alan barton

The double door and the artillery wheel may both be from the Revell 37 Panel Delivery. Can't think of anything else they could come from - the MPC gangbusters 32 Chev panel had separate doors. Cheers Alan

That is a very creative build, Vesa! You have burred the line between rat rod and T.R.O.G. racer and come up with a totally believable roadster. It's great to see how many of the Hillbilly parts you were able to use. The white tyres are the finishing touch - I wouldn't have thought of that but they are they make the whole project work, especially with your great choice of colour. Cheers Alan

Sheer genius! Why didn't I think of that? What a natural conversion! I have a spare 34 3 window coupe body from the modified series - I'm going to have to see how that shapes up now! Excellent vision you have sir, and I love the other cool projects you have on your bench. Is the 60 El Camino an SMP or did you convert a Revell 60 convertible with an AMT 59 Elky? Cheers Alan

Fantastic job! My brother was heavily involved in rallying in the eighties here in Western Australia and after destroying a few Mk 1s he upgraded to a Mk2. I know these Mk 11s well. Went for a wild ride with him in the bush one night - your body finds it hard to believe the G-forces you can pull on a dirt road. Believe it or not, an Englishman now living in Perth has built a stunning replica of this car. I saw it at a book signing by the guy who was the Ford rally team manager - it was very impressive. Cheers Alan

Thanks everyone. I took a bit of a risk on this one so it is nice to see so many people appreciate it. When I get the improvements done I will be sure to post an update. Cheers Alan

You did a great job of hiding your issues, John. I have never looked twice at this as the box art doesn't do a lot for me but seeing a professionally finished version like yours has changed my mind. And not onyl does it make a great show rod, it would be an excellent start for one of those low slung T buckets that Greg was showing over in the General pages. Quite the parts n=mine this one. Thanks for going to the trouble of sharing this one with us all - it's been quite the education. Cheers Alan

I've always loved the early Cougars so I can't wait to see your results here. I would definitely look at some alternative quarter window treatments, just to separate the visual cues from the Mustang. Good luck in your endeavors. Cheers Alan

I appreciate your thoughts Patrick. I'd had the colour in the Testor's one shot lacquer range for a few years and it really spoke to me for this model. By the same token, a more subdued colour with the round headlights could work as well. If I find another Beverley Hillbillies truck I will be grabbing it because there are so many possibilities. Cheers Alan

So here she is. Obviously I didn't built it in five days but I get sidetracked on projects sometimes so I thought I would wait til it was nearly done before posting build photos. Overall, I am quite happy with the finished project. It matches the picture in my head and I think it reflects the era, even if it has a more contemporary colour scheme. I think it would look right at home at Pleasanton. I enjoyed the fact that I used nearly all of the original kit parts (not counting the oddball Beverley Hillbillies bits.) Since taking the photos there are a few things I need to go back and fix. Originally I planned to use the stock Olds windshield but it just stuck up way too high. It is a beautiful piece, however, so rather than cut it down I am going to save it for a future T bucket project. Instead, I cut down an AMT 32 roadster windshield frame. This is an ugly piece that you would never use on a Deuce but with a bit of work it seems to suit the Olds. As the photos show however, the fit isn't as precise as I first thought so I need to go back and fix that. Finally, I chose to leave the wire wheels in the plastic they were molded in but as I still have a spare one, I think I will experiment with some washes to see if I can get rid of the plastic look. I've also noticed that a front tyre has popped askew on its rim. Need to fix that, as well as a plug lead that has popped off. Hey, new rods always have teething problems, right?

I took most of these photos a while ago so after this post I will switch across to Under Glass for the final project. By the way, I found Googled a photo of the original Barris Mail Truck and the 1:1 Woodlites looked exactly like the photo in Mr NNL's post. Looks like MPC wasn't too fussy back in the day. Not sure what they measured because they sure look different to the real thing! While on a recent trip to the USA I visited Hobby Lobby and picked up a bunch of colours of embossing powder. I read it about it here for ages so here is my first attempt. For flock or powder, I am a big fan of a thick wet coat of gloss enamel to sprinkle onto, rather than glues or adhesives. You can usually shake it off straight away and it seems to hold better in the future. I also added some very basic plug leads to the little four banger. They're a bit fat but I liked the colour of the insulation so went with it.

In keeping with the roaring twenties theme for my roadster, I chose to use the Olds running gear. I adapted two side draft carbs off the Revell Offy midget kit by cutting the updraft carb off the original manifold first. I also made a three pipe header out of K&S tubing. I cut the brake rods off the rear axle and mounted the front axle on top of the spring instead of under it. Eventually I had to do a fair bit of trimming on the rear springs to get them to work with the shortened frame.

Thanks guys. I've no idea if this kit is still in the RC2 catalogue but the kit number is 31753. The copyright notice says 2004 so it was a while ago. The Jolly Roger has a lot of the good bits also but if I remember correctly it doesn't have the stock running gear. You can cut the rear sailing ship half off and graft other bodies on - other conversions that might work would be the Revell 27 T Tudor and Phaeton bodies. With those conversions you wouldn't need the fully finished bucket body contained in the Beverley Hills version. Here's what I did a few years ago by combining the Monogram Paddy Wagon sides and roof with the Jolly Roger. I never took any construction photos but it was a pretty cruisy conversion. Bodywork consisted of narrowing the Paddy Wagon roof about 2mm, cutting open the screen sides and framing them with Evergreen half round, cutting out rear wheel arches and outlining the doors with Evergreen after sanding off all the woodwork from the sailing ship. Most of the rest of it came out of the box. Cheers Alan

