MrObsessive

The Lindberg kit might be a good one, but I'd be worried more about the width of the top, more than the height. When I was building a '55 Fairlane years ago, I had used Lindberg's '53 Ford kit as a base for the roof. Much to my surprise, the roof was WAY TOO NARROW! Of course a lot of work had to go into widening it to fit the '56 body, but I was surprised being that they are the same scale, the bodies could be so different width wise.

:o Man! I can tell already Mark that this is going to be one MIND BLOWING project!!

Yup! Got one of those...................... Very detailed for its size.......has both the hardtop and the softtop! I also got this 1:24 diecast.............although I can't remember who made it. I picked it up off eBay a couple years ago. I'd love to see a mainstream 1:24-25th plastic kit of this car however. Revell of Germany-----are you listening?? I'm REALLY curious as to what Pocher will announce next month. I had one of the 1:8 Mercedes kits, but I sold that one to Harry a few years ago. I'd like to try my hand at one, although they had a reputation for being notoriously fiddly! Not to mention, it would probably take me five years to finish it!

Mike, here's the can I used........I'm sure it's similar in other areas, although I have to admit------this is the first time I've tried it on a project (after testing of course), and I'm completely sold on it! I do recommend using an older airbrush----I have an old Badger Crescendo which I used to spray it. It's a bit tired, but after nearly 20 years of use, it still does the job. The color coats were sprayed with a new Badger Patriot (Model 105), which does an excellent job for what I need!

Joe, I used MAS's stainless steel tubing to replicate the rails. The "injectors" are just little cut pieces of Detail Master's thinnest "ignition" wires. The wires are of such a tiny diameter though, there's no way I'd ever use them for engine wiring in this scale as far as plug wires. They're better suited for firewall wires, or wiring under your dash such as might be exposed in a race car for instance. Mike, I used BIN's product out of the regular can and not the aerosol. It took quite a bit of mixing before I was able to use it, but I thinned it out with isopropyl alcohol remembering the consistency of milk rule. They recommend denatured alcohol, but I had none of that around. There was some slight orange peel after I airbrushed it on, but I did rub the surface out lightly with 600 grit sandpaper before putting on the color coats. BTW, it cleans up nicely with acetone, as this is what I used to get the airbrush cleaned out (an old Badger Crescendo). I figure lacquer thinner would do the same job, as well as either of the two alcohols I mentioned.

There's an absolutely gorgeous one that's up for auction on eBay right now! Lots of interior pics as well as trunk and engine bay shots. Those should give you what you're looking for.................Hope this helps!

I want a 1968 Mercedes 280 SL! That's a subject BEGGING to be kitted in any scale!

Just a quick follow-up as to how I want my interior to appear. '03 Vipers came with a somewhat basic black for an interior color. Well, that's all well and good but if I'm paying what for what was an $86,000 car in 2003, I'd want something that has a bit more expressiveness to it. I have these pics among my references which I think will totally compliment the red exterior................. Now that certainly looks better than just basic black! Dontcha think?? Thanks for tuning in!

