Mr.Zombie

Try Kingkit in the UK, that's where I got mine from. It was 70 pounds, so quite expensive, but still cheap for a Transit kit that was mint. The truth is, this kit is something you won't see twice at a model show. And though it's a curbside, and the chassis detail isn't up to date, the way the body looks like is just nuts. This might be the most acurate rendition of a car that I've seen.

Seeing your Escort and the time you've put into it, I wonder why you just don't hunt one of these down. They are rare, but not impossible to come by. Of course you'd have a project for several years, as you'd build it fitting your Escort, and that means basically redoing everything but the body...

It's been a while... I was buisy with other stuff, and my Transit hasn't been touched since spring. Now, as I was preparing stuff for another project, I needed things painted in trans red, and as I was at it, I thought I might aswell paint the rear lights of the Ford. And I did. As I had that, I painted the frames aswell, so that they are done. But then I figured I could put them right on, and the spare wheel, drill the exhaust, mount the windows, glue on the wheels, prepare this and that, add a wash to the side doors...

Keeping on keeping on. Dona alot, can't see much.

I got myself a set of colors to build the real car I linked first, and it was a complete fiasko. Therefore I rethought the colors, and that's what came out of it. Of course, this is just the beginning, there will be more grime, dirt, rust and so on...

What's a Warszawa? Well, the Warszawa is the first Polish post war automobile. Built under the license of the Russian GAZ M20 Pobeda in Warsaw from 1951 the first cars were basically the GAZs with very few differences (logos and so on), by 1957 the cars were altered a bit, today you'd call this facelift I guess... This is it: If you live in Poland, and had some 30 bucks monthly, then you could subscribe to a magazine and with each copy, you'd get a piece of the model, like a wheel, left front suspension, and instructions how to put it together. After 2 years you ended up with a 1500 pieces model that is mostly die cast, which makes it weigh baout 30 pounds when done, with workling suspension ("real" leaf springs in the back!), opening doors and windows(!), opening hoods and lights... I don't live in Poland, and got mine from a friend who bought the whole subscription second hand on polish Ebay or so. The kit itself doesn't leave much room for improvement in terms of detail, but it was ment to be put together without painting or gluing. The body was laquered in gloss red, a color that I hate on cars, and so I decided to improve the kit where needed, paint everything, strip the body and paint that using the car above as my main inspiration. I began small with the carburettor. What you see here is 15 pieces, and an afternoon of painting... Then I altered the head, the wiring harness was a mess, so I built my own using the kit pieces and scratchbuild sparkplugs and leads. Now the ignition works exactly like on the real car... From there it kind of snowballed, and after three weeks of painting I had an engine bay that would fool people owning the real car... I changed just minor details, like the readiator hoses with clamps, bits of wiring, stuff like that. I painted the trunk area too. The car on my pics is this petroleum/aqua greenblue, but it seemed to have been repainted at some point, and you can see the gray underneath. Therefore I opted for gray on the surfaces you wouldn't touch while respraying a real car. Mostly because I wanted to have it more interesting in terms of color, and on the other side I felt the gray gives me more room for painting scratches and damage. The mess... I was sent to the garage with the model, as it's big and heavy, my wife doesn't really want me building it in the kitchen. This is where I'm at right now. Today I successfully painted the hood and the trunklid, this week bit by bit I will have the whole body done. Thanks for looking, have a great day.

That is absolutley fantastic! Great job! Here's some of my works:

Very convincing, especially the rear quarters.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW! Incredible. Absolutley incredible!

Very awesome!

Oh, wow...

AWESOME! Supergood! I'm a fan.

Add a black wash to the belt guard and valvecovers to get some depth. You forgot the little antennas on top of the "mudguards", just above the headlights. I like the paintjob, I'm not very fond of the wheels as this car never had others than the ones with babymoons... Being my favourite car of all times, I own the kit, but don't think I'll ever have the balls to actually build it...

Fantastic!

Thanks, I try my very best. The fact that the rust is on the model is where it's at on the real car is a part of the reality ilusion. The model rusts where it would in the real life, thus helping me to cheat you into the whole reality deal.

Dunno, where the roof I got is from, or if it's a copy of whatnot. It just fits as you can see.

Jo Han's kits are wrong as they are scaled to fit a certain size box. Get in touch with Tom, he'll send you a roof that fits. In retrospective, the next time I'd do that conversion I'll use a convertible to do so. Might be that Tom would cast it, but I don't really want to send it off, wait, get back, blabla. And who knows if I even did a good enough job crafting the roof on. I certainly did a good job for what I'll do with it, but good enough for a product regardless of how low the quantity might be? Besides, I already filled the side trim holes, and that how I needed it, what to do with it now? Fill the rest? Rip it out? No Sir. Not gonna' happen.

Ummm... No?

To be honest, the weathering I learned on cars. I began with it because I suck at painting clean and shiny surfaces...

What a nutty perfect coat of paint! Awesome!

I can't cast ... Can you? I was scared of failing too, but I thought for quite a while and I came up with a solution that was quite easy and with minimal sanding and filling. It took me only two evenings to get the roof on the Revell body.

I used to build military stuff, but the last build is maybe 10 years ago. Not planning to ever come back, sorry.

I second that. I think that the cast is spectacular. Just the fact that it's a big chunk of roof on flimsy pillars, stuff plastic kit makers manage to warp and make corooket makes it worth for me. Contact with Tom is great too, very patient guy, willing to explain, sending pics of what he has and what you get. Great person. As for the side trim, als you can see, the car I build has almost none left, and what it has can be easily modified from the Impala kit. I think how to do the "Bel Air" badges, but it's a long way to go yet.

As the matter of fact the Transit still holds the record of "most common getaway vehicle" in the UK after bankjobs and robberies. Nope, no UK plates. My original idea was to put it on Cologne /Germany plates buy a trailer and hook it behind that thing, inside I wanted to put in some Ford spares, and a Ford V6 engine that I have from a Sierra XR4i by Tamiya, and the Sierra itself needs only few modifications to look like my current daily driver: And it could go on the trailer. It would be a nice little scene from my weekends

If you look for specific details on a stock Escort, whatever it might be, I own like five of old Fords, and my buddies have more than enough of these cars, so it should be easy.