1966 Thunderbird -- rebuild

[Steve Geer]

Recent rebuild of an AMT kit I originally plonked together in the late 1970’s . . . and then buried it away.  It was a massive “paint fail”, with the T-Bird elegance concealed under a runny/blotchy emerald green paint job, not to mention a gold interior, a flat black roof and brush-painted silver trim.  Oh, and it rolled on slicks(!) all around, just adding further unsightliness.  Bad . . . even considering my slapdash building techniques of that era.

 

After a soak in Super Clean, I took care of the mold seams and sink marks as well as sanding the vinyl roof texture smooth before painting with a Dupli-Color GM shade from the 80’s – similar to Ford’s Brittany Blue.  The new paint was clear coated and polished and the trim is BMF.  The interior was re-done in black while a set of Fujimi rims & low profile treads replaced the aged slot-style mags.  The original rear view mirrors vanished long ago so I temporarily added some body-color ‘flag’ units from a die cast, otherwise it’s fairly close to a stock ‘Bird.  Best of all, it finally found a residence on the display shelf after many years of languishing in the “ugh” box.   

Thanks for looking – comments and questions welcome.

[Paul Payne]

Nice restoration.

[slusher]

Very sharp!

[NOBLNG]

Nicely done.

[PappyD340]

Looks great, well done!

[ewetwo]

Great transformation

 

[Classicgas]

Beautiful.  How did you do the headlights? 

[doorsovdoon]

Very nice. I hope to build one of these but very hard to find here.

[Steve Geer]

20 hours ago, Paul Payne said:

Nice restoration.

 

19 hours ago, slusher said:

Very sharp!

 

19 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

Nicely done.

 

11 hours ago, PappyD340 said:

Looks great, well done!

 

7 hours ago, ewetwo said:

Great transformation

 

 

5 hours ago, doorsovdoon said:

Very nice. I hope to build one of these but very hard to find here.

Thanks for the kind words guys! 
I have a lot of 30-40 year old builds that weren't very good and I'm enjoying rebuilding them with better technology and questionably improved skills.  There'll be more . . .

 

7 hours ago, Classicgas said:

Beautiful.  How did you do the headlights? 

The headlights were a lucky accident. When I don't have clear lenses of a proper size, I've been messing around brush painting headlights with thinned silver, black & white bottle paints and a little Molotow pen to get highlights, lowlights and shadows with a bit of reflectivity, after which I hit them with a little clear epoxy.  Sometimes it looks okay; sometimes, well, not so good . . . Like the example below?

[Bob Ellis]

nice work. One of the great AMT kits that was preserved.