mr moto

Thank you everyone. I swear it was easy! Glencoe offers a number of these mini-kits and I'll probably buy some more - after I build the Ferrari. They're great fun!

A quick fun little project to recharge my batteries. A Glencoe re-issue of an old ITC kit from about 1955. They don't get much older! The small size wasn't much of a problem because of the low parts count and minimal detail. I lowered the stance and replaced the wheels and tires with some from old Aurora Model Motoring cars. BTW, the Glencoe box art shows an XK-150 but I think ITC originally showed what was in the box. Thanks for looking!

A good opportunity came up the other day take these photos to illustrate my comment about the difference between Grex and Iwata nozzles. The one on the left is Iwata and the one on the right is the Grex. You can see that there's a great difference in size even though the opening sizes are the same. I find the Iwata can be hard to handle and hard to find if it's dropped. Also, very large paint cups are available for the Grex. Here's the one that I use when painting car bodies: As you can see, my Grex is a side-feed but similar size cups are available for top-feed and if I was was doing it over again I'd get the top-feed brush. They're just a little bit simpler and easier to clean. When I bought mine the large cups hadn't come out yet. As far as thinning the paint, I don't find that it has any special requirements that are different from any other airbrush. For instance, if I've decanted some paint from a rattle can I don't thin it any further than how it came out of the can. Lacquer is what I typically spray. I don't know if enamels might be different. Hope this helps out!

Progress has been kinda slow. Haven't been spending too much time at the bench lately. Gave the hood one more test fit before giving it the final touches and found that it warped a little after painting. I've had this problem with relatively thin resin parts before. In fact, that's why I made this hood with a molded in sound deadening pad - because a previous one had warped and maybe the extra thickness would prevent that. So I decided to bend it a bit using hot water. This is my sophisticated hi-tech heating rig: To save time the water was heated almost to a boil on the stove and then I used the cup warmer to keep it hot while I worked. The end result was much better but I'm not totally satisfied and might try doing it again. Have to weigh the risk against the reward and decide. Putting the correct curve into a complex curved part like that is not as easy as it looks. The sound pad was painted with Duplicolor trunk paint which has some texture and a a sort of slightly speckled appearance. It gives a pretty realistic look. I made a grill insert out of some Model Car Garage photo etch mesh, added an emblem that was foil cast using the one on the rear deck panel as the original, Alcladded the whole works, and then put another Studebaker crest decal on it. BTW, when you're painting photo etch or really any metal parts it's best to start with Duplicolor self etching primer. It really increases the adhesion and durability. Here's the hood after that plus a foil trim added. Yay!! Finally another finished part. Part of the reason for slow progress lately is that I'm waiting for some new foil to come in. The foil I have on hand is causing some issues so I ordered some new direct from BMF. Here's the "glamor shot" so I can admire my work for a few minutes. It's getting there! Here are the exhaust tips I'll be using. They're reshaped from the ones that come in the Round2 '59 Imperial kit. They're not actually correct for a 56J but are similar to the ones that Studebaker offered in 1957. I like these better and they were easier to make and the Authenticity Guide says that dealers installed a lot of these on '56 cars. Anyway, it was time to gather up all the "small" parts, which are really almost everything remaining, for a painting session. Most of them got an Alclad treatment. A few were painted flat or semi-gloss black. My favorite semi-gloss is Duplicolor flat black primer followed by Tamiya semi-gloss clear - all rattle cans. I'll stop here but I hope to be back soon with it almost finished - maybe all the way? See you soon!

Excellent work but isn't that actually the 1955 300 instead of a 1956 300B? The color definitely looks great on that car.

I like what you're doing very much. That's a huge improvement over what came in the kit. This will be interesting!

I have a Grex and an Iwata. Both are excellent airbrushes. The small parts of the Grex, especially the nozzle, are much more substantial and easier to handle. The trigger action is a great feature.

If you opened an AMT, Revell, or Tamiya box and saw a Ferrari, Mustang, or Bugatti with a body that looked like that you would demand your money back.

Made a little more progress over the last few days and it's starting to look like a project that can reach a conclusion after 10 years! Got it up on its wheels and it already needs a front end alignment. Actually, the tie rods haven't been installed yet and they won't be until the body is on the chassis and the engine is installed. I'll need the extra access room when connecting the exhaust to the engine. The body is next up. Step one is to respray in white primer. I always use gray primer first because it seems to be the best at exposing flaws but the white primer will help give some pop to the light color paint job. The ceiling is masked off so there will be more light reflected into the interior by the flat white. Same reason that ceilings are usually white in houses. I started into the two-toning by spraying some Sunglow Gold on the rear panel, masking it with a pre-cut pattern that I made ahead of time, and then overspraying with Yellowstone. At this point, I realized that I had forgotten to pre-foil the Golden Hawk script on the rear panel so I had to retrace my steps a bit and do that. So that's a rough trim that was painted over again with Sunglow and then the high points of the script were rubbed clean. All the Yellowstone was masked up like a mummy, the body sprayed with Sunglow, and then unmasked to give this result. I used one of these blue abrasive sticks to reveal the script. Those sticks seldom get used by me but in this case it seemed to have just the right reach to rub the script without bothering all the other textures in the area. Don't know why the picture turned out so strangely colored but that is the same car with the same paint! So I'm about to start cleanup and prep for the clear coat but it seemed like a good idea to also foil the emblem on the rear panel before clear coating. It has a decal on it and decals don't always adhere to foil as well as I'd like. A few coats of clear lacquer should take care of that problem. And that's where it stands right now. This evening, I might be able to spray that clear.

