CorvairJim

Great save, my friend! Ain't Glue Bombs terrific? I have more fun rebuilding them than I do building fresh plastic! (I just wish I could find a source of "Freebies" myself... )

"Junior's High School Hot Rod" was a bunch of fun to build! It came to me as a $1 glue bomb, brush painted silver inside and out and the hood glued shut. I sacrificed a good bit of an AMT '66 Mustang to bring this old guy back to some semblance of life. Engine, tires and wheels, bucket seats all came from that 'Stang. Hey, "Junior" really wanted a Mustang, but all he could afford was this busted a$$ old Galaxie. Anyhow, the interior is obviously multi colored with the blue Mustang seats and the factory green-gold on the rest of it, but wait: The insides of the two junkyard doors are black, still sporting their original trim panels. The taxi markings on the door came from the Monogram '91 Caprice Taxi.

I haven't built an entire Taxi yet, but I did find a door off of one that I used to get an old sedan back on the road... Does this count?

Here's mine, built right out of the box: Sorry about the blurry pics. It was an older 2meg camera without a close-up setting.

I have a couple of those Jo-Han Ambulances in the works at the moment, sort of on-again, off-again builds. One is being redone as a chop-top pro street hearse and the other one has had its body front-halved and is becoming a motorhome! Like the man said earlier, it's just plastic - do with it whatever makes you feel good! I'd still like to get my hands on another of the Ambulance kits as well as one of the Hearses to build them box stock with some added details. (BTW - I just opened a sealed Jo-Han 1960 Plymouth Police Wagon kit last week, and immediately started kitbashing it with the AMT '57 Chrysler 300C for the current 1962-themed "Cannonball" CBP, so there! )

Lots so far, lots more to come... Thank goodness for the Dremel Moto Tool!

I'm no Ford fan, but the 1970 Torino Sportsroof is just a great looking body. I have one of these in my "To Do" stack. Yours looks great so far.

My thoughts exactly. I like phantoms in general, and I really like your name for it. (I'm a Chevy guy so, being a Ford, I've been known to "Mock one" from time to time! )

My Cannonball car is getting a lot of my attention at the moment, and I also have a commissioned build due in a month or so, but then I should be able to get cracking on my V-8 Corvair (and several other CBP builds I'm committed to! )

I've only done a couple of these, and had a blast with both of them. This first one is an actual 1966 AMT Corvair Corsa annual that I got on eBay as a glue bomb. It looked so rough that it gave me the idea to rebuild it this way as soon as I opened the box: I call this next one "Junior's High School Hot Rod" Junior was a part-time burger-flipper with NASCAR dreams: Sorry about the blurry pics of the Ford. I was using an older, 2meg camera without a close-up setting.)

I got a couple more hours in on the wagon last night after I signed off. I made a lot of progress on the interior. I decided to leave the 2nd seat in place, the way it would be at the beginning of the Cannonball. The floors are gone from the front and middle foot wells, and the 3rd seat was cut down to allow me to put in a flat piece of plastic for the folded down 3rd seat. I scribed lines into it to represent the three panels, and cut in the handle to lift the rearmost one. I also ground down the insides of the interior's rear side panels and the Chrysler's rear wheelhouses to allow them to fit together and still have the chassis fit up under the interior with everything in place where it has to be. After several test fittings, I made extensions to go on the bottom of the door panels to extend them down to meet the Chrysler floor. Would you believe the interior bucket was 3/8" too short??? I knew it looked too shallow, but that's almost half an inch, folks! 3/8" in 1:25 comes to 9" in 1:1! How would YOU like to have 9" less depth to the foot wells in YOUR car? Anyhow, I scribed lines in the bottom of my new side panels to represent the sills on the floor at the bottom of the doors. I still need to make kick panel extensions to go up in front of the doors, and extend the seats down to the right depth (the back one down to the floor and the front riding about 3" scale above it). In typical early 1960's Jo-Han fashion, the seats had sharp cutoffs at their leading edges instead of curving over. I took a few minutes to sand them to a more comfortable radius. I'll be cutting the pedals from beneath the Chrysler's dashboard and attaching them to the underside of the Plymouth's dash. I'll add my own dimmer switch. The Plymouth kit comes with a clunky piece that's supposed to combine the shift lever and turn signal stalk on one ring that goes around the steering column. Ain't gonna happen in this model! I'll make my own, thank you very much. Mine will actually look realistic, as opposed to the hugely out of scale things Jo-Han wants me to use! That ring even has a tachometer mounted to it's top! (How many 1960 Plymouth wagons do you suppose ever had a column-mounted tach?) I'll post a couple of pictures once it's closer to being ready for paint.

