ShawnS

What a fabulous build. That engine is perfect in every way.

Another fantastic build man. You have a great talent for replicating the look of the real car. Well done.

Then I made a crossflow cylinder head. The intake side of the cylinder head didn't need a lot of detail but once the manifold is on it looks fine. Rocker cover Thermostat cover The head with the manifold, rocker cover and the thermostat cover. Then I made a carby. I started with a Best resin weber, cut it up and added more detail. Only a small section of the original part was left. Stay tuned for more Cheers ShawnS

Thanks. Yeah I've been using an aftermarket shop manual. It's not as comprehensive (or expensive) as the factory manual and most of the pics in it could only be described as super lo-res but it has helped a bit. I have also amassed a large collection of reference pics from all over the net. Thankfully for me, these cars had a long life (1979-1987) over three different models and they have a big fan base in OZ so there are forums and threads galore to grab pics from. Back to the build. Here is how the chassis ended up looking. It's a fair bit different from the original Mustang chassis. Then I started making the engine. I originally planned to builld it as a curbside but eventually I decided to go all the way and include an engine. I had the choice of tracking down a resin engine from the US and modifying it for my needs but as it probably would have taken weeks for it to arrive, I decided to make my own in the same amount of time. The block. I started with a basic rectangular box and added detail from there. Made a sump. It has 22 hex bolt heads from T2M. Timing cover Crank pulley Water pump I found a fuel pump from my spares box and modified it to suit. Intake manifold The underside of the intake manifold To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

Here are a few of my little ones. And my favourite All of them are cars that raced in Australia in the 60's and in the case of the yellow one, in the 70's. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks all. I'm glad you are enjoying what I'm doing. Incase you are wondering I have never done anything like this project before sometimes i struggle to put a model together let alone build one from scratch so it's one big constant WOW moment for me too. Let's go crazy with some detail. Starting with the diff. I started with a diff from a 69 Camaro cut it down to the basic shape of the main gear housing and totaly rebuilt it to my needs. To add some extra detail I used some nuts and bolts from T2M. Then I added the spring cups, the trailing arms and made a watts linkage. The sway bar is a work in progress. I made the mounting points for the watts linkage on the chassis The springs are just wire. to be continued... Cheers ShawnS

Best looking Mercedes ever, and the real car isn't half bad either.

Looks fast just standing still. That's is a glorious little VW. Well done.

OOOHH. That's a fantastic build Eric. Very nicely finished. The engine bay does look like it lacks fine details but It doesn't detract from the finished product though.

Got the first coats of primer on to the body. There weren't too many big imperfections but lots of small things that needed touching up. That's it for the body for now. I now turned my attention to the chassis. That's where the real work and detail commenced. I wanted to use the chassis from Monogram's Talledega as it had all the detail that I wanted but it was too big for my needs. So I searched through my stash and found a chassis from R/M's '64 Mustang. The Mustang chassis fit with just a few areas that needed trimming but it needed a complete make over. I removed the rear section and sanded off the detail from the main underbody. I re-made the whole rear section with different shaped chassis rails that will suit the trailing arm and watts linkage suspension. You can also see the detail returning to the main underbody area. The spare wheel well was made from a section of a plastic tire from a Fujimi kit and was detailed with some evergreen. The fuel tank was also made from thick evergreen sheet and was sanded to shape. Made a heat shield that goes between the tank and the spare wheel well. Coming up next will be the rear suspension and diff. To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

For the tail lights I won't bother doing anything too special. I will just paint some clear orange and red onto the lenses and whack some foil on the back. For the head lights, I cant get away with taking shortcuts so I made some reflectors from parts I found in the spares box and placed them in a box made from evergreen. I will make some lenses for them later. Then I moved on to the window trims. I used two different width layers of very thin evergreen strip and did around all of the windows. Made some mirrors too. Mock up. To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks Dave. I will be casting it as I want to make various versions. Especially this one Thanks for your support and kind comments guys. There is still plenty more to show you. such as; The Roof. I cut out two basic shapes from evergreen sheet. i cut the centre out of the bottom roof piece. This will allow me to have the roof curve inwards on the inside. I glued that to the top piece and filled it with putty and sanded it smooth. You can see the curve if you look at the pencil line. You can also see the grooves that I scribed near the outside edges that will help locate the roof onto the body. You can see the extra area of styrene above the window frames that will mate up to the roof. I sanded it to shape and added the rear window blank. To get the rounded off contour on the roof top I added some thin evergreen sheet sections covered them with putty and sanded to shape. To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

