alan barton

Having a 1:1 29 roadster in my shed and a dismantled 29 five window coupe put away for a retirement project, I can tell you a few of the differences. I haven't yet worked out the best way to get an accurate 29 5W in 1/24 or 1/25 but hopefully this info may help. The cowl and lower cowl panels are identical between 29 roadster and 29 coupe but are entirely different in every contour and dimension to a 30. Whilst a 30/31 body will easily fit a 28/29 frame, absolutely no body components are the same. They are as different as the first VW Beetle and the last Superbug - similar but different! The front door pillars or A pillars on a 29 coupe are noticeably thicker and flatter than the detailed ones on a roadster. Not a hard fix but work none the less. The doors of a coupe are about 4 inches longer than a roadster. They are the same length as a Tudor, so if you have an original AMT 28 Tudor in your stash, I would build a coupe by using the Tudor cowl and doors joined to shortened roadster rear quarters. If you choose to cut down a Tudor rear roof quarter to make a coupe, be aware that the window openings have a different shape quite apart from the obvious difference in length. The rear half of the car is where things get tricky. Just sticking with the 29s for a start, the coupe quarter panel is shorter behind the door and the curvature drops off noticeably quicker than a roadster when viewed in profile. This is because the passenger opening on the coupe and roadster, where it wraps around the seat, is identical. As the Coupe quarter panel is shorter, due to the longer door, the side curve has to start later and drop off quicker. To use an AMT or Revell rear quarter, you would first have to carefully cut horizontally away the interior opening from the top edges of the body, shorten the quarter panels at the door jam and then reposition the unmodified roadster cockpit opening to suit. You would then have to sand off the roadster swage marks and fabricate new lower ones from Evergreen. Also, for some strange reason roadsters have a swage mark along the lower edge of the quarter panel while coupes do not! The tulip panel behind the passenger opening is narrower than the roadster for the reasons mentioned above. The truck lid/rumble seat lid is identical but on the coupe it is located lower down the rear curvature, resulting in a narrower beaver panel underneath it as well. Haven't worked out whether it would be easier to rescribe the trunk lines or simply cut it free and relocate it. The roadster and coupe bodies are identical lengths from the bottom of the firewall to the rear extremity of the quarter panel. Also, the rear fenders are identical from coupe to roadster. Whilst a 30 coupe would offer up proportions similar to a 29, they are different and look noticeably bigger than a 29. Oddly, a 30/31 roof is higher than a 28/29 roof by about 1-1/2 to 2 inches. Usually cars got lower with each new model. I have seen it done by Chris Dansie in Australia using the Monogram 29 pickup and 30 coupe and it is by far the best conversion I have seen . You have to remember to change all the body pressings and swage marks because they are much simpler on a 29. Hope that helps those of you considering such a conversion. Remember, Google Images is your friend! Cheers Alan

Vince, I am fairly certain that that chrome sprue is from the AMT ramp truck body that Model King reissued some years ago. Cheers Alan

Everything becomes old with time and will be good to look back on so I cut out the tops and put them in clear sleeves in a lever arch file, by kit manufacturer. I'm up to four files after fifty years of building. I also keep the end caps and have ideas of making a collage one day but that plan is well down the list! Cheers Alan

Tim, as always your reports are a fantastic preview of what is to come. Thank you for taking the time to put so much detail into explaining the features of the 30 coupe. The 32 grille, skeleton interior and stock wheel arches are great news. . The choice of components sounds perfect to me and swapping stuff in and out is all part of the fun. It will probably be Christmas before we see them however. I got my first roadster off the net back in September 2015. I just bought four more from my local hobby shop and NNL sponsor in late February. I don't know which end of the supply chain is at fault but we seem to wait for an eternity to get new products in the southern hemisphere. Local price is $49.95 but I saw a games shop the other day with the roadster for $59.95 - ouch!!!!! I can see getting at least 5 coupes - the potential in these kits is huge! Cheers Alan

There always seems to be a lot of confusion about the AMT and Lindberg pickups, perfectly understandable when you think that AMT and Lindberg had one each, then the AMT became a Lindberg and who knows might become an AMT again one day. So to clear things up, here is , first, the AMT 34 pickup in orange and brown (don't hate me, I built it in the early 80s!) followed by the Lindberg in metallic blue/mauve.They are obviously different creatures. The AMT is an infinitely better tool and the cab of the Lindberg is all rounded off in a way that doesn't really match any factory Ford pickup offering. It's really more like a cut down 32 sedan (not that that wasn't done in real life from time to time, especially here in Australia where farmers during the war could get more gas rations for a commercial vehicle tan a family car). And in case you are wondering, both these models are built with box stock bodies. Cheers Alan