So I don't suffer burnout (it's happened before), I've decided to put the '59 Chevy on hiatus for the time being, and start something much simpler. Actually, I started work on this model before I started on the Chevy, but I decided to go full speed ahead on the Chevy as I wanted to fix that wacky roof on it. This is Revell's 2003 Viper in which I've had this kit since it was intro'd around 2005 or so. I don't know why I didn't build it years ago, as it's a VERY nice kit! It's also another one of those dream cars that more than likely I'll never own, but it's nice to have a decent replica of one just the same. OK.........I went by the script this time (instructions), and started on the engine. I didn't want just a lump of an engine sitting in the engine bay, so I added a few details such as ignition wires, and the fuel rails that are prominent on Viper engines. The intake, block, and transmission were airbrushed with Alclad Aluminum, and the valve covers were painted Viper Red which I had mixed at our local automotive paint jobber. The exhaust manifolds were painted Alclad Iron (I think). The ignition wires are 30 gauge kynar wire and the tiny wires below the fuel rails are Detail Masters. The fuel rails are stainless steel tubing, and I used references and pics off the 'net to place 'em as best I could where they belong. Moving on to the chassis, this is one area which gave me no trouble at all! Everything went together well, and it looks realistic enough to me without having a thousand and one pieces to get together. Like the engine, the suspension arms were painted with Aclad Aluminum, and the exhaust was painted with their steel for contrast. The brake discs I'll add later after they're painted, and the wheels will eventually be dechromed and repainted in a similar fashion. Usually I have the interior painted and together before I start to paint the body, I strayed away from my routine this time, and prepped and painted the body. The interior tub fits well inside the chassis, and I did test fit the body to avoid any surprises..........so far so good so on to the paint work. One thing I did first after getting rid of the mold lines and such was give the body parts a light coat of Plastikote Gray primer. I got this trick from Bob Downie (aka Zoom-Zoom) as I wanted to add a good coat of BIN Zinser sealer. This strays away from my usual spraying of Future, as I wanted something that was not quite so runny, and would not give me much fuss to deal with. Future is good stuff, but I didn't want to have to deal with runs around the edges, and the fast buildup of the stuff if you leave your airbrush in one spot for more than a millisecond! Here's the body after the BIN was airbrushed on............... I have to say I REALLY like this stuff as it went on VERY smoothly, and since I wanted a white undercoat, I'd say this is darn near perfect! One reason I'm going to stress a barrier coat on kits of late------and this may be helpful to newbies. Since the middle of the last decade or so, the model manufacturers have switched to a newer, "softer" plastic. Regular paints which did not craze the plastic before, can do so in a heartbeat. It's a good idea to take the extra time and add a barrier coat-------this will save you a lot of headaches (and heartaches) by doing so. I remember a thread on another message board where it was stated that Revell couldn't duplicate the problem as there were LOTS of complaints. Well I can tell you that just the appearance of the plastic alone said enough for me that some sort of barrier coat was MANDATORY! Well here she is all nice and painted up. I thought I asked the paint jobber for a single stage paint, but it appears as though this may be a two stage. Just the same, I'm going to rub out and polish what I have as I really hate to clearcoat solid colors. It's wholly unnecessary in my opinion and experience. I have a bit more, but I'm at my pic limit so stay tuned!

Excellent Conversion! The civilian one brings back some memories..........My great-grandmother had one with that roofline although I believe hers was a '54. I like whatever looks correct no matter what scale it is! A lot of neat subjects can be missed due to scale "bigotry".

That's a new one for me too. Seems as though if that were the case, MB would have put out a "cease and desist" order quite some time ago. As it is, Pocher was selling those kits for a bunch of years before they went under.

Thanks alot for the pictures Dave! Those will come in mighty handy!

That would be the toughest part if for me if I were doing this! Reshaping the rear "gullwings" to a different angle, making a new decklid, new taillights, etc. You're a braver man than I with this conversion!

Same here...........been doing it for a while now. Might have something to do with all those ads I see showing up there now!

Sharp little Honda Dominick! I've never seen those here in the states.......a real rarity indeed! I built the original Nitto version of that kit years ago (mid '80's) but don't know what happened to it. They do build up nicely, albeit not a lot of detail in the engine compartment. Tamiya's version is nice as well (which I have) but for some reason, I prefer this rendition of it better.

Bruce, The Modelhaus sells that particular body style, albeit in four door form and it's a '57 Savoy. Same car, just different headlights, grille, and tailights. Now it would be quite a feat to change the roofline on the hardtop '58. The sedan's roofs were taller as well as a bit longer. Windshields were also different between the two. You'd have to raise the roofline a good ½ to 1 scale inch for it to appear correct. If I were going to do this car, I'd contact Don and Carol and ask if they have any reject bodies of the '57 Savoy they make. They would offer it to you at a greatly reduced price (or maybe even free sans postage) and use the roof off of that to make your '58. You could also just buy the body and glass only and adapt that to the '58 chassis and innards. Of course, you'll have to convert the resin bodied four door to a two door, but the bodies were so similar between the two-----it's not a hard job at all. That's a GORGEOUS car BTW you have pictured! Reminds me of my Dad's '57 he once owned many years ago. In fact any of those '57-'58 Mopars remind me of his car. Hope all this helps!

