CorvairJim

I wouldn't have to build my way out of that wet paper bag, Rob: I'd just hack away at it with my trusty X-Axto knife. Of course, if the bag is really all that wet, it would soon become my RUSTY X-Acto knife! (Or at least the blade would... )

I'd like to get one of these some day to replicate a 1:1 '72 XA351GT that a friend of mine owns: http://www.motortopi...-xa-falcon-4788

Hmmm... That does give me an idea for a little bit of "Huh?" factor for my build: I could paint it in whatever the regular color would have been for a Plymouth engine in 1960. Even I know that the early Hemi was never available in a Plymouth, just the other four Chrysler divisions (Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial)... I think I have a little bit of web searching ahead of me this evening! (Edit: 2 minutes later - The Plymouth V-8 was red in 1960, the Slant-6 was light blue. One red Hemi comin' right up!)

For what it's worth, Robert, here's the way I see it: The EXP would self-destruct before making it halfway across Pennsylvania (3,000+ miles at top speed in a first generation ESCORT??? C'mon, think about that for a second... ), and the Coyote is so cramped that you and your co-driver would be at each other's throats before crossing the Ohio River... if the little kit car made it that far. That leaves the Mustang SVO and the Fiero. Both are probably dependable enough to make the distance, and the SVO has the legs on the little Pontiac... unless you stuff the engine bay full of small block Chevy motivation! They won't see that coming, yet there are a couple of different conversion kits on the market to do just that. It's still kind of cramped inside, but at least there's a sizeable console between you and the other guy to give each of you your own private space. I'm more of a GM guy than I'm into Blue Ovals, so my vote goes to the Fiero. Still, a Mustang SVO is unusual enough to be worth considering, and it has more room for food and spare parts than a Fiero does.

Thanks for the compliments, guys! To answer your questions/statements: Walter, I did the aftermarket-style bodyside moulding with a brush after masking it out. I went carefully along the sides to keep the silver off of the vinyl insert section. The rest of the trim was done with a silver Testor's paint marker. Those things make window trim, drip rails, wheel lip mouldings, etc. very easy! I didn't use Bare Metal foil on this one because I didn't have any on hand that I feel confident would stand up to being handled. The last three sheets of the stuff I've bought have had major adhesion issues, and I'm very close to giving up on it entirely. Charlie, I sure hope so! That was my thought all through the build. It's one thing to build to please myself, but something else entirely to build for someone else. Michael, I appreciate your comment, but the "Rockford Files" car definitely has it's issues. I messed up a bunch of details on it due to bad research. It has the Trans Am style steering wheel and engine-turned dash applique. Finally, I used 1:24 rims and tires on the 1:25 model, so they look too big for it. Shane: The Esprit was the luxury model of the Firebird in the 1970's. The Trans Am was the full-dress performance model, the Formula was the "Performance-on-a-budget" model, and the base model was aimed more at buyers who wanted a sporty looking car without all that actual performance nonsense! I call those cars "Secretary Specials".

I have this kit. I opened it when I first bought it, looked through it for a few minutes, and all but gave up on it. Seeing yours, I'm thinking about maybe giving it another look. Definitely a silk purse from a sow's ear.

She's lookin' GOOD! These Novas look good in green, and you picked a great shade.

Your "prehistoric El Caminos" look GREAT! I have a '55 Elky in the works myself. Like you, I got rid of the flange AMT put on the pickup roof piece to cover the cut, preferring to blend the two pieces together for a more factory look. I'm going a different route with mine: Mine will be a work truck as I envision Chevy would have built it. Like the Sedan Delivery, it will be in base 150 Series trim - the Nomad fender and door trim has gone away. I recontoured the rear wheel openings to the shape used on the other wagons and sedans, not the radiused look they used on the Nomad. I'll even be substituting a straight-6 for the 265 V-8. Blackwalls and poverty caps will finish off the stripper look. I have a number of other builds in line in front of it at the moment (for CBP's with deadlines... ), but I hope to have it back on the bench by fall.

