1320wayne

Very nice work Chuck. I'm jealous as I only have one of these kits and ecals to do the Blue Max car. I may go ahead and cast the body before building it though so I can do more like you. Can't wait to see more progress.

O.K., so I went way off the reservation on this one. I have never built a police car before, since I mainly do drag, Nascar and Mopar subjects, but this one sparked my interest after being able to find decals of a local law enforcement agency car. The decals came from the following site. http://www.policediecastdecals.com/ They have numerous decals to offer for so many agencies (especially Florida) and their decals work very well. My subject matter was a Revell, Easy Kit modern Chevy Impala police kit done up in Volusia County Sheriff's markings, which is the county that I live in. The kit was relatively simple, as it is merely a curbside kit, but nicely detailed nonetheless. I replaced the kit supplied light bar with one from a diecast. I used transparent paints to paint the inside of the lights to get the red and blue colors. I added the antennas and detail painted the interior to match the real interior colors of Volusia Counties cars. I added a police radio with wired mic. along with wiring the laptop computer. I also added a bit of detail to the dash mounted camera and placed a set of photo etch sunglasses on the dash. I used the markings for the K-9 unit so naturally I had to add a dog to the back seat. I used Black Chrome Bare Metal foil for the side windows. One glaring mistake that I made was missing the mold line on the front bumper. It's too late to fix that now so what I have planned is to sand it down like the front end of the car has made contact with something and then to be consistent I will add subtle weathering to the rest of the exterior. This build took less than a week to do and it was a nice break from all of the other projects that I have going on currently. Every time I see Gregg at a show he picks at me about going outside my comfort zone every now and then. Well, here you go Gregg. I don't think it gets too far away from my norm than this. Now, after doing this build, I'm really looking forward to the new Lindberg Dodge Charger police cars so I can build some more. Who knows, one day I may even have an entire shelf of nothing but police cars.

Excellent job John. I've never seen this scheme built up before. Your finish work is superb. I guess I have been missing something in the research world because I have never seen any of these late 60's funny cars with the blower hat turned backwards. Where did you find that reference?

Dave, I am working on small styrene plates for the front and back of the blower manifold that will fill the gaps that you see. Just cruisin along on this one. Here's more on the engine. Valve covers are painted and attached. Starting to get the pulleys in place. They were supplied from Protech. The photo etch blower holddown plate is from the Model Car Garage set. There will be plenty of photo etch bolt heads attached all over the engine as well.

More progress on the engine. The motor plate is a resin piece from the parts box that I reworked to fit between the framerails. The blower manifold is also a resin piece from the parts box that I added a photo etch burst plate on the front as well as aluminum inserts for the fuel lines. The blower has been attached and will have a blower blanket added later.

Scale Modeling By Chris also makes a very good set of drag themed tire decals which inlcude both the larger MH and the MH Racemaster decals on the sheet.

So I started work on getting the engine mocked up so that I can figure out where it will sit in the framerails. The engine being used is a Ross Gibson modern pro stock Hemi that will be configured to a blower setup. The blower is a resin cast Kobelco Superman blower from Holeshot Miniatures.

Roger, I used chassis references located at various online sources. Well, since it will be quite some time until this body sees any color I wanted to experiment with what kind of paint scheme I was going to go with. I used a scaled out drawing to work up an idea and I think I came up with a winner on the first try. I might continue to play around just a bit with some other ideas but ths one seems to be the direction that I want to pursue.

Here is a lot more done on the chassis. Only a few more cross braces to install and the funny car style drivers area to finish and this part of the build is done. From there I will move onto the front and rear suspension setups and then start working in the sheet metal for the chassis. I also did some work on correcting the rear wing for this body. The one that I did for the master was too high. I cut down the sides and created a new center section.

Making steady progress on the chassis. Never have I gone this far with a scratchbuilt chassis before. It's fun but takes quite a bit of time to measure and cut and attach all of the pieces needed. I will be slowly working on this one while I am also concentrating on finishing up some previously started projects at the same time.

The early versions of the Mustang II pro stock cars had an almost stock wheelbase. By the later 70's, pro stock teams that were still using this body style were lengthening the wheelbase for better weight transfer. The Dyno Don, Gapp and Roush and Bob Glidden cars were all primarily stock wheelbase cars. This car along with the likes of Herb McCandless, Eddie Shartman and the Super Fly car were done later and had longer wheelbases. Bear in mind that my data may not be 100% accurate but this is to the best of my knowledge.

Here are pictures of another completed project. I just put the finishing touches on this one within the hour. It is an AMT Firefighter pro stock Mustang II kit built as the Scott Shafiroff pro stock. The decals were provided by Bad Habit Motorsports, when they were around. The body has been lengthened to meet the wheelbase of the real car. The build features basic engine detailing such as plug wires and fuel lines. The headers were scratchbuilt out of solder and aluminum tubing. The whellie bars and parachute were sourced from the parts box. The resin cast helmet is in place because unfortunately, when I was attaching the chassis for the last time, as I was stretching the body to get the chassis in, the front end cracked on the upper drivers side fender. Normally I wouldn't choose to hide something like that but since the paint, decals and clear coat were all finished I really had no choice. This was a fun one to build.

The wheelbase is a scale 113".

Very cool, different looking project.

Here is the beginning of my latest project. And yes, I still have many other projects that I haven't finished yet. Those will be finished but you always need others on the workbench to bounce around to. This is a 69 Daytona Pro Mod based on the master that I created for Top End Miniatures, now Holeshot Miniatures. The body is based on the Chip King car and even though I really like his car I decided that I have to create something with a bit more color and graphics to it. So, this will be a phantom build designed after what I think Chip's car should, or could look like. The chassis will be primarily scratchbuilt out of styrene tubing and working suspension components. So, here is the beginning.

Happy Birthday to one of the nicest people that anyone could hope to meet. Thanks for all that you do for this hobby. I had to look this up for you. I hope I got it right. Hau'oli lā hānau

Excellent work on this one Mike. Seeing these nice Mopar builds gets me inspired to move some other projects aside and get to work on some of the large quantity of Mopar builds that I have. Can't wait to see it finished.

Excellent looking build. Love to see a Mopar with color matching steelies.

You know, Martha's never done anything to harm me so the next time I'm in Michael's I will have to look for this. Thanks for sharing.

Very nice builds, all of them. I also have a large collection of Snake and Mongoose builds. Unfortunately they are currently unbuilt. I need to get started on them one day so they can look great side by side as yours do.

Very nice progress. Excellent detail on the engine.

Here is a link to my photo album form this past weekends IPMS show in Jacksonville, FL. It took me a while to load the photos as I only took 452 shots. Great show! Enjoy looking. http://public.fotki.com/1320wayne/model_shows/2010-shows/jaxcon-2010/

Here are the best trees in scale that I have found. They are pricey but the detail is amazing along with the overall choices. http://www.virtualdollhouse.net/Customer/Earthscapesbyheath.htm

Very cool project. I love the color and that scratchbuilt bed gate is awesome. I have one of these that I have had in progress for a few years now myself and I scratchbuilt a front bumper for mounting a winch that looks pretty cool. I am including a pic. just to possibly give you some ideas. Can't wait to see the finished piece.