W-409

Wow, incredible work in here, but that's what we expect from you. Very nice work on this one. The chassis looks super nice and your engine detail is fantastic as always. My favorite detail is that blower belt and that Cragar logo in it. It looks just right. I can't wait to see the finished pictures.

Wow! I haven't been able to check your progress for a while but looks like you've been very busy lately! Great work with the body, it definitely looks better than it did before and those steering wheel grips are amazing. Very nice little detail that is usually left out. Great job as always...Can't wait to see what you're going to work on next.

Thanks Chris! It's great fun to work on these older kits where you have to add a bit more detail than on some newer kits that might include some of the details already in the kit. Here's a very small update for this weekend just to show you that I've made some minor progress. Seat was glued on place and I "stretched" the kit's seat belts so that they connect to the roll bar. For this I used paper that I painted with the same brown paint that I used on the seat belts.

Nice work as always from you! This '66 Chevelle is a very good looking body, so it's great to see that the Lindberg kit can be built into this nice model. Excellent job on paint and BMF on it. That overspray on chassis is just about perfect and detailing is top notch as always too. Nice work, I gotta get me one of these kits now.

Excellent looking Satellite! That color is very nice, perfect shade of red and a very smooth and shiny paint job too. With those wheels and tires it looks just about right to be driven around to Cruising Nights etc. Very nice work.

Wow, very nice work as always! Combining metal and plastic on the body is definitely not easy, but this looks just right. Excellent color choice and those wheels and tires fit perfectly to this one. Great work again!

This is interesting! I'm happy to see a different '58 Chevy than the usual Impala (Which is very nice car too) and especially seeing one built as a Cop Car is interesting, because that's something quite unusual. Start looks very good already, keep the pictures coming!

Thanks Guys! I'm currently serving our country in Finnish Army so I only have time on the weekends (Most weekends are "vacation") so the progress is not very fast. My plan is to get this one done this year though... Gene, drilling holes to the headers was not an easy task for sure. I smoothed out those mold lines first and after that those flanges were already pretty fragile so it didn't make it any easier. I started by drilling a small hole to the center and then continued with a bigger drill bit that was just the right size. It wasn't easy but I'm glad I didn't screw it up!

This update is pretty small one and the progress I've made is kind of invisible. Anyway I was going to install those rear inner fenders on place, but I noticed that there was no way I could fit them between frame rails and rear tires. Thinning plastic from those inner fenders wouldn't have been enough so I had to take rear tires off and with some sheet styrene I widened those wheels about two scale inches on both sides. Now everything fits properly on place and I can continue working on it again...

That would be a great kit and I'd buy lots of them for sure. And I believe that it would be a decent seller in the hobby shops too. Those Trumpeter kits aren't that easy to find anymore either that a new kit of one would be great, especially if it was a Sedan. I'd prefer '62 though as I have one of them in 1:1 scale, but of course they're really close to each other.

I really like it too. The combination of white and copper works very well in here and you nailed the stance as well. Nice work in the engine bay as well, but those bumpers are probably my favorite part. Where are they from?

Thanks so much Bernard! Yep it feels kind of odd that I got only one done, but at least it should be pretty easy to do better next year. And Cruising around in the Impala was a lot of fun and from April to October every single Friday Night I was at a Cruising Night somewhere and pretty much every Saturday too. And if there wasn't a car event on Monday through Thursday or on Sunday, I was probably just driving around either myself or with a couple of friends. That combined with work...No wonder I got pretty little modeling time during the summer months. But I have to say that I still should have got at least a second build done. With everything coming up in 2016 I can't promise much but I hope I could get at least two done. Happy 2016 to you too, Bernard!

Wow! All of them are very nicely done, but if I had to pick just one I think I'd go for that black Roadster with Early Hemi in it. It looks just right in every way. Falcon is my other favorite, but as I said earlier, great job on them all.

Very nice! I'm happy to see a 3rd Gen GM A Body built this well! Overall look here is pretty much perfect, tires are tall enough to fill those big wheel openings and the stance looks just like one of these looks with stock suspension and that kind of tires (For some reason I know how... ). Very nice work overall!

