W-409

Thanks Bruce! Since the latest pictures, I've got a lot of things done with this thing. First I painted inside of the body with flat black, except the headliner that was painted red. Then I installed windows. Fitment of kit's windows was pretty good, but the kit didn't come with side windows. Usually, especially with a Hardtop, I like to keep the side windows down, but in this case as the class markings are on side windows, and the Optional Super Stock class is kind of rare to see anywhere because it was pretty short-lived class, I definitely wanted to make side windows for this as well. They were cut from sheet plastic, window frame is BMF and I hand-painted class markings with a small brush, to represent white shoe polish that they used on the 1:1 car. Also, inner fenders were painted gloss black. Here the body is ready to be installed on chassis. Firewall had some molded in wires that I painted black. After installing the firewall, I was able to modify steering shaft to fit with my new, corrected generator placement. I made one U-joint to the steering shaft, which is covered inside a black rubber boot, after this the steering shaft fits properly on place and the U-joint was easy to fabricate, as it is "hidden" under the rubber boot. Brake master cylinder was also installed and the last piece of brake line was fabricated. And here the body and chassis are glued together. A couple of things made this step a little tricky. First, the kit wants you to glue firewall to the body before installing body and chassis together. I couldn't do that, as I had to be able to connect cluth linkage together before installing the body. Also, modifying the steering shaft was a lot easier now that the body wasn't installed yet. So while installing the body, I had to temporarily remove the heater box from firewall and re-glue it back on place after body had been installed. Another issue was radiator wall / radiator / fan shroud. The kit wants you to glue that to the chassis before installing the body. The problem was, I glued front valance panel to the body before paint, so to be able to install the chassis, I had to trim the front ends of both frame rails away. Now there was no place where to mount the radiator wall on the frame. After some fiddling, I was able to install radiator wall on place after the body and chassis were together. It looks like it's close to being done, but there's still tons of little details to do.

Thank You! Bruce, you're right, and that's what makes the side trim pretty tricky to foil nicely. Especially with a body that has an extra coat of clear, like this one. Well, today I got the chrome trim done with BMF. Window trim was easy, but the side trim wasn't. While the end result is not perfect, I'm pretty happy how it turned out. Tomorrow I'll need to paint the body from underside and start thinking about installing windows for it.

Thanks Guys! I also clear coat all of my builds, doesn't matter if it's a solid paint or metallic, or if it does or doesn't have decals, I clear coat anyway. Because all paints and clear coats polish a little different, then I can polish all of my builds the same way, knowing that it'll work the way I want. The body is now finally polished (minus the hood, which will still need to be polished, but there's still plenty of time for that). It was a lot of work, mainly because my polishing cloths are starting to be pretty worn out. I got this one done, but for the next one I'll need to shop new ones. The clear polished out ok. Not flawless, but I think I can live with it. Next task will be BMF for chrome trim.

This will be a great project! We don't see enough Land Speed Racers built here and we all know this is going to be a beautiful model when finished. While I'm not really a fan of rusty / patina paint jobs, I think you nailed it on this one! Looks really good.

Yes. According to my experience with Tamiya clear, it's a good idea to spray several very, very light coats of clear to areas that have decals. Once the decals have been covered by clear completely, then you can spray a couple of a bit heavier coats to get a proper finish. But if you start very carefully with super thin coats of clear (of course with any clear, you have to start with light coats, but with Tamiya I think it's even more important to start slow), that way I've never had an issue. This is a great looking project and you're doing a good job with it. Keep it up!

I do, but the early pictures are unfortunately half-covered by a Photobucket tag. On later pictures I was using Fotki so they work fine. Here it is, and here's also a link to my Fotki album to actually see the pics. https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/90198-55-chevy-bel-air-ags-finished/ https://public.fotki.com/NostalgicDrag/55-chevy-bel-air-ags/

Water under the decal came to my mind as well, even though I let the decals dry for a couple of days before clear coating. I have always cleared over decals, it gives them kind of a "painted on-look" compared to them looking just like, well, decals. With the spray paints, I've never had an issue with it. The issue with me being here in Finland, is that buying supplies is a lot trickier and more expensive. That's one reason I wanted to use the Mipa clear coat that I have leftovers from my latest 1:1 scale painting project.