If I had the bucks, I'd bid on this in a heartbeat and would do my absolute best to win it!

The channels I made are part of the structure for the hinges. I don't trust simply epoxying brass on to plastic------over time with the stress of opening and closing the trunk lid, the hinge will work loose from a simple surface mount onto the the trunk structure. I like positive-sturdy locations whenever I'm hinging something. Be it doors, trunks, or some other opening panels. Those channels will get thinned down a touch to get rid of some of the squareness of them. After the trunk is painted and polished, the hinges will get epoxied inside those channels, and since I'm doing a test fit job way ahead of time before painting, there should be no surprises when it comes down to final assembly. Thanks for asking!

Hey Ron, thanks for that pic! Interesting little emblems ahead of the Fuelie scripts!

Got some progress done in the last couple days. I finally bit the bullet and decided to mount those hinges and then see how the trunk would fit on them. So far things look good, and now it's a matter of "latching" and springing the hinges for the final result. As far as latching, I'm considering going the magnet route, as this will make for fewer moving parts as far as a release mechanism is concerned. And as far as keeping the trunk open, I'm going to use a tiny piece of guitar string that will be connected somewhere on the inside of the body, and then connected to the hinge so that there's a spring effect. Now on to a few pics! I mentioned in another post that I'd like to reduce the radii of the hinges. They seemed a bit too out of bounds for me, and also-----I didn't want them to appear too toy/diecast like. Here are the hinges in the up position after they were fastened on the block supports............... Like the doors, the trunk has the same type of hinge retainers. I still need to soften the edges of the retainers a bit so they don't appear quite so blunt. The trunk is staying up BTW due to friction------after they're painted and whatnot, they're not going to stay up. So far the trunk is sitting flush with the rear deck as it should.............. I soldered on a very tiny collar on the left rear hinge-------this will be where part of the guitar string will go. Not exactly like the 1:1, but some concessions need to be made due to what I'm working with! Well, that's it for now............thanks again for tuning in!

Yeah, I'm looking at a bunch of 1:1 pics on my hard disc of that car, and the test shots original wheelwell flares are a bit too much. Stu, your pic manipulation DOES make them look a lot better! It's an easy fix if Revell doesn't address this, but still...........

No, just a fella that grew up around a lot of "car folks" as a kid, and heard those terms spoken of. I'm fortunate that I was exposed to all kinds of cars both foreign and domestic growing up in the '60's and '70's. I had relatives that would come across all kinds of "oddball" cars, not to mention my Mom was dating someone once who I swear had a different car every 3-6 months! Ahhh!! You read my mind! I was just thinking the other day if that would work and I happen to have that kit! I can scratchbuild the "flex hose" you're talking about as I've done it before on other builds. The only fly in the ointment might be the Fuelie scripts that go on the front fenders. They look similar to a '57 'Vette's scripts. Thanks for the confirmation!

I'm gonna try my hand (again) at making torsion bar springs to keep the decklid open. While it may not be exactly like the 1:1, it'll be realistic enough without looking clunky. I already have a few ideas in mind to try this. The last time I did this was about 10 years ago when building the '64 GTO. That also had a button release for the trunk which latched it shut----------I may attempt the same thing with the Chevy.

