Mr.Zombie

The seats of my car don't look like the ones provided with the kit whatsoever, So I sculpted mine using Super Sculpey, baked, sanded in some structure, added a piece of round material along the edge, and I'll have to paint the whole mess with this strange muster before I glue them into place... I superdetailed the engine and the chassis too. Henrys "never fail" mechanical brakes are in place, though they can't be seen anyway, the battery was moved to into the engine bay and the whole engine was modeled after my real engine... Here's the battery: And this is how I built the head. It consists of 21 pieces instead of 3 now. I cut down the sparkplugs and drilled holes, The shiny base of the sparkplugs is 0,3 mm aluminuim tubing, the isolators are made from white plastic rod, and even though it looks like there is plenty of space between the rod and the tube, the head is so tiny that it can't be seen with the naked eye. I used the distributor from the kit, but driled a hole for a cable and I glued on some brass plates bent into shape (Model A's don't have ignition cables), each sparkplug got it's tiny screw on top, on the real car securing those "spark plates". The distributor got latches and it will get two more details when everything is in place and the body is installed. The engine became some love too, on the drivers side it has now a tiny voltage regulator on top of the generator and the + cable that will end at the battery... I also built a tiny fuel filter on the firewall out of some tubing, plastic rod and a transparent plastic ball... The other side of the engine got a trottle linkage out of 10 parts, the carburettor has now a drilled intake, three new elements and a fuel line that later will be connected with the fuel filter, and the whole thing has got a first coat of paint. That's what I have for now. Thanks for listening. Have a nice day.

Hello. My friends gave me a Monogram 1931 Model A as a present and I happened to have a cowl left from a 1929 Pickup Truck by Revell, owning a real 1929 Tudor Jalopy, I decided that I build my own car in 1:25 using parts out of these two kits. I didn't find a 1929 A kit anywhere, and I hope it doesn't exist or I'll cry because if you can buy one, then my efforts were for nothin'. I decided that I'd like to replicate the car as it looked like when I had it running for the first time, partly because I haven't had to build the downdraft carb manifold from scratch (build it anyway), and partly because that's how the car looked at some certain point, and not like now where it's changing constantly. The trim rings I added later that evening, therefore they are on the model. Only three as I couldn't find four of the same design inbetween my junk. I began the conversion by cutting off the sun visor of the '31 roof as it's lower on the '29, then I fitted the floor and front wall and cowl cut off the '29 truck cab, used some putty to fill in the gaps and had a full "twentyninish" body at the end of the day. I had to glue it all together at this stage alerady as I needed the body to be square and the dimensions correct. Unfortunalley, this ment also that I would have to build everything inside thru the door openings, including the skeleton of the body, highly visible on my car as it's missing the doorcards and sidepanels. The body needed some more alterations as I went along, some of the trim needed to be removed, the beltline of the body needed sanding and filling as it's different on the '29 than the '31, the roof was filled on my car long time ago, and so I sanded down the imitation of the kits vinyl roof. I also had to alter the mudguards, the profile of the '29 is very different from the '30-'31, but I couldn't simply use the trucks fenders as they are different in the back, so I cut off the rear fenders of the '31 and crafted them on the front fenders and running boards of the '29. I also did the safari window. Sanded down the original lines, cut out the window shape from clear acetate, and glued on some heavy black teflon tape stripes around it as the window frame, then sanded the edges, painted the whole thing in body color leaving a very thin black line between the "glass" and the "frame" as weather strip... Later I added a wiper and some supports out of wire, PE screw, pin heads and some plastic card. Here's how the whole body looks like today sitting on the chassis: The body isn't ready just yet. My real car was painted 40 years ago with some red oxide primer using a brush, therefore I airbrushed only a basecoat and the chassis, everything else I painted with a 3.0 and 2.0 brushes as it's aproximatley in scale with the brush used by whoever painted my car. The paint is heavily chipped and faded, the roof has been welded shut and it's very dirty. What you see here is just the first coats of paint, later I will add dirt, dust, filters, rusty streaks and so on. For now I concentrated on painting the rust as faithful on the model as I could, meaning the color and the shape of each rusty spot is kind of like it is on the real car, and I tried to vary the shade of paint right on the model to get this worn effect. But in terms of painting I'm maybe 40% into the model right now, so don't panic just yet.

The question about "pushing it" is a tricky one, as there is potential in these kits to go totally nuts with everything, but on the other side you have to respect the original, the age, and yea... The shirt was painted like that because I've only seen these with one colored shirts, which is a shame since there's plenty of space for "somethin". I thought either Hawaii Shirt or that one... Speaking of these kits, I'd love to be able to purchase the "Fink Exterminator" Kit.

