W-409

Oh, that explains it, thanks! Luckily I'm not so big Ford fan that I can live with the wrong upholstery pattern so I don't have to fix it. That will be a fun one to build...

Thanks Brian! I used a set of different metal wires for the linkage, I think it's mostly copper that I painted but I can't remember for sure... Then there are some pieces I cut from beer can aluminum. Now I'd replace them with Photo Etch pieces, but back then I didn't have any... Hope this helps. A few days ago I shot another coat of primer to the body and it looked pretty good. So today I sanded the body very lightly and painted the first coats of color on it. That metallic blue is really thin so I had to shoot several really light coats of paint on it. Now I'll let it dry a couple of days and then I'll finish the painting by a few more color coats...

Santa brought me a Revell '68 Mustang. It has the parts to build it into a Super Stock car so I think that's what I'll be doing. For some reason my kit has two complete interiors, the second one is in a separate plastic bag and there's a paper that says "'68 Mustang Replacement Parts"... Did Revell make a failure with it or something...? It doesn't matter me, but never seen that happening before.

Interesting project, I just bought the same kit for myself so I'll be following this one with a great interest. But isn't the kit a '78-'81 Malibu rather than a '82. If I'm not mistaken, for '82 Malibu and El Camino got that dual headlight setup, which was definitely worse looking than the former one with single headlights.

Wow! I didn't see this one until now (Looks like I visit rarely in these Truck sections!). Excellent work with the Camino, it's always nice to see one of these 3rd Gen A-Bodies built. You did a nice and clean job as always.

I'd definitely be in this one building either a '65 Wagon or '63 HT but then that facebook thing ruined the plan... I'm not a member in there, I've never been there and if possible, will never be either. But anyway, have fun and build some good looking Novas, there can never be too many of them!

I didn't participate this year as there was simply not enough time to build anything this massive (Really, I wouldn't want to do a box stock build for this kind of CBP ) but next year I'll try to be at the starting line again. I think it's good if the CBP has somekind of limitations on what you can build, but I'm OK with unlimited too. That gives a possibility to build anything so we get to see some wild stuff at the starting line! I think there have been good ideas in this thread. Junkyard Cannonball sounds interesting, but I know I'm terrible at weathering my models. Maybe that would be a good project to study how it's done... Pro Touring is a no-no for me though, but otherwise I guess I'm in whatever theme is chosen.

Wow, super nice work as always from your bench! Sometimes I have trouble with removing mold lines from this small parts and then there are some guys who scratchbuild them from aluminum..... Impressive work as always!

Here is a minor update on my Thunderbolt... Dashboard, steering column and steering wheel had to be painted with the same color as the rest of the interior, but they needed a glossy clear coat on them as they're not upholstered with any kind of material. Interior is painted with Humbrol Enamels, so that was my choice for dash and steering wheel and column too, but right away I knew that Humbrol Enamel clear won't work as it turns yellow by the time. Some people had been saying that you can't spray an automotive gloss clear on top of Revell/Humbrol Enamels, but I gave it a try on a scrap piece of styrene and it worked perfectly. So, now the steering wheel was sprayed with that stuff as well and I like the end result. I'm still debating if I should try painting that Ford emblem on the steering wheel... It's so tiny that it might end up as a mess... Dashboard is getting there too. Pretty much everything else is done but a clear coat. Cauge decals are taken from kit's decal sheet, but it didn't have any decals for that additional meter mounted under the dash. So I painted it gloss black and wiped black paint off from the raised letters and needle. I also added valves to front wheels and did some minor black washing on them.

Thanks Mattias! When I started this build, the plan was to build a fairly simple Nostalgia Drag Car with only some minor modifications and plan was not to try to build it to match any class rules. But looks like my plan failed completely... Though that's not a bad thing, I've had a lot of fun modifying this old kit trying to make it more presentable. The color combo came to my mind when I remembered a '57 Chevy I saw at a Drag Strip here in Finland a few years ago. That looked really good, so I thought I'd try it on mine too.

This year started out very good as I finished this Fiat Topolino Altered in early March. It was built for a Primer CBP on TRaK, where the basic idea was to leave the body, or parts of it in primer finish. So I decided to build something that's a bit lower budget racer with most of the money spent on the engine. I think I captured the Old School look and feel on it pretty good... ...And then that was it, nothing else was finished this year. What might have affected this, is that I spent the first half of 2016 in the Army and now during the second half I've been working with my 1:1 project, '62 Chevy II. All that together with all of the American Car Events in here during the summer, Drag Racing and everything, no wonder that I couldn't finish anything else. Now I have a couple of projects quite close to finish ('64 Thunderbolt S/S and '55 Bel Air A/GS) but there's no way I could have them done before the year ends. Hopefully I can finish a bit more in 2017 then!

Two impressive builds for sure! Especially that Impala is a real beauty, all of the modifications you did they improved the overall look. Even though I usually don't build factory stock, it's very nice to see one that's built so well. Great work, can't wait to see what you'll be building next year!

You always build something interesting. All of those four builds are super nicely done, and I also like the fact that they are done in Traditional style. I like it that each time I open one of your threads I don't have to be afraid if the model is full of billet parts everywhere or it has big wheels and low profile tires or other too modern stuff that I don't like. Fantastic job on all of them, but that '55 Gasser has to be my favorite. Nice work!

Your builds are always a pleasure to see. The fit and finish is just right on every one of them, and these are no exceptions either. Fantastic work on all of them, but that Monaco has to be my favorite. That body style is looking so good that I'd be happy to have one in 1:1 scale too, even though I'm not a Mopar guy. Great work!