That's a bummer, sad to see a quality resin company closing its' doors. Not only they have excellent products, but the subjects are also very interesting. Just placed an order via Slixx. In today's world of 3D printing I'm sure the popularity of printed items can be seen in product sales of resin cast parts. Personally, while 3D printing sure has its advantages, I've have yet to see a 3D printed product that would be as good as a quality resin cast item. I mean, many 3D printed parts are very highly detailed, but the printing texture becomes an issue with fiddly parts as it's so tricky to remove. With that said, I prefer resin cast parts, but of course, 3D printing will probably get better over time.

This turned out really nice, but coming from your bench that's no surprise at all! I built the same kit as a mid '60s Gasser a few years ago and did plenty of upgrades to make it more realistic, but my build was not nearly as good as yours. With that said, my hat is off for the amount of work you put into this one, making a cool but not really that great kit into a masterpiece. This simply looks "right" in all areas, but if I had to pick a favorite, the engine bay is a work of art. Very nice job on this model, interesting to see what's next.

Thanks Bruce, Tom and Tim! I really appreciate it. The clear turned out really good everywhere else, but for some reason, on top of the decals the clear coat had a few small "fish-eyes" here and there. I'm still a bit on a learning curve with this clear coat that I'm using, or in fact, I've used it several times on 1:1 cars but I've had to figure out how to make it work with scale models as well. I've done a good amount of testing with it, and before painting / clear coating this body, I painted a spare hood with this exact paint and laid two decals on it. The decals were from this same kit. That test piece had no issues. So, to fix it, I have carefully sanded both sides of the body with a polishing cloth and a few minutes ago I sprayed a couple of light coats of clear to the sides of this body. So far, it looks like it's going to work. So if no catastrophic failures happen while the clear coat is drying, I should be able to start polishing this in a few days. In case someone is wondering, in the past I've mostly used spray paints found in a local hardware store. It's easy to get a good paint job with them on a body, but smaller parts are tricky. And, the color selection is very limited. Meaning, all of the cars painted red, for example, are the exact same shade of red so it looks a bit boring on the display shelf. That's why I'm trying to move on to using airbrush, because it gives me a lot more options as far as different paints go.

Wow, had not seen these before but I'm very glad that I did now! I love old builds that have survived the years this well. Both of them are very nice, but if I'd have to pick a favorite, it would have to be the Gasser. It's very rare to see a Gasser of that era being built in scale. Nice work on both of them.

That looks excellent! Hopefully we see it finished one day. Made a little progress with this one. Here's the frame after cutting the Funny Car rear section off. I mocked up the frame inside the body, to determine where I want my rear axle to be. Then I fabricated a new rear section from plastic rod. I don't have the axle yet so I'm not able to build any mounts for that just yet, but now I'm able to test fit other parts so I can get a little further. Keep in mind that the rear section of the frame is not done yet, the frame will need more modifications to make everything fit properly... But now I was able to test fit the engine. With engine mocked up to the frame, and frame mocked up to the body, I was able to notice that the engine does fit between the hood and belly pan once I change the stock oil pan into a dry sump system. Then I added one crossmember in front of the engine and built simple engine mounts out of L-shaped plastic profile. Nothing fancy, but they're not seen very well from finished model anyway, so once I add bolt ends to them I guess they'll be ok.

That turned out beautiful! I like the subtle weathering on it, very nicely done.

Thanks Sean, Bruce and Bob! I appreciate the kind words. Body, hood and firewall are now clear coated. I used a two-part clear coat by Mipa, which is the same stuff I've used for 1:1 scale cars as well. Only exception is that for scale model use with an airbrush, I thin it approximately 75%. Hood and firewall are good to go, but for the body I think I will have to do a light wetsanding and shoot one more coat of clear before I can move on to polishing.

Thanks Robert! I appreciate the kind words. I've been working on the body, yesterday I got it masked so that I was able to paint the area between the side trim red. For that I used Revell's #34 Enamel, thinned and shot with an airbrush. Then today while the paint was dried, I removed my masking and installed decals on the body. They were surprisingly easy to work with. Tomorrow I'll need to do a little fine tuning with Micro Sol and next week I'll be shooting clear coat.

