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Posted

Yet another refugee from the local toy show, which was allowed to follow me home due to its completeness, fairly clean (and easy to match!) black paint, and—especially—its sit and “attitude.” Riding high on Cragars and slicks like a late '60s-early '70s street boss? What's not to like?

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Dusty as a barn find, it cleaned up well, and the paint took a nice light polish (Wright's Silver Cream on a damp cloth). I polished the glass, but did nothing with the interior except break out the bucket seats and switch them (they're left and right-handed on a '65 Goat, and had been installed wrong).

Original Builder had for some reason hit the spokes of the nice Cragar wheels with some kind of black paint, possibly acrylic. I discovered that rubbing alcohol would soften it, so I let the wheels soak in that for a few minutes and then took the black off with a toothbrush. This worked well but also took some of the chrome off the spokes as well. I re-chromed them with a Molotow pen and they came out suprisingly well. (Plan B would have been to paint the spokes dark gray.) I think the tires and slicks are JoHans. They were “waxy” and really didn't want to be sanded, but I eventually wrestled them to the ground. So I was able to re-use all the original rolling stock.

Spent quite a bit of time on the rear end of this one. The resissue kit taillights just don't look right, so I put some effort into building them up and reshaping them, and then I filed and sanded the ends of the rear quarters to the proper '65 shape (the kit looks more like a '64 in this area). Touched up the paint with a black “Professional” Sharpie, which seems to have real gloss black paint in it instead of dark purple ink. I didn't get it perfect, but I did get it looking a LOT better, and learned a lot for when I get around to building a “good” one of these from a new kit. You can see details of what I did with the rear end (and comparisons with a nice Welly diecast) here:

From there it was just Snake-Fu 101: Silver Sharpie-ing the trim, detailing the grille, and so forth. I originally planned to replace the front bumper and headlights with the Modelhaus piece reproed from the '65 promo, which is much more accurate and better looking, but got lazy and didn't feel like looking for it. Maybe that will come in a Phase II, in which I'll also sili-clone a hood scoop intake piece from an unbuilt kit. Someday. Meanwhile, here's what it looks like. Since I used 100% of the model's original parts and didn't add or substitute anything (although I did improve a couple things), this one comes close to qualifiying for my definition of a “restoration.” I think the OB would be please with what I did with it.

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And here it is compared to the nice (after considerable reworking of the roof) if very slightly undersized Welly '65 GTO diecast. As always, comments welcome.

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Posted

I like it!

Sorry if I missed it in the text, but the bumpers... are they weathered intentionally, or has some of the chrome worn off to expose that classy late '80's tan AMT plastic? Because either way I like the "used" look it gives to the old Goat. 

Posted
10 minutes ago, Chuck Most said:

I like it!

Sorry if I missed it in the text, but the bumpers... are they weathered intentionally, or has some of the chrome worn off to expose that classy late '80's tan AMT plastic? Because either way I like the "used" look it gives to the old Goat. 

No, I didn't weather them, that's the AMT tan plastic showing through. It looks worse in flash photography than it does in real life, or I'd have touched them up with Molotow, but glad to hear you like the look! B)

Posted
On 12/4/2018 at 7:42 PM, TooOld said:

Not bad Snake !  I might lower the front a bit but that's just me . :)

I thought about it, but kinda liked the late-'60s "highboy" vibe. B)

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