Phew, that's an incredible build... ESPECIALLY for a guy who's just getting into the hobby! Lovin' it!

Nice work! That 'Vette engine looks like it was born there, and takes the famous Mazda rotary 'hummmmm" right out of it!

She's a winner! I need to get some of those P.E. Yenko badges...

"Impressive" doesn't begin to say it for me. How about "FLIPPIN' AWESOME"?

Opened it two days ago. Looked at things yesterday and decided to kitbash it with an AMT '57 Chrysler 300C yesterday. I cut and glued some styrene today. I figured that the first thing I needed to do was to make sure everthing would fit the way I intended, so out came the ruler and I started measuring. Then I roughtd the 300's floor pan, interior sides, dashboard, firewall, back seat, and chassis together to test fit to see if everything would fit in the wagon body. So far, so good, so I got out my trusty X-Acto with the scribing blade in it (the tip snapped off a #11 blade) and scribed the engine bay sheet metal out of the 300. Then I cut what passed for the radiator wall out of the wagon and did my first test fit of the 300's engine bay in the wagon body. I found I had to cut it right in front of the radiator wall, so that's what I did. Two minutes with a razor saw and we're almost there. A little finessing with some of the plastic bits molded inside the wagon body in the hood hinge area and where the radiator wall used to be and we're nearly there. I got out the Dremel and took down the top of the radiator wall ablut a scale inch so the hood would fit and Voila! It was like it was intended to go there all along, like AMT was channeling the engineer that made the Jo-Han molds all those years ago when he did the 300 molds! Gee, ya think that maybe that Mother Mopar might have used the same basic car for these two? Now to get started cutting up that 40+ year old interior bucket!

Better luck next time, Harry! (... The skunk is dead.)

My first thought was that this can't be plastic. I thought it was an old Tonka, Structo, or "Buddy L " toy that had been left outside for a couple of decades and had a new set of wheels put on it. The rust job and weathering is that good! The only suggestion I could make is to highlight some of the faded trim to make it look like it might once have been chromed. (My SECOND thought was that this has to be Mater's cousin!) GREAT JOB!!!

Well, here we go! Opened up the old Jo-Han Plymouth wagon last night and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a Fury Sport Suburban and not the Savoy Suburban shown on the box. The dressier looking car should blend in with the scenery better than a stripper, at least in my opinion.But... WOW! This is one PRIMITIVE kit! The interior bucket is so shallow that there's not even a driveshaft hump! It has a completely flat floor (something that I am used to, being a Corvair guy and all... ), but I know right off the bat that I'm going to have to do something about that! The engine has this thumpin' huge hole running right through it for the big ol' plastic axle. One more detraction from an already underdetailed engine bay. I suppose I can always close off that hole and rig the wheels independantly - the right way. Or I could take an engine from oner of the kits I have on my shelves. Hmmm... How about the early Hemi from the AMT '57 Chrysler 300C? Let's see... Where did I stash that kit... Hmmm... Oh yeah, there it is, in that stack of Mopars I'll probably never get around to building. Off comes the shrink wrap... Yeah, that looks like it'll do the trick, all right! Huh? What's that? That chassis looks a lot like the basic, underdetailed one from the wagon. I wonder... Where's the 300's floor pan? Oh, there it is - AND IT FITS LIKE A FLIPPIN' GLOVE! Long story short: That Chrysler 300 will be roughly a Chrysler 137 by the time I'm done with it! It's sacrificing it's frame, floor pan, suspension, firewall, inner fenders, and drivetrain to my Plymouth wagon Cannonball project, as well as other bits and pieces, most likely. Anyway, on to tonight's Happy Snaps... Pretty crude, huh? Check out the fit of the floor pan in the wagon body. It's just in sitting there, no tape, and it's not spreading the sides of the wagon body one bit. There is no gap at all between the inner fenders and the body's quarter panels! I'll be cutting up the wagon's interior bucket to use the side panels. I'll extend them at the bottom to match up with the 300's floor pan. The front seat from the wagon will be used, but I'll be fabbing up a flat deck behind it. The 2nd and 3rd seats will be folded down for the race for spares and groceries, and so the 3rd crew member can get some sleep between shifts at the wheel. (P.S. - Many thanks to Niko for showing me what an early Hemi is supposed to look like. I hope mine comes out somewhere close to as nicely as yours did!)

