Mooneyzs

SO.... I got a little work done on it tonight but not as much as I was hoping but planning on getting a lot of bench time in this weekend. I decided to take a break from the hatch for the night and I worked on getting the pulleys all mounted. Now they aren't glued on or anything yet but I had to rework the block a little. anyway here is a couple pics... Here is the pulleys mounted on the engine. I had to pull the stud out of the block for the original pulley and then re-drill for the new one. As well as the Idler pulley I had to rework the mount a little bit to get it to the correct location. And the blower I had to sleeve for the shaft on the pulley: After putting the pulley's on I had to set the block in the engine and take a pic :

Clint... Thank you for the kind words. I sure am hoping so with every little detail I am trying to do. sflam... Thank you. I am still not done with details on the hatch so stay tuned. I have a couple little details up my sleeve...lol Scott... I noticed from the reference pics that I was going to have to do something for that. when I get the holes modified on the hatch and hinge I will show the reference pic and the body next to one another for you. It was a very small detail I noticed with the portion you are talking about on both sides of the hinge that I just had to add Micheal... Thank you John... What can I say Brother but thank you. I think I have been keeping on track this week with your advice about getting to the bench for at least 30 mins a day Joe... Thank you my friend.

Ira... Awesome work. This is coming along very nice. Love how you are always creative and thinking out of the box.

John... You are off to a great star on the race car. Looking good brother.

Ray... you did a killer job on this. Here is my reaction tonwhen I saw the finished project and color... "Oh that is Bad A$$!" I love the color and the decal. Looks great

Larry... Thank you. Dave... Thank you my friend. Trying to build as clean as you do . Like gow I changed the mounting holes from 8 to 6. I think it looks much cleaner and i believe the spacing is about 3" in 1:1. Brad... Thank you. You are so right that planning something out and then it takes way more time than expected. But I dont mind putting the extra time in for it to turn out the way i want. Sad thing is that i wished I would of noticed the mistake i did when drilling the holes in the hatch side of the hinge as well as the hatch. The fix should be easy but gonna take a few hours to redo. I seem to redo everything trying to make it perfect...lol Henry... thank you Danno... thank you and thanks for the info. I will have to get my 57 pick up and 1/43rd scale Merc done for that show. Not sure if the funny car will be ready by then.

Nice job on thia build. It looks great

Micheal... thank you for posting those links I will be going over them this weekend. I am digging the magnetic Jig. I think I am going to have to do something like that myself. I know my soldering skills needs some extra practice.

I couldn't agree more. Tim you need to figure out what the most you are willing to pay and not go above that. I have done that with many of the 1/16th scale kits that I have gotten. There have been a couple I paid more for but it was because it was one that was a little more rare and haven't seen them on ebay as much.

Pat... Thank you very much!! this little detail for the hatch ended up being more time consuming that I originally thought but very pleased with how its turning out.

Here is a front shot of it. I am really happy with how it turned out other than the fact that I messed the holes up on the hatch but I will be an easy fix after I thought about it for a sec: Here is all of the bolts with nuts on them other than the two in the middle. I ran out and will have to make an order to Scale Hardware for more nuts and bolts: The Escape Hatch functions very nicely and happy with how smooth it is and I believe I got it to open just like I saw on the youtube video of Prodhumme explaining the car: The inside of the hatch. I still have to cut a hole out for the lexan window that is on the car as well as adding a lip around the hatch and the latch that will function to lock it closed:

From that point I continued to transfer the holes as shown here: I then placed bolts in the holes to get an idea of what it will look like. I won't be using the hex head on the final product but i am going to take the hex head and sand the head down to look more like a rivet as well as to look more like the reference pics I have of it: Here is all of bolts mounted into the hatch after drilling all of the holes: So after I got the hatch bolted to the body I noticed that the holes on the hatch were not perfectly straight. SO I will be going back filling the holes by gluing rod in the hatch and then I am going to fill the holes in that side of the hinge and redo the holes by using the holes from the other part of the hinge as my guide. I was unhappy with myself for not noticing but I didn't set the 2nd hinge up the same when I drilled those holes. I took pics from both side so you can see how the bolts didn't line up in a straight line on the Hatch: View from the left side of the car:

Ok Fellas.... I have been working on this quite a bit the past 2 nights and probably have about 9 to 10 hours or more....lol on this. Some of it was some tedious work and time consuming but well worth it with the results. Any way I won't ramble on and will show the pics .... So after I got the lip for the hatch to sit on, I then had to make the part of the body that the hinge was going to sit on straight because the roof has a curve to it. I made it as flat as I could by using a make shift sanding block as well as a technique with flat tip Xacto blade (forgot to take a pic of this) that I used to scrape the plastic to get it to the shape I wanted: I then started to work on the mounting holes on the hinge. Since I spliced multiple miniature hinges together I needed to redrill my mounting holes so they would be uniform. So I used one of my stainless rulers that has marks in them that I got from Micro Mark and used it to space out the holes: Once I got two of the holes laid out..... actually the two end holes lined up perfectly with the ruler and I spaced it evenly with a total of 6 bolts. I know that the actual car had 10 of them but talked it over with a friend and we both agreed that it would of been too bunched up. Was then going to go with 8 as of yesterday but then tonight when I sat down I decided to change i to 6: When I got the bolts tightened down I then used the marking ruler as a guide to drill the holes: Once that was done I started drilling the mounting holes into the body. starting with the ends first and then I would use the hinge to transfer drill the holes for the correct spacing: Bottom side with the nuts tightened up:

Roger... I believe he is talking about MisterTwister (Darryl) who did a beautiful replica of his Nova that he used to race.

