Boyd Coddington’s Chezoom

AmericanMuscleFan · August 29, 2021

This is great work Jim! You've made us used to beautiful constructions and paintings of exceptional quality and this is no exception. By the way, I like the good advice of patience printed on the packaging, however, I don't think you have many problems on this side...! All the details you add are first class and will make the difference at the finish line! ?

Rocking Rodney Rat · August 29, 2021

Nice detail on a build of an iconic car. -RRR

Edited August 29, 2021 by Rocking Rodney Rat

Dennis Lacy · August 29, 2021

You’re killing it on the interior! The embossed “carpet” with the piping looks awesome!

kelson · August 29, 2021

Fantastic work sweating the details most people would ignore!

cobraman · August 29, 2021

Looks great ! Your doing some fine work.

TooOld · September 1, 2021

I think it's amazing that you took those blocks of plastic they called the suspension and made them look like a real C4 suspension , Great job Jim ! And the time you spent spraying spoons is gonna pay off , that color looks awesome !

OldNYJim · September 5, 2021

Thanks everybody!

Been working through a bunch of little parts so I can actually get somewhere on assembly, and I’m hoping for a nice bright sunny day tomorrow so I can polish the body.

In the meantime, got the engine mostly finished off - need to wax those shiny bits where I’ve been handling it a lot to get those perfect again:

Excuse the loose throttle linkage - need to thread that through the firewall once there’s a firewall for it to thread through…

Got the engine and driveshaft into the frame for good:

Painted the exhaust and got that installed too:

And then started some assembly on the interior tub - I gave the seats and door gaps a light wash with some gray artists acrylics to add a little depth - need to buff the extra off those tomorrow:

More soon!

Steve H · September 5, 2021

Awesome as always Jim!! Looks like you getting close…

OldNYJim · September 5, 2021

19 hours ago, Steve H said:

Awesome as always Jim!! Looks like you getting close…

Thanks buddy! Was that your build that won best paint at DSC? If so, congrats!

Polishing day today - had four or five hours of nice bright sunlight to work in today, which I much prefer to polishing under artificial light.

Could really see the pearl doing it’s job when the sun hit it - flipped the color to a gorgeous blue color as I was working on it:

And some hours later - it’s looking pretty straight and level:

I can’t wait to throw some wax on this and see how it finishes it off nicely - still need to paint the grill and do the foil before I get that far though.

More soon! Edited September 5, 2021 by CabDriver

Danno · September 6, 2021

Wow!!! Absolutely stunning project so far, Jim!! Most excellent.

OldNYJim · September 7, 2021

20 hours ago, Danno said:

Wow!!! Absolutely stunning project so far, Jim!! Most excellent.

Thanks buddy!

Got a BUNCH done on this one today…

Spent an hour laying down some foil:

Finished off assembly on the interior:

Got the window glass in place, using some a sticky-dot-tape dispenser that my wife had (worked pretty well!):

Got the interior tub glued to the frame:

Made some headlamp ‘buckets’ on the lathe so that I didn’t have to use the kit’s cheesy chrome headlamps:

And added some parts-box lenses:

And after that it was just attaching the chrome spears to the rear fins (which fit horrible), attaching the taillights (which fit horrible) and epoxying the mirrors to the body.

Need to do touch-ups tomorrow once all the glue has had some time to set, but it’s about a wrap!

Thanks for following along - I’ll shoot some real finished pictures once it’s all wrapped up for real!

Edited September 7, 2021 by CabDriver

alan barton · September 7, 2021

Wow, you really captured the look there, Jim. Your research and careful consideration of the finishes has been rewarded. This must look amazing in the sun!

Cheers

Alan

Kingslug · September 8, 2021

Looks great!

TooOld · September 9, 2021

Fantastic job Jim ! Just curious . . . with the current issues with BMF what type of foil did you use or was it an old sheet of New Improved Foil ?

gotnitro? · September 10, 2021

Beautiful results !

Mike F. · September 10, 2021

On 9/4/2021 at 9:44 PM, CabDriver said:

Thanks everybody!

