W-409

Greg: Thanks so much, you're too kind ! Usually it's me who is learning from other people's threads but it's great to hear that some of you find my threads helpful as well! It keeps me motivated to post some stuff in here too. Dave: Thanks a lot, I appreciate it! I have to agree that I'm happy how this one looks. Little modifications and some extra detailing on an old kit like this can really make a difference. Today I got this thing finished so here is the last set of WIP pictures. The first picture shows almost finished chassis and body parts along with lots of minor details were waiting to be installed. This picture shows the interior after adding a a tachometer from my parts box. Its cable is made out of Scale Dreams' wire and it goes through the firewall and contacts to the magneto. I also added a launch handle for parachute that I made out of sheet styrene, but its' cable is still missing in this picture. Here is the completed parachute. Details were made out of Scale Dreams' wire, regular metal wire and masking tape that I used to create that "rope" that connects to the frame. Here is the finished product in one small picture. I'll shoot proper pics on Sunday and post them up. But now I have this thing boxed up and ready to go for a local Model Car Show tomorrow.

Today I did lots of little detailing & assembly on the frame. I started by making a driveshaft from something I found from my parts box. After some cutting the driveshaft was a lot shorter and then it fit well on place. I painted it with Revell 91 silver and added a bit of black washing to the joints to bring out a little detail. Most of this driveshaft will be hidden under the Belly Pan anyway. Then I moved on to the "interior" where I installed pedals, steering wheel, brake handle etc. It's starting to come together now, I still have to add brake lines, chute handle, tachometer etc. Gas Tank was also painted and installed and I added fuel line from tank to fuel pump as well. And as usual, those fuel line fittings are made out of plastic rod. I installed the grill on place too. Black wash is The Detailer's liquid. Now I also glued windshield on but as it's drying I have no pics of it yet. I hope I can get this one done next Friday in time for the show.

Now there's a Model Car Show on March 5th that is pretty close to where I live so my goal is to have this one completed by then. Looks like I could make it but there's still lots of work to be done so I need to stay busy. I shot some flat clear to the body parts last weekend and today I continued by painting inside of the body flat black. My original plan was to shoot some grey primer overspray on rear wheel opening-areas, but I found out that my airbrush couldn't do it well enough so now this thing has only this Red Oxide Primer on it. After flat black on the inside was dry, I painted class markings to the doors. I used a small brush, free hand and Tamiya Acrylic white paint for this and the end result is decent. I tried to achieve a look that those were done with white shoe polish at the pits and I guess it could be worse. Last, I added a bit of black wash to door lines using Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color. Engine was installed on place and Belly Pan was painted with primer too. Tomorrow I need to make a driveshaft and then I can continue assembly/final detailing.

Great to see you back on the bench! The Dart is looking excellent so far! Those AMT slicks look a lot better than the ones with Revell kit do and your engine detailing is super sharp. Those fuel filters are my favorite part of it, where are they from? I can't wait to see more progress on this one. Start looks very promising.

Thanks so much guys! Brad & Joe: You're right, my skills have improved a lot since I joined here. Lots of good tips and tricks have been found in this forum and I've got good help from other builders too as well as the amount of inspiration that can be found in here. I'm trying to get better with every build and I want to try some new things that might make my builds better. Hopefully some day my builds will be as high quality as some of the Masters in here. Randy: It's interesting to see how this will look in my display case when completed as I have never built anything that was left in Primer before. It's nice to do something different from time to time and this is actually quite fun...This won't be the only build that I'm leaving in primer. I'm sure I'll do another one some time. Walter: That's some interesting information, thanks! It sounds really clever as who would want his car to catch fire during the Quarter Mile trip, or even worse, have flames hit his face if driving an Open Rail. Those are something I haven't seen often in scale so it's fun to see how people react to those parts in model car shows "What the heck are those?". Thanks again for the kind words. They are really appreciated!

Wow that turned out fantastic! Thanks for sharing this thread, lots of good information, reference material and inspiration in here. I think I'll need to bookmark this one for future reference. Your build turned out super nice. Detailing is very nice and clean overall, not only in the engine but you've added lots of extra stuff in interior and suspension too which really paid off! It looks excellent in every way. Congrats on a fine build!

Thanks Bruce! There are some little grease marks in the engine block, but not much of them will be added as race cars are not supposed to leak any liquids. Some black washing will be added to the engine though to bring out some detail. Today I made some good progress with the engine. First I black washed that fuel pump and a couple of other little spots, but some more black washing will be done when I glue the engine on place. Then I added a simple bracket for that fuel pump out of beer can aluminum and started working with carburetor linkage. I used Scale Dreams' Photo Etch parts and some copper wire I had laying around and created a pretty simple but pretty decent linkage. Of course one piece of that wire will be added later on that will connect to the linkage that I already have on place and go through the firewall. Then I decided to add those aluminum shields on top of carburetors. I've seen those on pretty many old Drag Racers and I believe they were used to protect dust from going into the carbs? They're something that are not seen that often in scale so I decided to make them for this build. Those are simply pieces of beer can aluminum bent into correct shape. I still need to add some minor details to the engine before I can glue it to the chassis, but it shouldn't take too long anymore.

This is looking interesting! Old Stock and Super Stock Racers are my favorites so I will keep a very close eye on this build. Nice work with the chassis and interior so far. Stance and wheel and tire combo looks just right as well. Keep it coming!

Oh yeah, when I saw pics of that 1:1 ride the first thing came to my mind that this would be another ultra cool John Teresi project! Start is looking fabulous as always, body is looking great as well as the chassis does with all of those scratchbuilt items. I can't wait to see more progress on this one...Great work so far!

