What Did You Accomplish Today? (Model Car Work)

[Spottedlaurel]

Actual progress made on three different projects yesterday, and during the week managed to move ahead with background work on others:

Aoshima Toyota Ipsum sanded and given more primer, hoping to get a basecoat down and maybe even some colour this weekend.

Monogram Maserati 3500 GT started BMF and detail painting of the bodywork etc.

'Monogram 65 Corvette "Bring Out Your Dead" entry had a tedious but satisfying session of scraping and scribing old Humbrol brush paint from panel lines and other areas that the brake fluid didn't work on. More than one half done, other side to go. I now know Corvette coupe doors are a less than straightforward shape! Would like to get some primer on it this weekend, then see what I need to modify to fit the chosen wheels - it'll probably be a combination of shaving the chassis and suspension arm, finding slightly skinnier tyres and modest narrowing of the wheels.

Keep finding parts for the Monogram '37 Ford. I think I have pretty much everything in place to simply glue it back together (with something a bit more permanent this time!). Funny how once I was tuned-in to how I built it and what paints I used, the random parts made themselves more apparent. Still got the instructions, so that will make life easier!

Bought some automotive paint from the local car parts shop that looks to be an excellent match for the  Fujimi Nissan Fairlady Roadster - essentially restoration of a kit I never finished, which suffered paintwork damage after my daughter knocked it onto the floor. I recently gave it a soak in the brake fluid tub and I'd like to finally see this thing finished.

[Bills72sj]

Got my welders for my shop finished up.

[ZTony8]

It was yesterday but I made progress on the first AMT NASCAR stock car I've ever worked on past washing and sanding parts. I'm doing the 1990 Morgan-McLure Kodak Oldsmobile. It's only taken me 30 years to do this.

[oldscool]

Wow Bill, that is a great looking welding setup. Those gas bottles look just like the real ones that I used to work with.

Edited July 5, 2020 by oldscool

[stinkybritches]

Did my first paint job with an airbrush. Tried it on a spare body. Turned out better than I was expecting. It's got a couple of small runs. I don't know if the paint was too thin or if I got too close. Also, there is orange peel in the clearcoat. 

[espo]

6 minutes ago, stinkybritches said:

Did my first paint job with an airbrush. Tried it on a spare body. Turned out better than I was expecting. It's got a couple of small runs. I don't know if the paint was too thin or if I got too close. Also, there is orange peel in the clearcoat. 

Looks good in the picture. You might play with the air pressure, thickness of the coat of paint being applied and how far from the subject you're painting. Once you get a feel for the balance you will be amazed at the finish.  

[stinkybritches]

50 minutes ago, espo said:

Looks good in the picture. You might play with the air pressure, thickness of the coat of paint being applied and how far from the subject you're painting. Once you get a feel for the balance you will be amazed at the finish.  

Thank you for the tips. I'm going to give it a soak in Super Clean and have another try.

[CabDriver]

Glued some wheels on (success) and tried a new (to me) clearcoat on a dash to see if I could get the finish I wanted (partial success)

[Modlbldr]

Busy day today bouncing from project to project. I got my Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA wet sanded and didn't manage to sand through anywhere!

Got the 63 Tempest Convertible out of the pond and washed off.

And I got some minor bodywork started on my 63 Mercury Meteor. Man, did the primer show up some flaws!

Later-

[Straightliner59]

I moved the inner brackets on my cab hinges closer to the outer ones. There was just too much space between them, before. First photo is before, second, after. Still scratching my head over AMT's decision to mold the cab hinges to the bumper!

[Snake45]

Finished the "restoration" of that super-nice survivor AMT '66 Mustang fastback I got the other day. This is my fourth AMT '66 Mustang fastback in a row--3 restos and a new-build AWB street freak. 

[Spottedlaurel]

Not worth staring a WIP thread on this one, as I hope it'll be on and off the work area very quickly:

1:24 Monogram 1937 Ford kit by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

A week or two back my son assembled this lot after going through my scrap/parts boxes, first built in the very early '90s. It was a memorable build, as rather foolishly I didn't wear a glove when painting it and I ended up with a Ford Signal Orange hand. It was the kit which recently donated its wheels to the '66 Chevelle Wagon, and I was then going to use its chassis and rear wings under another project.

1:24 Monogram 1937 Ford kit by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

However, more sifting through the parts boxes turned up pretty much everything else to put it back together. The paintwork has survived well, so I'm simply going to reassemble it. Since the above photo I've found the radiator and fan, hose, ignition module and a brake servo. The only items I'm obviously missing are the front and rear bumper brackets, but I imagine they will still be around. I even managed to locate the detached headlamp plus tiny door handles and one boot hinge that had gone astray. The exhaust manifolds and system had found their way into the Maserati V8 box, I didn't realise what they were from.

Probably going to use these wheels, if I can find some suitable tyres from the spares box. They're from the Revell Camaro Ultra-Z Street Machine. Otherwise some Centerlines, or whatever I can find from another kit that looks appropriate. I want to keep the late '80s look, as it will sit well next to the Chevelle (modest scale differences aside).

[stitchdup]

40 minutes ago, Spottedlaurel said:

 The only items I'm obviously missing are the front and rear bumper brackets, but I imagine they will still be around.

If you dont find them I have some I can post down to you, I didn't use them on mine

[Ace-Garageguy]

No pix, but every day I chip away a little at the mods I'm doing on several long term builds. All small things, usually requiring overnight drying before I can move on, so having several projects going at this time works out.

One fer-instance: the engine in the Monogram 1/24 '64 GTO is appallingly bad, but the decent 1/25 engines I have just look way too small in the engine bay. The block needed to be lengthened and reshaped at the rear, the oil filter setup entirely reworked, holes repaired from removing the blobular starter and oil filter, heads cut down and reshaped, intake manifold significantly reworked, etc. etc. etc.

And this is another build that started out to be "relatively simple".   

[Tom Geiger]

Slight amount of work when I snuck into the model room today.  I drilled and added pins to both Jeepsters manifolds. Two on the V6 and one on the 4. Sprayed them all flat black..  next step is to rust em and glue them to the motors.

Not much getting done this week. My daughter and the grandkids are here. 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Tom Geiger

[Snake45]

57 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

One fer-instance: the engine in the Monogram 1/24 '64 GTO is appallingly bad, but the decent 1/25 engines I have just look way too small in the engine bay. The block needed to be lengthened and reshaped at the rear, the oil filter setup entirely reworked, holes repaired from removing the blobular starter and oil filter, heads cut down and reshaped, intake manifold significantly reworked, etc. etc. etc.

Would the engine from the Monogram '69 GTO or '70 Trans Am be a better starting point? 

[Modlbldr]

Got a bit of work done today on the Alfa for my wife. Got the mesh put in and detail painted around the headlights. Also got the dash done. Can't see them but I made three little toggle switches for the dash under the gauges. I also got the interior door panels and seats painted.

Later-

[Ace-Garageguy]

2 hours ago, Snake45 said:

Would the engine from the Monogram '69 GTO or '70 Trans Am be a better starting point? 

I'll have to check. But I did happen to see on a build thread here that the Revell '66 GTO contains the exact same POS engine as the '64.

EDIT: From what I can tell from another thread here, it appears that the '69 is also.

EDIT 2: Yup. The '69 is the same. Yuck.

The big giveaway is the distributor drive coming through the intake manifold like a smallblock Chebby.

That's completely wrong for a Pontiac, and there are a slew of other inaccuracies...kinda big ones if you're at all familiar with the real engines.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Ace-Garageguy

[Spottedlaurel]

10 hours ago, stitchdup said:

If you dont find them I have some I can post down to you, I didn't use them on mine

Thank you Leslie, that's a very kind offer. I'll have a dig around and let you know.

I think they can be added after the body and chassis are joined together, if so it won't delay me getting the rest of it together.

8 hours ago, Modlbldr said:

Got a bit of work done today on the Alfa for my wife. Got the mesh put in and detail painted around the headlights. Also got the dash done. Can't see them but I made three little toggle switches for the dash under the gauges. I also got the interior door panels and seats painted.