Brad... Thank you my friend. I gotta make it right John... Thanks Brother. I just wish I could build some of my stuff as fast as you ... let me borrow one of your mini me's Henry... Thank you. Scott... Thanks Bud! Danno... Thank you. Wait till you get to see it person next time...hehe. Isn't there a swap meet in the next few months or is the next one not til Desert Scale? If there is another one before the show I will have to bring the in progress to the swap meet like I usually do Tyrone... Thank you sir, I have been enjoying getting these updates done. Dave... Thank you. You are correct the roof is not flat. I actually did some work to the hatch and inner body to sand them flat. You will see in the updated photo I will be posting next. Stay Tuned, I am downloading updated pics right now and will have them up shortly......

I agree we wanna see more of this build

John... that is looking killer.. Love how this turned out and it looks nice. I love how you made the drivers window partly open that is an awesome little detail to this amazing build. looking forward to the car and so I can see you then get to work on your next big project

Hey Tim.... I will be honest... 3 years ago I picked up 2 of them. Both I paid 120.00 for and the first one I got the decals were BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH and then picked up another for a better set of decals. I know at the time I thought it was a lot and really wanted to build the Army Vega Funny Car so I went ahead with it.

John... I am speechless.... this thing looks so sweet Brother!! Lets get to the race car finished so you can start your next build

Larry... Thank you Ray... Thank you Sir!, you know this is the first build that I have taken to a level like this. I have learned a lot during this build. Charlie... Thank you my friend. I am trying to capture all of the details that I can. I am jonesing to put some of your great products on this engine. Well I sat down at the bench for a couple of hours tonight. Thought I would of gotten a lot more accomplished but I am happy with what I was able to work on. I worked on adding the lip around the escape hatch as well as getting the hatch fitted into the opening. I had to sand part of the hatch to accommodate the piano hinge. And I started fooling around with how I am going to be modifying the scale hardware that I will be using. Here are a few shots of the progress. Here is the lip that was added to the Escape Hatch opening. I used .010" thick x 1/4" wide Evergreen Styrene with leaving a lip of around .040". I know I didn't need a 1/4" wide strip but it was all I had in the .010" stock: Here is the underside of the body of the lip. I used Weld-On #3 to glue it in place. (Weld-on is basically like Tennax). I am planning on feathering bondo around the material so you won't see any of those hard edges once painted. It will just blend into the body: Here I had to sand the front and back edge of the hatch. First I had sanded the front edge where the hinge is to get the gap correct for the hinge and then after that I sanded the rear to get the gap equal to the rest of the hatch. I took .010" thick plastic and used it to keep the hatch evenly spaced. Also don't mind that the hinge is upside down and on the wrong side but it was easier to test fit when I was getting the gap correct, next I need to work on getting part of the hatch and the body shaved down where the hinge goes so that the piano hinge will sit flush with the body so it will function propertly:

Charlie... top notch work my friend. I always love your attention to detail and how clean your work always is as well as that added westhering touch you add.

Joe... Thanks buddy. You are right that I won't be able to get the pin in or out once installed. I will be painting it with the hinge off and have been thinking that I was going to use some some super small scale hardware to fasten it in place with the .5mm bolts and nuts. I wish there was a threaded button head style to look more like a rivet or button head screw. That's what it looks to me in the reference pics I posted. I am also thinking of just polishing the hinge portion that will be visible and maybe painting the base. I a, not sure if Alclad would work well since it will be movable. But I have some extra hinges that I may do a test paint on to see if it would work. Danno... I was hoping it would turn out like it was one solid hinge and not pieced together...lol Art... Thanks brother, it's coming along little by little. Mike... Thank you sir. I am doing my best Jason... Thank you for the kind comments. I am glad that my build has inspired others. Dave... Thank you. I think it took me between 4 and 5 hours between how I was going to figure out a way to hold it when soldering and checking things along the way. Probably didn't help that I was watching TV at the same time too and was distracted from time to time...lol Clint... Thank you. The only reason I think the loops look so good is because they were already formed...lol. I did try and search for some photo etch ones but the only one I was able to find wasn't big enough and wouldn't of looked right. Just glad I was able to find these hinges. No need to feel like you are rambling. I enjoy when other like to share things in my threads too. It how we all learn from one another.

Art.... I am speechless. That engine is looking Killer!! I love the detail on the Injector set up. Man that engine sure is nice.

Here I taped the hinge into the body and on the hatch to see how it looks. I will need to recess the hing into the body to get it flush with the body: Here is the inside of the hatch: Here is a shot of it in the open position:

Dave... Thanks bud for having faith in me. Mike... Thank you. I have more screen prints to do from that you tube video I want to get more reference photos from. Brad... Thank you. You know I was thinking about what do to with the thickness of the body and hatch and how I will recess the hinge into both those panels. I do have an idea though So I was able to get the hinges soldered up and pretty happy with them so far: Here is the back side of the hinge: Here is the hinge after I sanded down the solder joints: Here are the pieces of the hinges: Here is the hinge positioned in a couple positions to show is movable: