MrObsessive

Randy, Randy, Randy! A Birdcage Maserati! One of my favorite '50's/early '60's road racers! You betcha i'll be following this one! The soldering alone is interesting to watch as sometimes that's what ya gotta do to get certain parts and strength.

Which is probably the chief reason the car looks that way it does.

Folks, I have this very car dead center on my radar screen for a not too distant in the future WIP. It won't be the model after I finish my Shelby (I'll want something easy after that one), but certainly the car after that. I already have in my mind and written in the kit's box, how to fix all what's wrong with that car. Chief among them is the woefully wrong rear fenders and accompanying side trim. Bill you're right............the engine was a thread that was started here, and I tried to get in touch with someone in Australia that ostensibly had the correct engine for the Fury. I never heard back from them after trying a couple times, and as close as I got to that engine was a pic that was posted on their site. I was informed later on that it too is not quite correct for a '58 Belvedere/Fury. As a matter of fact, the '58 Fury WIP came VERY close to being my current build, but I wanted to switch up eras for a moment as I just not long ago finished my '59 Chevy. So if you all can be patient and wait about a year or so (may not be that long), I'll be into building it full tilt. I may get bored with the Shelby for a minute and tinker around with that '58's bodywork. BTW, I'm with John on how I feel about this car! I don't ever expect Round 2 to fix it no matter how much we complain. Too many folks have bought it as is (IMO a shame), and there's no reason to fix what's wrong with it just to satisfy us out here in the lunatic fringe.

Steve, I've got plans for the back window as I did this before on the old one from 20 years ago (I'll have to take up to date pics of that one). As you know, the '67-'68 two door hardtops have somewhat of a "tunneled" back window. I'll have to make some slight extensions as the C pillar is a bit broader than the '65-'66 models. Not to mention, getting rid of that ridge that's on top of the trailing edge of the '66 roof. There is a subtle crease that runs somewhat parallel on the '68's C pillar, and it'll be just a matter of filing/sanding that one in. It'll be a little while though!

That's lookin' great Steve! I was wondering if there's an aftermarket source for that woodgrain? That's one thing I hate painting as I can never get it to look right.

I want to add that the 1967-68 two door hardtop Mustang was another one of those cars on that NNL East "Wish List". Now that I'm doing this car with all this work, watch a kit come out of the '67-'68 two door hardtop!

Thanks for the nice comments folks! While it's not the chromiest, flashiest thing that I've ever built, it was a change of pace for me. I just wish it wasn't so dang fiddly to get together! It is one of my favorite BMW's and one that was rarely seen then, and never seen at all today now! At least I finally have one built in my collection, but woe unto the novice that ever tries to build one of these!

Yup! I sure am! I got tons of pics off the 'net of the IRS as it appears in the car today, and I may be using brass for some of the bits and pieces. A little more about this WIP------AMT's '67 Shelby kit will provide the basic chassis and parts of the interior. It looks like I'll be using the '67's seats and modifying those into a '68 pattern as the '68 Shelby's kit pieces are IMO woefully inadequate. I have a junker Revell '69 Shelby kit which will provide the engine, and I'll have to make the electronic fuel injection setup out of my own mind as I don't know what could be close to that. I did a similar setup to the build I did back in '96, but I want this to be better than that one was then. I've had for years now a set of GMP's now OOP '68 Shelby 10 spoke wheels. Those are the most accurate to date, and came with a set of RWL tires mounted on them. Keith Marks makes the stripes and badging and I already got a set from him. As far as color---------it looks like I'll have to be mixing my own green with a gold metallic in it to get close to the color that was on the 1:1. I read that the car was initially painted a light metallic green from the factory when it was originally a California Special. The car was painted in sort of a candy green with a mica gold cleacoat over the green to give it a somewhat pearlescent appearance. I'm not sure if I can pull all of that off with the paint, but I'm sure I can come up with a reasonable facsimile. Looks like I've got my bodywork cut out for me. IMO, the whole front end of the car namely the grille will need to be reworked. The '68 Shelby kit body as it was out of the box the grille is too upright, while on the 1:1 the shape is more trapezoidal. This on top of opening up the doors and trunk! So needless to say, I can see just the bodywork alone taking the better part of the month to get done!

