Farmboy

A couple of things. I found a skylight that will work, quite by accident. It was sitting on my bench with some craft beads in it. A bit of Goo Gone and here's what I have for the roof insert.. so that meant re-doing the piece I had built previously. What's the saying about eggs and omelettes? Note too that this is going to be rounded over and moulded in to the roof the bottom will be cut to the correct thickness. This is all prelim.

Guess that's what I meant JC, just didn't say it properly. Oh well.... Here are the beginnings of the clear section over the pool. It's a simple frame cut to fit inside the roof width, and the top piece will have the center removed to allow for a skylight, tinted or otherwise Hopefully, converting this from a square and angular add on to a smooth and flowing hump in the roof won't be a major pain If you kind of squint, it looks like it's going to be okay! We'll see. comments and observations welcome

Thanx for the input guys, this is undiscovered country to yours truly and I'm finding out as I go along. I did a bit of research on spa/limo units and I've decided to put a roof on it after all...with mods. First, here's a pic of the to-be-roofed section with rod joining the front and rear and the hot tub placed in it's soon to be permanent location. This will a) help line up the insert and help with the smoothing process. I"m keeping the windshield in during this work to ensure the body has that much more support at staying square during the sanding ..and the roof section. There will be another section mounted on top of this with the sunroof cut thru to the spa.

Here's the section with the spa installed. The deck will be done with wood, the spa painted pool blue, perhaps even a round metal rail around the perimeter. The rear passenger section will go forward to the hinge part of the rear door while the front will goback to the edge of the front door. comments and observations welcome

Back to the bench. I'm still doing bodywork and actually put a roof on it. It looked like....a looooooooooong car. A pool is needed! Here, I've taken the roof section and cut it to fit between the mid doors the actual hot tub is made from a chrome nut cover used on A class motorhomes and big rigs. I've modified it by removing the threaded section. I'll dechrome it and add a couple of grilles to the inside. Note the custom moulded in seating! comments and observations welcome

Here are a couple of the 55 from the same file. There's no engine in her. The stretch was the focus and I was satisfied with that. Back to the Pontiac, I'm thinking of putting a spa in the center section of it. There would be no roof over it and it would have wood decking. Thoughts?

Progressing fairly ok. The bottom half of the body is about ready for finish sanding, just have to finish the vertical door line. The top is just getting the filling work underway. The strip of styrene is just the mock up. It will be cut to length and covered with BareMetal foil or shot with Alclad to be the chrome insert in the spear comments and observations welcome.

JC, here's a shot of a 55 I did a few years ago. A minor stretch but it turned out ok. This something like what you're contemplating?

Now the sanding and filling begins. I'm going to start at the bottom of the inserted piece, level each section and move on to the next. Here is the bottom section with filler applied before sanding comments and observations welcome.

Here's the scratchbuild of the body side. I've decided at this point that only the drivers door will be on the left. The rear door will be part of the body. It just makes more sense to me. Anyway, I made a few attempts at making the body side out of a single piece of styrene sheet but no luck. So, the bottom, middle and upper section are made from separate pieces of styrene. The topmost piece is from a section of styrene tube, the side spears from half round. There's lots of room for adjustment thru sanding and filing and filling. A few of the pieces are overly large which will cut down on the fill. comments critiques and observations welcome.

A bit of progress. Here I'm adjusting the body to fit the frame. I've assured the floorpan/frame are square. I've mounted the body to the unit, adjusted it so it fits and glued and clamped the styrene sheet to the body assuring it's proper fit.

I know. The dime is really 10" in diameter! The whole thing's a Photoshop! Seriously, this is Wingrove level stuff. That's not you name is it? I'e never encountered work like this before...and you're sharing the steps not just the finished product! Excellent excellent excellent!

This is the rough joining of the floor pans and frame. Oddly, it took a section from the third kit to more or less blend the unit together. Some minor finishing will be required. The frame however, where it has nothing outstanding in it's design was a simple matter of joining two pieces. Here's another view of the two pieces from the bottom. The transmission support piece on the 2nd crossmember will be removed. and lastly, the two paired together Comments and observations welcome. It'll be a couple of days till the next post but I will continue the build

Time for chassis and frame work. Here you see the amount of overlap required. Looks like it will make it with just the two ...but see the gap. A small section from the 3rd chassis is needed.