Then it was on to the lower bumper section. I made the sides. At this stage I was a little bit stuck as how to do the complete airdam so I got some of my modelling clay and made a mock- up of how I wanted the whole nose to look. this also gave me the chance to check the proportions. It was at this stage that I found the whole front end was way too big so I spent some time cutting, sanding and re-making every part of the nose until I was happy with how it looked. I eventually found a way to build the airdam. The bumper itself will be cast as a separate part. I added a grill section to the inside. and made some lights from some mirrors that I found in my spares box and little bits of evergreen. Tomorrow- The roof. To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks everyone, There is a fair bit left to show you so I hope you will enjoy what I have to show. Although I have taken hundreds of pics so far over the course of the build (and will probably take hundreds more), you guys are getting the edited down version. Yeah I've had a few people tell me the same over the last 12 months and I can tell you that although the Falcon and the Granada are from the same family and have similar styling cues, they don't actually share any parts. Also TPB won't be selling these. It's all mine and I probably won't sell them either but I haven't made up my mind on it yet. Back to the pics. I glued the hood on first then I glued on the windscreen. The thick strips that you can see on the side were there temporarily to keep the body sides in position in the jig while the glue dried. I then turned my attention to the rear end treatment. The first thing to do was to bend a wide thin strip of evergreen and wedge it into the space around the tail light section. This was then trimmed down to replicate the trim around the tail lights. I made the rear bumper. The tail lights were made by scribing the lines into a thick evergreen sheet and then I cut and glued two pieces together into an L shape. This photo was taken in the prototype stage and I later re-made the tail lights to fit flush with the sides of the body. I will cast the tail lights in clear resin later. Then I moved on to the front bumper. I cut out and glued together 3 pieces of evergreen sheet then added the sides and the front. I later added the centre section where the licence plate sits. You can see that the top section isn't cut down like the two pieces under it, I did that to keep it solid to reduce any potential warping. To be continued.. Cheers ShawnS

The partsbox car will be an XB.

Beautiful. Great work on that one Michael.

A real good looker. A nice build too. Well done Chris.

Very cool. I love those big intake trumpets on the engine. I think the whole engine bay is detailed just right, not too much not too little.

Lovely. Very nicely done. Those Hudsons come up really well as scale models don't they.

The next step was to putty the wheel arches. I'm not the neatest putty user but it did the job. Then sand them back. It took a little while to get the shape right but I was happy with them in the end. Then it was time to start thinking how I was going to join the two halves. I made steps at either end to glue the hood and trunk to. I made a jig to keep the body sides at the width that I required and glued some bracing inside. I started with the back end. Then I made the hood. Before I glued the hood to the body I made a vent grill from evergreen strips. and glued it in place. The hood had a nose that was added at that stage. Along with a small grill. I was happy enough at that stage to glue the hood onto the body. To be continued. Cheers ShawnS

