rods almost exclusively over the last few years. I have got some other projects on the go that I will post up here shortly. Love the flip body on the grey Vicky - that is the ingenuity that we were renowned for as teenagers. Imagine how cool it would have been to show that model to your high school mates and demonstrate the flip top body? Sooooo cool. To give you a sneak preview, here is the colour on the custom nose. Keep 'em coming guys!Cheers Alan

Gotta bit of a soft spot for buggies, no idea why but I guess I thought they were cool when I was a kid. This thing rocks - love the colour,love the trim, the Corvair gives it some muscle and I think it's really cool that you used the natural metallic plastic of the AMT parts back engine. But if you stand up that windshield I will never talk to you again! Cheers Alan

Finally, my three California Jalopy Association style Deuce jalopies. All feature AMT 40 Ford radiators and roll bars and AMT 36 Ford wide five rims. They also have had the cloth insert removed from the centre of the roof and then a flange of thin evergreen carefully fabricated to give the models the appearance of a genuine steel body. The hoods are rolled up form soda can aluminium. The Tudor was a sorry mess from my teenage modelling years but suits its new role perfectly. Hope you enjoyed my collection - my tribute to sixty years of 1/25th scale AMT 1932 Ford model kits. Add some of your own - the good, the bad and the ugly!

Another model where I can't give deserved credit to the builder because I purchased it from an antique mall in Adelaide South Australia a few years ago. As best I can tell the original builder cut down an AMT 34 Pickup cab and grafted it to the Deuce fenders. Also appears to have a Model A roadster pickup bed. I have plans to build a 32 closed cab pickup using the 34 cab with the heavy rear moulding removed but otherwise fitted up to AMT 32 components to continue the collection.

Also posted here some time ago, this is my custom Tudor body fitted to the Vicky fenders. Have an original custom Tudor under construction and hopefully finished shortly. It runs fifty Ford hubcaps on red steelies.

I can't credit the builder of this coupe because it was found in a thrift store here in Perth - how it survived is anyone's guess! It doesn't have a skeric of paint on it but the plastic is unmarked and there is not a dob of glue to be seen anywhere. This one will sit on my shelf just as it is, a time capsule from back in the day.

This one is a cherished part of my collection because it was passed onto my by the widow of my dear friend Les Hardaker. Les was the sales rep for the first ever distributor of model cars in Australia and was an enthusiastic builder and collector until his passing a few years ago. This kit was built on his kitchen table in Sydney Australia circa 1962. It is box stock except for the fenderwell fender unit from the second issue of the roadster. It is completely brushpainted but the care and detail he lavished on it has stood the test of time.

Now this model is what you would call a twenty footer. Looks fine from a distance but the bodywork is really not up to snuff but I am good with it. This was started at least 35 years ago having been inspired by one of Tim Boyd's Modeller's Corner columns on building a 3 window from a roadster and a Vicky. Hey, there was nothing else around back then!. Then it got damaged by heat while on a public display and then the Revell 3w came along and I was going to scrap it. Something made me decide to persevere and build a tough little street fighter out of it but I would need more time than I am prepared to give it to get the bodywork squared away - i really struggle with door lines and window moulds! So primer it is.

This Vicky was passed onto me by my friend Roger after he decided to go back to military modelling. He did a beautiful job and the maroon paint would have been my choice anyway! Other than massaging the stance and adding some Monogram wire wheels for an eighties resto rod look, she's box stock. Oh yeah, I made my own headlight bar and used some Revell headlights. In my humble opinion, the AMT Deuces look much better on full fenders - you don't notice the section so much. I have both a phaeton and a Vicky under construction, grafted to Revell Deuce components to avoid some of AMT's awkwardness. Figure I had to do it because it would seem unlikely that in the present climate, Revell would tackle these subjects themselves

Next, the phaeton that I posted here last year. My most ambitious AMT Deuce by far with all the suspension from a Buttera 27 T kit grafted on. Also used the headlights and taillights from a Monogram deuce

The first one AMT Deuce I ever built was this five window. Mostly stock but uses the rear axle from an Ala Kart and the wheels and tyres from a Monogram Edmunds Supermod. It also runs a Son of Ford headlight bar with Dietz headlights

My second roadster was inspired by some of the cool survivor models I have seen on Dave Darby's Facebook page. It is pretty close to the original instruction sheet for the altered roadster. I didn't have a scoop so fabricated a replica from two slices of plastic spoons - it works for me!

Hi there, fellow housebound modellers around the world Thought I would post this lot up and maybe other people would just like to put up single shots of their AMT Deuces as well. First up, let me say that I never particularly liked the AMT '32s. As a teenage I only ever had the body of one roadster plus a gluebombed Tudor. One of my first ever kits purchased with my own money was the Monogram Son of Ford and ever since I have wondered why so many people seem to like the AMT. It's proportion issues have been well documented on these pages many times before. For the last three years I have been the columnist for Australian Street Rodding magazine, a column called Scale Rodding. It has been going for well over 20 years by my estimate. Sometimes when you don't have something new and ready to write about you go looking through the collection and the stash to see what content you might have for an interesting article. Turns out I had more AMT 32 than I realised so I set to to get some very old projects finished off. I would not call any of these contest models but they were fairly cheap and cheerful fun to build and if you work on the wheel and tyre combos and as a result the stance you can get some half decent results. Feel free to add your models to this thread but lets keep it easy to view by limiting to one photo per car and not quoting photos if you wish to reply to someone. After all, the original roadster kit is now 60 years old so there should be a few of them out there! First up is the roadster. Almost box stock but I did graft the stock rear spring onto a 32 Vicky axle and added a resin dropped front axle. Impala wheelcovers and wide whites are for an early sixties vibe

I like all your work but there are some features here that really strike a cord as they were seen on Aussie rods as well. I'm thinking especially the filled in rear wheel arches and the front spring in front of the axle for a slightly shorter wheelbase. The four banger not so much because by the time Aussie rodding took off we were well and truly in the flathead era so it wasn't common to see banger roadsters. I love the building blocks you've selected for this roadster - look forward to seeing your progress. Cheers Alan

What a great combination of parts Ray! You've got me excited - I have the same body and frame in my stash and it's a combo I really like. After all, this is virtually the same as what Garlits did with his Dart roadster funnycar so it is definitely feasible. I'm also really enjoying the very business - like finishes you put on the frame components and the clever use of funnycar headers to get the exhaust outside the body. Great model! Cheers Alan

That is magnificent, Rodney. Only this week I had the Revell and Monogram coupes side by side trying to contemplate if this was doable. Looks like my first call was wrong. Did you have to shorten the fender unit at all to make up for the scale difference? Cheers Alan

Noel, the manufacturer of that Ford Prefect 100E was Premier - if you google it you will find pictures including the box. I have a glue bombed version in my stash but a friend of mine is doing a full detailed fully corrected version of one that will look outstanding when finished. Out of the box it is slightly better than a Palmer, but not by much! Cheers Alan

You might be onto something there - I can see the resemblance! Cheeers Alan

Thanks for that Anthony! Looking at that photo, when we are criticising modern cars for all looking the same, we can forget that it has always been like that! If I didn't have so many other WIPS already, i think it would be fun to attempt the conversion! Cheers Alan