Now I'm moving on to what I think is the hardest part of doing the bodywork on the '59. The trunk! Cutting it away was tough enough, but now making the underside stamping, as well as hinging it were going to be a challenge. Unlike the '60, the '59 has no tulip panel-----so one has to be somewhat creative in making a support so that the hinges will have something to hang on. I usually use the underside of the tulip panel when making my hinge supports, but since the '59 Chevy has no such panel (I think just the 2 door sedans and hardtops lack this), I had to try a different approach. One of the first things I wanted to do was to make the underside stamping that cars have to their decklids. This is more for support of the trunk itself as decklids are nothing more than a sheet metal stamping. If the structure wasn't there, in no time at all the decklid would warp out of shape due to all the slamming and closing it would go through in a period of time. I wasn't going to copy every little dip and dive of the structure, but to have a reasonable facsimile of something underneath when the trunk is open. I started by making a crude tracing on some .015 sheet plastic using a 1:1 pic as a reference............ I had to account for the "gullwing" shape of the trunk...........Then it was a matter of spending time to cut each corner shape and radius to suit a close resemblance of the structure as seen here............. Now I tried to use as little liquid cement as possible in attaching the whole structure to the trunklid. I didn't want a situation where so much cement is used, that you could begin to see the structure itself on the topside of the trunklid as the cement is still reacting to the plastic. That would be a NIGHTMARE after it's all painted and done! I'll do a little more sanding and refining before the whole thing is painted down the road. I have yet to add the hinge retainers as I wanted to see how the whole thing will turn out. This little center piece here will have to be recreated as it was lost when I was cutting the trunk out. A PE medallion will eventually go here as well. Here are the trunk hinges I soldered together recently. While not the final shape seen here (the radii is a bit too large), these are similar to the door hinges in shape. Here's the decklid as it sits on the body at the moment.......... And here's the revised structure for the hinges. I changed this a bit because down the road, I'm considering doing roll down rear windows. Due to the geometry of the window shape, they need to scoot back a bit and then the leading edge of the glass rolls down into the well. The previous brace that I made would have interfered with this movement, so I changed it to this shape. I'm going to add a touch of super glue at the joints to toughen things up a bit. The blocks that are attached to the brace is what the hinges will hang on. I may extend these out just a bit so that the reduced radius of the hinge, will have no trouble with binding in its movement. Well that's it for the moment.........hopefully I can get more done this week and have more to show later on! Thanks for following this thread guys!

Sorry for the super long delay in updates folks! Sundays are really the only days I have time to compose something readable--------and also to upload pics as during the week and Saturdays, I'm quite occupied. The past couple months, I've had other things going on, and model building time has taken somewhat of a back seat. I have been making some progress on the Chevy, but recently had to redo the door hinges as they just didn't seem right to me. This is what happens when a span of years go by doing this type of building..........you forget the little things that used to come to you so easily! Just the same, I got the arc of the hinges now the way I want them, and the doors clear the body the way they should for the time being. Of course, the proof is in the pudding when it comes time after paint and polishing, to see how well they'll work. OK------on to some pics............... It was finally time to get the passenger door jamb completed and make the support for the doors.........the biggest hassle is to try to get both sides to appear symmetrical, and then as I mentioned to get the opposite side hinges to work as well as the other side. In another post, you noticed that the vent window was still attached to the roof. I was reluctant to cut away the vent too soon until I had the dogleg structure built underneath the windshield pillar, as you can see this is quite thin. When I was in Lexington, KY------I stopped by a local Hobbytown, and picked up Trumpeter's scriber as someone had recommended one. This made quick work of cutting away the vent as I was able to now do so without much fear of the windshield post breaking due to the lack of structure. Since I now had the door jamb on the door itself now done with some minor tweaking to come later.........I now wanted to test fit the door into the opening. As you can see the door fits quite well, and there shouldn't be a problem with paint clearance down the road as the 3x5 card method was used here as well. Looks like I may tweak the very upper corner of the door to match the contour a bit better.............the entire body will get a very thorough going over before I move on to the engine, chassis and interior. The redone hinges are now in their places on the support. In the pic here, I'm just test fitting for clearance and to make sure there's no binding of the hinges as they're opening and closing. I made a small crack in the door jamb as this was the main side I had rework the hinges a second time. This is a small fix that can be done quickly before too long. A couple more photos to check the fit and clearance of the door................ Hmmmm............I may add some .005 plastic to tighten up the section a scooch............we'll see........ Also notice that I angle filed the trailing edge of the front fender trim so the door doesn't bind against this as well. Not a severe angle, but just enough so the BMF doesn't scrape away each time the door is opened and closed. Stay tuned.......there's more!