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Posted
20 hours ago, Steve H said:

That's what I'm talkin bout!!!! Yaaaa. A motor that will "scuff" the rear tires... sweet!

one of the coolest things about this build, no matter what colour you paint it, it will,look awesome. 

Cheers, Steve

Thanks for your continued support Steve!  I’m thinking of a nice pastel blue for this one - haven’t quite found the shade that I’m looking for yet though.  Might have to just mix something to get what I’m imagining in my head...

9 hours ago, misterNNL said:

Neat solution to the rear suspension. I love the fabrication and parts choices you're making on this build. I'll be watching with great interest from behind my own pile of projects.

Thanks buddy!

8 hours ago, TarheelRick said:

IMHO that engine sort of overwhelms the build.  

 I’m kinda with you, yes!  I had the blower stuff sitting on the bench so I tried it and kinda liked it (and liked it more the longer I looked at it), but my original idea was something more subtle but mechanically interesting still - like a Hilborn mechanical fuel injection setup maybe?

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That’s more what I originally had in mind...the block still looks HUGE in there, which I like, but it’s not as ‘bad’ (or good, depending on your viewpoint) as with the big blower.  Need to keep thinking on that...

Meanwhile, I was putting off making headers, but I needed to so that I can do the steering parts so that was today’s project.  Did some research on tube sizes, and 1 7/8” seemed to be the consensus of what would be a sensible diameter for a traditional size pipe coming out of a Hemi...nowadays 2 1/2 to 3” pipes seem to be more common from what I was reading but they’d run a little smaller back in the day:

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These are the individual headers from the AMT Showboat kit, which I like because you get 32 of them in the box ?.  That’s where I got the intake system from - but I still need to do some research and make sure it’s appropriate for this engine.  

I stripped the chrome, cleaned up each pipe and then did some careful measuring and positioning to get them to match on both sides...they measure out to just under 2 inches diameter, so I think they’d work ok without choking that Hemi too much, but still looking traditional and not as big and chunky as people might run now.

FC8B637C-F4D9-40B0-9A2E-78C4D72E5843.thumb.jpeg.031359d82658b52345fc5f5275a8b993.jpeg

Something I wanted to do was to get the angle of the pipes to match the angle of the cowl, when viewed from the top - or close as I can on a cowl that has a bow in it, anyway.  I think I like ‘em!

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More soon - need to figure out steering next!

Posted

Jim, I love the build no matter what, my vote is for the blower though. Krylon has quite a few pastel colours...

Beautiful work, looking forward to see it complete 

 

Cheers, Steve

Posted

Thanks fellas!  

Tiny bit of progress today - getting ready to move next week so that’ll slow progress a bit now...

Steering crank parts, fresh off the cutter:

C468954D-23B1-4542-B194-2B6CED731D54.thumb.jpeg.f59d19699d88d5902c1ec687ffa3be0e.jpeg

Add a little bar to connect the crank to the front...

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Make sure it clears the headers (and that the crank could turn without hitting anything, and ditto the linkage)

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I’ll detail this up some and clean it up properly after we move - but that’s another part ticked off the list!  Next job will probably be the rest of the steering setup, and then a firewall.  More soon (ish)!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Got my new hobby room set up this past week...

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...and I was really excited to get back on this one!  

I wanted to work on the steering some more today - but I kinda needed to make the interior floor and trans tunnel so I could make seats so I could see where it was all going to line up...so today I made all that junk instead.  First up, the floor:

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Because this body curls inwards a little towards the bottom I had to make sure I’ll be able to get the body on there once the floor’s in place - and because of the big Z on the frame the trans tunnel needed to be fairly high...I can see how why all those rat rods have high trans tunnels taking up most of the interior ?

Fits about perfect though!

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Next up, I needed some seats.  I was going to make a bench, but the tunnel meant that the seat base would sit higher than I wanted.  That creates a little bit of a issue, because these T bodies are so narrow already that it didn’t leave much space.  

