GSL "Common Kit" '29 roadster - with GM slant engine prototype you never heard of

[Russell C]

Back last March, I tipped NY state modeler Jim Bongiovanni that Arizona doesn't require front plates like New York does, and as a sort of homage to his Revell '29 roadster buildup, I thought I'd make my build a 2-plate NY state-registered rod. Plus, I've never been to NY state, so here I can dream just a little on how nice it would be to live in the sky above Manhattan and occasionally take the rod for a summer ride out in the country a ways while being as politely street legal as possible. Handy that I had a license plate frame in my parts box the identical size as what's in the '29 Revell kit. The bracket for the front plate is a 32nd scale half steering wheel that's been rattling around in my parts box since forever, don't recollect what the bracket for the back one came out of. Since it might be a little dark under the frame extension out back, I added a little light housing on top of the Revell kit's plate, butted up against a leftover bit of the plastic sprue I left on the plate frame. Might as well not arouse the ire of the local cops for not having a lit plate back there at night. In gathering images to use as a template to draw the NY plates in my old CorelDRAW program, I was wondering why I didn't see yearly / 2-year registration tags on the back plates like we have in AZ. Finally figured out those are put in the left corner of the windshields. Wasn't planning on using the Revell kit windshield frame at all, but now I think I'll install just a short bit of it with a vestige of windshield glass to put those stickers on. Folks will see later why I was skipping the whole windshield entirely.

Next, made a much stronger pair of connecting pins for the engine/transmission to that I could finalize the engine mounts, particularly since the passenger side of the V8 is gone. My guesstimate turns out right on the added length to the front of the frame, if not just a tad too much. Might end up with a shroud around the fan … or not. Hacked the radiator itself out of a Franklin Mint '41 Lincoln parts pile, and the fan comes from that pile, too. Call me a traditional mechanical stick in the mud, not a fan of electric fans.

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 curiousmodeler sez:
Frame extension out back? What frame extension?? Since you can't build engines right, you better build the back end right! And what is that giant thing on the inside of the frame opposite of the bracket for the underfloor master brake cylinder/booster?!

Ah. Well, I figured that a cantilevered pedestal in the interior that's fairly heavy couldn't just be bolted to the sheetmetal of the floor, so I put in a large bracket directly underneath that it could bolt down through to.

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 curiousmodeler sez:
Cantilevered pedestal?? What are you up to?!

   .. .....  Nothing …… !

[Russell C]

At first, I thought I could flip the Revell roadster kit's chrome plated oil filter upside down, slice it thin at the top, and turn it into a ribbed radiator cap, but it ended up looking just too big in diameter. Plan B was to lightly crimp an aluminum dowel with pliers around the top to create the ribs, and then lathe-turn it into a shiny dome with a smaller diameter boss underneath for mounting on top of a short length of black plastic sprue, which itself goes onto the ex-Franklin Mint '41 Lincoln radiator. Decorative ornament pinned into the cap to be figured out later. Now that the oil filter is reduced to being a chrome cap for some future project, my orange glue bomb Vette scrapyard pile donated one more item to this project, its oil filter, lathe-turned a little smaller in diameter and length. Realistic orange color for Fram filters, will use a fine-tip marker to draw in that name upside down later, too.

[Russell C]

Evil "89AKurt". Over at his now-turquoise & florescent yellow (I assume) GSL Common Kit '29 roadster build, he mentioned a "puke tube" while doing his radiator work. Never heard that term before, so I tossed it into a search at the Jalopy Jounal 1:1 forum. Of course, a coolant overflow tank! Various types to see there, ranging from whisky bottles to basic vertical tube tanks. Once I see a simple detail like that, it's hard to unseen it. A quick rummage through my metal bits pile turned up an old scrap of aluminum tube with a smaller tapered end that looked sorta like a tall stainless Thermos bottle, so that'll do, with a bit of aluminum rod 'lathe-turned' on my motor tool to be the cap that fills in the tube end. A little bit of wire will be the bracket to hold it to the radiator side, hole drilled in the bottom for the future overflow hose.

