Ferrari 250 GTO / Pontiac GTO-powered

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 10/3/2023 at 10:36 PM, Scott8950 said:

Glad to see you back on this awesome build. This build is gonna help me tremendously with mine.

 

On 10/3/2023 at 10:55 PM, NOBLNG said:

Nice work! I like the side-pipes too.?

 

On 10/3/2023 at 11:51 PM, ea0863 said:

So sacrilegious. I love it!  

Thanks for your interest and comments, gennelmen.   

[Ace-Garageguy]

Closeup of the "junkyard" diffs I'll be using.

Real Ford guys or car builders will recognize that the more oblong rear cover shape is much more typical of OEM Ford 9" housings...and the fact that the rear covers are welded to the housing, not removable as portrayed in these two kit parts (the white one is from the Revell '32 Fords, other one is a reinforced-housing NASCAR kit piece).

                                                                                       

Edited October 10, 2023 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

To use the 9" diff from the Revell '32 Fords, the axle housing ends needed to be shaved...just like using a real junkyard housing in something it wasn't made for.

The eyes in the axle mounts on the springs had to be carefully bored out too.

Here's the axle installed in the chassis, AFTER the center tube of the crossmember that fouled it was removed for clearance.

Still a tight fit back there, so the frame bays on either side of the pumpkin got squared up.

Fixed on the right, unfixed on the left.

After squaring the other side, I made a curved frame-tube section to replace the straight one removed earlier, to tie everything back together.

Also visible below is the additional setback required on the driver's side of the firewall to accommodate the head stagger of the Pontiac engine, to finally allow me to measure for a driveshaft.

We needed another modded 1/25 wheel to fit the remaining larger diameter 1/24 tire, achieved, as earlier, by wrapping it with .010" strip stock.

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[OldNYJim]

On 10/10/2023 at 12:40 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

and the fact that the rear covers are welded to the housing, not removable as portrayed in these two kit parts

Huh!  I love learning little facts like this…I wasn’t aware of this…I should blending those gaps!  

Great tid-bit of info, Bill - thanks!

[afx]

Tidy work.

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 10/27/2023 at 11:43 PM, CabDriver said:

Huh!  I love learning little facts like this…I wasn’t aware of this…I should blending those gaps!  

Great tid-bit of info, Bill - thanks!

Glad you found something useful. For what it's worth, I think this 9" may be somewhat over-scale for the 1/25 kits it comes in, and it looks kinda huge on this 1/24 model...but I haven't measured a real one...yet.  

On 10/28/2023 at 7:44 AM, afx said:

Tidy work.

Thank you, sir. You've been an inspiration in that area, as your in-progress work is some of the cleanest I've ever seen.  

[Ace-Garageguy]

Lefty has kept me honest over the years, ensuring a human could actually fit in whatever I build. It's tight sometimes, but it's tight in reality sometimes too.

Lefty got his name after the tragic loss of his right arm to the carpet monster under the bench in my last house. Happily, the arm reappeared during the last move, and he reattaches it occasionally to check steering wheel and shifter positioning.

Here, he's making sure there's still plenty of room for feet and pedals after a little further firewall incursion, necessary to accommodate the cylinder head stagger of the Pontiac, after moving the engine back a bit more to get pulley clearance at the crossmember. There is.

The rear springs and axle control links had to be shaved a little to get the much meatier rear tires inside the sheetmetal while not fouling the suspension. Parts were primered after shaving mold parting lines and sprue attachment bumps too.

It was finally time to permanently attach the new fabbed front crossember, made earlier. Bottle of cement is a weight to hold the rails square while setting up. I recently added the Trumpeter panel scribe tool to my arsenal. It'll do things the Tamiya scribers won't and vice versa.

New crossmember in place, with one of the newly fabbed upper control arms in too. Black assembly below it is from an Aurora 250GTO gluebomb, essentially what I copied for this build. Not terribly accurate, but not terrible either. Coil springs were salvaged and reused on this one. Frankly, I probably would have salvaged both complete control arm / spindle / spring assemblies had they not been just too glooey.

[Bullybeef]

Every time I open one of your threads I’m learning something new to add to my building portfolio. Thank you for continuing my scale education Bill. 

[porschercr]

Excellent craftsmanship Bill.

Trevor

[oldcarfan]

I love what you're doing here! My dad told me a lot of Italian, German, and British exotic cars ended up with American transplants when they became obsolete for front line sports car competition. I'm currently looking for one of my dad's old 1970s builds that had a similar idea. He used the Lindberg D-Type Jaguar and opened it up to put a Chevy engine in it. The idea was based on an E-Type that a friend raced and then blew the engine up on. Not being able to afford a new engine, he pulled a junkyard smallblock Chevy out of a wrecked Impala, put it in and went back to racing.

[Scott8950]

Some great progress on a very cool build.

[OldNYJim]

I’m glad Lefty was reunited with his arm anyway - must’ve been tough changing gears for him ?

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 10/31/2023 at 11:37 PM, Bullybeef said:

Every time I open one of your threads I’m learning something new to add to my building portfolio. Thank you for continuing my scale education Bill. 

Always glad when somebody finds something useful in one of my builds.  

On 11/1/2023 at 12:23 AM, porschercr said:

Excellent craftsmanship Bill.

Thank you, sir.  

On 11/4/2023 at 9:09 PM, oldcarfan said:

I love what you're doing here! My dad told me a lot of Italian, German, and British exotic cars ended up with American transplants when they became obsolete for front line sports car competition. I'm currently looking for one of my dad's old 1970s builds that had a similar idea. He used the Lindberg D-Type Jaguar and opened it up to put a Chevy engine in it. The idea was based on an E-Type that a friend raced and then blew the engine up on. Not being able to afford a new engine, he pulled a junkyard smallblock Chevy out of a wrecked Impala, put it in and went back to racing.

