MrObsessive

Bob, I used 1966 Dodge Turbine Bronze. That looked very close if not exactly like the color the original Turbine cars used. The paint was mixed by a local auto supplier place here-------they put it in a spray can, and I decanted it for airbrush as I don't like/trust spray cans. I believe MCW has this paint............you could check with them once you get your airbrush.

The 1:1 '69 AMX I owned (390) had a turquoise color to the block. IIRC, 1968-70 390's during these years were turquoise. I can't think of any paint type off the shelf that may have this. Perhaps MCW might have this in their product line?

Not much really picture worthy at this point. I did spend some time today tightening up the shut lines on the opening panels-------namely the trunk and one of the doors. I'm a big believer in the 3x5 card approach in determining shut lines as seen in this pic below on this Turbine Car I was building a while back................... If you can slip your card through without binding....then it should be good to go as far as paint. Paint will take up some of the thickness so you don't want your shut lines too tight. The '59 will need to have some trim as well to the tops of the doors, as well as the quarter window sills. I'll replicate that with some styrene strip. Tomorrow, I'm going to paint the chassis with red oxide primer------then do the edges with a slight overspray of Roman Red. Next comes painting the frame rails (carefully!), and then start to get the suspension together. I'll post pics when there's enough done to make it worthwhile posting. Thanks everyone for the well wishes and encouragement!

Wait! The '61 Pontiac Ventura! Art, you're killing us!!

Marshall, I'd have to do some digging around to see what type it would take. I've had it for about 10 years and I believe it's an old Cox RC unit but I could be wrong. Here's a better pic of what it looks like hanging from the ceiling........... As you can see the cockpit bubble is really yellowed. I remember someone telling me a while back that this one may date back to the '70s. Maybe you have some background on where this originated?

Seeing these pics reminds me very much of when I was a kid in the '60's and I was SURROUNDED by Corvairs! My Mom and Dad divorced when I was about four. Interesting enough, they would later go on to date people that drove Corvairs! I also had an Uncle that was a Corvair nut. He I believed owned every model Corvair that Chevy made throughout the years.......and still had a Corvair when he passed away four years ago. I really like your build! You did an excellent job rescuing this now rare gem. I have also a builtup '60............plan is to someday turn it into a '63. I always liked the glitzier chrome on the pillars on that model year Monza. Trick is to find a junker with that front end and mate it to the '60 body without ruining it.

Jeff, the linkages are some old Detail Master pieces that I've had for years. I have to improvise the placement and the "look" of where I want them to be for some semblance of realism. Thanks for asking! Those magnifiers can be had for dirt cheap on eBay-------I've located two. One here and here. I believe the second link is the company that I bought mine from. Most of the time I only need the first lens. If I have both of them on, it's literally like looking through a microscope..............they are THAT strong! Hope this helps!

First I want to say I LOVE this conversion! Any modeler that's brave enough to cut into plastic to make it what he or she wants is OK in my book! Now about the top..........why not simply modify the roof into an uptop that you cut off? I did this on both my '58 Impala, and the '64 GTO I was working on years ago. The basic shape would already fit--------you would just need to add top bows, and give the sail panels that correct "droop" that most convertible tops have. This would save you from buying a kit for just the top, and having to modify it when it's really not for the same car. Here's a pic of what the top should look like. These are off a Challenger, but both it and the 'Cuda shared the same top frames. Hope this helps you out!

That is an RC Bell 47 Helicopter that runs, but has no servos right now. Plan was where I used to live to get it up and running and in the air, but the house I live in now, I'd surely crash it through someone's window! There is an airfield not far from me that a bunch of guys get together and fly their RC planes and helicopters when the weather is nice. Someday, I'd like to get the proper servos for it and get in the air once again. It just hangs quietly from the ceiling--------if the cats get out of line (getting into something), I can take it down and aim it towards them.......they're terrified of it!

Dan, I'm glad I was able to help!

To my eyes Mike------no. If I were doing a convertible (I will be someday), I'd use the windshield frame from the '60. It just looks more accurate to me. In fact, I have another roof swap in mind for down the road.....using the '60 roof to fix that terrible Trumpeter '60 Bonneville hardtop.

