1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk (56J)

[misterNNL]

1 minute ago, MrObsessive said:

In my life, I've only ever seen this car twice in person. Once on the road not far from where I lived at the time, and another time in the Hershey Museum. This is another one I'd like to build from the '53.......Franklin Mint (or Danbury?) did one, but like their Stude Golden Hawk, the bodies aren't "quite right".

I'd have to build mine WITHOUT that toilet seat on the decklid though! I was told that was optional.

The one I saw was identical to the black one. The show was In Sidney,Ohio in Shelby County.

[mr moto]

As part of my deep dive Stude-a-mania, I attended the 2012 Studebaker Drivers Club International Meet in South Bend, Ind. and took literally hundreds of pictures. The concours event at the fairgrounds featured an unbelievable number of Hawks of all kinds as well as other Studes all the way back to wagon days. Here are a few views of Packard Hawks. Note that in the background there is a sea of other Hawks filling the Hawk display area. This a great event to attend. Studebakers virtually take over downtown South Bend for several days and the Studebaker National Museum is not to be missed either.

BTW, the toilet seat was not optional like it was on Chrysler products of the time.

A few bonus photos:

 

[OldNYJim]

That looks like a great show!  I’m in South Bend pretty regularly through the summer for the oval racing there…I should try and combine the two next time they have one of these!

Enjoying seeing this project come together!

[misterNNL]

I do agree about the awkward looks of the Packard version. The front end has a "buck tooth grin" look IMO.

[espo]

Looks like a great show. I always kind of liked the Packard Hawks front end since it was so different from any other cars at that time. Not making fun of the grill but it does remind me of a Cat Fish's mouth. 

[thatz4u]

I like Studes, had one like the one in the photo, got it after  high school. It had duals & a floor shift, nice memories...

[Tom Geiger]

Since someone mentioned building a Packard Hawk from the 53 kit…

Right after the rerealise of the 53 kit some 25 years ago, the late Todd Konsol built this one. He was very talented and could even hand paint scripts!

[misterNNL]

7 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

Since someone mentioned building a Packard Hawk from the 53 kit…

Right after the rerealise of the 53 kit some 25 years ago, the late Todd Konsol built this one. He was very talented and could even hand paint scripts!

Impressive work!

[mr moto]

That was a fun side trip thru Packard Hawks, etc.! 

BTW, when I said that the toilet seat was not optional that may have been putting it a bit too strong. What it was was "standard" - that's the way the factory was building them. But Studebaker (and by extension post-merger Packard) was well known for honoring almost any reasonable special request from a buyer. That said, it may have been deleted by request on a few cars.

So after getting the chassis brace and dual exhaust fitted with the engine mock-up the time was right to do the engine. After studying photos of the big block Packard V8 here's is the "secret sauce" that I came up with:

All the temporary glue joints were undone so it could be painted, re-assembled and detailed. A lot of the pieces are resin copies of parts from kits that i already had. I copied them so they would still be available to build those kits and, besides, I might want to build another Sky Power 352 someday.

I don't seem to have any photos from the construction process but this is how it came out - just needing a little bit of touch up work at that point.

The air cleaner is a scratch built item and the owner of a real 56J that I contacted through the Studebaker Drivers Club forum went out to his garage and got dimensions for me. I can't give the members of the SDC enough compliments for their willingness to help!

The color is my own mix of "Sky Power red". There's no record of the exact original formula and the color on restored cars varies quite a bit but it's always a vivid red and according to the Authenticity Guide it should be leaning toward orange. The fan belt is made from black Chart-Pak drafting tape and it came in that width - no slicing necessary.

The resin body treats the front end as a sort of gaping hole to be filled by a one piece side grill, bumper, lower pan assembly:

You can also see a little styrene filler piece to be used to re-angle the grill opening. Anyway, the build deserved something better so I made some resin copies of the bumper unit so they could be cut apart, trimmed down and incorporated into a more realistic front end.

I tied it together with this little styrene apron that will provide a base to build a new front end structure.

It's starting to look better already!

[doorsovdoon]

Nice filling and bodywork.

[Paul Payne]

Nice resin casting- that's not an easy part to cast. The engine looks great- you put your research to good use!

[MrObsessive]

4 hours ago, mr moto said:

That was a fun side trip thru Packard Hawks, etc.! 

BTW, when I said that the toilet seat was not optional that may have been putting it a bit too strong. What it was was "standard" - that's the way the factory was building them. But Studebaker (and by extension post-merger Packard) was well known for honoring almost any reasonable special request from a buyer. That said, it may have been deleted by request on a few cars.

Thanks for that info Manuel! I once lived many years ago above an old dealership that sold these brand new (Studebaker-Packard dealer). I was talking to the original owner's son one time about these cars as he was very familiar with them. He did say that it was an "option delete" feature, although like you said probably only a few cars were built without it. To my eyes, it looks cleaner without it, but it is a unique touch on that type of car.

Thanks soooooo much about the engine info! That was one thing that's always stopped me from building the kit I have. The engine out of the '53 kit would be woefully wrong, and your listing of what you used is a HUGE help. I have all those parts on hand somewhere in my stash, so that makes things a lot easier.

Your front end is looking good! On the '58 Golden Hawk I did, that was one area that I'd need to redo. My front end came out too "short"........so your suggestions and pics certainly help here.

