Ramfins59

Thanks Bart and Ray. I appreciate the encouraging words. I'm kind of bummed about having to fix he paint that chipped because up until that happened everything was coming along great, with no hitches, but hey... "stuff" happens right...... It will all be right at the end of this project... just a little "bump in the road" so to speak.

Great job so far Kerry. This is looking really cool. Keep up the great work.

Yeah I've shopped at beauty sections of stores for sanding boards and sticks, at JoAnn's for fabric, and at doll house stores for those great little brass hinges and other "little" items for detail stuff.

OK... five hours to trim the BMF on this beast... my eyes hurt... It all came out pretty well...... except...... when I peeled off the excess foil on the long side trim pieces, apparently the new XActo blade cut through the paint in spots and the excess foil pulled off teeny, tiny chips of paint...Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!! Plus the BMF is not totally even along the side trim. This only happened on the side trim. My plan is to remove the foil on the long side trim, touch up the paint with a teeny brush and allow that to dry. Then I'll clearcoat the whole body. Once that is dry and polished (if necessary) I'll reapply the foil on the long side trim, that way the XActo blade will be less likely to cut through the paint again. It's extra steps that I wasn't planning on but I feel it's necessary to have the model look good. In the meantime I can reassemble the interior. Thanks for following along..

Thanks John, and yes, Tom is correct. I also bought several pkgs. of those cranks and handles from Norm Veber and I plan on buying more. They are perfect for interiors that don't have good side panel detail. Just paint them chrome silver and drill a small hole where you want to mount them and put a tiny drop of CA glue in the hole first. They are really great.

Thanks Ron. Good luck with your "glue-bomb". I hope it comes out the way you envision it. Hey John..!! Thanks a lot. My friend picked this Promo up from EBAY back at the end of November. Yeah it has been awhile hasn't it..?? My friend Mike can't wait to come pick this model up... He sent me a picture the other day of a display base he made for it... He said he was "bored"... He's got a 1:1 "Rambler" script trim piece mounted to a wooden base with a sticky note sticking up on it that says..."COMING SOON"........ Do ya think he's anxious to get it......???

I was finally able to detail the interior side panels today... The armrests are scratchbuilt and the cranks and handles are from TeplMinCoMd. And I also unmasked the painted body. Still lots to do but it looks like I'm on the "home stretch" now that the paint is done and it came out good. Thanks Ira and Derrick, I appreciate your encouragement. Further progress will be posted as it happens. Thanks to all for following along.

Thanks guys. Troy I used Model Car Garage photo-etched seat belt hardware along with their seat belt material. I think the same belt material can be found in the ribbon section of either craft or fabric stores.

OK... Here's my stash. Two Lowe's plastic shelving units... models are more or less in year order on the top 2 shelves. (Sorry... I posted the same picture twice.)

Here's a picture of the repainted seats. I think I'm finally done with them now. The interior side panels are painted but are still drying... I still have to apply chrome foil trim and install the door handles & window cranks. Pictures will follow when they're done. I also got to paint the lower body the Cordovan color and that's drying too. Thanks to all for following along on this build.

Thanks a lot Charlie. Yeah I'm looking forward to the final product too. I'm liking this car more and more as I work on it. I think I'll have a tough time handing it over to my friend when he comes to PA to pick it up (No way does he want me to ship the model to him.)

Thank you very much Bart, Bill, Don and Chris. Your positive comments mean a lot. It's good to know that I must be doing something right here. I wasn't happy with the way I painted the seats, comparing them to the 1:1 reference pictures that my friend sent, so I repainted them. I'll post new pictures tomorrow after they are fully dry. I also started detailing the side panels and I'll try to post pictures of those too when they are done. Thanks again.

Gently bend it around a curved item close to the curvature of the stack.like a paint brush handle or the stack itself.

Thanks very much Bill and Erik for the encouragement. Yes Erik it was a lot of work, especially since it was my first attempt at doing something like this on an interior bucket.... it was a little bit of trial and error as I went along but it turned out looking pretty good in the end.

Thanks Tom. The matching paint that my friend ordered and had shipped to me is a color called Corral Cordovan. I was able to paint the upper door/side panel sills that color today, as the weather here finally cooperated. I also sprayed the roof Duplicolor Arctic White. I'm letting the paint dry and gas out for a day or so before I unmask the body and then mask off the roof to paint the lower body. Tomorrow I plan on unmasking the side panels and detailing them while the roof continues to dry. No pictures until the paint is dry enough for me to handle everything. More will follow. Thanks again.