Thanks, Chris & Charlie! I'm not nearly as accomplished as many of the guys on this site, but I like to push the envelope and develop my skills. I try to make each build better than the one before. I'm pretty happy with the way this one came out.

My current project became my prior project last night, so my Plymouth wagon is finally back on the table as I type this! Niko, I AM taking notes, since my wagon will have the same Hemi as you're using... Same chassis too! Being a Chevy guy, I need all the help with this Mopar stuff I can get, and it's good to have someone with that knowledge right here where I can look at how it's done right. Your model looks great so far, and I hope mine comes out something like as well.

Unfortunately it's in line behind a couple of other CBP projects with earlier deadlines. I have everything I need for it, including the interior from a 1966 annual kit 'Glue Bomb' that will have all the correct details for the year. AMT has reissued the "Late Model" Corvair coupe many times over the years, but always in 1969 trim. I can modify the '69 body back to '66 appearance just by removing the side marker lights, but the interior is another matter entirely. I think this build will be one that I use to 'decompress' when I get too wrapped up in another of my builds and need to do something different for an evening or two. Being a replica of my favorite car ever, it NEEDS to be done right, not rushed. I'll be posting a few shots of the 1:1 car withthe pics of the model when it's done, if that's OK with you... That modified Mustang sounds like a real beast, and your Skyline would have a ready following here in the States. Nissan never exported them here. More than a few have been imported by individuals and brought into compliance with all the laws and regulations (The U.S. doesn't require changing a right-hand drive car over to left-hand drive, so that makes it easier), but it's not a car you'll see everyday... or every YEAR for that matter, outside of the occasional car show.

This is sad. Such a great CBP and it went for over a month between comments! My V-8 Corvair is in line behind a couple of other CBP entries that end sooner, but I know exactly what I'm going to do with it... BEAT Y'ALL TO THE FINISH LNE!!!

A friend from a 1:1 car website PM'ed me asking if I'd sell her a model of a '77 Esprit that I'd built several years ago as a birthday present for her father, who had owned one back when he and her mom were dating and first married. He sold his pride and joy when their first child was on the way, but he often talks about "The one that got away". Well, I was pretty attached to that ol' Firebird model but I offered to build another one, in the correct colors (or at least as close as I could get in off-the-rack spray cans!) Of course, nobody ever kitted a 1977 Firebird Esprit. The closest thing available was a Trans Am... with the requisite hole in the hood for the shaker scoop, fender vents, and T-tops! I hoped to find the same AMT model that I'd used for my first Esprit conversion, but couldn't find one. I settled for the Revell version. I should have looked harder. The Revell version has the wheelwell spats and decklid spoiler molded into the body, obstacles that the AMT didn't throw in my way. I detailed everything I went through to fix these problems in an "On The Workbench" thread. The first one I did was meant to be a replica of the car from the old "Rockford Files" TV show, right down to the correct colors (copper with a tan interior) and California license plates. This one is Firethorn Red inside and out. Other changes and additions I had to make besides filling the hood scoop hole and T-tops, reworking the fenderwells, shaving the decklid spoiler, and shaving and filling the fender vents were converting it from a 4-speed to an automatic, hanging pedals from under the dash, adding sun visors and a dome light (and a sheet styrene headliner cut to fit to cover up the remains of the T-top framing), scratchbuilding a correct base Firebird steering wheel, finding correct Rally II wheels (and getting them to work with the kit-supplied wheel backs). Also, the Trans Am-style exhaust outlets were a non-starter for a non Trans Am, so I had to come up with some sort of street exhaust dumps. I decided to go with straight pipes from the muffler out the back beneathg the bumper - it was just a lot easier than routing a bunch of bent-up plastic rod around the rear leaf springs. Besides, it looks cooler. I had no rear photo of the car to work from, so I had to play that aspect of the build by ear. Angle-cut 2 1/2" pipes do the job just fine for me! Anyhow, take a look at what's been filling too much of my free time over the past couple of months... Posing with the model that inspired this one: Now for the beauty shots!