So, to check I’m actually building something (mostly) feasible in 1:1 scale I measured the smallest gap I would be able to sit in (yes, I measured my rear end with a ruler) and then measured the gap available and discovered I would JUST squeeze in there ok.  Because it’s a tight fit though, bomber seats made total sense, so I made a set with a 16” wide seat base based on plans I found online:

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I might lose those ‘bat ears’ on the top before I’m done, but I kinda liked them when I was tweaking the design...we’ll see!

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Those should work!  I think it would probably feel a little like how a Lotus 7 (or the home built variants) feels like to sit in, where you kinda squish yourself into it, but I like how they look.  Next up will be some risers to mount them (and some more clean-up once the glue’s dry and they’re not so fragile) and I can get back on the steering setup.

More soon!

Posted

Very good fabrication Jim, everything you have done so far is first class!

For the engine, I think that the blower is obviously more impressive or spectacular I would say but it depend what you plan as the focal point for this build.

I love the seats, its a good idea!

Very bright and cosy hobby room by the way... everything you need to spend more time on the bench... ?

Posted
On 8/15/2020 at 8:40 AM, TarheelRick said:

This is going to be one really cool rod.  Like the overall look, but IMHO that engine sort of overwhelms the build.  However, it is your build and it must satisfy you.  Looking forward to more updates.  Also like the work on the rear axle assembly.

Agreed. I’ve read every word on this thread and I’m into how low it sits and how that height accentuates the tall of the Tall T. With an engine sitting this tall, it kinda takes away from the roof height for me. If it was my build I’d be going to keep an engine below the hood line.

Posted

Thank you everybody!  Appreciate all the nice comments.  @Tom Geiger - I think I’m with you on the blower...I do like the exaggerated look of the high roof, and you’re right, it loses some of that if the engine’s right up there too.  

Im starting to get to where I can put some paint on this thing, almost...I had a color in my head that I’ve been trying to find and hadn’t managed to track down yet.  I wanted a solid color for this one, a kind bright dark blue ?. Not a REAL dark blue, but not too bright either.  Kinda traditional looking but not too old looking...and obviously that mix of requirements made it hard to find what I was looking for ?.  

Hunting in Menards today I found this, in the tractor paint aisle, no less.  JUST what I had been looking for!

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Shot a couple of spoons to see if it’s about what I wanted and I think it is - I’ll check them out in the daylight tomorrow and see.  I think we have a winnner though - and it’s a Ford color ?.  First paint job after moving to Indiana and it’s a tractor color ?

Should look something like this shade hopefully;

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Kind of an unusual shade for a Tall T, I feel like  - but I think I’m gonna like it!

Got a couple of little bits and pieces cleaned up on the frame today, and got all the parts that will need some more work Bondo’d ready for some sanding and then primer tomorrow, hopefully!  More soon! 
 

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Posted

Jim, I love the tall Tee, however, I’m starting to like your sense of humour almost as much! Almost... Keeping the hobby fun while building really cool stuff, awesome! I think that colour will be outstanding.

cheers, Steve

Posted (edited)

Haha, thanks fellas!

Got stuck in an endless loop of priming the body, fixing the flaws, re-priming, spotting a new flaw and so on...had a lot of THIS look to the body this week...

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And a lot of this too...might be getting closer to being paint-ready now!  This body is definitely a challenge...

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Confident that Tractor Blue is gonna look cool though!

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Edited by CabDriver
Posted
6 hours ago, Can-Con said:

Needs more pipe !! ??

Nice build!  Is that body styrene or resin?

Got some paint down today!  Had a nice still, dry, warm day so I got to use the new outside paint booth:

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The color is actually a touch darker than it appears in these pics - see the spoon pic I posted above for a better reference...but I’m pretty pleased with it!  More soon! 

Posted

Looks good! Great to see that colour going on.

I thought of this build when I went to a 1:1 car show last weekend and there was a T-based rod on display. It was a van, but still remarkably small (and comic in its proportions).

The steering column was completely vertical, will yours be similar?

Posted
On 9/4/2020 at 11:43 PM, Can-Con said:

It's an MPC "Blackjack "T"" kit with a few mods.

Very cool!  I’d like to build one of those too - yours looks great!

On 9/5/2020 at 12:01 AM, Spottedlaurel said:

Looks good! Great to see that colour going on.