Thanks guys, I appreciate the positive comments. Bernard, most of the decals I use come from the various Slixx Mom and pop series sheets - they really are a must for early drag and short track racers. As you worked out, the parts are basically in the kit. Fortunately the frame on the altered disappears pretty much - it is really ugly! I left the side boards off the pickup bed and made a little aluminium tonneau cover. AS you can see from the rear view, it wouldn't hurt to tweak the fit-up between the bed and the body but that wasn't where I was heading when I first tackled these guys. One thing to keep in mind - the T bucket in either guise looks pretty big alongside any of the offerings of the other manufacturers. Cheers Alan

As I explained in the Lindberg 34 roadster pickup thread in the reviews section, I got fired up on my Christmas break to slam some old Lindbergs together.I was pleasantly surprised to find that by working on the stance, wheel and tyre issues, steering wheels and headlights, they come out alright. So for anyone thinking of buying them (cheap, I hope!), here's what they can come out like. First, the T Bucket. Very awkward proportions - every other T bucket mould, AMT, Revell, Monogram, MPC or Aurora is WAY better - but it has a certain charm. If your great aunt gave you one for Christmas, it would still be worth a shot. This one is painted in Tamiya Candy Lime straight from a rattle can and fitted with mags and whitewalls from the Edmunds supermod. Second, a first issue red plastic T bucket resurrected from a glue bomb but using some of the fresh optional parts from the green car. You're not meant to use the front mounted blower with the wedge nose but I wanted to so I did a bit of whttlin'. If you want to build this version, be careful to note that there are two sets of body mounts and engine mounts on the frame to allow for a setback setup. If you don't want to build the kit you could always use the frame to build a railway bridge! Wheels and tyres from the parts box made a world of difference! I like this version way better than the street rod. Thirdly, the 32/34 closed cab pickup with 56 Vicky wheel covers, AMT Firestone whitewalls and Parts Pack slicks and the lights from a Revell deuce. I had some paint issues with this puppy so don't look too close! Almost box stock apart from an attitude adjustment! Finally, the roadster pickup with Whitewalls and baby moons, better lights and steering wheel, and the bed cover from a Revell Willys pickup.

I had the old reissues of Lindberg rods hanging around on my shelf for years and I would have to say I had little or no respect for them. However, over Christmas I was in a bit of a rut and decided to slam them together purely as an historic example of early Lindberg kits, nothing else. At first they were going to be box stock but the wheels and tyres are average, the steering wheel seems to have come from a English bus from the thirties, the stance is woeful and the headlights are just plain goofy! And you could say that about every Lindberg hot rod, 1/32 or 1/25th, and I've got ém all! So I decided I had better help them along with a few tweaks. Then something amazing happened - they started to look really cool! To say I was caught out is an understatement. If I had realised how good they could look I would have scribed recessed door lines, filled the holes in the cowl and fabricated a floor for the otherwise hollow bottom of the car. Too late now, it was painted so I just soldiered on. The tarp is from the Revell Willys pickup - perfect width and the bit you chop off to correct the length does a nice job of filling the dip in the tailgate! Headlight buckets are from the kit with better rims and lenses from my parts box. Headlight bar is a bent pin. Another pin was cut up to form some bumper brackets so that the rear nerf bar isn't glued to the tailgate. I left the dumb big rig exhaust pipes off. Apart from wheels, tyres and steering wheel and these few mods, it is out of the box. So here is the (alleged) 34 roadster pickup. If I find another one cheap I might have another crack at it with the afore-mentioned improvements. Does anyone know if the rat rod reissue includes the full fenders? Cheers Alan

Greg, if I remember correctly he said it was just in respect to his father. I will have to re-read his autobiography to check. Thanks for your kind comments - I'm glad you liked my model! Çheers Alan

