AMT 1957 Ford Fairlane 500

[doorsovdoon]

Just finished the underside, it took a lot of masking tape but worth it! The doors were a pain to mask up right, I wanted it to look like they have door cards by slightly overlapping the blue paint on the edges, I also masked off the trim pattern to prevent too much build up of paint. I have to mask them off again so I can do the trim inserts in white and silver. Nightmare, Lol!

[slusher]

Really nice work Gareth, chassis looks awesome!

[wrenchr]

That is looking great!! 

[espo]

Very nice looking chassis. I like your idea on painting the interior door panel lines. 

[doorsovdoon]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, the chassis turned out nice, I'm pretty pleased with it. One thing that's bugging me is, I painted the engine blue when it's supposed to be red, I just dived in thinking blue for Ford, red for Chevy. I'd like to repaint the engine but some of the paints I used on the details like oil filter and water pump might react if I spray over them, so not sure, I may just leave it blue and be happy with it.

[doorsovdoon]

Doors are finished, the chrome trim is BMF cut Extremely fine! looking at pictures of this car I saw the carpet is usually a darker shade to the door cards and the bottom parts are normally the same colour, so I masked up the doors again and painted the lower part a darker blue to match the carpet. I've also made a start on the body foiling, I should be finished by Tuesday.

[doorsovdoon]

The gold trim is chocolate wrapper and has a texture to it which is perfect for this car!

[dino246gt]

Wow, that's looking great!

 

[ChrisBcritter]

Real clean work! I see you're going with the custom taillghts.

[doorsovdoon]

4 hours ago, dino246gt said:

Wow, that's looking great!

 

Thanks, Dennis.

[doorsovdoon]

18 minutes ago, ChrisBcritter said:

Real clean work! I see you're going with the custom taillghts.

Thanks, Chris. I thought they were trim for the stock lights, Lol, I can't get them out now! I'll just glue the stock lenses to them.

[doorsovdoon]

Well, I can kiss goodbye to the stock lights. I put the custom bezels in by mistake and just glued the stock lenses on them, they didn't look right so I pulled them out. The lenses came off easy enough but I had a bit of a fight with the bezels. All was well until I decided to clean off the Molotow mess on the red lenses from handling them. All I did was use some brush cleaner and a cotton bud and the lens crumbled like a wet sugar cube! I use brush cleaner all the time to clean up plastic parts and never had a part crumble like that before. So, plan B. A quick dive into my parts tin I might be able to use a combination of headlight bezels and police flasher lights. The third picture shows beacons from, I think, the '70 Ford Galaxie police car, they would need some chrome detail but I'll probably go with what you can see in the second picture.

[doorsovdoon]

All fixed. I think they look better than the originals, haha!

[doorsovdoon]

On the home straight now!

[Painted Black]

Looks great... blue engine and all.

[doorsovdoon]

1 hour ago, Painted Black said:

Looks great... blue engine and all.

Thanks, Robert. Yeah, Lol. 

[Rockford]

Tell you what mate, you've had some real setbacks on this kit but its come through looking great! Well done on those back light lenses and the chassis looks really tidy. 

[Gary Davis]

What a great build. Love the 2 tone paint scheme for sure. Good building technique on a cool car...

[Wm David Green]

This has been a great build, it has restored my faith in these older kits with one piece chassis. Your paintwork is superb.

I haven't been on this site for some months due to other pressures and work etc.

I messed up the doors on my AMT '56 Ford and ended up gluing them closed (I know this is a different kit).

I'll do better next time. I have two more '56s and three '57s, all AMT kits, in my unbuilt stash.

Well done, thank you for the inspiration.

[Spottedlaurel]

Looking very good Gareth. Quite a lot of detail work to get through on this one!

With all that masking being required inside aren't you tempted to do a bit of brush painting?

[Lunajammer]

Fascinating and frightening about the brush cleaner and lenses. Was your cleaner something like acetone or lacquer thinner? What would be so hot as to dissolve plastic with a touch?

[doorsovdoon]

On 12/16/2020 at 9:31 PM, Rockford said:

Tell you what mate, you've had some real setbacks on this kit but its come through looking great! Well done on those back light lenses and the chassis looks really tidy. 

Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, it's been a bit of challenge this one but it't turned out great, I'll post in completed section soon.

[doorsovdoon]

19 hours ago, Gary Davis said:

What a great build. Love the 2 tone paint scheme for sure. Good building technique on a cool car...

Thanks, Gary. Can't beat two tone?

[doorsovdoon]

9 hours ago, Wm David Green said:

This has been a great build, it has restored my faith in these older kits with one piece chassis. Your paintwork is superb.

I haven't been on this site for some months due to other pressures and work etc.

I messed up the doors on my AMT '56 Ford and ended up gluing them closed (I know this is a different kit).

I'll do better next time. I have two more '56s and three '57s, all AMT kits, in my unbuilt stash.

Well done, thank you for the inspiration.

Cheers, William. I was tempted a couple times to glue the doors shut but I pushed through, not a kit I'd do again I think, though I do have the Revell '57 Station wagon which has fixed doors and is a more modern kit so hopefully that'll go a little smoother than this one.

[doorsovdoon]

8 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Looking very good Gareth. Quite a lot of detail work to get through on this one!

With all that masking being required inside aren't you tempted to do a bit of brush painting?

Thanks, Nigel. It is time consuming but I get a better and more accurate finish doing it that way, I very rarely use any brush paints at all on my builds.