I had seen a custom built limo out of a 63 Oldsmobile at a car show recently and thought it would be a good project to attempt. The car I had in mind is the 62 Catalina Firstly, doors on different models of vehicles are not all the same. rear doors on a 4 door vehicle are not as wide as the front ones. The doors on 2-doors are wider still. For this build from a 2 door kit, I separated the door from the door jamb and cut it the width of the door handle. I then cut another width out of the remaining door to make it even narrower so when the door handle section is joined back on, it will still be narrow, but still wider than the rearward doors. I had two Catalina kits and a custom catalina available to butcher. Here I've separated the roof to accomodate the stretch I'll be attempting. The 1:1 vehicle had all of it's limo doors on the passenger side! Neat! For the driver's side, only the driver and rearmost doors are present. Note the section re-glued to the door. I will have to build this open section but it looks pretty straightforward for sheet styrene and filler. Hope my skills are up to it. Here are the doors glued in place. I do have one thing to mention. The side spear has a slight slope to it from front ot rear. When re-assembling the doors, in order to keeps the spear straight, the top or bottom of the doors where they join has a slight mismatch. It's minor and will be corrected with careful sanding and filling. I wanted the spear to be straight at all costs. The rearward 3 doors are all the same width, only the front door is slightly wider by design. This will be the new roof section. I've already rounded over the sides. Chrome strips will be replicated with plastic rod. I'm contemplating 4 individual sunroofs but that's not for sure. Now on to making the frame. Here, the chassis is being eye balled for length. I''ll use calipers to get it right. The frame will then be lengthened by the same amount. More when I get a chance Comments and observations welcome.

If I chose to up the detail level, I would simply tie the two assemblies together with an adjustable rod. Conventional steering box linkage would do the job.

Here are a couple of pics that were taken during the construction process. It actually sort of fell together easier than I thought it would: I will get photos as it is now but I haven't gotten back to my workbench in over a week.

Finally got her finished. I went from two tone to solid black 'cause I thought it fit it's gangster persona. Also installed two flathead v-8's inline for power. Comments and observations welcome. thanx for stopping by.

Here's my '79 from the Revell Streetburner series.

The bottle cover is trapped between the top piece and a hex nut screwed on to the shaft on the other side.

I found I was wasting a lot of paint using the regular-size bottle with my airbrush. I had an extra metal connection piece from my Paasche single action. I cleaned out a nearly empty Testors paint bottle, drilled and installed it in the bottle lid. Don't forget the small pinhole for vacuum control. I don't mix way too much paint anymore and it's a breeze to clean. It's just the ticket for frames, multiple parts with the same color etc. I go back to the regular bottle for bodies or multiple coat work. Here's a pic.

That is one beautiful custom.... I've never here of her, where's it from? Any additional pics? angles/interior/trunk etc...? Post as much of the bodywork as you can? Thanx

Finished. The license plates and antenna are on the bench waiting to be put on. I learned a couple of new techniques along the way with this build. Hope it was of some interest. The wheels by the way are from a '70 MonteCarlo Lowrider kit. Comments and critiques welcome. next up is the '58 Impala from American Graffiti.

...7 hours later the lenses are dry and mounted to the rear over BMF. Model obviously needs dusting! Also, the wheels are chrome spoke/rim and finished with burnt jet exhaust. I first sprayed the chrome wheel with future and after drying applied the burnt exhaust paint. I then used a microbrush with thinner and removed the paint on the spokes without affecting the chrome finish. You have take my word for it in this pic, maybe I'll get one not so washed out next time. Comments and observations welcome

A guy shouldn't have this much fun with food coloring! These are the tail light lenses. The red is straight red and future. The amber is a mix of about 7 yellow/2 red drops to a small amount of future. I didn't apply them super opaque as I could have as I'll be puttimg BMF behind them. Thought it may be of interest. Comments & observations welcome.