Hi all. To everyone who hasn't seen this on the ozautobuilders forum this is for you. This is my current project and the only thing that I've been working on for almost a year now. I'm about half way through the whole project so I'll fill you in with where it's at and how I got there. THE CAR It's a 1983 Ford XE Falcon S-Pack. The XE Falcon model life lasted from '82 to '84 and it was one of the most popular cars for it's time. The S-Pack was powered by Ford's trusty 4.1L (250) 6 cyl and was basically a stripes and interior trim upgrade over the base model My parents and my grandparents both owned XE S-pack Falcons so they were always part of my childhood and hold many memories for me. It's armed with these memories that I embarked on the most ambitious model project that I could think of and that was to build one (or both) from scratch. This is my parents car. THE BUILD I searched high and low to find a model to base it on but I soon realised that any modification of an existing model would require just as much work as building one from scratch. I thought about it for a while and when I was going through some old car brochures I found a small basic side plan picture of an XD (the Falcon before the XE). I scanned the pic and enlarged it, cleaned it up and made it to 1:25 scale. I drew that onto a sheet of evergreen twice and cut them out. That's when I started adding the detail, first the upper kink in the sides and then I scribed some detail in the sides. Although the real car looks totaly boxy it is has a lot of subtle curves so I had to massage some roundness into the lower areas. The next thing I had to do was to make it thicker to stop it from warping I added thick evergreen into the inside to act as a spine and make it sturdy. I also added more evergreen to the lower inside section later. I scribed the door handles too. The next step was to make something for the window frames and pillars to stick to. The 'L' shaped piece is a spacer that goes inside to bring the windows away from the body. At this stage you can see a strip around the wheel arch that will give me something to stick the putty onto for the wheel arch flares. I made the window frames and pillars from evergreen strips. To be continued. Cheers ShawnS

Oh man, great tires. Fantastic work. I don't think that scratchbuilding needs a literal definition. There's scratch building parts or accessories and there's modification of an existing part. Heavy modification of an existing part should fit into the scratchbuilding category. I love scratchbuilding. It's a great feeling to make something that wasn't previously available in kit or resin form that keeps you coming back for more. I've been known to make parts for projects that I have no intention of finishing any time soon. Sometimes things will just go 'click' in my head and I'll just start working on a part and won't stop until its done. Here's two examples. I made a Morris 850 grill for a project that I really wasn't into at the time. For me it was more about learning how to approach and conquer the problem of 'How To' than it was any attempt to finish something that I had started. Once I figured out that I wasn't going to use the grill any time soon I decided to give away a couple of casts of it to another builder. He asked me If I was going to do some wheels too so although I had lost interest in my Morris model at the time I made those as well. I have always got something brewing in the back of my head just waiting for that click. Scratchbuilding to me is sort of like those learning to draw books where things start off as circles, squares, cones etc.. I start with those shapes and add extra details from there. Once you start you won't look back. Cheers ShawnS

I'm loving Tamiya thin cement for my styrene work at the moment. I think that I have given up using thicker cements for good. I also use zap-a-gap CA glue for most other uses. It's mainly the availability of any products at my LHS that dictates what I use though. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks Dr Cranky it's good to be here. I'm slowly finding my way around and I'll contribute more as time goes on . Thanks Mike. Nah, I won't be casting this one. Too much hassle. Here are the induction options that I am considering. The carbs are resin casts of an AMT (Nascar?) carb that I found in my spares box and the air filters will be MCG items. Dual inline normal manifold. Dual inline Hi-rise manifold Dual cross manifold I don't have any references as which system the real car ran in the 60's but recent pics show both the cross and the regular inline manifold have been fitted in the last 20 years. I'm not realy fussed but if there are any Chev experts who would know which of the three is the optimum road race setup please feel free to share your knowledge. The Impala isn't the only American 4 door that I am building at the moment. Here is a sneak preview of a 63 Galaxie in progress. I'm still pondering these builds and am keen to get them going again after my current project. Cheers ShawnS

Hi guys, this is one that I started a while ago and I'm looking for some motivation to kick start it again. It's AMTs 62 Impala convertible with a modified roof from a 63 Impala. I am going to replicate a famous Aussie race car from the 60's. It will have the 409 under the hood and a bench seat up front. Here is what it looks like these days. I made the interior door panels before finding out that it had power windows so one of those cranks will have to come off and replaced with switches. The seats were the point at which the project stalled. I tried to replicate the ribbed pattern that AMTs Impala seats have but it came out looking too clumsy. When Revell released their 62 recently I noticed that the ribbed pattern were decals which looks more like it should. As the Revell decals won't match the seats that I am making it looks like I will have to make my own decals. What do you guys think? I think I'll end up remaking the seat any way because I'm not happy with the top of it. I don't think there is enough space between the top of the seat and the rectangular pattern. It's been a while since I started this but I feel If I can get the seats sorted out, I can quickly finish it. Cheers ShawnS