Good story. Sure wish I'd held on to some of the way-cheap stuff that was floating around back then. I bought a complete covered-headlight E-type once for $400, but it was so structurally rusty you had to jack it up in the middle to open the doors...and it was way beyond my fabrication skills at the time to save it. Sold it on for a grand and thought I'd made a killing. My first Porsche was a running driving '58 356A coupe for $600.  

On 11/5/2023 at 9:46 PM, Scott8950 said:

Some great progress on a very cool build.

Thanks for your interest and comment.  

On 11/5/2023 at 11:26 PM, CabDriver said:

I’m glad Lefty was reunited with his arm anyway - must’ve been tough changing gears for him ?

Yup, but Lefty has a much more philosophical view of his styrene existence now, thankful that even with a significant disability, he was still able to contribute to some of my projects.   

[Ace-Garageguy]

I've been a little under the weather, moving kinda slow, but managed to make some progress.

First shot just shows a spring liberated from its glooey prison, one installed, and the remaining control arm nearing completion.

Next shot shows camber verification prior to final gluing, using round-head pins as kingpin centerlines.

As the .021" pins are a tight fit in the .020" bores, reversed they make a great way to hold the ride height while measuring the spindles for stub-axle location. Maintaining the exact stance established during the mockup phase is critical for the look I'm after.

RH stub-axle in position, LH measured and assembled to match.

Both spindles mounted, with the final wheel/tire combo. Amazingly, all 4 wheels touch the ground. 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ace-Garageguy

[Scott8950]

Nice fabrication work,  I'm really enjoying this build.

[David G.]

What a fun project!

I always enjoy watching you builds. It's cool to  see how you make the unworkable work.

David G.

[Pierre Rivard]

Wonderful chassis fabrication Bill. Now don't hold back, all you need is real springs to fully articulate that front end. ?

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 11/11/2023 at 7:28 PM, Scott8950 said:

Nice fabrication work,  I'm really enjoying this build.

Thank you sir, and thanks for your comment and interest.  

On 11/12/2023 at 7:43 AM, David G. said:

What a fun project!

I always enjoy watching you builds. It's cool to  see how you make the unworkable work.

And thank you too, sir.   

On 11/12/2023 at 8:40 AM, Pierre Rivard said:

Wonderful chassis fabrication Bill. Now don't hold back, all you need is real springs to fully articulate that front end. ?

It really wouldn't be all that hard to drill and pin the control arms so they'd move, and substitute real coil springs...but I think the poseable steering is as far as I'll go...though it would be fun to make the front end go boingity boingity. But then I'd have to machine tiny shocks to control bounce, with valving you could only see with an electron microscope.  

However...I'm am going to rack-and-pinion steering most likely, and if I do, the rack will be through-drilled so a tie-rod can slip through it more realistically than having the whole thing move back and forth.   

[Ace-Garageguy]

When I got her up on her feet with the body on, I realized I'd made a mistake copying the rear wheel arch from the right to the left. Made a new transfer template, took more careful measurements, fixed.

Engine tidied up a bit and back in the chassis with a rear trans mount in the right place, carbs and air cleaners mounted right to finalize hood clearance, etc. This shot also shows just how far the engine has been set back in the chassis. The firewall just forward of Lefty's feet used to extend as far forward as the part to the left (above in the photo) of the rib. The setback problem is aggravated by the stagger of the Poncho heads (right head forward, opposite of a SBC), but even with this much setback, I still have workable room for pedal swings if we were building in full-scale...and that makes me happy.  

Pretty sure at this point I'm going to do a cowl-induction hood to solve the clearance issue. First production cowl-induction

...not to be confused with cow-induction    ... was 1969 Camaro IIRC, but an intelligent rodder could certainly have come up with something similar a couple years earlier. Also lets me pick up cabin air from a better source than the clear hood scoops the stock panel has, and fill the holes (which makes more room on the LH firewall for a brake booster as well). These things are hot to drive as-was, better to duct air from somewhere else probably. Cowl-induction would get cooler intake air to the engine than the stock through-the-radiator flow, of course...plus further annoy the purists.  

And she likes hanging out with her build-sister (an ancient 1964-issue Monogram 275P gluebomb rescue/rebuild) when they're between sessions. 

For the bajillionth time (well, maybe only the tenth or so), I say again...the effort it takes to add posable steering to any model car is, in my opinion, one of the most effective mods to add realism you can do.  

Edited November 19, 2023 by Ace-Garageguy

[Bullybeef]

Tidy work Bill

[Scott8950]

Nice clean work. 

[Rattlecan Dan]

Nice work Bill. That posable steering tip is one of many of your good tips. Much of your work is either beyond my skill set or energy level. But I glean what I can and use much of what I can absorb. Thanks for your forum contributions.

[David G.]

Good progress on this Bill.

David G.

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

On 11/19/2023 at 8:31 PM, Scott8950 said:

Nice clean work. 

 

On 11/19/2023 at 9:34 PM, Rattlecan Dan said:

Nice work Bill. That posable steering tip is one of many of your good tips. Much of your work is either beyond my skill set or energy level. But I glean what I can and use much of what I can absorb. Thanks for your forum contributions.

 

On 11/20/2023 at 7:18 AM, David G. said:

Good progress on this Bill.

Thanks again for everyone's interest and comments. I'm always glad when somebody can learn something useful from me, as I've learned a whole lot of good stuff from other builders here.   

[Kenmojr]

On 1/18/2023 at 1:50 PM, Gramps46 said:

Well you fooled me.  I thought you were going to do a take off on this C&D road test.

 

I recall that magazine issue...