WOW! I'm very glad I saw this thread even though European or Japanese cars are not my favorite subjects. This has to be one of the cleanest builds I've seen in a long time. Especially that paint job makes me speechless. I've tried gloss black a few times and it always turns out to be a disappointment even after polishing it. But your paint job is flawless, I guess I just have to keep trying.... What else could I say other than you did simply perfect work in every way. Wow.

Very nice builds, all of them! Especially those two Pickups in the end caught my eyes, maybe because I had not seen them before. All of them are done very nicely and they'd defintely be good material for the Real or Model Quiz. Fantastic work, can't wait to see what you build next year.

I have a pair of old narrow Cheater Slicks too. I'm not certain who made them but those Speed City Resins' slicks sound familiar, so I guess that's what they are. Anyway, they're very nice and also they're not as wide as the 9" slicks most kits come with, so I highly recommend them too.

That looks very good! You don't see many of those in that nice condition. Mine is a bit older one, '92 with that 4 cylinder "Iron Duke" engine and 5 speed manual trans. It's not a rocket, but fun to drive.

Very nice work on all of those models! You sure know how to build these Factory Stock cars right and as always, I'm impressed by the quality of your paint jobs and sharpness of your BMF work. As a Chevy guy, those Chevrolets are my favorites, especially that '57 Cameo is a real beauty. Oh, that's great! I have a Chevy S10 too, an excellent daily driver!

I agree, sometimes it might be a problem, but not always. I built an AMT '67 Impala a few years ago and used tires from some old Monogram 1/24 kit. They fit with no problems and look much better and more accurate size than the too small AMT tires the kit came with... Same thing was done on AMT '66 Oldsmobile, and probably with some other kits too (Can't really remember them all!).

Well a lot has been said already, but here are some of mine. Not in a specific order... -Errors with chrome parts. Mold lines, sink marks, and just chrome parts that don't fit. When you start correcting these issues, usually the chrome plating damages and it's very tricky to fix. I haven't tried Alclad yet so I've always used BMF for this. Not fun. -One piece interior tub with molded in door panels. That way door panels are usually not as detailed as if they were molded separately. And detailing them yourself is quite tricky like this. Even worse, if all seats are molded in too! -One piece chassis with everything molded in. This sucks a lot, finding a more detailed chassis from somewhere usually requires pretty much work and it's not easy to fit under a different body. -Windows that are mounted from outside with window trim molded in them!!!! Aaargh, this is really frustrating. Seen in new Moebius kits that are otherwise top notch, but this feature really sucks big time. It makes installing BMF very tricky, and one slip with a knife and your windows are ruined. There was nothing wrong with the old method where window trim was molded to the body. -Speaking about windows, bad fitting windows is no fun either. You can't do much on them, as everyone knows what happens when you show some sandpaper on that window.... Of course it can be polished afterwards, but it's not as good as bright it was originally anymore. -And last, the thing that annoys me every time... Big wheels with low profile tires! Those look horrible and they don't fit in any classic car in my opinion. I know many people like these, but I've always hated them so I'd prefer having an optional set of somekind of old school custom wheels instead of those big ones. For example on a Muscle Car kit, a set of Slot Mags or Cragars would look really good...

I think anything that was originally 1/20 would be better as 1/25. I have nothing against 1/20 scale kits even though they might look a bit goofy on display cabinet with a big bunch of those regular 1/25 models, but the problem is that there are so few 1/20 kits out there that most people don't have much spare parts for them. That said, you'd have to build them box stock, or then scratchbuild all of the details. And then the legendary 1/24 VS 1/25. I have never seen a difference between those two scales. In fact I think that the difference is so small that it doesn't matter, bigger problem is that sometimes kit parts can be different size compared to each other, even if both kits were the same scale. Some kits, for example AMT "Twister Vega" have way too small engines compared to the size of the engine bay. I mix up 1/24 and 1/25 parts all the time with no problems, so I don't care which scale it says on the box top. That's good, because there are some very good kits released in both scales.

I've been installing some chassis components on place recently. Front axle was not an easy one, as one of the steering rods had to go between headers and oil pan. For some reason I couldn't slide it on place as one piece so I had to cut it into two pieces. Then when everything was on place, I glued that steering rod back together. Rear axle fit just perfectly, and I also started making a fuel line from gas tank to fuel pump, but it's not quite done yet. Here's a mock up with the body. Engine fits nicely on its place. Wheels and tires are not glued on place yet, it's just a mock up...

Today while my Ford Thunderbolt was drying I had to do something on this '55 as well. One of the reasons why it has been sitting long time collecting dust is that I couldn't install the engine on correct position, it was too far in front. So the problem was solved easily with a couple of cuts to the chassis and now those headers are not hitting anywhere anymore. Now the scoop is right in the middle in that hole on the hood too. Oh well, looks like the chassis is a bit dusty... Gotta clean it up! Here the chassis has been cut from the bottom, but upper side is still as it was before. And as the scoop and hood hole lined up properly, I did one more mock up to see that everything fits on place. Now next steps will be clear coating the body again and painting the hood...

Wow! That's a whole lot of rivets ! I bet sanding those to correct length and then gluing them on might not be the funniest possible things in model building, but after it's done the result looks fantastic. Those body tins looked very good even before the rivets, but now with the rivets mocked up the tins are even better. Excellent work as always. Every time I get to visit here on this forum, it's always neat to see what progress you've done. This is one of the most interesting builds anywhere that I've seen. Can't wait to see the next update.