Looks good, I'd like to give one of those a go but my cheapskate bids have never yet scored one. I can imagine everything on them has a very dinky feel to it, unless you have an unusually large thumb the nicely detailed dashboard certainly looks quite small.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Spottedlaurel

[Modlbldr]

4 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

 

Looks good, I'd like to give one of those a go but my cheapskate bids have never yet scored one. I can imagine everything on them has a very dinky feel to it, unless you have an unusually large thumb the nicely detailed dashboard certainly looks quite small.

I'd love to find another one of these kits too. I managed to pick this one up off of a guy locally on Facebook Marketplace for $15. It was sealed inside. I saw one recently on eBay that went for $77!

The 1:1 car is a bit on the small side so the kit does have a small feel but the quality is fantastic. I hope you get one soon.

Later-

[Rocking Rodney Rat]

Getting this SBC ready for my latest hot rod project. It's back-dated with three-2s, Chevrolet script valve covers and ram horn headers. All backed up by a T5 transmission, because real hot rods have three pedals.... -RRR

[Tom Geiger]

Spinning my wheels!  Working on the Jeepsters.. wanted to fit the exhaust systems to engine and chassis. Especially the four cylinder one that doesn’t belong in that chassis. 

Thought I was going to put some weathering chalks on the manifolds... cannot find the V6 ones.. I thought I had readied them.. so I found a pair in the box and I drilled and pinned three pins per side.. then waited for that to dry.. then sprayed them flat black.. 

Then I pushed my side desk on wheels away from the bench.. there are the manifolds on the floor!  Argh, weathered them all.. put the spare pair in a little clear bag back in the box for next engine.. Argh!

[Spottedlaurel]

Current 1:24 Projects by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Current 1:24 Projects by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Varying amounts of progress today on this lot - '37 Ford rebuild saw most attention, I want it done by the end of the weekend and it's already taken more effort than I anticipated to get this far.

Toyota got mocked-up now it's in its final colour. Painted a load of suspension and exhaust components, will start fitting them tomorrow (and modifying as necessary to get it sitting suitably low).

Fair bit done on the Maserati, probably optimistic to think it'll get finished tomorrow but it's not far off now.

Only progress on the '65 Corvette today was getting the box for the '92 out, so I can start getting the engine assembled. Not 100% sure if I'll use it, but it will go in something one day so my effort won't be in vain.

[ChrisBcritter]

After using pretty much every tool on the table, I managed to dislodge one of the torsion bars from the '62 Newport, break off the wheel and drill out the stub axle pin, reassemble the broken pieces of the bar, and put aside the chunk of front crossmember that came out with it. Sawed off the bottom of the mounting well to remove the second one; the bottom popped off, gracefully bounced off my left and disappeared under the table. I'll look for it later.

Also did a bunch more measuring and figuring on the '62 Ranchero conversion; looks like if I use the Ranchero rocker panels, I can fix the extra width on the Falcon body.

I think.

[Mike999]

Well, that was fun.

One current project is an AMT '59 El Camino.  Somehow I managed to lose the starter (that happens a lot).  No big deal, I'll just find the right Chevy starter in the parts box.  I grabbed one from an AMT '62 Chevy with a 409 engine. The El Camino is a 348 and they look the same.  Almost...

If you've never built that El Camino: it was released in 1964, when AMT 3-in-1 kits still had 2 metal axles and a hole thru the engine block.  The '59 El Camino was a real step forward.  No hole in the engine block. Everything in the chassis is separate, nicely engineered and fits well:  4 coil springs, turnable front wheels with kingpins connected thru the tie bar, etc.  Even separate swing arms and a sway bar on the rear axle. 

Oh...and 2 separate exhaust pipes.  Which must attach to the headers, in a very precise fit.  Which the right side wouldn't, because the starter from the '62 Chevy was TOO BIG.

%$#$#@!!!  Back to the drawing board.  And the parts box.  I tried several different starters.  And mocked each one up, by temporarily attaching the header, while checking to see if it would fit around the starter and still connect to the exhaust pipe.