Mr.Zombie

Thanks, I have a tiny update for you. It is really not much, but in my world it is a giant step forward, and a cool Idea I guess. I was a bit annoyed by the aircleaners, they are not molded right, they are croocket, the chrome bleed out, they have sinkmarks and so on. I had no Idea what to do with them, and planned to leave them as they were, but the more I was looking at the engine, the brakes, wheels, and the more I considered how much time I spent on trying to make it as real as possible (for my standards anyhow, I am far beyond many people around here), the more I thought that whatever I would do with the rest of the car those aircleaners would give it away as a model. Today I was at my garage, working on my real cars, and we were tinkering with the ignition when my buddy came up with a box full of electric stuff. All kinds of things, wires, clamps and whatever one might need. Now, I know what they are, and know what they are for, but no idea what they are called in english. Basically they are little metal tubes, that you put over an end of a cable, squeeze, and have a nice end of a cable, and then you can mount it on a clamp, or screw on somewhere. They are kind of protection things for the cable itself, and look like that: http://www.conrad.de...FB.EPS_1000.jpg .They come in different lengths and materials. I looked thru the box, and choose four that were equaly "pretty" with an even collar, and most round. Once home I first put them over the end of a brush handle (because they are squeezy, and the wood helps keeping the round shape while sanding and so on), cut 2/3 off, and sanded smooth and flat. Then I took the already glued chassis, and carefully cut off the original aircleaners without damaging anything (especially the mimic, which was not very easy, I have a talent for messing up stuff), and then I just glued them into place. They are in fact even, just looks like the one in the back is a bit shorter, because the engine ist tilt a bit. Tomorrow I will black out the insides and maybe add a wiremesh inside to add some detail. I leave them as they are, no paint, since all that fiddeling gave 'em a nice patina that goes along with the rest of the car. Tada! Vrrrroooooooommmmm! Have a good night folks. Here is 3 am on Sunday. No Idea what day is where you are.

Agree! ###### cool! Better pics please.

It was annoying the hell out of me. Such a horrible, horrible color I choose.

Don't have pics of the So_Cal Tank, but a cool period drawing that might help you for future whatever:

Ummm... Nah...

Looking at him, and seeing what you did. Was it even worth cutting up that Ed Roth figure?

OK, tiny update, but a giant step forward for me. I could not live with this horrible green that was hurting my eyes. Trying to age it just made it more annoying, toy like and shiny, and horrible. Tons of washes and drybrushing mistakes just made the whole engine look like "poo". So I washed the whole thing with dissolvent yesterday evening and made up two different solutions. A simple one and a difficult one. I went with the simple. I looked thru my folders with 300+ pics of Fourbangers in hot rods and found this one: You can clearly see that the engine is covered with old oil over rust, paint and cast metal. That should be doable in scale, and I get rid of that horrible flashing green that annoys me. Since I painted the starter, head, generator and other bits and pieces separate, I can age them a bit different and get that look. If that what I was goin' to do would work out. So at first I made myself some paste out of oil paint, dry pastels in brownish colors and some light grey dust color, and whatnot else. and used an old small brush to, well, not really paint, but more "tap" that mixture on the engine, varying the color and the moisture of that paste as I went (lighter on stuff that stuck out, darker in the shadows). I went over the whole engine body, and left the oilpan drity and rusty with some green flashing thru. To add some realism, I also painted that coolant leak on by the third cylinder, and scraped off some of that snot here and there with a scalpel to let the green come thru a tiny bit. Now I am quite happy. Engine is dull, dirty, structured, and most important MATT, and not shiny like dogs testicles... I still need to paint the oilfiller cap, and touch up here and there. Maybe a drybrush when it's fully dry? Where the starter be, I of course didn't paint that stuff on. It is also very difficult to make a good pic of how it looks like in real life so the first two pics are more the color, and the other two are more how the structure ended up being after all that stupid work. Now I have to build a third fourbanger, because I still don't have a green one... Bah... I am seriously considering this mudsplashes that the car on the first pic is wearing for this little hot rod. Any thoughts on that? Yay, or nay?