OK Niko, here's a pic of the engine in the car for the moment..............you can see where I had cut off the "extra" in the cowling which the '60 body had as well. Yeah, it does sit a bit too far back according to the 1:1 pics I'm working from..................but hold the phone........... The problem seems to lie in the placement of the molded in trans mount. Now I suppose I could move this piece forward a bit moving the engine forward, but then that would change the length of the exhaust------then there's the aspect of moving the engine too far forward, and having the fan butt up against the radiator. Not a good thing! As it stands right now I think I better leave well enough alone.........I've got enough engineering troubles ahead of me for the moment.

Thanks for the kind words Charlie. Those eyeglass loops I picked up off eBay for something like $10! They DO come in mighty handy as the eyesight ain't what it used to be. I had seen guys use these at work for various and sundry things, and since I worked around electronics I knew I had to get a pair.

Niko, It does seem to sit a bit too far back, but that might be due to Revell "overextending" the cowl a bit. When I swapped roofs I used the entire cowl and all ('60 is slightly different than the '59), but I got rid of the overhang that would sit beneath the trailing edge of the hood when closed. This seems to alleviate the problem a bit. In the pic below you can see this cowl extension on the original '59 roof before I cut it off....... Sorry for the pic being so blurry! In the 1:1 world, the cowls due to the massive windshields were quite steep. One way to fix this is to maybe move the firewall a bit rearward into the chassis, so the engine doesn't butt up so much against it. Doing this however can change the position of the interior, wheel placement, etc------so you'd have to check everything along the way as you're going along. Thanks for the compliment, and later on I'll take a pic of the engine in the engine bay so you can see how it looks.

EXCELLENT!!

Well, except for a few minor tweaks here and there, the bodywork is all but done! The paint job will be one of the LAST things I do.............I don't want any surprises when it comes to final assembly after the body is all painted, polished, and BMF'd! Well, that's it for now........thanks for bearing with me!

Since the engine was done for the most part, it's time to move on to the chassis/interior floor. Since the model will have opening doors, I can't use the platform/ tub interior that Revell gives you. This would make the interior floor too tall, as these cars should have a slight "stepdown" from the door sill. Actually, I wish Revell would tool most of their newer kits this way. They still insist on the tub/platform method, instead of taking a page from AMT/RC2 and making their interiors from the flip side of the chassis floor. The main part of the floor was cut away with just the driveshaft hump left and the rear seat. I went ahead and blended in the driveshaft hump along with the firewall/cowl to the chassis floor. The channels on the top side of the floor needed to be filled in as well------at least those areas that won't be covered by the seats. One of my dislikes when detailing chassis' is having to mask off the gas tank and paint it. I never have good success doing this, so I figured might as well take the time and cut away the tank. It makes for much easier painting, and I can also make gas straps while I'm at it for down the road. It occurred to me that when I put the firewall in place, the front inner fenders were going to be in the way as far as painting. So out comes the Exacto blade, and I cut these away as well. The firewall should be body colored as this was all painted as a unit as the car came down the assembly line. The inner fenders were part of the front clip assembly and were semi gloss black according to many pics I have of the car. I wanted to make a hanger for the fuel and brake lines before I go ahead and paint the chassis. Since this is dual exhaust car, the fuel and brake lines run pretty much through the driveshaft tunnel. If you had a single exhaust car, your fuel line ran on the opposite side of the exhaust pipe. This is going to be kinda tricky to route, as I don't want to the appearance of the driveshaft scraping against the lines! Hmmm..........I'm gonna have to file away those molded in "lines" on the frame rails and floor it appears. Wish they wouldn't mold those in........... .........And yet some more to come!

Well, it's been quite a long time since I worked on, let alone did any updates to this one. Before I get into what been going on with the Chevy----I'd thought I'd fill you guys in on what's been happening with me this past year. It's been a very rough year family wise. My Dad was quite ill for the better part of the year.......in fact, he was in and out of the hospital since about the beginning of this year. I've lost track of how many times he had to be rushed to the hospital as he suffered from very severe COPD. Dad was 80 years old and he smoked for as long as I can remember--------long before I came along. Well, he passed away on September 1st. Before that happened I guess I went into somewhat of a mild depression where I didn't want to work on any models, let alone keep up with anything as far as new releases or any of that. I would come here to the board, but I wasn't interested in commenting or adding my 2¢ to anything. It's now been over three months since he's been gone, and it was just recently in the last few weeks or so that I've become fired up again over models. It had been so long since I worked on the Chevy that it literally had dust sitting on it from just being parked on the shelf. I did build the '03 Viper in the interim, but building that didn't break the burnout that I was going through. Just the same, I'm back on track with the '59 Impala. I finally got the engine done for the most part, and I've moved on to the chassis floor/interior area. Here's what I've got after a very long hiatus! I wanted to add some detail to the carbs.......while not every not and bolt is true to the 1:1..........I'm not sweating it as it'll be covered up by that big 'ol air cleaner in the end anyway! I've also added the oil tube since these pics were taken...........I thought Iost it somewhere! Originally, I was going to do a fuelie engine, but I just didn't want to part out the '57 Black Widow kit for it's setup. Funds are a bit limited these days, and I'm just not into parting out kits or buying them for just a few parts. The stuff you see on the trans is Parafilm. I like to use that whenever I'm handling something for a long period of time to keep the paint from wearing off for the most part. Ah yes.........for those of us who have passed the half century mark, these are quite useful when trying to see and work with those small details. I'd thought I'd never need these, but now they've become a necessity for me to build the way I do! More to come so stay tuned!