Thanks Paul and Pierre, much appreciated! Regarding the tires, I haven't decided on them yet, but honestly I'd like to use the kit tires just because they are part of this kit. They are about the correct size and they look good enough, because they're not seen from the finished model basically at all. But, I haven't decided yet so things might change. The front end is taking shape and looking already much better than on previous pictures. So these pics are taken after two rounds of putty and sanding. Still in rough stages, but the basic shapes are starting to be in the neighborhood of correct. I was also digging through my parts boxes and found a starting point for the frame. That frame is from some unknown Funny Car kit and while it needs lots of modifications to fit this thing, I think it's still easier starting point, compared to building the frame completely from scratch. Also I found one front axle which might work on this. I already cut the rear section of the Funny Car frame off as that's unnecessary. Now I can't get much further with the frame though as I don't have a rear axle yet. Once I locate one Quick Change axle from somewhere, I'll be able to build a new rear section for the frame. In the meanwhile, I think I'll work on rear end of the body and fabricate the belly pan.

This is an interesting project, especially because this Alfa Romeo body style is just simply beautiful. Looks like you're off to a good start.

Thanks! I've always liked this body style, in addition to the race car I had a '74 Malibu Station Wagon as a daily driver a few years ago. Had to sell it unfortunately as it was a bit too expensive to drive with our gas prices (plus that I drive a lot). Nowadays my daily driver is a bone stock '64 Rambler American and it's a lot cheaper to drive.

Well, you're correct on that! Too bad I don't have a proper photo album or anything about the Stocker in the internet. When I get the current rebuild done, then I'll have more pictures but for now here are some pictures of the car. We bought it in 2012, but it was originally built as a Stock Eliminator car in 1979... https://public.fotki.com/NostalgicDrag/race-team/lindstrm-stock-elim/#media Best ET so far is 11.96. It used to have a 350 SBC and TH-350, but at the moment the transmission has been replaced by four speed Jerico.

Great to see you're able to get your old project car back! With the amount of memories tied to that car, it's important that it gets back home. And, it's great to see a 3rd gen GM A-Body getting some love, they are, after all, quite underrated compared to either '68-'72 or the newer G-Body bodystyles. Would be nice to see more pictures on the progress as you go. Speaking of 3rd gen A-Bodies, I really should get this thing back together and back to the racetrack this summer.

This turned out very nice like your builds always do. Excellent work with creating the master for a beautiful car that probably would never have been kitted otherwise, and also excellent job building it. I agree with what a couple of guys have said here, in my opinion a good resin kit is way better than anything that I've seen coming out of a 3D printer. But, I also realize that the quality of 3D printing will probably improve over time. But for now, I much rather spend a little more money on a good resin kit than buy a 3D printed product.

Haha, luckily not, the 65 year-old rubber bands have seen better days! Well, been doing some bodywork on this thing. It's still on rough stages, but I think it's heading into a better direction. First I added a little material to the bottom of the body, to make the body a little taller, but not as much as on my first mock up. Then I started working on the nose. After looking at photos several different early Streamliners, I decided I need to stretch the nose a little to make it a lot more aerodynamic for high speeds. This was done with sheet styrene and a piece of round plastic rod. It looks a bit out of place in the pictures, but once it's molded to the rest of the body, I think it should be pretty good. At least now it will gain a few mph of top speed and the air doesn't go under the vehicle that much.

Funny Cars usually need a lot of extra work and detailing to look good, because everything is visible once you lift up the body. You did an excellent job with this one.

Thanks Bruce! We don't see too many of these '61 Impalas built, so happy to see I'm not the only one building one of these. Today in addition to watching the NHRA Gatornationals via NHRA TV, I got this thing painted. The paint is Tamiya Lacquer, LP-39 Racing White that I thinned down and shot through an airbrush. I think it's a good color for this, while it's not too bright white. Now the body, hood and firewall can dry for a couple of days before I'll install decals.

This kind of Street & Strip cars are very popular in 1:1 world, but it's kind of surprising how few of them we actually see built in scale. With that said, I'm glad to see one here, especially when it's built as nicely as this one. Excellent work!