I think he's talking about the "humps" that are left inside the body after it's detached from the runner in the factory. Just a guess, but those I've found can impede how well the chassis/interior will fit later on. Much easier to grind those humps downs with a Moto-Tool if you have one.

I've seen them on older releases as Joe mentioned. I just take my Dremel Moto Tool and grind those suckers down. Easy-Peasy!

If one purchases something from a seller on eBay for instance, the seller can have a shipping label printed out on their own which will generate a tracking number if the seller so chooses this option. It's then just a matter for said seller to physically take the item to the P.O to be delivered. Once the shipping label is generated, eBay is notified and the buyer is told that the item has been "shipped" even though the item may still be physically in the seller's home. I know this as I've sold on eBay quite a number of times, and I've had shipping labels printed out on my printer with a tracking number affixed to it, and I've even had buyers email me after one day wondering where their stuff is!

I keep looking at this one because of the COLOR! Super nice paint job, and I'm curious too what the name of the Sherwin Williams paint is. That looks to be a dead ringer for "In Violet"!

What's nice Mike is that I'm finding out that there aren't any huge differences in the widths of the bodies. Not always the case even with the same manufacturer of what's supposed to be "1/25th" scale. EDIT: BTW, I originally was going to use the cowl off the '66 and graft it onto the '68's body as the A pillars look better to me on the '66. However, the two aren't quite the same between the model years, so that's why I went with what I did. I'll just refashion the '68's A pillars a bit to look more in scale. I'll also make new vent windows/posts as the ones molded on the '68's body aren't quite right either.

My enthusiasm is on high tilt today as this is a car that I've been wanting to redo for a VERY long time! Since I'm off today, I figured I better get started as who knows how I'll be feeling later in the week once I get back to work. I normally don't repeat models so close together because it was just late last year that I finished up the '67 Mustang GT. Well, this car I've simply loved for quite a few years as I originally built one back in 1996. While that model was OK as far as it goes, I was never quite happy with the overall body shape of it. Not till years later did I figure out what the problem was------the roof looked like it just "sat" on the '68 fastback's body, and just seemed off to me. After some brainstorming, I figured out that the best way to get a much more accurate body of the 1967-68 two door hardtop, was to combine more aspects of the '66 Mustang into the '68 Shelby kit's lower body. The car that I'm replicating has a very interesting history which can be read about here. This will be a loooooong project as there's quite a bit of bodywork to be done to make it the way I want, not to mention the independent rear will have to be totally fabricated from scratch. The only working features I'm going to have on this one will be opening doors and trunk. I was going to do more, but I'm at a point in modeling where the other working features are nice such as windows and whatnot, but with my eyesight not as in tune as it used to be, and the time factor, I may leave those type features to larger scales in the future. OK! On to some pics! As you all seen on my last completed BMW thread, here are both the '66 and '68 bodies again before anything was done. This is the area where builders in the past including myself have made a big error in trying to make a '67-'68 two door hardtop. On the '68 body (white) there's a much taller "hip" area just behind the doors. Correct for a fastback which also had "swoopier" rear fenders to my view and were a bit lower at the very end. One can't just cut off the top on the '66 and plop it on top of the fastback's body. So some slicing and dicing were done on my part.............. Using my Trumpeter's scribing tool I began to slice along where I made the original line with the magic marker. It took a bit, but I got the roof, top of the quarters, and rear deck free. I did the same to the '68's body............ OK! Here's a very preliminary mock-up of what I have so far! Looks MUCH better already then simply sticking the roof on the '68's rear "hips" unchanged. When it's all said and done, I want my model to look like this one.......... Still MUCH more work to do to fill in the gaps and get everything looking the way it should. This went much easier than I thought as this section is nearly a drop-in to what I cut off. I'll tweak the A pillars somewhat as they're a bit too thick per the 1:1, and of course match up the front header of the '66 roof to better suit the '68 body's windshield frame. Thanks for checkin' this one out folks! Comments welcome, and I'm not sure when the next update will be. I'll fiddle with this some more today, and when I get more pics together I'll post 'em.