Been working through a bunch of little parts so I can actually get somewhere on assembly, and I’m hoping for a nice bright sunny day tomorrow so I can polish the body.

In the meantime, got the engine mostly finished off - need to wax those shiny bits where I’ve been handling it a lot to get those perfect again:

Excuse the loose throttle linkage - need to thread that through the firewall once there’s a firewall for it to thread through…

Got the engine and driveshaft into the frame for good:

Painted the exhaust and got that installed too:

And then started some assembly on the interior tub - I gave the seats and door gaps a light wash with some gray artists acrylics to add a little depth - need to buff the extra off those tomorrow:

More soon!

Really nice job all around. Makes me wonder though how someone is expected to sit in the back, LOL.

OldNYJim · September 10, 2021

Thanks fellas! Still needs some little touch-ups when I get a minute, and to get that hood aligned perfectly…still learning about hinges ?

18 hours ago, TooOld said:

Fantastic job Jim ! Just curious . . . with the current issues with BMF what type of foil did you use or was it an old sheet of New Improved Foil ?

This is actually the currently available stuff. It wrinkles as you pull it off the sheet and is pretty dull…but I managed to get it laid down mostly ok, and some wax brought out the shine!

2 hours ago, Mike F. said:

Really nice job all around. Makes me wonder though how someone is expected to sit in the back, LOL.

It actually doesn’t have a back seat! It has, I guess, some padded panels that kinda look like a seat back, but as best I can tell that’s all that’s back there!

Thanks for the nice comments everyone…finished pics when I get my act together here…

retroguy · September 10, 2021

On 8/1/2021 at 4:38 PM, CabDriver said:

I’m a big fan of Boyd Coddington but never did a Boyd kit, so I’ve been slowly collecting the various Testors and AMT offerings the they did of his cars (some nicely done, some not so much…). I wanted to actually build one of them this year rather than have them sit on my shelf, so I’ve been picking up some old books and magazines for reference material and decided to start with the Chezoom:

The car debuted at SEMA in October of ‘92, and was built for a guy named Joe ‘Mr Gasket’ Hrudka after Boyd showed him a sketch that Thom Taylor had done, and featured a LT1 Vette motor, Vette suspension, a custom tubular frame and about 10% of the bodywork of the 57 Chevy they used as a starting point.

The Testors full detail kit is pretty well done - but the detail is lacking in a few key areas and there’s definitely room for improvement. On the flip side, they have some nice heart-warming words of encouragement in the manual to give you that warm fuzzy feeling if you screw something up…

First thing I’m going to tackle is the engine, which should look like this:

As a sidebar, researching this car for good reference pictures is hard - there’s plenty of photos out there, but the car was redone later and has some fairly substantial changes to about everything but the body. For instance, here’s the engine as the car is today:

As such, I need to do some figuring out and make some assumptions when it comes to detailing this build…I suspect they just didn’t take a bunch of photos of this car as they were building it so they aren’t out there to find…

Here’s the engine parts as they come:

A good starting point, but there’s some little details missing that I’d like to add to make this thing a little more accurate:

That hollow air filter was first thing that needed to go, so I scratchbuilt a replacement, then turned to that little catchcan that you see on LT1s that sits between the passenger side valve cover and the pulleys. Now, the Chezoom has a little cap atop that can that (somewhat) matches the one on the valve cover so I made a Silly Putty mould so I could replicate it:

Actually, a bunch of them:

And then after the first batch got smart and added some gray dye to the resin so I could actually see the finished piece properly.

Next up, drilled the engine for hoses, added an alternator bracket and made some plug wire looms out of brass so I can route the plug leads nicely, then scratchbuilt that dipstick that you can see on the 1:1 that looks like it’s maybe for the trans fluid?

Starting to look like the real thing a little more! I was surprised how little unpainted billet there is on this car considering Boyd’s reputation for using it for everything…won’t need the lathe as much as I thought for this build!

That’s about where I’m at with this one so far - just getting rolling. If anyone has any good detail shots of the original version of this car please feel free to post them below…more soon!