Well here we go. Last "Workbench" post for this one. Just a couple little oddn 'n' ends to finish up and it gets sent off to the young lady who asked me to build it as a surprise for her dad's birthday. It did throw me a curve this afternoon when I did the first test fit of the chassis intothe modified body: The reworked front wheel wells were too tight, and contacted the tires. The first photo shows how I taped a new cutline as a guide for V-E-R-Y carefully grinding it back a couple scale inches with my trusty Dremel. I had to redo the wheel lip moulding that I had already put on it prior to paint, but I didn't damage the paint itself. PHEW! Anyhow, here are just a couple of shots of the finished product. I'll continue this one in the "Under Glass" section.

A first-generation (1960-64) Corvair could be a handful in a corner... IF you overcooked badly into the corner, IF the tires weren't inflated properly (factory specs were, believe it or not, 15 psi front/26 psi rear on the first-gen cars), IF your shocks, tires, or suspension bushings were badly worn... Gee, that's an awful lot of IF's, isn't it! Fact is, my '66 Monza was one of the best-handling cars I've ever driven. Even without that car's adjustable gas shocks, firmer, shorter springs, or urethane suspension bushings it would out-handle any contemporary compact car and many full-on sports cars of the era. Light weight, a low center of gravity, and a 4-wheel fully-independant suspension can do that for a car. I'm not sure what American compacts were available in Australia in the 1960's, but a 1965-69 Corvair would out-handle ANY of them! And when I say ANY American compacty of the late 60's, I mean not only such cars as the Falcon, Comet, Valiant, Dart, Studebaker Lark/Daytona, Rambler American, and Chevy II/Nova, but also the Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, and Javelin. In fact, during the first generation Corvair's run, only the Pontiac Tempest, with it's great weight distribution due to it's rear-mounted transaxle, even came close.

Here's an '85 that I built back in 2001 for my daughter Sarah for her 16th birthday. She told me that since she would be able to get her license that year, she wanted me to give her a Corvette for her birthday! I decided to do just that... And I managed to get away with building it right under her cute little nose! I just told her that I was building it for a guy from work who wanted a model of his daughter's dream car as a birthday gift! (I didn't lie - I'M a guy from work, right? ) She was born in 1985, so I decided that the model had to be an '85 too. I backdated an '87 AMT annual, because it was the closest I could find to an '85. Removing the high mount brake light from the top of the hatch was just about all I had to do. Her favorite color is bright yellow, so the car would have to be yellow. (These pictures were loaded into my Photobucket account from my page on Motortopia.com, which accounts for the blurb in the bottom of each shot. I list the original pics when my old computer fried it's hard drive... ) On the rear of the car you'll find a custom Pennsylvania vanity plate, "SWEET 16", for Sarah's 16th birthday. Like I said, I built this kit about a decade ago, and my skills have improved since then. Looking back, I find it surprising that tis is the only Corvette I've built since I've gotten back into model building in the late 1980's!

Oh come on! It's one of Juha's models? Any more real and a mouse could get into the darn thing, twist the key and drive it away! Dirty trick, Harry, dirty trick! (But keep 'em coming - that's what makes the game interesting... )

I surely am. My father was a private pilot for several decades and instilled a love of flying in me too. Of course, another part of that comes from the fact that my folks gave me the middle name "Eugene", after my great great uncle. My older daughter carried on the family aviation tradition when her first daughter was born - She named her Ameilia, after Amelia Earhart. She added the extra "I" just to give her a touch of uniqueness. I couldn't agree more! You do it the way you want to do it - it's YOUR model! As I see it, if the technology to make a part was there in 1962, it's fair game. Whether or not it had actually been done for a given use up to that point is immaterial. After all, somebody had to be the first to do anything, right?