Glue once, measure twice.  Or something.  In seeing whether things were lining up in the engine / frame department, I saw that I'd glued on the front cover / one-arm water pump in a non-vertical position - that was brilliant - so I had to pry it off and put it on right. Won't have to carve out a crevasse for valve cover clearance, that's nice to know. Top radiator inlet 'arm' somewhat ironically is sourced from the old blue-molded Revell '31 Ford Sedan Delivery (you should see what I'm doing to that kit's engine). Added a little piece of plastic to the right side of the crossmember, which will be filed flat on top after the glue hardens to serve as the surface the overflow coolant tank sits on. Ignore the black spots on the crossmember, I drilled the holes for the radiator locator pins one increment too far over to the right and filled in the holes with stretched black plastic sprue.

May have figured out what to put on as a radiator cap ornament. Inspiration was the Red Baron glue bomb that provided the front part of the now elongated chrome oil pan. Couldn't remember if that pile still had its gunsight radiator ornament or not, but that must have been busted off when I got it. However, since the wire bracket for the overflow tank was such an easy circle/stem to make, I should try it to see if I can make a 3-piece gunsight ornament out of wire. This might work, take two perpendicular wires and mash them together hard with a needle nose pliers and add a tiny drop of superglue to the junction and hope it's strong enough to survive trimming off the excess to fit within the circle. We'll see.

[Russell C]

Chose the smallest headlights option, got those & their aluminum wire rod brackets more or less figured out. Didn't like the look of the really deep recesses behind lenses, so I used "89AKurt's" tip on how to make headlight reflectors out of standard aluminum foil. The reflectors are just temporarily dropped in here as are the headlights on the wires, they'll all be lined up and fitted better in the final assembly. Heat-stretched clear plastic sprue will work as headlight bulbs, where the ends will be hit with one more round of heat to make 'em look like round bulbs.
 

[Russell C]

Try as I might to like the wheels / narrow tires & drum brakes in the Revell '29 roadster kit that's the basis of this Common Kit class, the road racer in me prefers disc brakes and tires with a bit more contact patch, even though this build will be a rod that motors around to shows not all that fast. Since not so many street rods are seen with 4-spoke wheels, and I spotted a nice set of 'em on eBay last year that were the custom wheels in the MPC 1984 Dodge Daytona, that's what I'll use. However, they are all the same offset and I want big meats in the back. To cure that problem, just slice the outer rim areas off something like the front wheels off the Revell IMSA Mustang (thanks to MCM forum modeler Dan Doane for lending his parts box set!). The experienced mini-lathe owners will spot the one I have in the 2nd pic below and ask why I didn't just turn a new pair of rims out of aluminum. Answer: I'm not that good at machining. What I did there was chuck the wheels into the lathe to get a good true circle cut into the wheel at the depth I needed (fer gawd's sake, be careful with that saw not to impale yourself!!) and then I rotated the chuck by hand to carefully saw the rest of the way through. Don't know where the front tires I have came from, the backs are the 2-piece plastic ones from the Revell Chevy Luv pickup .... because they just happen to be the size / width I need, and the tread pattern on 'em isn't terrible. Not too difficult to cut a bigger wheel opening in 'em.

[Russell C]

Made a bracket for the alternator out of a black-anodized dead soft aluminum tag that I fetched out of the scraps barrel from my long-ago job at an aerospace nameplate manufacture (same material I used for my GSL Group 15 entry's Y-block engine generator brackets). Bends but doesn't break easily, quite carvable.  Touch up the bare silver metal areas with a black Sharpie marker and it's all good. Thought I could just lathe-turn grooves using my motor tool into the three Revell roadster pulleys and then create a new fan belt out of heat-stretched black plastic sprue. That worked well for the bottom pulley, but the longer I looked at the upper ones that would be silver-painted, the more certain I was that I'd end up smudging the paint man-handling those into place. No way to smudge aluminum. So, I used my mini-lathe to create the two top pulleys from aluminum rod.