That's really nice! Excellent work with those body modifications, and your black paint job looks flawless too. All that Police equipment is a nice addition as these old Cop Cars are being built quite rarely. Great work as usual!

Thanks Chris, I appreciate it! You're right that it would be ready for paint now, but as I'm building this for "Primer Build" on another forum it will be left in this Red Oxide Primer. My plan is to try to add a little Grey Primer overspray to rear quarter panels, but I'm not sure on that yet. It depends on if I can make it with my airbrush or not. Today I installed fuel pump and its drive belt on place. They fit nicely on their places, but I had a bit of trouble with adding a fuel line from that fuel pump to the junction block that is in the middle of the intake. That fuel line is a piece of some small diameter wire I had laying around and its fittings are made out of plastic rod. I will need to add a fuel line from fuel pump to gas tank as well, but of course I can't do that before engine and gas tank are both installed. I have a question though. I was thinking of adding a bracket to that fuel pump, but as I don't have much experience in this kind of fuel pumps so I'm not sure what type bracket should it be. Similar to regular alternator bracket? Something else? I also need to add some black wash to the fuel pump. Now it looks just like a piece of painted plastic.

That turned out very nice! Even though American Graffiti is probably my favorite movie, I've never been much of a fan of that More American Graffiti. Those scenes at Fremont Drag Strip with John Milner are great, but otherwise the movie is not that special. Anyway it's great to see a nicely done replica of Milner's ride and actually I've planned to build this one too. Very nice work with those decals and sharp details finish it off. Great work overall, and that Hunt Bros car is a nice addition to the shelf too!

That's a very high quality build of a cool subject! Excellent detailing on those engines and those photo etch wire wheels on front are a very nice touch. Excellent work!

Wow! That looks great, nice to see one of these being built. Very nice paint and decal work, placing decals on top of chrome trim isn't easy but those sit very nicely on their place. I agree, more pics would be great.

Thanks for the kind words Brad! I was thinking very carefully what should I do with that nose/grill area and that idea sounded the best after all. Smooth nose piece with no grille at all would have been a bit too boring so this modification makes my Fiat a bit different from most of the others. Now there will be about two weeks before the next update as the next time when I'm at home is on February 19th. Hope to have something done that weekend. This weekend was so busy that I didn't get anything done.

Wow! That is probably the best looking chute that I've seen! Very nice work on it with all of those little details and the color of that chute is just right as well! Excellent work as always. I can't wait to see more!

Very nice work! These Hudson kits are excellent quality, I've built the Factory Stock version and I have one of these Stock Car kits waiting to be built, too. Yours is a great inspiration, very nice and clean work all over. Nice paint job and decals fit very well to the body shapes even if they are placed on top of that side trim. I know that's not easy to do right but here it looks spot on. Only thing I'd do differently would be painting bolts and nuts from those wheels with silver. It would give a bit more detailed look, but don't get me wrong... It looks fantastic like this too!

That's very nice, probably the best '70 Shelby that I've seen in a long time! Really nice and clean work all over, good looking paint job and sharp BMF. Those wheels and tires look just right too. Great job.

Wow! That turned out very nice. Great job with converting it into a Delray, it's nice to see something different. I've never seen that color combo on a cop car either, but it looks really good. Beautiful model for sure!

Uh, 5½ hours? Really? You could have built four models in that 24 hour build off with that building speed! I know I'd have trouble in building one of these this nice in 24 days. Really nice job. Excellent paint job and nice, clean work overall as usual.

Now I decided it was time to do some bodywork while a couple of engine parts were drying. Kit's windows are molded as one piece, but since I want mine to have the windshield only, I had to cut it apart from rest of the windows. Then after a bit of fitting and careful sanding here and there I got it mocked up. It doesn't fit perfectly on place, but it is pretty good. Another thing I didn't like was the nose clip that has no hole for the grille at all. I wanted mine to have the original Fiat grille on it, so the only choice was to saw a correct size opening for the grille. Then I started removing mold lines, flash and other that kind of stuff from the body parts to get them in primer. Body had pretty much cleanup to do even if the body is really small, but after everything looked smooth and I had scribed the door lines a bit deeper with Trumpeter's Panel Scriber, everything was ready to go into my "Paint Booth". Note that the Belly Pan wasn't painted yet as it still needs some work. And then I shot some Red Oxide Primer on this one. It laid down pretty nicely.

When it comes to building these '50s Fords, you're the man! Another fine example of your work. Flawless paint job and very sharp BMF work. It looks just right overall, I wouldn't believe that this nice model is really a box stock build. Fantastic work, as always.

Very nice '58 Sedan Delivery! I got two of these bodies myself and they are pretty nice. Yours turned out very beautifully. Great paint job and that tube grille together with those hubcaps fit perfectly to the look. Great job.

Thanks Richard, Dave, Brad, John and Gene! Much appreciated! Brad has a good point and a question that I have no answer in. To be honest I was wondering about the same thing before I decided to go ahead and use that seat. Unfortunately it was the only seat I had that would fit in here so I couldn't replace it with another one. Gene, I've done that same thing with a couple of other builds that had seats with belts molded in them. It's a pretty easy way to add a bit of realism into those seat belts rather than doing the massive work with removing molded in seat belts and then later replacing them with aftermarket parts. Here's a minor update too. I just got spark plug wires on place. That Scale Dreams' wire is a good stuff and even though it has been a long time since I put spark plug wires on a scale model this was pretty easy.

You do great work and this is another masterpiece, probably the best Cadillac of this era that I've seen! Very nice paint job and great detailing all over. Excellent work!