Today I don't have much, because I mostly painted. The frame got ready yesterday night, and I was able to paint a flat black basecoat, the first layer of many that'll follow to age it properly. Then I ran into a big problem, and abigger one. The big problem is that I painted the engine with automotive paint that doesn't allow me to wash and do all that stuff that I usually do, because the thinner disolves the paint. And all that after I already glued on the carbs and the exhaust mainfold. So I had to work with acrylics, nevertheless the Engine is still a bit sticky, and each layer has to dry before I do something else. Horrible. The next problem is worse. After I put everything together I felt that the color I choose for the engine (and as the matter of fact, this is the color 90% of all A engines have) is too bright and too liveley for the rest of the car. I found a video on the net where the engine is more dull, kind of turqoise, and that would be a better choice. But now it is too late to change something, and I have to get over it. I painted lots of oil stains, to get rid of the strange green, It is not horrible, but kind of odd. I dunno. Maybe after everything is painted and in place, and aged properly, I will feel better about it. Two more words on aging. One of the reasons I didn't do much more today is that I decided that I want to replicate the excesive lubing that most of the A Hot Rods seem to get. So I used a mix of artist grade oil paint and dust to "paint" the trans and some suspension components with this mix. Now I have to wait till it dries, which mal take few hours or more... I finished the front wheels aswell. There'll be no more paint on them. In fact I am even thinking of blacking out the lugs on the black rim, not very sold on that five "points"... Pics! The grille shell will be chrome. Hopefully... This one is borrowed from a ready model that I have here for a "surgery".

Does the exact opposite to me. Seing the works of the japanese guys, especially the theme choice that is beyond everything, makes me want to quit doing everything that has to do with some crativity, and work at a Ford plant or somethin'. But I can't, I have to be creative every single day at work, and not only crative, but creative on demand. I have no idea where my inspiration comes from, I just know that ideas have to come out somehow. And that is what I do. Doesn't matter how, I need to express myself one way or another, and although I don't have a permanent vent (like some people for example just draw), I kind of choose my form of crative output. Sometimes I'll draw like mad for a week, then I'll leave it for months just to find out that in this time I was photographing every single day...

Still quite an achievment I'd say. Congrats!

Yes, I had a look. You sir, are my hero. Your imagination and abilities are unbelievable. Love the tractors, especially the little Fordson.

What is 1/4" scale please? I'm not familiar with the quarterscale things. 1:25? And I'd love to see that as a separete thread with description and more (biig) pics. I love this!

Very stylish! I wouldn't drive it, but nevertheless, pure 1960ies.

How did you tint the windows with a marker so even? Unbelievable.

After all that, there was one more thing. During the whole process, I forgot to check if the wires don't scrub on wheels. Well, the don't! Slamin' huh? Now I need to glue some short pieces of wire to each shock and each axle, finish the steering, and then It's going to paint hopefully tomorrow, then I have to finish the engine before I add the fuellines and other stuff. The Engine has to be in place in order to glue the whole suspension together (front an rear axles are just glued to the rest of the frame via leafsprings, so I still can take the engine out. But the whole thing is so ###### delicate, that I have maybe two tries on this until I damage something beyond repair...

I keep it going. After I sourced exactly ONE picture of a Model A frame from underneath (and that after I know four people who have those things, but each an every one rebuilt to juice brakes ), where you could see how the brakes are attached to the rest of the car, I built the mechanical brake system from scratch. I figured either today, or again in 100 years. First I bent myself the main bracket out of cooper wire, and attached it right behind the batterybox underneath the frame. You can clearly see the position on many pics. Then I made some latches out of foil that in a real car keep the whole assembly in place. Now, on a real car you push the pedal, then that main bracket turns forward, and that way it pulls the brakecables which then pull on a "9"-shaped bar mounted to the brake cylinder. Kind of werid to describe. Here is a good pic of a front brake: You can see the wire just above the steering rack, and the small 9 shaped "thing" that moves backward in the pipe sticking out of the drum. I was counting a bit and figured that since the whole steering is oversized on the model, I will not be able to build that "thing" fine enough (and I don't have the tools and abilities to do such tiny assemblies), so I drilled a hole in each drum, glued the front axle to the frame, cut a cooper wire a bit longer than needed, faded it thru the hole in the drum from the outside, found the right position by eyeballing and glued it with superglue. Then I took some very very fine tubing and glued it on top of the wire, where that "thing" sits. Then I glued some tiny pieces of the same tubing to the rear drums, and built the whole mimic at each end of the main bracket, which consists of 3 pieces each, upper arm, lower arm, and a bolt in the middle, with a tiny hole drilled in each end. After that I went back to front and used some super glue to "shape" the transistion between the tubing and the "pipe". Now the fun began. The idea was to take some guitar string (doesn't bend that easy), and cut it to pieces, again, just eyeballed and cut the string adding about half an inch on one end. Then I bent one end of each wire ("L" shape), and had tiny hooks. Now I took each wire with tweezers, carefully faded it thru the tubing in each drum "backwards" and hooked it in the holes in each arm in the middle of the frame. Glued in place and repeated four times. After the glue set, I gently pulled with tweezers on the "loose" end, right behind the drums, and glued it to the tubing /the wires don't hang this way, but are streched under tension). After all was dry I just clipped the half inch of wire sticking out in the front and back. Simple. Now for the numbers, the whole brake thing was done in just three hours, and I needed 19 pieces that I made from scratch. The reward is most likley the first mechanical brake assembly on this forum (in this scale I mean), and it looks amazing! I almost regret that I'll have to cover it with paint... Pics:

Here 95 is 2,16 dollars for a litre when it's cheap. That is 8,64 a gallon. More or less. That is why I have a V6 for every day. Gotta' drive 'em as long as one can pay for this stuff!

Well, here they are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27851952@N00/5005052617/sizes/l/in/photostream/ Not grounding straps but spark something... I have seen that it works, I have seen many A engines with those, but yea... No idea how they are called.

Yea. Not one of them came out as a model kit, so I just got them real things. Have a nice house in the woods and a barn. They have it good here.

Hmm... Compared with what you building there is a whole lot of Japanese cars here. I'll try to change that. That was my very first car. I drove her 350000 kilometers in 8 years, and eventually gave as a present for my cousin on his 18th birthday, so he could commute to the university. Since I needed a car, I got one that did fit my bill. A 1975 Ford Taunus. Zero electronics, Zero electrics (minus lights of course) I drove it every day for about two years, and then I found that it was too good, and that was a great reason to buy a second car, so Taunus doesn't have to be on the road the whole year. Now it is just a plain nice weather/summer car that I use as often as I can. The daily driver for the next years was found cheap, and served me for the next 3 years and about 100000 kilometers with no breakdowns whatsoever. A 1982 Ford Granada: Since the European Granada is the best car ever made, the only reasonable thing was to get a 1976 as a stationwagon. You always need a stationcar. Then I thought that three cars are more than enough. I was wrong, the whole fun begins when you own at least five. 1960 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. Because every man on this planet should plant a tree, build a house, and own a V8. So I got the bggest one I could find. After the Cadillac it kind of happened that I got one of these. 1986 Citroen 2CV, 2 cylinder boxer, and as simple as a car can get. Then I have seen an old Volvo commercial with a 1960ies Amazon, and they claimed that "you can drive it as you hate it", and that was what I wanted to find out for myself. So I just did. You can see where this is going, at this point there were not enough Fords in my garage, so I hunted down this bad girl: This is a 1977 Ford Granada Coupe with a V6 engine. I got it from the second owner, an old gentleman, and he following three months I transformed it to a daily driver par exelence, and I have been using it ever since every single day: Then a dude wanted to get rid of a 1981 Ford Fiesta. Look in the papers, the car was born on 6th of May 1981. Just like myself. How could I resist? And then there is this girl. She is one of a kind. The colors bodystyle and the engine/trans combo makes this 1977 two door the rarest Granada on this planet. I think that is all I have in my garage today...

It comes together the mean lil' coupe. I am very happy with the look of it. I love the proportions and the parts I used would make hell of a high school rod back in the days I think. That is it for now. More to come when I'm a bit further. I have to think now, since the wishbones are glued to the transmission, and them are hangin' on the front axe, I can't do the brake wires, although I'd like to paint them together with the frame, so no idea how I will do that, need to sleep over it. After this one I will build a Tamiya kit, I like the detail on the 29, but I am sick and tired of having to kind of sculpt every single piece by myself because the of the flash that virtually every single piece is covered with. And I still need a model A grille shell that was missing in the box...