I'm ahead of you Greg! I built this replica in 1995 from an AMT roadster and the Revell 22Jr modified roadster kit I had an old special magazine abut Model A Fords that had a detailed reprint of the Tony Nancy article so that's what I went with. I used the best parts I had in my stash at the time and as you can see, I too was stymied by the wheels. As every other Model A running that class at the time seemed to run 12 spoke Americans, I went for them as a believable compromise. I have been looking for a workable pair of 8 spoke Turbines ever since! I built the injected version but it was later blown. I got to see the real car at the Petersen a few years after a built the model and also got to spend an amazing two hours talking to Tony Nancy in his shop in Sherman Oaks on a rainy January afternoon. An unforgettable experience with a true gentleman who was very interested in my models - I had photos of the five of his cars I had built at that stage. He told me that the number 22 referred to the number of Model Ä"s he had owned! I am aware of a few errors in the model. I never noticed the red stripe around the tonneau cover in the black and white photos. The front legs and cross bar of the lower rollcage are not located quite right - you would struggle to get your legs in there! Also, the back edge of the interior opening should have a slightly curved recess to clear the seat. I used Testor's Italian Red but the real colour has more orange in it. All stuff I learned later. Don't remember where the pipes came form and yes, they're close but not quite right. So yes, the new kit would be a great head start on building this real car. I am going to use the kit to build his first roadster, a 32 framed hiboy with a flathead - there was a real nice model by a guy called Martin Feistnayer (or similar, sorry) way back in SAE at least twenty years ago and it was in the NHRA museum in Pomona in one of their cabinets.

Bill is absolutely correct there, Luc. There are some classes that run smaller engines (360 cu in) or a lower spec and these may use OEM cast iron blocks while the heavy hitters such as the World of Outlaws series uses 410 cube alloy racing blocks. Almost exclusively Chevy small-block but on very rare occasions you might see a Ford, Mopar or Holden based engine. We also have a budget class here in Australia that runs a V6 Holden engine - still the same frame however. As far as I can tell USA, Canada and Australia all run very similar rules and there is plenty of international competition - we see USA drivers here every season. I suspect some tracks may run without mufflers but most Aussie tracks have to use them. There are also wingless sprints which are just that - sprintcars without the wings. Awesome to watch! They usually run a winged chassis - you will see the wing mounting stubs sticking up on top of the rollcage on most of them. Hope that helps Cheers Alan

To answer your question in a bit more detail, it is quite true that sprintcars have evolved slowly but there have been numerous changes since Monogram released it's kits way back when. If you build one of these kits straight out of the box it will definitely look like a current sprintcar. If you want to build an exact or fairly accurate replica, there are some things you might like to upgrade. Nearly all modern sprintcars use a highbar style chassis. Monogram updated their frame to this style a long time ago but for true accuracy you need to google some frame manufacturers to see how many bars need changing. I built an accurate replica of the Australian champion about 15 years ago and even then I changed over 20 bars in the frame! Front tyres - the Goodyear implement style is now replaced by a fatter treaded tyre - there are some AMT Goodyears in old muscle car kits that make a good substitute. Seat - a modern sprintcar seat is a full containment device, with much higher, wider side panels to wrap around the drivers ribcage and a complex helmet brace mounted at the top - I believe Dirt Track Modeller does a photoetched one. Like Ray said, thepartsbox.com does current hood, armshield (mudguard) and wheels. It is easy to make the tins (flat aluminium side panels) alongside the engine and driver and also up the back bars of the rollcage. The more recent kits have angled front wing sideboards and the small midget style fuel tank. Earlier kits have straight front wing sideboards and a full sized fuel tank or tail. The engines are largely the same but they often have a large air filter box on top of the injection rather than the individual foam style air filters in the kit. They now tend to have a cylindrical oil tank in the engine bay rather than the wedge shaped one in the drivers compartment that is in these kits. Which ever way you go they are a great kit. Suspension is fiddly but that is because it is so accurate. Don't expect to get the front and rear end on in one night! Cheers Alan

Happy New Year Tom! The two Caravans are so you! Great to see a rod in the mix. I'll have to see if I can post my year's efforts - a late rush of blood got four new builds finished in December! Cheers Alan

Tim, you are really showing your passion for this kit! I am waiting for shipments to arrive in Australia so that I can get some more! The pink one is a stunner - I don't think I've ever seen a rod painted that colour before but it looks sooooo right. Of course, the grey spoke Americans are doing it for me too! (I run them on my 1:1 Model A roadster!). I'm also a big fan of your turquoise one. Now this may sound sacrilegious, but I reckon this kit would be a perfect basis for a Boyd Coddington/John Buttera/John Corno styled car from the mid seventies/ early eighties period. Everything is there! The separate fender housings would make it very easy to do the Buttera trick where he moved the arches forward a few inches, along with the front axle, to give it that crouching to pounce look. Of course, you would have to swap in a small block Ford or Chevy but then you could switch the Buick into the re-issued SweeTee to build a Tommy Ivo T (maybe use the back of the Blue Bandito body for the "half a touring"body style that Tommy used) and then you could.........oh, man, we're going to be building this kit till we're a hundred years old! Cheers Alan

