W-409

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I appreciate it. They are from Detail Master's Battery Hardware Kit:

Very nice, clean work creating a beautiful and a period correct race car! I know some people are not that thrilled about this kit, but your build proves that it can be built into a very nice model. Excellent work!

Thanks Bill, much appreciated! The final assembly went smoothly and this thing is now finally Finished! Check it out here: Thanks to everyone who has been following along or posting comments, I really appreciate that. Now, on to the next one.

This is a project I started originally in 2009 and finally finished it yesterday. For 1961 Nationals at Indy, NHRA announced a new class that was called Optional Super Stock. Optional Super Stock allowed normal Stock class entries to use recently introduced parts and equipment for 1962 model year, or one could run with body / engine combination that wasn't available straight from the factory showroom, if the vehicle was otherwise Stock legal. Also, a hood scoop was allowed. Don Nicholson modified his '61 Impala to run in the new OS/S class, so the 1961 409 engine with a single four barrel carburetor was rebuilt with a 1962 setup with dual Carter carburetors, cylinder heads and a camshaft. Nicholson won the class final against The Ramchargers, but was unfortunately disqualified because of prohibited valve springs... The Optional Super Stock class was short-lived, it was replaced in 1962 by the newly introduced Factory Experimental category, which became really popular. I wanted to build this model to match the car Nicholson drove at Indy in 1961. It is based on a Lindberg kit, which represents the version of the car that Nicholson drove at the early 1961 season, so I had to do some modifications. The kit is not the most detailed one, but it's actually not bad either, here I tried to fix some of its' biggest problems. Engine was replaced by one that I took out of an AMT '62 Bel Air built-up. It is a better detailed version of the 409 than what you get in the Lindberg box, but it also has the correct 1962 model year parts. Most notable modifications are headers that I scratchbuilt from plastic rod.They are built using a picture of the 1:1 car engine bay as a reference. Carburetors are 3D printed Carters by an unknown supplier, ignition coil and valve cover breathers were scratchbuilt and the incorrect placement of the generator was fixed by modifying the belt drive. Other than that it's mostly out of box, with just some added details like plug wires, throttle linkage, fuel lines, generator wiring etc. On chassis I replaced wheels and tires. Front tires are from, I believe, Revell '58 Impala, rear tires are from AMT Parts Pack and wheels are resin cast by a friend of mine. I had to modify the way the wheels mount on both, front and back, to make them sit properly, and also I lifted the front suspension a little to achieve the stance of the 1:1 car. Other than that the chassis is mostly box stock with added fuel lines, brake lines and scratchbuilt clutch and parking brake linkages. Interior is mostly box stock. I used flocking for carpet, everything is painted with Revell Enamels, for dashboard I used an airbrush, but everything else is brush painted. Added details are seat belts and tachometer cable. The body of this kit was pretty good. I had to make lower window trim for rear window from plastic rod, but otherwise no major modifications had to be done. Paint is Tamiya LP-39 Racing White shot with an airbrush, followed by Mipa clear coat and polishing. Chrome trim is BMF, side windows with hand painted class markings are made out of sheet acetate, some body emblems are taken from a MCG photo-etch set. Hood scoop is scratchbuilt from sheet styrene. It was a fun build and overall the kit went together better than I expected. Like always, I made mistakes on the way, but I can be pretty happy how it looks on the shelf anyway. All kinds of comments are welcome, so I can build the next one better. If you want to see the WIP-thread, it's here: https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/88260-don-nicholson-61-impala-oss/

I have one of these kits that's missing some parts. Now that I've bought some of the missing parts in eBay, decals from Slixx and also one glue bomb from a friend that will give me the rest of the parts needed to build Ohio George's Willys, it's natural that they will reissue the kit. So, glad to see it's reissued, but personally don't need it for now...

Really nice work with engine detailing! I think toning down the chrome on valve covers was a good move. At least I've lately been using very few actual chrome parts on my engine bays. Instead, flat clear on top of kit chrome plating or different "chrome paints" which don't really give the perfect chrome effect, give usually a more realistic looking result, just like we see here.

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.