I thought of this build when I went to a 1:1 car show last weekend and there was a T-based rod on display. It was a van, but still remarkably small (and comic in its proportions).

The steering column was completely vertical, will yours be similar?

Thanks buddy!  Yeah, they’re pretty small in real life - especially if you see a fenderless one which obviously makes them look that bit smaller visually.

Good question on the steering - I’ve been doing some research on sprint car style cowl steering setups trying to figure out what would work well.  Read up a bunch on the HAMB to see what people have done in real life for builds like this where space is an issue, and someone posted a photo of this steering box, from a Toyota van:

E26A555A-DF3E-49D9-B9E8-16C65FD95F08.jpeg.ed9876636f56699ca4a5c35bb814f790.jpeg

Now, this would work great if I was building this thing for real, because you could mount it with the wheel at a conventional angle and just link the output to the link arm coming out of the side - and it’s super compact!  Not traditional at all, but I’m not too concerned seeing as it’ll be near impossible to see anyway.  That said, I didn’t want to just pretend I’d built a solution to this problem so I’ll add at least a basic version of this box peeking out from under the dash.

Speaking of which, I wanted to use a variation on a stock T dash, like this...

9C643704-AD78-4117-BD2E-D5EF66165A2E.jpeg.ad4a7555a9146325047df8ba545ae47b.jpeg

...and replace that ammeter with a speedometer.  Because of the thickness of the resin body though I had to distort the proportions to make it work, so this is an “inspired by a T dash” rather than a properly scaled replica.  No biggie, that Hemi wasn’t in there from the factory either...

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I’ll replace that wire gauge surround with a photoetched one when it’s painted and ready for detailing, but that’s roughly what we’re looking at.  I’ll finish cleaning it up tomorrow when the glue’s set up tomorrow and get it in primer and see what we’ve got 

Oh, and finish that steering box, which will just be visible under there...just mocked up a little styrene tube for now to I could make sure it lined up with the output roughly right...

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Next thing after this will be the door panels...not totally sure what to do with those yet...

More soon!

Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Modelbuilder Mark said:

Really digging your project here, not just the subject, but your problem solving as you go. 

Thank you Mark!  

A little more work on this today...made some door panels, somewhat based on a tidied-up version of stock T door panels (to which I’ll add these spare door handles from the Revell 29 kit):

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On the basis that I filled the trunk with frame and axle I figured some door pockets might be a nice addition, but I couldn’t find a door panel that had pockets that I liked in my stash here.  I did find this stuff at the Dollar General though...

696D12B6-D683-4E5D-B723-0C4F96DBCF0F.thumb.jpeg.9bc425d572f355d112d202d2c59bae60.jpeg

I KNOW there’s better stuff than this for sculpting model parts out of, but I already in there...the material feels kinda foam-y but apparently you can paint it and it air dries in 72 hours or so...

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Rolled some out into a sheet and added some creases and detail to make it look like fabric door pockets...not that you’ll likely be able to see it anyway if I paint those door panels to look like they’re fabric or leather colored but I wanted to try the technique:

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And how they’ll look on the door panels:

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Just adds a little interest I think - we’ll see in a few days if you really CAN paint these ok!  Worse case I have to shell out a few bucks to use some ‘real’ product...

Oh, and I primed that dash ready for some paint...

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...then cleaned it up and got it body-colored:

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This tractor paint sure is thick, but it seems to shrink down nicely and stay glossy so I’ll take it...

More soon!

Edited by CabDriver
Posted

Oh, a little sidenote - saw this yesterday:

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Got a good chance to check out the interior - these things REALLY are tiny!  Even without a big high trans tunnel this thing had some super narrow seats in, but they didn’t look much wider in 1:1 than mine would scale up to...reassured to know from studying one up close that I wasn’t too far off!

Posted

Tiny update - my experimental clay door pockets dried fine and took paint fine too!

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Scratchbuilt a little firewall ready for paint and detailing:

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And now, whilst I wait a couple more weeks before I dare attempt polishing that thick ol’ enamel tractor paint I can start detailing some of the assemblies ready to mount to the chassis (which is also in thick ol’ tractor paint so it’ll be a little while before THAT’s ready to mess with too ??)

More soon!

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