What a brilliant concept and so perfectly executed! Your craftsmanship shows exactly why this was such a great kit. I'd love to do the same with the Lil Deuce! You colour and wheel choice is inspiring - you should be building real rods as well! Cheers Alan

Ha ha, too funny!!!! Actually, while I'm still working out this issue I haven't glued the steering box onto the frame -it's just waiting for everything else to get sorted before I glue it in place. I think this is very much the type of model that you need to build once to get your head around things before building the second (and third, and fourth and...). I was really pushing to get this one finished for our clubmeeting last week so it didn't get the benefit of a mockup as I would normally do. I'm sure it is fixable! Dyno Davo has just given me some M&H slicks that we think are from the Boothill Express - the rubber rake is now awesome and they fill up the radiussed wheel arches sooooooo much better. I'll post another pcik when she's back together. Cheers Alan

Hey Tom, the right hand side is the RIGHT side! The roadster is not quite finished - I haven't glued the body down yet because there is a slight bind causing the left hand side to ride high - I expect it might be the mufflers interfering with the radius rods and forcing the floor up. There is also a pesky mark on the windshield that wasnt there when I took it to our clubmeeting last week - I'll have to fix that. Tim, I want to thank you for your input in getting this car to market. I had been in a slump for over six months and this little roadster woke me up right away! And that lovely Buick, exhaust spacing or no exhaust spacing, will make a great start for a Tommy Ivo T bucket replica and a Tony Nancy A/R replica. Too cool! I'll be buying lots of these. I am well on the way to having my first kitbash finished - all the leftovers with a Jimmy Flinstone chopped 29 coupe body and probably the leftover Hemi from the new Slingster kit (another home run for Revell!) My intention is that the only leftover parts from the 29 kit wil be the third set of headlights! That, people, is value for money, even at Aussie prices! Cheers Alan

I'm going to try my luck with photo posting as it has been disastrous of late. My good mate Marty (59Buick) got this in for me from the USA and I spent four nights and one afternoon on it. Love the model, warts and all, and will be buying at least four more. I followed Tim and Drew's advice and hogged out the front crossmember and shaved the spring til it was wafer thin. Wheels are from Revell 32 Ford kits, using a Monogram NASCAR outer rim to widen the rears. I am not totally happy with the tyre choice but second time was better than the first! Small MPC on the front, and either Revell M&H or Revell Rat Roaster on the rear. I had some old AMT Firestone Supreme redines on the front but the size, profile and stance was all wrong - a shame since the redwalls planted it right in 1965 where I wanted it. Paint is Testors One Coat lacquer straight over bare plastic. I can't understand why Revelll put a 30/31 firewall in a 29 (and technically if the new 30 coupe is accurately scaled it shouldn't fit that either) so I sawed about 3mm off the front and glued printers aluminium over the top and carved it to shape. Took about an hour and I am very pleased with the result. Love the accurate windshield frame, love the long pegs on the door handles that let you glue them from inside the bod, love the great fit of the interior panels and seat, love the nailhead. love teh3 choice of headlights. Not wild about the radiused wheelarches or the firewall and the height of the front end but none of these things are deal breakers. It's a hot rod, there is no such thing as "stock"! Cheers Alan

Hi Drew, first off congratulations on a very nice model. I don't know if yhou remember me but nearly 20 years ago you put my IMCA modified in your column. Like you, I drive a full size Model A hot rod (daily when I can) and like you I often anguish over matters of proportion and stance when it comes to hot rods. I would like to suggest that the problem with this kit is not the kit itself but the real car style it replicates. Quite simply, Model A roadsters on Model A rails, whether they be channelled or hiboy have that huge gap underneath, The dead straight rails of a stock Model A frame just keep everything else suspended way too high off the ground. I can recall that when the price of 32 rails, either original or repro, went ballistic in the late eighties/ early nineties, there were a bunch of fenderless Model As built here in Western Australia with the Model A frame and they all had a similar stance to the one on your model that so bothers you. It's just the way it is. When you go back through late fifties/early sixties magazines there were some really slinky Model A lowboys featured but if I recall they often used a suicide front end that got the front of the frame way down, helping the stance and closing up the unsightly gap. Put another way, imagine the gorgeous Niekamp or Dick Flint roadsters without their bellypans - they too would have that huge gap underneath them! Don't know if that makes you feel any better about it but I bet you like your next model on 32 rails much more betterer! Cheers Alan

Gary, I can help here as I have heaps of both AMT 29, Revell 30 and Monogram 1/24th 30 wheels(and tyres) if we can work out something with postage from Australia I can send some your way. Cheers Alan

