AMT 23 t roadster with Offy power

[alan barton]

Picture the scenario.  You are at Donut Derelicts, or Cars and Coffee, and in the distance you hear a few muffled pops on the freeway off-ramp.  A few well trained ears BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH up?  What was that?  They return to what they were scrutinizing in the first place when EVERYONE hears an angry snarl at the lights diagonally across from the car park.  What IS that thing?  As the revs came up, the lights change and what looks like an antique with a geezer at the wheel lightly chirps the tyres and hooks into the event.  It shuts off instantly, and the bees swarm to the honeypot.

This then, finished today on Christmas Eve, is my AMT 1923 Model T Ford roadster.  This is no polished up show queen, nor is it a long distance power everything interstate cruiser.  It's an angry little toy, a wheelbarrow if you like, for that most legendary of race motors, the Offenhauser.

The shopping list goes something like this. The AMT kit provided the body, interior, fenders, grille, lights, windscreen frame and  front axle. The Revell Kurtis Kraft midget gave up its powerplant - don't worry, there's a mighty Australian Holden six waiting to fill that vacancy!  Headers are handmade from aluminium tubing and aluminium wire.  Rear axle is a tweaked Ala Kart unit, radius rods are from an MPC Switchers 32, dash is from AMT 25 T, radiator from AMT 29 A and steering wheel from  the Revell Hiboy.

Colour is Testors Burgundy red Metallic and the cream is Testor's Light Ivory.  The steelies are from the AMT 40 Ford while the wires are from the Monogram 32 roadster with Pie Wagon outer rim to give a matching deep dish spoke ( the outers match the 32 wire but the inners are completely different so you need to combine the two halves to get this result.

With both the 23 and the 25 being on the shelves right now, can I give you one big Christmas tip and that is - Buy the "25! Despite being the newer kit by about a decade, the 25 is much easier to build. The 23 has a multi piece frame, and multi piece fenders, which are simply handled so much better as one piece in the 25 kit. The headlights are meant to be glued into fresh air - there are no mounting points and I ended up whittling my own.

Hope you like it.

Merry Christmas everyone from Alan Downunder!

 

[Spottedlaurel]

Great work Alan, some clever kitbashing and the finished result looks excellent.

[PappyD340]

Very nice!

[unclescott58]

I like it. Nice job. 

[doorsovdoon]

wow, that looks nice! Excellent kit bashing, and I really like the mini moons on it. 

[Doug 1061]

Nice wheelbarrow.....  That came out very nice.  Good color choice,  like the dirtied up look of the top of the seat and door panels.  Had to do a double take on the wheels,  good idea having different wheels on each side.    Are those resin tires or did you cut them flat to keep it from driving itself off the shelf?

[Misha]

What a neat ride Pat and an inventive assortment of parts! Followed your build with great interest as I’m working on a tall T coupe on the fenders and chassis of the Ala Kart v2 with the V8-60 from the midget kit. 
Wishing you a happy New Year, cheers Misha

 

 

 

 

[SpeedShift]

Beautiful job on a great subject.......Well Done!

[espo]

I have been following your build on this and glad to see you got'r done. Great engineering on the drive train and I like the color. 

[BeakDoc]

Very cool! I’m digging it on those steelies!

[Koellefornia Kid]

Nice one! Love the shifter!

[alan barton]

Thanks everybody for your kind comments.  You seem to like the car as much as I do!

Doug, I flatten most of my tyres to give the car some visual "weight" .  Admittedly it is a compromise because when you turn over your finished model you see those very obvious flat spots but my models spend far more time on the shelf than upside down so I am prepared to live with that compromise.  I wouldn't do it on skinny tyres because you wouldn't expect them to squish as much.

Beak Doc, I am tending to favour the steelies myself but I still love the wires so I will just turn it around from time to time!

Oliver, the shifter knob is actually jewellery for people who like poking themselves full of holes!  Not sure if it is meant to be a nose ring, and ear stud or even somewhere further south.  A fellow clubmember spotted them on eBay and bought a  bag full for very little coin.  I have a whole bunch of them in various colours but this is the first time I remembered to dig them out! They are threaded onto a short bar when they arrive so you simply unscrew them and then stick them over the top of your shifter handle.