[Russell C]

It's nice that this kit has the separate fuel tank and battery items, but with the seat in the way from the front, and the deck lid molded closed, what good is that if you can't see these items? So, back in March last year, I showed in the "What did I Accomplish Today" thread how I sliced out the deck lid. However, my project needs to haul, in the literal sense of the word. I've seen old 1:1 pickup bed conversions of Model As, but I'm thinking just a flatbed extension will work. Combo of Plastruc tubing and the bits sliced off the Red Baron glue bomb I have the held up its fuel tank, since that looks more stylish than just angle iron.

Panels that look like wood will do, and because I am ever more lazy on painting in my old age, I thought I'd use a scrap of really thin 1940s or '50s-era blank circuit board material I gleaned out of my late father's electronics boards scrap pile. Looks sorta like Masonite to me. Smells terrible when you cut it, though, hold your breath.

Since the flatbed displaces the fuel tank and since the Red Baron tank was one of the few bits in good condition in that gluebomb, why not just locate it in the forward area with a filler neck extension? Filler neck is thick soldering wire, I'll slice it down to the right height when I get to the point of permanently the tank in place.

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curious modeler sez:
See?? You are going to build something weird. Probably some oilfield construction equipment truck or an army 6x6 weapons carrier. Why don't you build a normal model like an airplane or a submarine or an aircraft carrier?

An aircraft carrier? Sounds like a boatload of fun. A weapons carrier is a great idea, though …..

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curious modeler sez:
Don't even think of doing that!!

 

[Russell C]

Initially thought I'd have to use a different underside exhaust setup with the header pipes collector idea I had, but it turns out I can use the Revell '29 roadster muffler & rear pipe section, while using a longer thick solder wire for the front section (handy material from my late father's electrics soldering hobby).  Might use a leftover length of nickel plated tubing from my last GSL Common Kit entry's flat five velocity stacks collection, but cut shorter …. unless it looks like it's too large in diameter.

[Russell C]

Can't really use the either of kit's Revell '29 roadster taillights options since they'd be too far under the flatbed platform. My original idea was to put a pair of bullet taillight lenses from my junk pile into some polished aluminum tubing, but since the tri-carb's air cleaner caps look like the appearance I wanted and were nearly the same in diameter with the nuts on top being an ideal spot to run an electric power wire in, why not use those instead? The lenses were a bit long, so I chucked them backwards into my motortool and used one of those dangerous weapons of massive self-destruction to lathe turn them down to a size to match the hole in the underside of the air cleaner caps.

Polish up some aluminum wire, drill some holes in the frame and the caps, and that's mostly it. I'll probably put two wire rings like I showed in this tip at the bases of the lenses to give them more of a complete look, and later on, each light will get an electric power wire stuffed into the back that goes up into the frame.

[Russell C]

Front turn signals. Wasn't sure if this would work, but worth a shot if it did, and I do have fun 'lathe-turning' tiny things on my motor tool. The ingredients here is some old clear amber sprue from one of my mid 1970s AMT truck builds, then some K&S really small diameter aluminum tubing (polished with Simichrome Polish to chrome-like shine), and two sizes of aluminum wire scrap. First, 'lathe-turn' the amber sprue into smaller diameter rod, then jamb that into the tubing where it stays stuck, and then chuck both into the motor tool and 'lathe-turn' the amber bit into it its final bullet shape. Reverse direction on this, jamb a bit of aluminum wire into the open back end, clip with a wire cutters, then use the motor tool as a sort of circular vice to grip the piece such that you can use a #76 drillbit to drill the hole for the wire that mounts the turn signal unit to the headlight bucket. Then finally saw off the back to the proper length, file the back to a dome shape, polish the back end to a nice shine, and it's done.

[Russell C]

Engine progress. Bare Metal Foiled the valve cover except for the raised center area, which I covered with the white stripe decal section from the Revell '60 Chevy sheet. The "Chevrolet" script will go on there next. No room for an oil filler neck on the kind of GM prototype slant engine I'm doing, so the oil fill cap will go on the cover where the "O" is. One less unused scrap part out of my parts pile, I 'lathe-turned' that cap into a more perfect circle on my motor tool and scribed in an "O" on the top while it was spinning which I filled in with a Sharpie marker and polished off the excess. Believe it or not, I got some Bare Metal Foil to stay put around the main body of that cap, and the trick to getting a thin strip to stick to the bottom ridge was dabbing a teensy amount of Tenax (a.k.a. methyl ethyl keytone) with a super fine tip brush just ahead of the foil strip I was laying down. Burnished it while it was spinning on the motor tool with the edge of a piece of thin cardboard, then hit it with the Simichrome polish I mentioned in the prior post. BMF is finicky stuff, but it could be that the heat action of the burnishing makes the adhesive work better.