Nice, I have one too, but ain't showable just yet.

Simple... I disagree. If you go by partscount, yes. But the fit is just horrible, so if you want to have it decent, and not a gluebomb, it takes a good portion of cutting, cleaning, sanding and whatnot to make it fit. There are Tamiya kits with 1000 parts that build faster. I dunno if it's a legit model. I didn't rally care Thank you all for the kind comments. Glad you like it.

Is there a gallery of that one?

Thanks. There is a dude, Weldonmc who made the whole range of those kits for the NHRA(?) Museum I think, he did some nice work on his, and was a huge inspiration, as in "how far do I push it". Check his work out here: http://ratfinkmodels.blogspot.dk/2011_03_01_archive.html

A few details and the car:

Hello, Hello, I just finished building and painting Ed Roths "Mothers Worry" by Revell. I tried to respect the original and stay as faithful to the actual kit as possible, but I altered some of it anyhow. The changes I made: - added a scratch built distributor - added plugwires - added gas tank cap - scratchbuilt the floor out of wooden sticks - scratch built the 8-ball - replaced the shifter and steering collumn with wires - added carb stacks - turned rope steering wheel as the original kit part was just a horrible crooket element. - swapped the legs of the fly with thin wire - opted for real furr instead of the hair element - added numberplate - added the Alter Boys club plaque The paintwork on the car itself is based on a T-Bucket racer built for this years Annual Race of Gentlemen in Wilwood, the "Sachem Special". Body was painted with a rattle can, the numbers, names and the indian chief were painted on freehand. The figure was painted almost exclusivley with acrylics, using black oil for very few washes around the mouth and heavy coats of high gloss nail polish on the eyes and in the mouth. The Hair was glued on with transparent laquer. The shirt is the same checkers as the shirt from Curt in American Graffitti. Enjoy!

I salute you sir. At 1/8 it would be amazing, at 1/25 this is a blast. Fantastic!

Very awesome! Love the overall detail, especially the headlights and the rods that keep the windscreen in place. What scale is it?

Safari window FTW! And the Move Over aswell. I'll paint that on my car.

Yea, but more cylinders is always better. And for that build, I'd go for fun anyhow since the engine will be in a "wrong" scale anyhow...

YES! Again, but this time with a link: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=1+32+f4u+corsair There, 1:32 and believe me it's giant. Somewhere down the path there is a resin Corsair engine for 17 Bucks. Can't get cheaper than that, and more detailed than Verlinden.

Absolutley different. Very good!

Where is the clapping Smiley? Need one. I am amazed by your engines. And especially by your plumbing. As awesome as it can be.

Whata' cool Idea! Try the 1:25 Corsair from Revell for the Engine, it is bloody cheap on ebay.

Thank you dude! Now off to buy a Catalina just for the tyres...

Show a mockup please. With wheels and stuff. Wanna droll over that guy. Will he be green?

Cool! Can you tell me what kit it is, and more important, where did you get that front tyres from?

Alyn, update!

Thanks folks. Happy that you enjoy it. Choice of the rubber is one thing, what is more important, I always sand the lips on the rim paperthin from the inside in the same angle the tyre has. All that so I can stuff the wheel into the rubber as much as it is possible, real tyres are inflated, and there is no real "step" between them and the rim. The Kit rims are always out of two pieces, if you sand 'em, you have to grind down a bit of the inner ring, actually as much as your new rim flushes more in that before sanding. Many people tend to forget that, and kind of destroy their stuff by just putting the wheel together straigt oob.

Exactly the way I'd do it mate. Love this "bubbles", was lookin' for something like it for my things (or at least for one of the future ones), and thought You have some magic recipie to get that look. Still, great work, and I'm looking forward to see more of your stuff. If I might maon about something though. The front wheel, I think the rubber is a bit too big, and with this drop, I'd narrow the front axle a bit. But hey, details. Keep showing what you did.

Changed the headlights. Again. Now it took just 20 minutes or so, plus time to repair the damage I did while redoing it. This time I didn't glue the supports yet, firstly, It needs a horn under the right lamp, and second, now I can make any tweaks without damaging the rest of the car as I did today... It's getting there, notice how headlights make or brake a car like that? Unbelievable... Well, now it has the bastard look I was after. Strangeley, I put a roadster body on it with the old lights, and it looked great, coupe? No go.