W-409

Finding a set of Frontrunners is no easy... Don't know if you found a pair already or not, but probably the best source would be Lindberg's '64 Dodge Super Stock kits. They have a decent set of Frontrunners and by sanding the sidewall details off you could install the tire letters as decals to get the manufacturer you want. Other than that there are not many other choices as far as the kits that are easily available today go. Or at least I haven't found out much other sources...

Thanks James! I agree that finding a set of decals is often really tricky, even though I have a big bunch of decal sheets in my parts box. The door itself turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but I'm happy with it. I added some masking tape to rear quarter panel area behind the door line and to front fender to protect the paint job from those areas while I polish the door. When I pulled the masking tapes off, it pulled off also clear coat and part of the decals. The good thing is, clear came off only on top of the decals so the blue paint job didn't get messed up. Bad thing is that I don't have a replacement for that A/GS decal or for that Isky Cams decal on front fender. I have several of those Good Year decals so that's not a problem, but I'll replace those Isky Cams decals with something else after I've polished those areas. And for that A/GS decal, the only way to fix it was to try painting it back there. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do.

Great looking builds, all of them! But as a Stock Eliminator racer, the '64 Dodge is my favorite of them all. Very nice work and good looking 1:1 toys too, that '79 Chrysler is not a lightweight car either so nice to see someone running with one of them.

This looks great! Definitely one of the better builds I've seen from this kit. You got the overall look right and I like that paint job and flawless BMF work too. Congrats on turning a bit simple kit into a real stunner.

Thanks Chris! Yep it feels great to be back on the bench, even though I still spend a lot time in the garage with that 1:1 Chevy II. But whenever I have time I try to work on these little things. This '55 and the Thunderbolt are two that should be finished pretty soon, hopefully everything will go nice and smooth with them.... I've done a bit more polishing on the body but there's still a long way to go. But most of the white areas are polished now, hopefully I can continue polishing the blue areas tomorrow. So stay tuned.

Thanks Chris, I appreciate it coming from a Master like you! Here's a little update, I've done a bit of progress with the tires and wheels. Those separate molded in plastic white walls looked too much like plastic when they weren't painted, so I shot a few coats of Tamiya white spray paint on them. Now they look a lot better and they're not too bright white. For the wheels I also painted bolts and nuts with grey and wheel centers semi gloss black. I added a bit of black wash to the wheels to give some depth and I think they look decent.

Incredible detailing everywhere, it looks like you could fire it up and go racing any moment! Fantastic job on that paint too, a paint scheme like that must be extremely hard to get right, but it looks like you made it. Very good looking T-Bird, congrats!

Oh now I see why you want that El Camino hood! That Ventura is a cool car too. Here in Finland there were a couple of those running in K/SA in the late '80s/early '90s and those dominated the Qualifying every time! It's just a shame that I'm the only guy in J/SA so there's no way to be able to have a Heads Up run in eliminations... But, I like being behind the wheel of this one no matter who is on the other lane.

I think I've never seen one of these built before, so I'm really happy to see one that's done this well. Smooth paint job and flawless BMF work as always on your builds, plus that I like that Buick body a lot.

That's a very good looking Dodge! Great work fitting that Lindberg chassis and engine bay on this body, I have the same thing in the works as I'm building one of these as The Ramchargers car. Anyway you did a very nice job with this. Flawless black paint job and very realistic detailing under the hood too.

If you don't want to buy another kit for just the flat hood, a good idea might be to convert that RS hood into standard model hood yourself. It's not that hard to do, especially since you are already planning to do other scratchbuilding too, especially building headers can be much trickier than modifying that hood. I guess the best bet for that carburetor would be a Quadrajet from Fireball Modelworks. It's definitely the most realistic Rochester carb out there, and even though the Quadrajet and 4GC are a bit different, I'm sure most people can't tell the difference in this small scale. This will be an interesting project! I run a '74 Malibu Classic in J/SA.

Thanks Bruce, I appreciate it! Actually this has taken a lot longer than I originally wanted to, but of course the main thing is that I'm happy how it looks. Hopefully it will get finished this year ! Here's a small update. I painted the hood from both sides with that body color. Hopefully it will look good when dry so that I can clear coat it next week. In this picture you can also see the steering wheel painted white. I sprayed it with Tamiya white and next step will be painting those spokes with silver and then shoot a clear coat on top of everything. I also started polishing the body. As usual, I started from the roof and actually I'm really happy how it turned out. If the rest of the body turns out as good, I'm very happy. I'll continue from here tomorrow I guess.

