Ace-Garageguy

The roof works well. Love the seat inserts.

Wow man, that's a cool as it gets. Somebody ought to 1:1 this one.

I'm intrigued by the Iron Butterfly moniker. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, man.

Yes indeed, very very beautiful both.

Well, by now it looks pretty certain that this build wasn't good enough to win anything in the Gearz contest. Good thing I built it to please myself, eh? I would like to sincerely congratulate the winners. I'm happy that the contest did inspire me to finish something, finally, and that was a huge turning point for me. Again, congratulations to all the Revell / Gearz winners.

A model that is truly worthy of being called "spectacular".

I'm Jonesin' for more pictures....really need to see that beautiful paint done. However, I DO understand lazy very well. Great build.

I like this one, fo' sho'. Is that shifter linkage from the Comet kit? It looks pretty slick.

If you look halfway down page 2 of this thread, there's a shot of the rear-end setup before modifications. It's a generic Nascar truck-arm style rig with a reinforced Ford 9", available sometimes as part of a donor kit from GMS Customs on ebay. One of the reasons I decided to use it was to give me room to route the exhaust system after the severe lowering job. The leaf springs would have been in the way, and it would have taken a LOT more chassis mods to make that setup work.

I really envy you having some builds of your dad's, and I love these old AMT kits. They have something undefineable that's worth displaying just as they are. I really wish I had some of the models my own father built. He didn't do cars, but I remember a bright yellow P-47 done as a trainer. I don't know if there were actually any yellow P-47Ds, but it was a real thing of beauty to a kid, and it inspired me to try to approach his build quality.......which of course I couldn't.

Thank you Casey. That's quite a compliment. A bunch of chassis work.....had to c-notch the frame so much to get the stance I wanted that the frame rails needed extending upwards over the notch. Here they're beginning to get roughed in. There are also holes that need to be dealt with and the iinner fenders need to be extended upwards to clear the tires. New panel to go up-and-over the new rails and clear the pumpkin and new raised tunnel. Inner fenders have been extended .100" with styrene strip, and pockets for the coil springs are fabbed in. Semi-complete rear suspension with the new "sheetmetal" in place, and springs living happily in pockets. Top of the chassis showing the rear mods and the new front tubular crossmember. It was necessary to fab this type in order to clear the new front pan. The revised front suspension shown much earlier will work with this setup. Also, the firewall has been opened up more, allowing additional engine setback. I think I may need all the room I can get ahead of the engine. The piece of angle stuck to the block is just for temporary setup. This is pretty much the final mockup of the new nose treatment. ....and here's a better shot of the rough tail design, which mimics some elements from the front. ....and the taillights. I decided to go with the kind of rocket-ship look that this car seems to want, but with a little restraint to keep from becoming cartoonish. The lights, 4 of them to echo the quad headlights, are vintage Revell Parts Pack pieces I've been saving for something special. The peaks in the center of the pans will be softened slightly to better match the curves of the hood and rear deck. They won't be eliminated though, because I like the tension the slight mis-match of some of the design elements creates in the overall theme.

Yes, very interesting project, and I'll be fascinated to see what you do with it.

Last time I got any mail that started with "Greetings", it was from the draft board. Congratulations.

First, THESE ARE NOT MY BUILDS. I got these cars a while back in with a bunch of stuff from ebay, thinking they were all gluebombs, and parts-cars. Apparently the builder's family was liquidating his model collection after his death. When I unpacked these two and saw just how nice the stance was, and the little touches like the radiused wheel wells on the '40, I didn't have the heart to cut them up or part them out. I thought it might be nice to post these two models on the forum in case he never got the appreciation he deserved, and also in case anyone recognizes them and can give them a name. Neither car has engine or suspension. The '49 is a Flintstone resin shell, and the '40 is AMT.

That's a ton of great looking bodywork. Nice.