Also worked out the wire pins for holding the Revell '29 roadster carbs / scoop together, and to the intake. Added heat-stretched sprue "bolts" to the intake flange. Scratch built a distributor cap differently than what I did for my flat 5 engine in the last Common Kit entry I build, since the parts box distributor I had was just too big in diameter. This time I 'lathe-turned' the tan plastic sprue on my motor tool into a perfect circle cylinder, then hand drilled the number of plug holes I need as close to the edge as possible, then 'lathe-turned' the upper third so that half of the hole sections were opened out - it looks like a gear when viewed from the top. Then I heat-stretched the same color sprue to the diameter I needed for the plug-in nubs (or whatever the term for those is) and individually glued them them in the open hole areas around the perimeter of the cap. After the glue dried, I lathe-turned the outer ones down to the same height. I'll drill the holes for the incoming wires later.

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curious modeler sez:
How many "plug-in things" does this distributor cap have?

Somewhere between 6 and 9, including the center one, if I counted right.

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curious modeler sez:
Lunatic.

 

[Russell C]

Thought this was an experiment worth trying. Watercolor paint dating from my grade school days, and one of those thin diameter syringes that comes with a color ink refill bottle for my inkjet printer. Seems to be working out well so far, and the nice thing about water soluble paint is that if you overfill one of the spokes where it bleeds into the center hub, just run it under the faucet and start over. Might need one more layer added, I'll see when these dry out.

[afx]

Great looking project.

[Russell C]

18 hours ago, afx said:

Great looking project.

Thanks! Having my fun messing with people's minds, too. There was an angle of truth to the "weapons carrier" bit a few posts back. 😙

[Russell C]

Hit the radiator area with black, will tidy up the outer edges since the paint doesn't stick too firmly to the chrome. Hit the engine (masked off the rectangle area for the exhaust & intake manifolds), tranny & rear axle with primer so I can see what divots need to be filled in. Hit the front spring and inside wheel backs' disc brake areas with my old-but-still-spraying Model Master buffing magnesium, will buff those out a bit more later. I'll have to brush paint the discs on the other sides of these wheel backs, which I salvaged off my Red Baron glue bomb. That crumbly thing is giving up more than just its oil pan & fuel tank. If only the long ago builder could see how bits of it continue to live on as an entry into the GSL contest ...

Bothered me that when I temporarily pinned the scoop to the carbs (which I - oops - had sideways in my Wednesday post) and pinned the scoop & carbs to the primered intake manifold, the carbs looked so visually uninteresting just sitting on the intake. And it also bothered me that after seeing 89AKurt's fuel lines out of his carbs that I would have no stable way to put in my own fuel lines & linkages without first gluing both carbs to the intake, which would need to have its final coat of paint on it. So, I created a more interesting looking bottom adapter plate that I could glue the carbs to separately (heat-stretched sprue will make create the "bolts"), where I could drill all the holes in the carbs and make the fuel lines connect, including making sure that when I temporarily pin the whole unit to the intake and temporarily pin that to the engine, I'll be able to locate to the incoming fuel line and accelerator pedal linkage in a repeatable way before I paint all the various pieces. Objective being to minimize the handling after final coats of paint.

[Russell C]

The 'slop' of the too-large-of-holes in the coilovers were bothering me when it comes to friction-fitting the whole rear suspension together on the frame, where I could finalize the gluing of the radius rods, so I 'lathe-turned' sleeves on my motor tool to glue into the holes that I could later ream out to fit snugly onto the mounting posts. Excess handling of those ends from the Revell '29 roadster kit means I'll have to repaint the Model Master buffing stainless steel paint before the final assembly.

