Another Welly '65 Impala

[Snake45]

After seeing Mike C's nice Welly '65 Impala, I ordered one from diecastmodelswholesale.com, and it arrived in two days. Only colors available now are metallic gray and beige.

The wheelbase scales to 1/25.9. As cheap diecasts go, that's “close enough” for me. Should sit nicely on my 1/25 shelf.

Before getting into my mods, here's a couple pics of the engine compartment. It's VERY nice for a basic model at this price point—I'd expected a one-piece plate, or even a closed hood. There seems to be at least seven separate pieces here, including power brake cylinder, alternator & fan belt, washer bottle, radiator hose, and air conditioner with related hosing. You can even read the Turbo-Jet 325 HP on the air cleaner! I have engine compartments in kits I've built that don't look this good!

On to the Snake-Fu. Here's what I did:

*Sanded the tire treads, of course.

*Popped the hard-plastic whitewall inserts out of the tires and painted them black. Would have painted them flat red, if I'd had any on hand. Could always do this later.

*Painted the steel portions of the '67-style Rally Wheels with Model Master Steel.

*White-stemmed the headlights, turn signals, and taillights.

*Touched up the taillight trim rings with Silver Sharpie, and added the backup lights with white paint.

*Painted the “B pillars” (molded into the body) black to make them less conspicuous. They really should be cut out completely. Maybe next go-through.

*Fitted the grille/front bumper to the body better to get rid of an unsightly gap above the left headlights (see the Before pics). This took a LOT of work—over an hour of filing metal off the body.

*Black-washed and detailed the grille.

*Painted the front valence (below the front bumper and grille) craft acrylic flat aluminum.

*Detailed the full-width rear trim panel black. I pondered several ways to do this with either brush or spray paint, but all seemed to be a lot of work with satisfactory results not guaranteed. When I realized the rear bumper was molded in black, I ground a worn-out Xacto blade into a small chisel shape and used this to simply scrape the chrome plating off the panel area. This was also a fair amount of work but came out pretty good.

*Lowered the front end for an “attitude rake.” This was very easy and only involved filing the front axle locating notches in the engine compartment piece a little deeper. I think I might have overdone this, but it wouldn't be too difficult to build the notches back up again a little. I'm interested in other opinions on this—do I have too much rake, or does it look good as it is? Let me know.

 

So there it is. The Snake-Fu took much longer than I thought it would (the better part of three full mornings—8-9 hours), but the finished model ended up looking even cooler and more badass than I imagined when I started. Thanks for looking, a special thanks to Mike C for opening my eyes as to the potential of this model, and as always, comments welcome! Merry Christmas!

[keyser]

Great Rich. Dump the back a bit, front looks great. Knew it’d be nice. I’m not huge fan of 65, but really turned out great. 
Blessed Festivus for the rest of us. Lol. 
Could try redlines in front and bw in back like Fri night cheaters. 

[Mike C.]

Vast improvement. I kind of like the street rake. ?

[cobraman]

I like the way it sits. They don't make a 66 Biscayne by any chance do you know ?

[Gramps46]

Really like what you did.  The rally wheels look a lot better.  I would personally like to see a little less rake.  Trying to remember the normal street rake in 1965.  Really appreciate the photos.

[Snake45]

On 12/23/2021 at 2:19 PM, keyser said:

Great Rich. Dump the back a bit, front looks great. Knew it’d be nice. I’m not huge fan of 65, but really turned out great. 
Blessed Festivus for the rest of us. Lol. 
Could try redlines in front and bw in back like Fri night cheaters. 

Thanks Keyser! Yah, I thought of lowering the rear just a hair, too. That could work. 

On 12/23/2021 at 2:36 PM, Mike C. said:

Vast improvement. I kind of like the street rake. ?

Thanks Mike! I appreciate the "vote of confidence." 

[Geno]

Man, your right Rich, I am diggin' it, especially with the rake. You knocked it outta the park with the snake fu. I really like the looks of those Rallys,  I have the Sunstar version but I'm not crazy about the color, mine just has the spinner style hubcaps as well. You got me wanting to tear it apart and redo it LOL. ???

[Bills72sj]

Tasteful mods. Well done.