As someone who likes to do working features from time to time, brass is definitely it! Styrene plastic while workable, won't stand up to the constant flexing and stress when I want a suspension to be fully working for instance. Once you master soldering a good joint, it's really not all that difficult a medium to work with.

Wow! I never paid any attention to these until I saw this thread! In fact, Tom I was so impressed by your work to this one, that I went on eBay earlier today and bought one! Got it for a good price ($25), but it's in need of some TLC. It's missing a couple small pieces but nothing that can't be replaced or scratchbuilt. I learned something as well in that the full sizers were front wheel drive. I never knew that! You'd think that with the size that they are with those dualie wheels------they'd be rear drive. You learn something new every day! Carl, keep up the good work with your resto.......I'll definitely be following along!

Rob, I do have an idea on how to make this but it's a bit convoluted and requires some computer "geekery". You can save the image of whatever floral pattern you'd like, then you can "tile" the image on to your desktop. Of course, you'll need to shrink the image to whatever suits you for 1:25. After you've tiled the image, do a screenshot of the desktop, save in whatever folder you'd like, then have the screenshot printed on decal paper. After you've printed the decal paper, I would cut a template or pattern using wide masking tape, then tranfer the template on to your decal paper and cut accordingly. It might take a few tries, but it's the low budget way to accomplish this as opposed to having someone do this for you. As I said, it's a bit convoluted, and it would take some 'puter skills to make this work. I did this on the '55 Ford Burtex trunk mat pattern------a model that I never was able to finish. Hope this helps!

It's been a while since I made a comment such as this, so here's my 2¢. I received my kit the other day, and I have to say that I'm VERY WELL PLEASED with the Revell body! While there are a few nits (wheel arches, dubious character line flaw), I have to say that I give the Revell body a bit more of an edge over the Johan, and MPC bodies, of which I have both. One area that will need fixing if I ever get around to building this, is the drip rail moulding on the roof. One of the major things I notice in rooflines of cars that are being translated into models---------does the roofline portray the right "attitude" in the kit? In other words, are the sharp angles where they're supposed to be, or have they been "rounded" which to my eyes changes the attitude of the roofline? The 'Cuda to my sight doesn't have the sharp square upper corners in the rear quarter window trim like the 1:1, instead has been rounded off. This to me changes the appearance or attitude of the roofline which is a 'Cuda signature separate from the Challenger among other things. The MPC and Johan bodies do get this detail correct, but then the backlites of those two bodies are a bit too "rounded", especially at the sides when I compare photos I have of the 1:1 (which is a LOT). I guess it comes down to what looks correct to any one individual and everyone can argue the point as to which one is correct. This is just one man's opinion-------------I only know that this is 100% better than the junky kit that Revell tried to foist on us back in 2007. I've already got plans to what I want to do with mine when the opportunity presents itself.............been awhile since I got back into building! A lot has happened over this past year, but that's an issue for another thread! Anyway, I look forward to seeing what everyone does with this kit...............a lot of possibilities here!

Absolutely insane Peter! Even I wouldn't attempt something like that! IIRC I think there was a company that did this on a '90's Lincoln Mark VIII? Nice concept and quite practical especially in tight parking spaces.

True!!

Wouldn't the "Sunny" kit from the '80's be a better starting point? It's not perfect body wise, but IMO you have some of your work done for you in the fender area at least. Here's a pic of that kit............... Don't be misled by the box art and the kit's title. To me the body is a LOT more representative of a FIA car than the 1965 era 427. BTW, here is a link to the auction on eBay where that pic was cribbed.........