No worries Richard. When i read your post this morning the photo didnt come up so I couldn't comment on your work. This afternoon it is up and it looks terriific. It would be great to see yours side by side with mine and see how much difference the 4 mm makes. From your photo, as you said, not much at all! Great to see you have the correct radius rods, the silver frame and the correct shape on the bottom edge of the hood side panels. Like you, I studied this thing to death before I built it - I reckon I could build a real one with what I know now. That surprises me actually - in all my magazines and all my travels I have never seen a clone of this car detail for detail. I believe an Englishman hand formed a beautiful polished aluminium 4 banger powered rod in slightly reduced scale back in the nineties and I saw a blue 27 T with very similar proportions on the front of Street Rodder a few years ago but no-one has done a true replica. Considering what a simple car it is compared to say, the Matador 40 coupe or the Hirohata Merc, it seems like a lost opportunity. With the availability of glass or tin Model A roadsters and the lack of extensive chroming or exotic parts, this could be a real budget build in 1:1! Cheers Alan

Thank you Tom, Tim, and Bill, I started with the Revell track nose and massaged it quite a lot before casting a solid one out of Bondo to use as a plug for my vacforms. What I love about vacforming is that you end up with a rigid piece that is about .5mm thick and you can make as many copies as you like - I still have all the molds after 23 years and unlike RTV they don't deteriorate with age or use. I think I have sold 12- 20 sets of these parts over the years but have never seen another one built up. The new Revell kit would be nice for a Niekamp as I struggled to find suitable tyres, especially for my second, 1950, version and the separate molding on top of the cowl would be far more accurate for a lakes version. The front nerf was modified from an Edmunds Supermod kit and the rear is bent from a paperclip - a pig of a job as I remember! Richard, I used the Rod and Custom article in the seventies when Jim Jacobs found and started restoring the car and it included a reprint of the Hot Rod article. I was sure they said a four inch section and thinking about it as a hot rodder with a real '29 roadster, I can't imagine whay you would only shorten a car by 1 inch. I'm not saying that isnt what you read, it just seems such an awful amount of work for a teeny weenie change.

Thanks Tom, that's my baby! Colour is a little deeper in the flesh. This version is based on Jim Jacob's restoration in the seventies. Cheers Alan

Hi guys, I have had plans on doing the Dick Flint roadster for years but I HAVE built not one but two versions of the Niekamp roadster. The first one I built has a windshield and lives permanently in the Oakland Roadster Show diorama in Salt Lake City. Some of you may have seen it before because it is in the front row of the display and often shows up in photos of the diorama. The second version is done sans windshield and with a tonneau cover as in the photo above. One twist - I put the steering wheel on the right as I do with most of my collection - it's an Aussie thing! I have my own vacforming machine and I carved wooden moulds for the nose, hood, bellypan floor and spring covers and then vacformed the parts with 1mm high impact styrene plastic. I used the photoetched grille that comes in Model Car Garage's Model T track nose part. This is a perfect size but has slightly squared off lower corners - at least they tend to be hidden behind the nerf bar. And yes, both my models are shortened 4mm to match the four inch shortening that Bill did to the real car. Remember, the real car had the left hand door welded shut so shortening it isn't that hard, especially if you hinge the shortened right hand door like I did. (By the way, I'm thinking that MCG's Model A track nose might be a good start on the Eddie Dye car.) I hand mixed the colour for my first version and airbrushed it but cheated on my second one using a Tamiya spay can but cant remember the name of the blue just now - maybe Leighton House blue? It was surprisingly close. I soldered up a half chassis from K&S brass and then slid it in to the front of the car - there is no point building a full frame as it is totally hidden by the bellypan. Instead, I inserted a length of aluminium tubing through the centre of the spring covers and then used the next size down tubing as a rear axle. The motor I used was the 49 merc flathead with 50 Ford chromed heads. There may be better stuff available now but I built both these in the early nineties so that's what I used. I made the unique taillights by doing some very careful cutting and filing on a set of 49 Merc taillights - you have to work with ridiculously small pieces of plastic here but they look convincing when done. Unfortunately I have been frustrated beyond belief trying to use Photobucket this year so I don't have photos to post - Tim, maybe you might have some somewhere that you could pop up here? Cheers Alan

Haven't tried Photoshop for ages so I hope this works. This was built on a resin MPC Slammer (57 Chevy style) modified frame and has Tamiya Formula 1 slicks at the rear. I think it has a much tougher look than the recently reissues of the MPC Pinto modified. Cheers Alan