[landman]

On 9/24/2021 at 5:46 PM, NOBLNG said:

Great job on that dashboard! The interior looks nice too.?

Absolutely!

 

[MrObsessive]

Just ran across these pics of the Packard engine I have on my hard disc.............lookin' spot on Manuel! ?

 

[landman]

I owned this 64 and was ogling the 63 with my sons in law and grandson.

[mr moto]

Your '64 was one elegant looking ride!

[mr moto]

Finally getting around to a new update!

Continuing work on the front end rebuild:

Added the lower pan from the '53 Stude kit.

And then the resin side grill openings.

I don't know what to call this piece  but it holds the strike plate for the hood latch that i removed from the '53 donor kit. Later I decided to remove it from the chassis and attach it to the apron I made earlier to simplify painting color separation in the future.

This little bit is a reinforcement that ties together the apron and the lower pan.

Quarter round Evergreen was bent in place to create what will become the chrome trim piece across the front end. It was glued in place all the way across and then cut open so the hood can be raised.

The hood rests on this little plate when closed. The hole in the corner will accept the support rod to hold the hood open.

I made these very simple hinges for the hood. That downward leg will have a small hole in it to accept a pin (installed after the hood is on the body) that keeps the hood attached to the body. This type of hinge doesn't swing smoothly like some more sophisticated styles but it allows the model to be displayed with hood open or closed and it doesn't take up much room. The area between the dashboard and the firewall is very cramped on this car.

The separate wipers are a big upgrade from what was molded into the resin body. These aren't the ones I'll actually be using - found some that are better proportioned.

That's it for right now but I have some more stuff to post later today or tomorrow.

[Ron57]

Great stuff!

[mr moto]

As promised, I'm back with another update.

At this point, the build is starting to look like something that you could call a model car - it's about time! After completing the front end plastic surgery the body was finally ready for primer and after a good post-primer looking over I was amazed that it didn't reveal any major problems. There was just one little easy-to-fix flaw on a corner of the hood and It was looking like this:

And then - just in the nick of time - this showed up in the mailbox.

MCW is great for providing hard-to-find factory colors (like the ones that Studebakers came in). I've never used their clear before but if it's as good as their other paints it'll be great. The paint scheme I've chosen wasn't on of the most popular but It's one of the most mid-1950's-ish paint jobs I can imagine. Those bright, splashy, multi-color paint schemes were almost exclusive to the mid 50's. This one has the rather poetic name of "Sunglow over Yellowstone." I saw a photo of a 56J painted this way on the net and knew it had to be.

In the meantime, the chassis was coming along to the point of having the exhaust and rear axle installed. The chassis is just basic kit assembly from here on.

The wheel halves have been painted Yellowstone as the factory would have done:

Notice that these are 8 wheel halves but they're all inside wheel halves. Four of them are styrene from the donor kit and four are resin. I needed to do that because the only correct wheel covers available were Modelhaus repops  of some ancient AMT promo wheels and they were just a little too small diameter to mount in the tires (Modelhaus #428 medium wide whites). The solution was to use inside wheel halves on the outside too and taper the edges of the wheels to nestle down in them. The promo wheels also had a long neck that had to be cut down. Here's a comparison of before and after:

It's all for the good, though. Doing it that way allows the painted edge of the wheels to show just as they do in 1:1. So I'm pretty pleased with it.

That's all the progress so far. I'll be back when there's more to show!

[cobraman]

Looking good !

[bisc63]

Nice work all around, but I really like your engine work. This is the kind of thread that forums are made for. Keep up the good work!

[David G.]

Mind-blowing work on this one so far! All of it exceedingly well done.

David G.

[TransAmMike]

Your killing this Manuel from Baton Rouge!!  Geaux Tigahs?

[mr moto]

Made a little more progress over the last few days and it's starting to look like a project that can reach a conclusion after 10 years!

Got it up on its wheels and it already needs a front end alignment.

Actually, the tie rods haven't been installed yet and they won't be until the body is on the chassis and the engine is installed. I'll need the extra access room when connecting the exhaust to the engine.

The body is next up. Step one is to respray in white primer. I always use gray primer first because it seems to be the best at exposing flaws but the white primer will help give some pop to the light color paint job.

 

The ceiling is masked off so there will be more light reflected into the interior by the flat white. Same reason that ceilings are usually white in houses.

I started into the two-toning by spraying some Sunglow Gold on the rear panel, masking it with a pre-cut pattern that I made ahead of time, and then overspraying with Yellowstone.

At this point, I realized that I had forgotten to pre-foil the Golden Hawk script on the rear panel so I had to retrace my steps a bit and do that.

So that's a rough trim that was painted over again with Sunglow and then the high points of the script were rubbed clean. All the Yellowstone was masked up like a mummy, the body sprayed with Sunglow, and then unmasked to give this result.

I used one of these blue abrasive sticks to reveal the script. Those sticks seldom get used by me but in this case it seemed to have just the right reach to rub the script without bothering all the other textures in the area.

Don't know why the picture turned out so strangely colored but that is the same car with the same paint!

So I'm about to start cleanup and prep for the clear coat but it seemed like a good idea to also foil the emblem on the rear panel before clear coating. It has a decal on it and decals don't always adhere to foil as well as I'd like. A few coats of clear lacquer should take care of that problem.

And that's where it stands right now.  This evening, I might be able to spray that clear.

 

[Tuffy's Garage]

stunning