I built that kit last year but I really don't remember what I did for a distributor. I'll check on that and see if I came up with a really clever solution (doubt it, though). In the meantime, good luck with it and I'll be following.

1/16 brass rod works for me.

As promised, I'm back with another update. At this point, the build is starting to look like something that you could call a model car - it's about time! After completing the front end plastic surgery the body was finally ready for primer and after a good post-primer looking over I was amazed that it didn't reveal any major problems. There was just one little easy-to-fix flaw on a corner of the hood and It was looking like this: And then - just in the nick of time - this showed up in the mailbox. MCW is great for providing hard-to-find factory colors (like the ones that Studebakers came in). I've never used their clear before but if it's as good as their other paints it'll be great. The paint scheme I've chosen wasn't on of the most popular but It's one of the most mid-1950's-ish paint jobs I can imagine. Those bright, splashy, multi-color paint schemes were almost exclusive to the mid 50's. This one has the rather poetic name of "Sunglow over Yellowstone." I saw a photo of a 56J painted this way on the net and knew it had to be. In the meantime, the chassis was coming along to the point of having the exhaust and rear axle installed. The chassis is just basic kit assembly from here on. The wheel halves have been painted Yellowstone as the factory would have done: Notice that these are 8 wheel halves but they're all inside wheel halves. Four of them are styrene from the donor kit and four are resin. I needed to do that because the only correct wheel covers available were Modelhaus repops of some ancient AMT promo wheels and they were just a little too small diameter to mount in the tires (Modelhaus #428 medium wide whites). The solution was to use inside wheel halves on the outside too and taper the edges of the wheels to nestle down in them. The promo wheels also had a long neck that had to be cut down. Here's a comparison of before and after: It's all for the good, though. Doing it that way allows the painted edge of the wheels to show just as they do in 1:1. So I'm pretty pleased with it. That's all the progress so far. I'll be back when there's more to show!

Finally getting around to a new update! Continuing work on the front end rebuild: Added the lower pan from the '53 Stude kit. And then the resin side grill openings. I don't know what to call this piece but it holds the strike plate for the hood latch that i removed from the '53 donor kit. Later I decided to remove it from the chassis and attach it to the apron I made earlier to simplify painting color separation in the future. This little bit is a reinforcement that ties together the apron and the lower pan. Quarter round Evergreen was bent in place to create what will become the chrome trim piece across the front end. It was glued in place all the way across and then cut open so the hood can be raised. The hood rests on this little plate when closed. The hole in the corner will accept the support rod to hold the hood open. I made these very simple hinges for the hood. That downward leg will have a small hole in it to accept a pin (installed after the hood is on the body) that keeps the hood attached to the body. This type of hinge doesn't swing smoothly like some more sophisticated styles but it allows the model to be displayed with hood open or closed and it doesn't take up much room. The area between the dashboard and the firewall is very cramped on this car. The separate wipers are a big upgrade from what was molded into the resin body. These aren't the ones I'll actually be using - found some that are better proportioned. That's it for right now but I have some more stuff to post later today or tomorrow.

I'm thinking that mini '32 is actually an Austin Bantam. Yes, no?

Your '64 was one elegant looking ride!

That was a fun side trip thru Packard Hawks, etc.! BTW, when I said that the toilet seat was not optional that may have been putting it a bit too strong. What it was was "standard" - that's the way the factory was building them. But Studebaker (and by extension post-merger Packard) was well known for honoring almost any reasonable special request from a buyer. That said, it may have been deleted by request on a few cars. So after getting the chassis brace and dual exhaust fitted with the engine mock-up the time was right to do the engine. After studying photos of the big block Packard V8 here's is the "secret sauce" that I came up with: All the temporary glue joints were undone so it could be painted, re-assembled and detailed. A lot of the pieces are resin copies of parts from kits that i already had. I copied them so they would still be available to build those kits and, besides, I might want to build another Sky Power 352 someday. I don't seem to have any photos from the construction process but this is how it came out - just needing a little bit of touch up work at that point. The air cleaner is a scratch built item and the owner of a real 56J that I contacted through the Studebaker Drivers Club forum went out to his garage and got dimensions for me. I can't give the members of the SDC enough compliments for their willingness to help! The color is my own mix of "Sky Power red". There's no record of the exact original formula and the color on restored cars varies quite a bit but it's always a vivid red and according to the Authenticity Guide it should be leaning toward orange. The fan belt is made from black Chart-Pak drafting tape and it came in that width - no slicing necessary. The resin body treats the front end as a sort of gaping hole to be filled by a one piece side grill, bumper, lower pan assembly: You can also see a little styrene filler piece to be used to re-angle the grill opening. Anyway, the build deserved something better so I made some resin copies of the bumper unit so they could be cut apart, trimmed down and incorporated into a more realistic front end. I tied it together with this little styrene apron that will provide a base to build a new front end structure. It's starting to look better already!