Here's a minor update on the Impala. Those lower body panels (Whatever they're in English.... Valance Panels?) were glued on place to both front and rear. It wasn't a major surprise that the fitment wasn't very good so something had to be done to make them fit better before painting. Those panels were a bit too wide to fit perfectly to the body, so first I roughly removed most of the excess material with a hobby knife. Then I sanded them a bit smoother and so that they match the body shapes a bit better. This operation was done on both ends. Here is the rear body panel before doing anything... Smoothing it out and correcting the fitment... Then I applied some putty to smooth out the glue joints and that rear window lower trim I did earlier. In this picture you can also see my new decal sheet that just arrived. I bought it for the cauge decals as the ones from my kit's original decal sheet got destroyed when I removed paint from that dash a few days ago.

That's another beauty from your collection! It's great to see these old survivors in this good shape, it looks like it was built yesterday! I just wish my builds will survive as well as this one. Nice work.

I got 77%. It's surprisingly well as I'm not that familiar with those '30s cars. Fords and Chevys were easy to get right but with other makes I had some problems... I'm doing much better on GM Cars From '60s and Engine ID Quizes.

Great job on that T-Bolt! I like the paint and decals and those little details really finish it off. Nice work on a great kit, I can't wait to finish mine one of these days!

Great to see an update on this project! Fantastic work with the engine, your weathering looks just right, but the detailing is simply outstanding. If there is a model that looks very much like it was 1:1 scale, it has to be this one.

This is definitely a must have kit, I can see a '49 Ford Gasser in my future! Those slicks with a couple of grooves in them are worth buying even without the kit, but that box art model looks so good that I want to build something similar myself.

This is an interesting thread! I live here in Finland and I definitely speak American even though sometimes I'm mixing things up with a British word. But, since I've mostly learnt this vocabulary in the internet or books and during my whole life we've had US cars in our family, most of the words I've learnt are US. Actually many of those British words are something I've never heard before.

Thanks Mitch! This has been a fun project, and I'm really happy to see it's coming finally closer to finish. Today I clear coated the body and luckily it looks good so far. Hopefully it's still good when it's dry, even though I'm not sure if there is enough clear for polishing or do I have to spray another coat on top of it. We'll see about that when it's dry... I also painted the class markings on side windows. I had no decals for them so I painted them by free hand and a tiny brush. I'm pretty happy with them even though they're not perfect. But to be honest, they do look better in person than in this closeup picture.

One thing I never liked on this Lindberg body is that the lower rear window chrome trim is missing. Well, rest of the chrome trims are not perfect either, but this would have been impossible to foil smoothly as there was no chrome trim molded at all. So the only choice was to add that chrome trim in there. Luckily I had some styrene rod in proper size that I just glued in there. Now I'll let the glue dry a bit and then smooth it out with some putty. Now I should have no problems foiling this one.

Thanks Rodney! I appreciate the kind words (Even though I'm a bit late with the thanks)! Well finally I was able to shoot another clear coat on the '55! At least so far it looks really good, but now all I can is hope it looks good when it's completely dry. Now I'll let it dry properly before polishing, but while the body dries, I can work on the interior, chassis and engine.

Don't want to highjack this thread, but has anyone had any experience with those Dragster front wire wheels from the same shop? https://www.shapeways.com/product/HKU3JEFEM/drag-front-wire-19-inch-1-25?optionId=61643929 If they're good, they would definitely be worth that price. But painting them would definitely be a real pain as the tires and wheels are molded together. Anyway I'd order a few sets of them immediately if they're good quality and the spokes are not too thick.

This looks like an interesting project! Here's an easy way to post pics: First create an account on some image hosting site, like Photobucket. I'm using it and it seems to work fine, and it's free. Upload your pics in there and once they are uploaded, click on the pictures for a larger view. Then on the right button of your mouse choose "Copy Image Location", and just simply paste that link on that "Image" thing when you're posting an update on this forum. Hope this helps.

Bummer, looks like I forgot I had posted these pics in here. Vinay: Yep, we were in NHRA Finals in 2015. It was a great trip, for me it was the first time when I got to see an NHRA event, something that I had always been dreaming of. I was there with our Drag Race Team (which means my dad) and he was really excited too, the last time he had been in NHRA event was in 1990. Thanks guys, here are some more pics... After the day at Fontana Drags, we headed to Burbank to a Cruise Night at Bob's Big Boy. Lots of cool cars were there and I shot a bunch of pics, but as it was a bit dark all of them are not exactly sharp. Here's a link to the picture gallery: Bob's Big Boy Broiler Cruise Night.