Finally! What was supposed to be a "simple" box stock build, turned out to be one of the most difficult "simple" builds I've had to deal with in a long time! EVERYTHING about this kit was a fight, and with my emerging eyesight difficulties it made getting this done that much more annoying. Well, just this evening I got it all together and I have to say that probably one of the most difficult things about this BMW was getting it to SIT right. I had to tweak a number of things with the suspension, and the car if it were built to the instructions would have had the wheels sticking way out too far, and the car sitting up too high. Revell of Germany IMO put waaaaay too much into this kit, and it does rival Fujimi's Enthusiasts Series of kits in parts count, and very fiddly assembly. It's interesting that Tamiya chose this one to rebox as it was so difficult to get together-----at least for me. I have to give this kit a C- as far as ease of assembly and I DO NOT recommend this to anyone who is either short of patience, or doesn't have the skills to get it together. Some things I left on the cutting room floor------such as the separate trunk compartment they give you. The trunk is epoxied shut as the hinges are not accurate compared to the 1:1 (scissors hinges the real ones use), and this led to further crowding of trying to get everything to fit properly. I have two other kits of this one.......a pristine untouched Tamiya one, and another ROG "Alpina" version. Needless to say, it will be a very long time if ever when I tackle this one again. Enough of my rambling.......here are the pics! The paint was Acrylic Enamel Laguna Green mixed locally here, which I clearcoated with a tint coat of Tamiya Clear Blue and Green and their regular X-22 Clear. I did this to blunt the metallic paint somewhat as the metallic flakes while OK............were a little overwhelming a scooch. Some pics I see some dust flecks..........oh well. I've had the fan blowing as it's a bit warm in the room where I'm building today. There are a couple little spots here and there that could stand some touching up, but for all intents and purposes, this one's done! OK............here's a teeny taste of what the next WIP will be. This is all there is for now, and I probably won't do a full post on this till possibly next weekend when it'll be worth my while to have a sufficient amount of pics to post on it. Thanks for lookin' folks!

I was about to say the same thing............because.................

From that pic I don't see much difference at all. If you're going to put the parachute mounting brackets and such over that, I really wouldn't sweat it! We can be our own worse critics sometimes!

Wow! This is something else!! I LOVE all the details so far! Bummer about the stripe, but that happens to the best of us. This will definitely be a show stopper when finished!

Why thanks! I was very flattered to see it on there as LOTS and LOTS of models were there at the NNL East! I was tickled to see it as no one told me it would be!

You've all seen my paint jobs...........I've used and swear by chamois cloths. Never a problem with scratches afterwards because it's essentially......................skin. I've used this since maybe the early '90's? Here are a couple that were polished with a chamois cloth and Meguiar's Car Cleaner Wax. BTW, the finish was wet sanded with the polishing cloths beforehand as was mentioned above.

For those of you that might not be familiar with BIN Zinsser, here are a few pics of models I've done where this was used as a barrier. Dodge Viper built a few years ago............. You all saw this one very recently.............. Since even the primers have been questionable these days, I'd recommend putting the BIN on the bare plastic first before anything else. It dries very quickly, and I've had no problem with it to date.

Well, since plastics are forever changing in the model kit industry, you can always test the paint out in a hidden area on the model. For instance, the underside of the hood (if it's separate) is a good place. Also the runners or sprue is also good to use since it's obviously of the same type as the parts. You could even spray the inside of the body as that won't be seen to see if there's any adverse reaction. Better to be safe than sorry when it comes to testing. As they say, "Things just ain't the same as they used to be".

David, that's a very nice finish so far on the paint! Is that GM's '59-'60 Roman Red? Yes it certainly can! I almost gave up on my '59 Chevy for a number of reasons...............glass issues were chief among them. My patience is about to be severely tested again though as a tough project is looming...........

BIN is basically a shellac. I've not had to thin it however I'd guess alcohol should do the trick. Since I airbrush it, I do use a slightly higher PSI (around 15-20) to put it on and I use an older airbrush. My tried and true old Badger Crescendo comes into play whenever I need to use it.

EXCELLENT! I'm glad that you used the Johan body as that trounces AMT's version for accurate lines!