alan barton

My pleasure Steve, I'll have to go and check my build to see what I did with the windshield - it was about ten years ago. Just a thought on the Parts Pack wheels - you couldn't go wrong using them for now and replacing them with the real thing if and when they turn up. Cheers Alan

Steve, good luck on your build. It is a very cool model and staggeringly accurate in most aspects. I missed the interior depth problem so I guess I will just have to get shorter drivers for it! At the risk of sounding like the world's worst name dropper, a few years ago Tex visited Perth Western Australia to attend our annual hot rod show. Through a unexpected series of events he ended up staying at our home for several days - what an honour! I have a photo of him standing with me in my model room holding my finished kit in his hands. He also autographed my copy of the Hot Rod magazine that had it on the cover. He told me some fascinating stories about building the car. At the risk of contradicting Tom (sorry mate!) he said the motor came from Hot Rod or Motor Trend magazine - it was sent to them for photographing and Chrysler didnt want it back. He also said the side draft Webbers came from Carroll Shelby himself - he had ordered a bulk quantity for his Cobras but the Italian factory sent side drafts instead of the necessary downdrafts. He said the initial bodywork was done by a well-known Hollywood related kustom builder (you can work it out) but it was all in lead and horribly overweight. It was later given to another well known customizer who remade many of the panels in aluminium. I asked him about the absence of the louvers in the nose of the car. He had no idea why they were left out as they were in the car right from the start. He said the colour was candy tangerine but my model is Testors candy red over silver becasue it matched the colours as I saw them on the magazine cover. I dont know if this will help you with your belly pan/roll pan dilemna. I hated the idea of trying to cleanly glue candy apple painted panels together so I went about it this way. The rear axle is virtually invisible on the finished model so instead of installing the kit part I simply installed a piece of appropriate sized Evergreen tubing. I cant remember exactly but I think I made some simple sheet plastic mounts to lock it in place.I seem to recall that I left the trailing arms and driveshaft out as well - trust me they are invisible. I then painted the chassis as an assembled unit. I then glued the body together around the assembled chassis. It pays to leave the firewall/wiring panel off the interior for now and then I think I also shaved just enough off the top edges to allow the i interior tub to slide in an out after painting. Take some time to test fit this prior to painting. It was pretty tight but it didnt cause any damage . I then made a paint stand out of a simple wooden plank with two uprights in the middle. The uprights had holes drilled in them to allow a piece of stiff wire to be fed through one upright, through the afore-mentioned tubing replacement for the rear axle and through the opposite upright. The car is now suspended securely like a trapeze artist. At each end of the plank I drilled hole and fitted a vertical piece of coathanger wire. To paint the car it should be suspended horizontally the right way up with the underside of the nose carefully balanced on the vertical piece of coathanger wire. Next rotate the car 180 and check that it now rests upside down with the opposite piece of vertical coathanger wire supporting the inner surface of the engine bay belly pan. I hope all this makes sense. After masking off the engine bay (I left it silver base coat) basically, you sit the car the right way up and apply your candy colour coat to all the visible surfaces. Give it a few minutes to tack up and then ever so gently swing the body up and over to rest upside down on the other end (inside the engine bay) and spray all the under surfaces. As you would know, trying to paint a candy colour evenly is a nightmare at the best of times, and more so with a full bellypan. This way the only separate panel you have to paint is the hood! It worked for me! The only other challenge I recall was that the real car has a shaped aluminium trim running along the base of the windshield. I covered the bottom of the windshield with BMF and then marked a line about 1.5 mm up with a fine point marker. I then held my breath, prayed to the modelling gods and freehand cut on the line with a new blade. Ten seconds never felt so long but I got away with it without skidding across the windshield and it is the finishing touch in my eyes. Hope that helps! Alan

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi! Welcome aboard mate, and ignore what Tom said, there's room for THOUSANDS of us on here! Hi Tom! Cheers Alan

Here's one that has been so ignored I just don't get it. Nearly every significant pre-war Ford has been kitted in one form or another but the Chevies not so much. Go to any street rod event and the number one most popular Chevy by a country mile is the '34 Chevy. Ever seen a model of one? O.K, there is a deranged, confused 1/43rd scale sedan delivery by a European diecast company and a cheap and cheerful rip-off of same in the form of a plastic R/C car. 1/18th diecast? Nope 1/25th plastic? Nope. 1/43rd resin? Nope 1/64th diecast? Nope. Anyone ever seen another one? Nope, not me! With the Chevies, no one body style seems to be more overwhelmingly popular than another. Five window coupe, two door sedan, roadster, sedan delivery, they are all rather popular, both here in Australia and the USA and Canada. They are obviously popular enough for fibreglass manufacturers to make them. So Revell and AMT and Moebius have the chance to be first on the block with a car that has never been kitted but has a ton of fans. The approach that Revell took with their "32 Fords would be a perfect match. Police car guys would probably kit bash an AMT 37 Chevy six in for a replica stock patrol car. 34 Chevy rods often have relatively stock front and rear suspensions so conversion to factory stock would not be anywhere near as complicated as the equivalent Fords with all their street rod industry components. So Revell and AMT and Moebius have the chance to be first on the block with a car that has never been kitted but has a ton of fans. Model builders would like them because they would be different. Plus thousands of 1:1 owners would be able, for the first time, to have a model of their ride for the TV or the bookshelf or the office desk. A natural tie in for another Goodguys release. Sounds like a business plan to me! Cheers Alan

This is my 56 Chevy speedway towtruck, build entirely from cast off junk. (apart from the Evergreen angle used for the crane.) Cheers Alan

This ancient water tanker was converted from a Revell 56 F100 into a F300 to F600 water truck. Inspired by my love of dirt track speedway and also by the models of my good mate Tom Geiger. Cheers Alan

Hi jbwelda, I just found this thread and thoroughly enjoyed reading every post. I feel - your pain - I too decided to try and build a "perfect" Mooneyes dragster about 5 years ago and I reckon I struck every single speedbump that you hit! I was stubborn and ignorant and bullied my way through fitting the PartsPack engine but it is insanely tight and you can see the injectors slightly bending the left hand frame rail. I wish I had attempted the dash treatment the way you did, it looks great! I used the Attempt One frame as I found the Mooneyes Parts Pack frame to be lacking in a lot of areas, as you so accurately described. I made a new cowl and firewall from printer's aluminium and I'm very happy with those parts at least. My references were the Hot Rod Magazine article and the Mooneyes book. I noticed that very few period shots of Mooneyes vehicles actually wore Moon discs where as most contemporary Moon cars do. I decide to cheat a little and do the left side as contemporary and the right side as period correct. The book showed a 64-64 Chevelle shop truck but a Revell '66 was as close as I could get at the time. The trailer is the one from the AMT Fireball 500. Not trying to hijack your post or anything, I just thought this info might help others who check out your thread. Congratulations on a fantastic build and I for one, "get" the cube van - the connection to Mooneyes Japan is perfectly appropriate. Cheers Alan

Tom, I think you were a "random boxes full of organised stuff" kinda guy! Having seen bith yiours and mine, I think we operate at a similar level. I'm not bragging when I say that I have ended up with so much stuff that it takes a concerted effort to keep it halfway tidy! Cheers Alan