This thread is a great idea! It's a good way to get to know other guys on the site and how they see themselves. I've owned Corvairs ever since November of 1980, when I bought one as a used car to get myself and my wife and baby daughter around. It seems that the '65 Chevy II 4-door I had died and I needed to replace it. I wanted a fun-to-drive car that would be decent on gas... and it just about had to be a Chevy! (I was raised on Chevrolets and, car guy that I was and am, I was and am fanatical about Chevys!) I found a guy advertising a pair of Corvairs in the Philadelphia Inquirer, so I made an appointment to check them both out. After a 10 minute test drive in a dark green 1965 Monza coupe with a 4-speed, I was sold on it! Over the following decades, I've owned about 10 more Corvairs, everything from a 1961 Greenbrier window van and a 1961 Lakewood station wagon through a 1965 Corsa converible. My most recent one, which I had to sell for economic reasons (###### this economy!) was a '66 Monza coupe with it's factory 140 h.p., 4-carb engine worked to the point that it put over 220 ponies to the rear wheels, enough to flat run away from just about any 5.0 Mustang. Anyhow, with this background, my screen name on every website I'm on and e-mail have been CorvairJim just about ever sinced I first went online in the mid 1990's. My avatar is just an image I found on another website I'm on. It's actually the avatar of a fellow member of that site, but I liked it so much that I got his permission to use it myself on any site he's not on himself. I might start changing it up every now and then too, to show off photos of my '66 Monza.

I know that The Monkees were a "Made-Up" band, thought up by Screen Gems as a Beatles take-off, to take advantager of the Fab Four's popularity, cueing off their two movies and how they hammed it up. I'm also unashamedly a fan of their music, and have downloaded two full CD's worth of their songs. I too had the pleasure of seeing The Monkees (minus Mike Nesmith) in concert about a decade ago - Herman's Hermits opened for them. Both bands were as good as they were back in the 60's, and seemed to have just as much fun then as they did in the 60's. I have this kit upstairs in my stash and I might just break it out soon too. Does anyone else remember the episode where Mickey raced the Monkeemobile against a Cobra Daytona coupe? It took me years to realize just how special THAT car was!

I'm still concerned about how those would scale out. With the huge size of a B-29, my guess is that those would be at least 2' across, and you'd probably be looking for something roughly half that size. I bet that "Desert Boneyard" would have been something to see, though. I've seen film of them on TV and they were awe-inspiring. And to think these magnificent aircraft were just left there to rot away until they were cut up for scrap. I think I heard somewhere that there are only 2 remaining airworthy B-29's left in the world. My family has a background in Military aviation. My great-great uncle, Eugene Ely, was the first man to successfully fly onto and then off of the deck of a ship. He's known as "The Father Of Naval Aviation", and has his own display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Also, I have an uncle who was an Ace in the South Pacific in WW II.

That would be a Jo-Han '74 Olds Cutlass.

No roll cage, no roll bar, no roll anything! The only aftermarket safety device in this inherently safe car (an intentional jab at ol' Ralph Nader!) were a set of shoulder harnesses and my good sense in knowing my own abilities and not getting in over my head. The car was capable of a lot more than I was! I will be ading the aftermarket gauges the 1:1 car had - a tach in the instrument panel's clock hole and a pod of three gauges (oil pressure, head temp, and voltmeter) suspended under the center of the dash.

Well, it's like this: Even if it's 1:1, these early Cortinas were pretty toy-like except for the ones modified by Lotus. That makes it a tough call in and of itself! I'll say REAL this time around...

As I recall I got the body pretty well roughed out but I didn't have the final smoothing taken care of yet. The interior isn't there at all, but it sholdn't be too hard to do when I get back to it. I'm a little skeptical of bubble windows of that size in the early 60's. Surplus military aircraft bubble windows, like for side guns, would probably be bigger than you'd want. Round, flat panel windows are a different matter. Those were used in some aircraft as far back as the 1930's.