Thank you all very much for the kind words and encouragement. I've been sending my friend email pictures of each day's progress and he was especially pleased with the interior and dashboard... all he could say was "WOW...!!!" It really wasn't hard work, just time consuming. Although, all in all I really haven't spent a LOT of time on this project. I received everything by UPS from my friend back on November 27th. Today the sun is shining here so I'll definitely be able to get the body painted. I figure it should be done in about a couple of weeks at the latest. Additional pictures will follow as the work progresses. Thanks again for looking and commenting.

I've finished 4 so far this year... First is a '53 Ford Pickup Next is a Modelhaus resin '58 Buick Then comes a ReplMinCOMd resin '49 Merc convertible conversion and finally a curbside '53 Ford Custom

Thanks Bart and Jeff. Following is a picture of the model's dashboard. Mike put a Tach in the center A/C vent panel under his dash, and also mounted an accessory gauge panel under that and an accessory fuel gauge next to it. I did the best I could to replicate all that with paint, pieces from my parts box, gauge decals (not accurate but from outside the model it shouldn't be too noticeable) and some PE and metal pieces... Like I said above, I'm hoping to be able to get some paint on this puppy tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Then I sanded and smoothed everything and added strip plastic for side panel chrome trim later, and also a center detail panel on the side pieces. The holes are for the resin door handles and window cranks from ReplMinCoMd to be installed later. After sanding and cleanup, I flocked the carpets in brown, painted the seats dark brown with tan inserts and attached seat belts and head rests... I can't detail the side panels yet as the body color paint only arrived by UPS today, and I have to spray the upper door sills first. The weather here has not been paint friendly for the past few days (rainy or snow flurries) so I'm hoping tomorrow will be a good, dry day. Then I can mask the body for painting the white top first, and the upper door panels body color. Once all that dries I can mask the roof and paint the rest of the body, and then detail the interior side panels. Further updates to follow as work progresses. Thanks for watching...

Next came the hard work... the interior... Mike's car is a hardtop and the Promo interior was for a convertible, with the convertible bow pockets molded in. Mike said not to worry about the interior not being correct for his car, and to just paint it. Well, I told Mike that if I was going to make a proper replica of his car then I was going to try to do it right... Soooooo..... I proceeded to scribe with the back of my X-Acto knife and use my trusty saw to cut off the side panels of the interior bucket and correct the problems.... NOTE: I had NEVER attempted to do anything like this on an interior bucket before...!!!!!! Pictures follow...... The interior bucket before any cuts were made... After cutting off the side panels... After filling in the holes from the convertible bow pockets with sheet plastic and widening the rear seat with sheet plastic...

Mike removed the lower grille from his car as he said that cleaned up the look of the front of the car. After stripping the paint from the body I also removed the lower grille from the Promo and filled in the resulting hole with Bondo and sanded it smooth and then primed the body....... Lower grille removed... Lower grille hole filled with Bondo... Body in primer...

Next I detailed the resin wheels he sent by painting them with aluminum metalizer then painting the inserts brown, as he did his wheels, and then tried to do the red, white and blue details as best I could, as he did on his wheels. Then I mounted the wheels in a set of radial tires from my parts stash. I sanded the treads a bit for "realism"...

While my friend's car is a '65 Rambler, the grille is a '64. He painted the grille and the headlight surrounds black. In the center of the grille he mounted a French bicycle helmet emblem upside down (so the colors are red, white and blue instead of blue, white and red). T replicate this I painted the grille and the headlight surrounds flat black and I cut a small piece of strip plastic which I painted the front third clear red and the back third clear blue, and then glued it to the center of the grille... (Mike has this red, white and blue thing going on in various parts of his car to go with the Rambler "American" theme...) I also glued in clear headlight lenses with chrome backing as I thought that looked better than just the chromed headlights on the Modelhaus piece. (My picture is upside down... the emblem is actually red, white and blue....!!!)

Here's a larger picture of the 1: 1 car (the thumnail pics above don't really allow you to see things clearly). and the chassis with the hole... the chassis primed... and the chassis detail painted... More to follow......

A friend that I went to High School with back in the early 60's has a 1:1 '65 Rambler American that he wants to have a model of to display with his car at car shows and cruise nights. Mike lives in Nanuet, NY and we used to build models together way back when. He hasn't built models in a very long time and I offered to build a model for him. He was able to score a Promo on EBAY that was in good shape, and he ordered a replacement grille and bumpers from The Modelhaus (my recommendation) and also a set of resin wheels which closely resemble the wheels on his car. He also ordered the matching paint for his car and had all this shipped to me here in western PA. Following is a picture of his car... First of all, after disassembling the Promo I had to remove the wheels and axles and the gear for the non-existent friction motor from the chassis. This left a hole in the bottom of the molded in engine (picture follows) I filled in the hole with sheet plastic and sanded it all smooth and primed it with Duplicolor dark gray primer... Then I detail painted the chassis... Additional details and pictures to follow......