If you can get CA to hold that wire in place and also not "smoke" the surrounding area, you're a far far better man than I am, and should probably be a brain surgeon. If you can gently -ever-so-gently file a groove for the wire to lay in (hard to do on a painted seat, I know), you could possibly drill holes under the cushion to tuck the bent ends of the wire into, and then wick in a little clear acrylic to secure everything better. The wire would have to fit pretty well perfectly to work like this, however.

Oh yeah. I just love a ground scraping woody. Gonna be good.

Hmmmmm....I see a lot of really fun but not-at-all contest-quality builds getting praised, a lot. I really just think it's important for each individual to do what's fun for him (or her), and not worry too much about whether it pleases ANYBODY else. Of course there's a flip side to that. I think we all enjoy having our work admired by our peers, or else why would we post here at all? I have to admit I like it when someone "gets" what it is I'm trying to do, and only fellow modelers can possibly get it. I'm inspired by so much of what I see here, and certainly not only by blow-me-away spectacular builds.

Again, thanks for the interest in saving this little car. It was such an oddball, I really didn't expect it to be very popular. Casey, I'm definitely keeping the forward lean of the front fenders, but I'll probably stay with a more rounded look for the tonneau to harmonize with the door tops. Rick (pharr7226), I'll definitely have it far enough along to bring to the next ACME meeting. Hope to see you there. Steve (route66modeler) The glass cloth is something I've had on hand for a while. It's not really scale, but it's the finest weave I've seen yet. We use it to repair control surfaces on sailplanes where weight is absolutely critical. I'll contact my associate in Arizona and get a supplier name for you. OR, I have enough to last me a lifetime, and I'll be glad to send you some if you want. I've got progress shots, but my last camera battery died just moments ago. I'm sure the tail-lights will not be to everyone's liking.

Major cool build. I've got a friend who actually raced one of these when he was stationed on Okinawa during the VietNam era. Looks GREAT, and I'm sure my old buddy will get a real charge out of seeing it.

Cool. Thank you.....I''d forgotten I had some of this stuff too.

Oh YEAH YEAH YEAH !!!!! I really want to know this too !!!!

Well, logic would pretty much say it HAS to be different plastic formulations then. Maybe several kit manufacturers tried something "newer, better, cheaper", and you're stuck dealing with the results. It sounds like Revell has gone back to something more solvent-resistant. I have NOT YET used Duplicolor COLOR over Duplicolor PRIMER, but I know many people swear it works fine, every time. I'm looking forward (yeah, right) to experimenting in the near future, 'cause I've got a build almost to paint that I can only get the color I want from the big D. I've had outstanding results from Duplicolor primer under everything Testors. Ace Hardware's rattlecan black lacquer is hot enough to go through the D. primer and pull up or shrink bodywork, but with enough coats and final colorsanding, it will slick out fine. There was a time I was having pretty good luck with SEM High Build primers, and their Self Etching primers, but I've had very erratic results lately, sometimes crazing insanely, sometimes not.

IMHO your reducer or thinner in your color coats is so hot, it's re-wetting all of your basecoats and, as you say, it really looks to me like it's soaking ALL the way through and melting the plastic substrate. The swirl pattern at the front of the door is what makes me think that, and I'd be pretty ticked if it was happening to me. Can you use a not-so-hot reducer or thinner for your color? Since it's a model and won't be subjected to UV and real-car weathering, you can often get away with non-recommended color coat reducers. If that doesn't work, my best guess is that a 2K urethane or polyester automotive surfacer is going to be the only way out. Once 2Ks are fully hard, they're pretty well resistant to any topcoats. They are also high build, and tend to obliterate detail. Just as an aside, I recently built two Revell '70 Chevelles, same tooling, different releases and plastics. The older blue one, no prob. The recent white one.....when I hit the chassis with rattle can (aircraft engine) ENAMEL that I've used successfully on MANY models, it crazed like crazy. It DIDN'T craze the scratch-built styrene roll cage attached to it, however.

Then they got an A+++.