I could imagine Tom Daniel looking at that suspension and thinking "Why didn't I think of that?" Your work is certainly psycho, and I say that in the nicest possible way. It is always refreshing to see someone step so far out of the box they can't even see it from here. Cheers Alan

For wheels, I decided to use the plastic ones from an Eastwood Collectibles (perhaps Spec Cast was the manufacturer) diecast Posie's 30 Model A delivery. The original Posies delivery ran V8 wires so I had adapted some AMT 32 Ford wires for the job Spec Cast also do a Model A cabriolet with the same wheels. Now straight up, the detail isn't the greatest, especially on the backside, but the look is exactly what I was going for and, well, I had them! I also found that Monogram 30 Model A tyres would fit and were slightly smaller than the Eastwood tyres so I got a smidgeon of rubber rake without getting too carried away. The next problem was, they are mounted on childhood proof knurled metal axles and no amount of gentlly increased pressure would free the plastic hubs from the metal. Well, not without ripping the entire centre out of the spokes. After carefully easing off the rear half of the rim, I finally resorted to using a sharp X-acto to make numerous vertical cuts through the hub around the axle, finally releasing the interference fit enough for me to get the wheels off without damaging them. Very nerve wracking but we lived to tell the tale.

Good point Craig. I'm going to go with badly molded, because, after all, the lens can only fit into the cavity that has been made available for it. I might have to do some Googling - maybe there were other models to the one in your photo? Ellen, the Olds would make a great little roadster, it could have the Monogram 29 Pickup bed grafted on for a neat little farm truck and I wouldn't think it would be too hard to graft an AMT 25 T coupe body onto the Olds cowl, similar to what landman is doing with his Dodge project. The stock mechanicals are surprisingly detailed for a kit from the showrod era. There's heaps of potential here. And espo, the engine won't be what you expect! Cheers Alan

and the four most exciting words in dirt track racing???? "Security to the pits!"

Unfortunately, that simply wasn't going to work. Love the headlights, just hate the look for this project. That sent me digging deep into my parts box to uncover a very obscure part that I can't say I have ever seen used before on a model. These are the Woodlights from the MPC George Barris Mail Truck. The bar in the middle was very ugly so I replaced it with a short length of polished K&S aluminium tubing. The chrome had faded from years of rattling around in my headlight box so I restored that with my Molotow pen, the greatest thing to come along in decades!!! Finally, I went digging in my lens box and much to my surprise found the original clear lenses for them - it would be over 45 years since I bought this kit so that was just short of miraculous. Never, ever, throw anything out! With a bit more trial and error I had them mounted and they looked waaaaaaaay better.

I decided I wanted to try something a little funky in the way of headlights. A couple of years ago I bought a pair of E & J headlights from thepartsbox.com and I thought they would be perfect. I used some thin pieces of Everegreen rod to make some simple mounts and then drilled holes in the leading edge of the fender flange to accept them.

Because George Barris carved the hood full of holes for those gawd awful Mercedes SSK or Cord style flex exhausts that he seemed to love, there was quite a bit of work needed on these parts. I must have filled that hood three times before it cracked yet again so I ended up laminating a very thin sheet of styrene underneath and that seemed to sort it out. Filling the holes in the hood sides without damaging the louvers or the belts was not a fun time either!

Greg, I can think of three options, none perfect but heading in the right direction. Hubley did a series of 1/20th 32 Chevies. The wire wheels in those models are different to a 32 but they are a lot closer than the very spindly Model A wheels. I've attached a photo below. Ertl did a 1/18th 34 Ford pickup towtruck, a direct copy of the AMT/Lindberg 1/25th kit. The wire wheels in it could work, especially as I seem to remember they were slightly undersized. Someone did a 1/18th 32 roadster that seemed to be copied from the Monogram 32 roadster EXCEPT that it had 3 window style suicide doors. Very odd. My version is blue with flames. The wire wheels in that kit are more like Skylarks but maybe with a V8 hubcap you might be able to fake it. Hope that helps. Cheers Alan

Nah, she won't be a TROG car and she will be shiny. I'm just taking my inspiration from that era and mindset. Thanks for looking and for the positive comments!.

So here we are at first mockup stage. So far so good - it has the low slung stance I was aiming for and the body is looking fairly factory like - I have no idea what an Olds roadster really looks like but, hey, it's a hot rod - it can be any shape it wants to be!

There really was no interior to speak of in the original kit so I started by making some templates out of old business cards to see what would fit. These were then transformed to sheet plastic, with some details added with Evergreen strip. While I was at it I carved up a swoopy dash, right hand drive of course! I used some slivers of K&S aluminium tubing to make instrument trim rings.

At this stage I was pretty happy with where the body was going but man, that frame was long enough for a truck. That would never do. I sawed a significant chunk out of it just in front of the rear kickup and spent quite a bit of trial and error time getting it to a more roadster like length. After all that, I mocked up a simple metal axle across the rear frame only to find that the fuel tank was going to clash with any size or brand or rear end that I might want to install. There was nothing for it but to sever the fuel tank crossmember and slide the assembly rearwards to ensure plenty of room.

The bucket style body was a good start for what I wanted to do. For a turtle deck, I used a vacformed component that I made many years ago for a 27 T project that I never did get finished. The size was about right so it just took some careful mating up with the Oldsmobile body. There were a few gaps where the body met the fenders so additional sections of plastic were added to blend this together. I also used some half round Evergreen strip to add some swage lines to the body to add a factory look to it. For rear fenders, I chose a pair from the rear of Revell's 27 T series (Tudor, Delivery or Phaeton). The swage lines and pressings on the T fenders bore a striking resemblance to the Oldsmobile items up front.