OK guys, for what it's worth, here's my theory on parts storage that has served me well for over thirty years. Before that I was a "boxes full of random stuff" kinda guy. First, you need a large number of uniformly sized boxes. In a former life I was a photography teacher at a high school and the photo boxes were a perfect size. I now have a rack on each side of my bench with ninety boxes for a total of 180 boxes. Believe me, it is easy enough to fill them! Avoid round containers like the plaque - they waste tons of room! So, lets say you have a box for tyres. One day the box fills up. Instead of starting a new tyre box, you split your existing stash into street tyres and race tyres - now you have two boxes but with a different range of tyres in each. One day the street tyre box fills up. So, you split the stash and now you have say, radial tyres and crossply tyres. When the Radial tyre box fills you split it and now you divide them up into , say, Goodyear radials and Firestone radials. So now, when you are looking at a picture of a car in a magazine that you just HAVE to build you go straight to the Goodyear street radial box and BAM! you've got what you need! So the rule is, never double a box, always split a box. This way you don't have to think ahead and think " how many boxes do I need, what do I write on the front?" because you never start a new box until one fills up. That's when you can decide what you are going to call the next box, determined by what you have in the box you are going to split. It's dirt simple but it works wonderfully for me. I am not an organised person by nature so for me this is as good as it gets. with my current range of boxes I can pick all the pieces I need to buidl a car in around half an hour with very little digging or fossicking. Hope it works for you. Cheers Alan P.S. Glass top and self healing mat, the only way to go!

Hi everyone, Just getting in early to let you know about our show. Last year we had a grand total of 1, 123 model cars trucks and bikes displayed inside and outside the West Coast Street Rod Clubrooms. We had a record number of rookies last year with a build quality that left us breathless! Put Sunday 13th of July in your diary! This year's themes are as follows Cacklefest - The Long and Short of it! We want you to bring along all your 1/24 or 1/25th scale Top Fuel dragsters. Front or rear engine, it doesn’t matter because we are going to arrange them chronologically on a six metre dragstrip diorama so that we can see how the length of these ultimate race machines has increased over the last sixty or so years. Engines. Yep, just what it says. Instead of building a model with an engine in it, build the engine as the model! Absolutely everyone can participate in this one because it doesn’t matter whether you are into cars, trucks or bikes, they all have engines. Scale doesn’t matter either – anything from 1/43 to 1/6 will fill the bill. This is a great opportunity to show off your detailing skills. Make sure you display it on an appropriate engine stand to complete the effect. Starting with V! Yep, Viper, Volkswagen, Vauxhall, Valiant, Volvo, Virago, Vincent, Vespa, Velocette, Victoria, Vega, Vette (yeah, that’s cheating I know) I’m sure there’s more. Need more – just Google it! Any scale, any style, as long as it starts with V! Flight of the Mustangs Some Mustangs might have flown in the sky but the ones we’re talking about are the wheeled variety that will be celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this year – a pretty good excuse for a party, don’t you think? I know plenty of you have your only little herd of horsies so bring them along and we will put them in a corral all of their own! Our five metre long street scene diorama will be waiting for a 1/25scale Mustang Nationals to populate it. Start looking now for cheap flights! We'd love to have modellers from all over Australia and hey, all over the world, to come across to our special part of the planet. The show is only twenty minutes from the airport and we can organise a shuttle and accomodation so it will be a cheap weekend. Its a full weekend with Saturday open for set-up and socialising (strictly entrants only) plus the legendary Give 'N' Take box, a great goodie bag, and a free choice from the Wall of Kits after the presentation. Come and join in Australia's biggest model car party - you know you've been talking about it - make this year THE year! PM me for entry forms and details. Cheers Alan

Congratulations on a great job correcting the ungainly AMT proportions of what is in real life a very well proportioned car. I must confess to having planned to correct it also but in a far more complicated manner and I wasn't convinced it was going to work. What you have done seems simple by comparison but the impact is obvious. Sorry I have no photos to post but a few years ago, for those that are interested, I did combine a Revell 32 roadster with an AMT phaeton. The phaeton has far more inaccuracies than the Vicky The cowl is ugly and the windscreen frame and posts bear little resemblance to the real thing so I used all the cowl, the front doors and the lower three millimeters of the roadster quarter panel. I then cut and trimmed the phaeton body to mate up (hope that makes sense). I remember I cut the Revell roadster body a few mm behind the door line so that I didnt have to rescribe it. It was a relatively simple job and the effect was striking. Just a bit of useless information, the AMT phaeton was measured up from Dick Scritchfield's ( L.A. Roadster's member) real car, a body that was imported from Australia back in the sixties (we had far more open cars than closed cars) As a result, the back of the AMT phaeton lacks the seams that an American bodied car would have because Aussie cars had a one- piece tub. Just thought you might be interested to know! Cheers Alan