It is??? OUCH! There's still time to go with Plan B: I just received a Revell 1970 Trans Am glue bomb with a usable engine setup. I may switch over to that. Thanks for the head's up. I was going to try to find some clear semi-gloss, but your idea sounds like it would help vary the tone from panel to panel - the doors would look different than the seats, which would look different from the dash pad, etc. I like it! Anyhow,here's what happened today: COLOR! I'll probably have to respray the hood because of some stuff that got in the paint (look at the tiop right of the hood in the photo), but the reat of it went down nice and smoothly. It looks a bit "Orange Peely" in the pic, but that's just the metallic particles. I didn't do such a good jub staging this photo - The bumper caps are hiding behind other stuff! In the front right is my first attempt at steering wheel for it. I don't have the right wheel, but I have a possible line on one. If anyone else out there has one, let me know! It's the regular 3-spoke wheel the color of the car's interior, with the Pontiac "Arrowhead" in a circular badge in the middle:

Y'know guys, that's just the response I expected to hear. Seems the kit is sitting right here beside me... Pardon me a sec here... um... hold on... Ah, that's better - no more shrink wrap. Hmmm... Pretty basic stuff here. Lots of flash. The old Jo-Han dreaded plastic straight axles - I'll have to do something about them. I'm assuming this is a 413 wedge in here - I have a Cross Ram setup that should work on here pretty well, or maybe I'll just go with a complete engine from the Lindberg Dodge 330 kit. Or maybe the Hemi from the AMT Chrysler 300... Oh yeah - This is gonna be FUN!

Being born in 1962, I have to get in on this one. I've been following it from the beginning, but I really didn't ahve any hard and fast ideas of which direction I wanted to take my build. I have three possibilities in mind, involving a kit I just got in trade and two more that are on the way: A Jo-Han 1960 Plymout station wagon (I'm primarily a builder, not a collector), a '62 Pontiac and a '62 Electra. I'm thinking primarily about the Plymouth: It's a couple of years old and a family wagon besides, two things that make it less likely to attract attention from Johnny Law. It has that big back deck with the back seat folded down for the third crew member to sleep while the other two are driving and navigating. It has plenty of room for spares and supplies. The "Deuce-And-A-Quarter" has a lot to speak for it too: Being a high-line car, it doesn't sttract attention like the Pontiac would. In '62, Pontiac was already developing it's performance reputation, but the old "Nail Head" in the Buick could be built to move a 2 1/2 ton hunk of iron pretty quickly! Just hook it up with some Police-spec tires and cut it loose. Cruisin' in style to Long Beach! Any comments about which way I should go would be appreciated.I'm leaning toward the wagon. There's one snag: Even though I am mostly a builder, it's still hard to tear the plastic off a 40+ year old kit that seems to generally sell for over $50 nowadays.

What the heck. I have until the end of the year, right? I hope to have a new air conditioner in my attic/workroom by spring so I can work through the summer this year instead of putting my models on hold for about half the year, so I'm going to commit to this thing with a mid-engined, V-8 powered Corvair coupe. Count me in and EAT MY DUST!

This can only mean one of two things, Harry: Either you gave us one that was way too easy or you skunked us BIGTIME this week!

"1 Adam-12, handle code 3"!