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Hi Folks, time to get another build going. I am building a replica of my brother in law’s (Wayne) 71 Olds 442 W30 as a gift for him. He is my wife’s, sister’s, husband. As you will see in a moment, it’s a spectacular, fully restored beautiful car, no nut or bolt left untouched. I’m doing this build for a few reasons, so I’d like to quickly share that as some backstory to the build. First, I really like the Olds 442’s, (all years), absolutely gorgeous cars with beautiful lines. Second, Wayne was nice enough to take me, along with a few of his friends to Barrett Jackson in Scottsdale back in 2018. It was my first Barrett Jackson and a very memorable trip. The third reason was extremely memorable. In the summer of 2022, the band “The Lumineers” did a charity concert here in little Victoria BC Canada, literally 5mins from my home. It was an invitation only deal that was kept very quiet,(only about 350 tickets I believe), and few people knew about it. Wayne’s company had done a considerable amount of work for the charity raising money, and got my wife and I tickets for the event. We are HUGE fans of the Lumineers, so needless to say we were absolutely thrilled and it was a fantastic evening. So this is being done as a small token of appreciation for Wayne. I’m doing this as a surprise, it was originally going to be his Christmas gift but that obviously didn’t happen… I will share the link to this thread once it’s complete, and he has the model in hand, so he can see how it came together. Anyone that has followed my builds knows I’m normally kit bashing, this will be a little different. It will be MOSTLY “box stock”, but I already see changes that I will need to make for the replica. I guess I can actually follow the kit instructions 🤷🏻‍♂️😜 Haven’t done that for years!! I have been slowly getting a start at this over the last few weeks. So far mostly figuring out what needs modifying, and just how much detail I will add, and where. This will be a fun build, and I’m looking forward to sharing the journey with you. So here we go, the kit I am starting with… Wayne’s car… I will share more photos of this spectacular car as the WIP progresses. Wait til you see the undercarriage of this thing!! My plan is to do a reasonably accurate replica of the car. With it not being a kit bash project, I plan on spending a bit more time on some of the little details. So the whole “box stock” thing, well we’ll see where we end up. At first glance I know I need to eliminate the kits A/C and add an 8 track player. Yep… he has a factory 8 track in there! More on that later in the thread. I didn’t have a suitable pulley set to replace the kit piece, so I modified the one from the kit. Before… during.. after.. Here is a couple of photos of the engine. I took a bunch of photos last summer at a local car show. I was trying to get some under hood detail shots for this build. Again, you will see a few more photos as we progress. One of the biggest flaws I found in the kit so far is that there was no thermostat housing on the manifold. There is an oversized hole to drop the rad hose in, and it definitely needed some attention. So I scratch built a thermostat housing, I will deal with the rad hose later in the build. I’m not going to get TOO carried away with details, but there are several things I will definitely be doing. Ignition wires, fuel line, heater hoses, and the breather hoses to the air cleaner, battery cables, probably brake lines, but they may “terminate” out of site under the chassis rather than full brake lines. Here’s what I have so far… I made larger breather caps for the valve covers as the kit pieces that were molded on seemed much too small. The transmission and manifold are painted using a “recipe” that Dennis Lacy shared with me a few years ago. Tamiya silver leaf followed by Tamiya flat clear. I think it’s a near perfect match for cast aluminum, thank you Dennis!! I painted the engine block Bahama blue, then added 2 coats of clear blue, it’s not a perfect match, but pretty close I think. If you look at the heads, you can see the heat stains in the paint at the exhaust ports. I replicated that using a little clear yellow, then flat clear brushed on. The dipstick is simply ignition wire. I’ve done some work on the exhaust manifolds, but not quite ready to install yet. I have a fair amount more work done that is not shown here yet, but it’s a bit discombobulated (there’s a word for ya 🤔) I’ve been bouncing around a bit trying to sort out things that need modification and such. Removing the A/C from the firewall and building a heater box for example… I’m almost at the point where I can boldly march ahead….following instructions…..nah. Thanks for taking the time to have a look, and as always all comments welcome. If anyone sees anything glaringly not right, please speak up. Cheers, Steve

this the new mpc 68 coronet rt convertible kit this is the second kit I had this one I built factory stock except for the metallic red paint once again another fun build with a great kit The song I picked is a song that came out in 68 for the music playing in the background it was the only one of the 3 1968 songs I tried that did not cause the video to get blocked globally by the copyright holders

Older build the color is Butternut Yellow custom mixed from the factory formula and looks correct in person and matches the Exalta color chip but shows much too yellow in photos.

Sine my 4 door Galaxie is almost done I’ve got a new project getting ready in the wings. I am going to build a 66 Chevelle wagon using the Replica & Minatures stock conversion. It contains a flat hood, stock height front suspension, tires, steel wheels and dog dish hub caps. Should make for an interesting build. Now the decision of what engine/trans to build it with. Any suggestions on a donor kit for a good small block/ auto trans would be welcome.