Since here is night when you have a day the previous post is where I was 24 hours ago. Today I had nothing to do at the office so I went home after 4 hours or so and since then I was building. I buffed out the painted body a bit, painted the engine flat black and then green. When that was drying I pained a Winfield head and a stock model A head silver, and added a dark wash. After that I felt that the stock head came out much nicer so I stuck with that, painted the sparkplugs and added the distributor. When that was drying I turned to the manifold and the header. Painted both flat black, and the header got a layer of rust made out of paint and pastel chalks in brownish colors. By then the head dried so I could go on with the spark... Things. I have no idea how they are called, but Model A's have these metal plates (copper?) that are acting as sparkcables. I made those out of some thin metal, bend to shape and glued on. Sounds easy? Well it wasn't. Originaly I decided to do them that way to set this one a bit apart of all the other cars that I and most of the people are building. And I thought that these would be much easier than wiring the engine (I hate that part of any build). In the reality it prooved just as tideous to cut out four equaly big pieces of metal, drill two holes on them ends and then bent them to shape so they are touching the sparkplug and the distributor. I could most likley wire 17 other engines with all those pieces that fell off my table (it was faster to do another one than to look for the lost detail). I still feel they could be a bit finer, but my sausagefingers are not able to do details like that much finer... After the head was ready I just wanted to clean the carbs, but ended up glueing them on the manifold and painting (I couldn't clean the air filters because they are one piece, and I can't chrome here). I drilled one hole in each floatbowl for future fuelllines, and another hole on the other side on the bottom for throttle mimic. I build them from scratch kind of eyeballing at Alyns work, and I was cursing the whole time. The mimic is made out of 6 pieces so far and it took me about 3 hours to glue that thing together. The carbs need a wash, a throttle cable, and a return spring then I call them done. Tomorrow I need something less annoying to do, maybe lights or a safari window. I dunno, something fun.

OK. More. Yesterday I glued on the lower quarter of the trunk, as I planned I used aluminum for that, bent it, shaped it and made some welds using a streched sprue that I soaked with plastic glue, put around the area where the real car would be welded and after it got soft I pressed the end of a No 11 blade to shape the welds. I added some filler here and there and spraypainted the whole thing with flat black to see where I am. After some sanding and filling I decided to get rid of the door handles, since the 29 came with chromed ones that'll look better than the molded anyhow. I painted some areas rust brown and masked them with maskol that I'll peel of after the final paint, and go from there with the rust, I want the body to be in reasonably good shape and want it to appear like it is wearing it's original paint. To achieve that I'll paint it flat black, sand down with fine paper and then I will polish the side panels, doors and so on. This way I will have absolutley smooth transistion between the faded paint on the top surfaces and kind of shiny, old looking on the sides of the car. I also painted the engine flat black and I will add some green using a preshade technique that I used for military stuff. This way I will have shadows wherever I want. Pics for today:

Now, that was the plan. Now let's see where I am so far. I glued the frame and the suspension, glued painted and dusted the wheels. I figured that one wheel without whtewall should add reality, so I painted one rim in tan, a common color for Ford rims back then. The body will be black, engine of course green. Sorry for the crappy pics. So? Whadaya think? Worth goin' in this direction? Or leave it?

I should finish my Merc, and my 59 Miller Meteor and then begin something new, but I just couldn't resist. A while ago I found this: It is a T on Model A frame, hoped up fourbanger, mechanical brakes all around and just dead beautiful. I have a 29 model A here, and T Tube was found aswell, and then I should have sat down and build what I see, but I searched the net further and found this: Now that's a hot rod! I don't have a Model A Coupe body, but found a 1925 T, and figured why the hell not? I glued the frame and suspension, figuring, if that what I am planing on doesn't work, I still can pot the Tub on the frame and have a "way out". The plan is as follows. Stock model A frame, just like these two on the pics, stock front axle, the stance will be defined by the wheelsize, no fenders, chopped 1925 T body, mechanical brakes where I will try to make the wires and fittings (now it's too late for changing mind anyhow, since I already drilled holes in the front brake drums), the engine will be a fourbanger with a Winfield head (if I manage to paint one of the two i have really pretty) but stock ignition (want to try these metalplates instead of wires), and two carbs, one sidepipe and yeah. Here, that is my main inspiration for the engine setup: Should be quite mad. The body will be oob. NOT. Unfortunalley the body I have is from a kit that has a Zed frame, and is missing the lower quarter of the boot lid, so I'll have to add that. I will be doing it in Aluminium that I have from a takeaway tray, so I can bend and dent it a bit, see most of these are welded there anyhow. Should add some reality, and I save myself tons of sanding and filling.