Hi there, jbwelda, I have been following this thread and am really enjoyingthe process you are going through. For my money, I would definitely go with the removable valve cover option. I had something similar happen recently when I scratchbuilt a late model dirt track car and when everything finally went together, the aircleaner hole in the hood was about 3/8 forward of the carb. I just leave the aircleaner perched in the hood hole and when I need to display it with the hood off the aircleaner goes back on the carb. I am finding that as my models get increasingly complex then these sort of issues become increasingly common! By the way, would you be the kind gentleman who once sent a Scalextric1/32 Mini clubman body to a guy in Australia? - if so that guy is me. I did finish the project and always felt guilty that I had lost your contact details and couldn't send you a picture of it. Let me know if you are that person and I will send a pic. Cheers Alan

Hi Bill, I've built two of these and have three more on the go. They are a very nice kit and IMHO compare well to the much later Monogram sprintcars. Like all kits they do have their idiosyncracies! Give the driver figure to a kid to play with - it is easily the worst driver figure ever placed in any model car in history - seriously! Generally, the tyres are rubbish and need to be replaced. I have used Monogram sprint car tyres as a believable replacement, also the Firestones in the Revell Dobbertin series of kits (J2000, Beretta, C4 Corvette pro street). The Grant King was not the prettiest of sprintcars, especially the hood and the nose. I have one on the bench at the moment where I have grafted the V8-60 nose and grill over the Grant King nose and it is looking pretty cool for a late 50s, early 60s car. Recently there was a good article in another model magazine about improving the nose with the track nose and hood tops from the Revell Rat Rod 29 Model A pickup kit. and the grille from the Revell Offy midget. THe GK hood is very level and parallel - if you file the lower edge down towards the front to produce a tapered effect it will improve it out of sight! The chassis is a bit fiddly but the jig works very well and if you take your time it comes out nice and square and looks great. The one piece tail is magnificent and has a separate two piece fuel tank to fit inside- accurate for the era I believe. However there is no evidence of a fuel cap or filler. Engine is not bad but the headers have a strange arrangement where one port in the centre of the heads opens into two pipes - very odd but on the other hand isn't screamingly obvious till someone points it out. Biggest failing in my eyes is no rollbar to go behind the seat. Fact is, the old Monogram Hot Shot midget is the only open wheeled dirt car I am aware of that ever had a proper roll bar. This omission would be correct for the real GK but If you leave the cage off you are going to need to make a rollbar. What makes it worse is that they are so awkward to make and keep the right and left hand sides symmetrical, or maybe that's just me. Hope that helps Bill. I have had a variety of releases and they are all basically the same under the skin witt minor cosmetic changes as described in the earlier posts. Cheers Alan

Ray, this is looking fantastic and the choice of Li'l Coffin chassis was a great idea - the funky coil front end is perfect for this kind of build. For headers, you might try looking for a pair that come from , I think, the AMT 32 Phaeton or possibly the 32 Vicky. They work well with a hemi and stand a fair way out from the frame - I suspect this is what you are trying to work around. Another wide set of headers are the ones in the old Eldon or Dyoshu Invader twin engine show car - probably not so easy to find but maybe some-one on here has a pair in their parts box. Boothill Express pipes are 1/24 and suit a hemi but they would pass under the car so you might have to fill in the visual gap between the firewall and the front wheels some other way if you used those. If you're still thinking bubbletops, the Beanik Bandit unit would have to go close. Cheers Alan

Yep,Tom, that'd be me!!! Check your emails - got lots of news! Thanks everyone for the compliments - it was a great team effort with abouit a dozen guys responsible for the display and the models on it. It went down really well at the hot rod show. Cheers Alan

Forty nine this year, been building models since I was eight, and eyesight is the only thing I can imagine stopping me (thats why I'm leaving my 1/8th stash for a few years more!)

Drew Hierwaterr did a nice one in Scale Auto a few years ago with some very good comments and tips. Both of mine are still half built!