Oh yeah great to see an update here! That body looks excellent in primer and Roman Red is a beautiful color so I can't wait to see how this looks when painted. Keep the updates coming.

This is very interesting as I think that '63 Tempest is probably the best looking Pontiac ever made and to be honest I've considered ordering that kit from MCW too, as I need to get a couple of their Chevy IIs. These will be very interesting projects so I'll be watching closely!

Thanks Joe, I appreciate it! Now I gotta get back on the engine and start working on that body too...

I've never seen it either so while the car was out and we were testing cylinder leakage I decided to drive it a bit. I bet I would have had some major traction problems if I hammered the throttle as it was slippery with my Chevy S10 too even if it has proper winter tires on it. I wish neighbors weren't living so close to our garage as I'm not sure if they appreciate the V8 rumble on a quiet day....

That Mustang is a real beauty Bill! Gloss black paint job looks just about perfect to me and I really like that combination of gloss black and red interior. Engine detailing is top notch as always too. Spectacular build, I can't wait to see how that '59 Impala will turn out as I have a real 1960 in the garage.

I scratchbuilt a transmission mount/frame crossmember from pieces of square styrene rod. Now the engine fits properly on place and I'm quite sure driveshaft can be installed with no problems! Though before I can install that I have a few more things to do with that engine, plus that I have to make the driveshaft too... Well, slowly but surely this is coming together.

Wow! Looks like you got the tools to build pretty much anything you want. And I'm sure you'll do great work with all of those machines. I can't wait to see more work with this Chevy, it's coming together so nicely. Great job on that hobby room too! And Happy New Year to you and your family!

Happy New Year guys! I took our Malibu for a minimal New Year Cruise outside our garage:

Great work on this Barracuda, Walter! Great to see a guy like you who really knows how this cars were built back in the day building one in 1/25 scale too. Seeing this one brings back good memories from two years ago when I built that Jo-Han Sox & Martin Pro Stock kit. It was nowhere near this nice, but I had fun with it...Just like I enjoy watching this one, keep it coming!

That's a good lookin' Cadillac! I like to see these old kits built and this is a fine example how good these old Jo-Hans look when done right. Good looking paint work and sharp BMF make this one stand out.

Michael... Thanks! Yep you're correct, this kit has pretty much mold lines, ejector marks etc that need to be cleaned. It sure is a bit of extra work, but all in all this kit is a lot of fun to work with. And yeah, the 1:1 car was just what I needed to see to get my inspiration on this one back. That 8 carburetor setup is one of my favorites too, but I'm starting to see nightmares about making a carburetor linkage already... Gene... Thank You! Your build was a lot of fun to follow as well. I hope we can go Match Racing when mine is done. Here are a couple of more pictures. I glued transmission to the clutch cover and started searching for reference pictures how I should make the shift linkage. Soon I found a good picture of Borg & Warner T10 and I scratchbuilt something similar from metal wire and pieces of beer can aluminum. Shifter is straight from the box with just some minor cleanup and painting done. It's far from perfect, but I guess I can live with it. Then I moved on to the headers. Every header pipe had major mold lines in them so I started by filing them smooth. Every header pipe had an ejector pin mark in the curve so I sanded them off too. I didn't put much time into the header flanges, just filed them smooth briefly so that the headers are easy to glue on place. After all they can't be seen much from the finished model. Here other one is sanded smooth and other one is still waiting for that operation... After hard work sanding them smooth I headed to the paint booth. I wanted to spray them flat white and right away I knew I'd like them to look a bit old and possibly add a couple of rust spots on them here and there, but a disaster was really close when I shot some paint on them... The paint cracked all over. I knew that there was no way I could put them in the stripper to remove that paint off as the parts were so fiddle that they would have broken into pieces in that liquid. So the only way was to let them dry and sand them a bit smoother and then touch up with some Revell flat white and a brush. When I was done with that, I was surprised how good the headers looked. They look just like real headers that were painted long time ago so I left them as they were and glued them on. Some black was painted into the holes I drilled to the ends of those pipes.