As part of my deep dive Stude-a-mania, I attended the 2012 Studebaker Drivers Club International Meet in South Bend, Ind. and took literally hundreds of pictures. The concours event at the fairgrounds featured an unbelievable number of Hawks of all kinds as well as other Studes all the way back to wagon days. Here are a few views of Packard Hawks. Note that in the background there is a sea of other Hawks filling the Hawk display area. This a great event to attend. Studebakers virtually take over downtown South Bend for several days and the Studebaker National Museum is not to be missed either. BTW, the toilet seat was not optional like it was on Chrysler products of the time. A few bonus photos:

Time for a new installment of the 56J build and thanks for following! Here comes a couple of minor details but some of my favorites to include on Stude builds. The windshield washer bag appears on almost all postwar Studes (if they had the optional washer) so I've made these several times in the past. The bag itself is my resin re-pop of an old JoHan part and it gets decorated with a homemade decal. Most of my images (maybe all?) for under hood Studebaker decals come from the on-line catalog of Studebaker International, a parts supplier to the 1:1 Studebaker community. This build also requires a battery upgrade since the '53 donor kit includes a 6 volt battery but by 1956 Studebaker had stepped up to 12 volt along with most of the rest of the auto industry. They always used Willard batteries as standard equipment (though some later ones were labelled Studebaker) so that's a cool detail to include on these builds. A battery tray upgrade is also needed and on this car the washer bag actually hangs on the battery hold-down frame. At this point, the engine was mostly temporarily assembled so it could be test fitted to the chassis. More about the engine itself later. The 56J requires a dual exhaust system, unlike the donor kit, and I decided to fab one up from Evergreen styrene. It's amazing how much bend you can put into 3/32" styrene tube just with finger pressure if you take it slow. When more bend was needed I used heat from a little coffee mug warmer - kind of like a mini hotplate. The exhausts were made in sections so a slip-up on one section wouldn't ruin the whole thing and then connected with plastic pins. The 56J (and all Hawks from then on)also has an extra frame brace. It has an unusual shape so one pipe passes above and the other passes below the brace. I think that allows room for the engine to twist under acceleration torque without either pipe hitting the brace. I think that will do it for now but there's more to come!

Hi again! Thanks, thanks, thanks to everybody for the appreciative comments! I didn't know Studebakers were so popular but they've been special to me for my entire life. There's no particular personal or family connection but they just seem fascinating in a way that other cars are not. Next installment - still bringing you up to the present time. As of right now in real time, the interior and engine are actually finished and waiting for installation and I'm currently working on the chassis. So, the front seat was done much like the rear one but also needed some contour enhancement on the back side. Then it was time to make the dashboard. The R&R dash (at the top in the next photo) was right in a lot of ways but totally wrong in others so I decided to make a new overlay that would go on top of the AMT '53 dashboard. And that was it for the interior. Another installment soon.

I don't usually do WIP threads but since this is such a long term project it seems to deserve one. This build started about 10 years ago! After working on it for a while I found that my skills were being overwhelmed and life was putting a lot of demands on me also so I just set it aside to have a break. Before long that break had stretched out to 10 years but it's finally back under way. I don't plan to post any photos from the "old days" - just the recent work - and mostly let the photos do the talking with maybe a brief comment added as needed and I'll start a new post every ten or so pictures so they don't take too long for viewers to load. In the Studebaker world, the '56 Golden Hawk is usually referred to as a 56J. That was Studebaker's internal code for it. Most of my references came from the on-line Studebaker community which is large and has always been very supportive and helpful. The documentation for these cars is amazing and I frequently referred to the 168 page (!) Authenticity Guide that you can find right here: https://www.1956goldenhawk.com/manuals/56ghauth.pdf Here's what came out of storage: That's an R&R resin body with some improvements made already and more to come and a "Frankenstein" engine made to be a reasonable replica of the Packard V-8 (Stude called it a Sky Power 352) that powered the 56J plus bits and pieces from a '53 Starliner donor kit. That was in June of this year so now we'll start catching up to the present time. I decided that the R&R interior was unacceptable so work began on modifying the '53 interior to suit. Another post will be coming soon - still not caught up to present.

Great responses about making clear lenses! I was thinking there would be an aftermarket source where everyone was getting them but now I see that there's a lot of possibilities. I'll be trying some of those methods. Thanks, everyone!

To those of you who use the "drill out" method, where do you get your clear lenses?

OUTSTANDING!!! That's arriving in style when you pull up in that.

That's a great build. Beautifully executed. Congrats!! I'm loving all the CRAZY 60's style customs that are showing up!

Fabulous! What a great idea. Customing a custom. You have a great eye for that style and the work is top notch.