Cheers and Merry Christmas!

Alan

[ChrisR]

Looks great!

[tim boyd]

Alan....excellent to see you persisted through and completed that kit.  And FWIW, I completely agree with you on the ease of assembly issue between the '23 nd '25T. 

(Like Alan, I'm also on a Model T hot rod kick - thanks in no small part for Alan's enthusiasm on this same subject.  There are three T hot rods on the Boyd bench right now, with one just a few days from completion, another one pulled out from the graveyard (a build started 20 years ago), and a third shown in an early stage in a brief post in the "WIP" section of this forum. )

Best....TIM

PS - great "background story"/explanation, too.  TB 

 

 

[alan barton]

Thanks everyone.  In case you are interested, I will include this shot of a mockup I tried with a full hood.  It looked cool enough but a) the headers and aircleaners wouldn't fit and b) it is an indictable offence to hide an Offenhauser from public view!

Thanks for the kind words Tim- I too have a few more Model T's up my sleeve with the next one being a full-fendered 25roadster pickup with a flattie.  So many models, so little time! 

Cheers

Alan

[Deuces ll]

??

[crazyjim]

A very different engine you used and it came out really good.

[slusher]

Great looking model.. very clean and cool...

[Dennis Lacy]

I dig it, Alan. The Offy engine looks right at home in there being in good proportion to the T. This looks like something that would have been cooked up in mid-late 1970’s and to that end I think the wire wheels suit it best. 

[tim boyd]

In the category of "you just can't make this stuff up".....

So I''ve been going through my old Street Rodder magazine collection dating from the early 1970's right through the end of 2010 when those (unflattering words) at the publishing/video house shut down the magazine just two issues before their 50th anniversary.   

Doing so for entertainment purposes, but also to partly to refresh my memory on the 203 "modeler's corner" columns I wrote for the mag between 1978 and 1995. 

So today I'm reading the column from the April 1991 issue, and the topic for that month's column was "Shrinking the Salt Flats".  It featured photos of Bonneville Salt Flats models that I had taken at various model events, along with some photos sent by readers of the column.  The I get to a photo of a killer Belly Tanker sent in by long time Modeler's Corner reader/contributor Jim Sonter of Sydney, Australia.  In part, the photo caption reads "Built in '89, the body was hand-formed by 1/1 street rodder and modeler Allan Barton".  Yes, our Alan (note the corrected spelling) Barton. 

Alan, you rock.  Amazing to think we've both been at this so long.  Didn't recall that know you knew Jim....what is he up to these days? 

And for those that don't already know, Alan now does the "Modeler;s Corner" equivalent in Australia's #1 rod magazine....  

TIM 

[alan barton]

Serendipity right there, huh?  Opposite sides of the world and all that.  When I have been fortunate enough to travel to other countries, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and catch up with local modellers, it never seems to amaze me ( and my long suffering wife) how instantly in tune we all are. One minute you are chatting with some guy you just met in a show or maybe at a hobby shop, next minute you are in his house looking at models, pulling out boxes and then some-one (usually a partner!) says, "hey you guys, it's 2.30a.m. some of us have to work, ya know?"  We belong to an international brotherhood and the only condition of membership is to make sure you tell the guy next to you!

I think I first met Jim via sending letters across the continent in the early eighties and then went to visit him and his brother Roy in Sydney in Jan 1985.  His collection is amazing, actually both the boys' collections are amazing.  For starters, they are all hand painted with brushes and Humbrol enamel and they look gorgeous!  Jim produced three fabulous editions of a catalogue of vintage model advertisements from the sixties and seventies and then went on to print a book on classic Australian service stations which includes some of my photos.  He contacted me last year about a column I did on the Monogram Big T.

Cheers

Alan

[Rocking Rodney Rat]

The Offy fits perfectly there, well done and with the steering on the "right" side! -RRR

Edited February 1, 2021 by Rocking Rodney Rat

[MeatMan]

Nicely done!