Now, on to the brass tube & wire ends to replace the rear radius rods that came busted in the roadster kit. This is where the point comes in from my Jan 3 post about the extra 'sleeve' bits I added to the kit's radius rod arms at their connection to the rear axle. They now friction-fit onto the axle tightly enough that I could put them in place, and with the wire ends stuffed into holes drilled in each end of the plastic remains of the kit's rods, I could slide the brass tubes back 'n forth until the positions were right, and then use superglue to set them on permanently at their back ends, and then use Tenax liquid cement to permanently glue the plastic arm ends to the rear axle. Everything else is still friction-fit in place temporarily for the coilovers / front ends of the radius rods / drive shaft / chrome front diff piece, all for easy removal. The radius rods will be the same color as the frame & main part of the rear axle. (that's masking tape holding the front diff part to the axle)

Because the cylinder end of the chrome diff part was not especially well plated on its bottom and it needed its length corrected anyway, I wiped it out and drilled a new hole in the front of the diff to take a polished aluminum tube the same diameter, where I stuffed a 'lathe-turned' bit of plastic sprue into the tube and drilled a hole in that exactly the same size as the post on the back of the driveshaft. Makes the driveshaft have a much better, wiggle-free fit.

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curious modeler sez:
 LIAR!  What actually happened is you forgot there were two length driveshafts in the kit and you were trying to use the longer incorrect one for this highboy frame and kept lopping off the front of the diff to make it fit until it looked really stupid while the axle was still angled too far down & back, then you looked into the kit parts and saw the shorter driveshaft, and then decided to cover up your blunder!

That is another plausible sounding scenario …..

[Russell C]

Temporarily double-stick taped the valve cover to the engine with its permanently glued-on oil filler cap.  "Chevr O let"!

And reshaped the intake manifold to better match the carbs adapter plate they're now glued to. Dash seems now to be in good enough final shape to paint white and then double-stick tape on a better paper printout version of those gauges (this version is off my old Canon inkjet just to see if I got the size right). Premiered the whole underbody brake booster unit so it can be painted Metal Master stainless steel silver next. The decade-old spray can of Dutch Boy chrome has held up well enough to shoot a coat on the rear diff cover and the two white plastic steering link ends out of the Revell roadster kit. I didn't take them off the aluminum wire rod connecting the two, so if I'm lucky when I take them off that cardboard, I'll be able to attach the whole unit to the frame / front axle and superglue them in place with minimum handling that might otherwise mar that shiny paint.  (ignore the giant temporary wire loop holding the front of the radius rods to the frame)

[tim boyd]

Some mighty fine work underway there, Russell!   TB 

[Russell C]

3 hours ago, tim boyd said:

Some mighty fine work underway there, Russell!   TB 

Thanks for the kind words!

A little more primer painting today, with final coat black on the steering column/box. That little thin down pointing bit on it is the column shifter arm for the rod that goes down to the transmission. I've got it pretty much worked out what the shape & length of that rod must be and how it attaches to a short crank arm at the transmission.

At the bottom of the photo is the primered top end of the steering column - ignore the masking tape at the left side which keeps the plastic bare where the steering wheel attaches. Will create a wire shift selector arm along with a wire turn signal lever on the other side of it. Rear axle / radius rods may be ready for the final paint color, but I think the frame extension there will need some more sanding in a few spots. Might be able to get the whole rest of the frame primered this week ...

Edited April 17, 2023 by Russell C
typo

[89AKurt]

If you quit posting on this forum, 18 days should be enough time.  😬  Dealing with the trailing arms is one of the most challenging parts on this kit, dealing with the big mold seams and chrome, YUK!

[Russell C]

Three progress items today:  First, Plan B for the brake booster bracket & lever arms. Originally I thought it would be easier to glue the bracket onto the frame with a predrilled hole through matching one in the back of the brake booster assembly. That way, I could stick in the lever arms from the front side and wouldn't have to paint the bracket separately the same color as the frame later and scrape paint off the frame to glue in the bracket. Poor planning, since it was turning out to be way too fiddly yesterday to test-fit the lever arm stuff with the bracket already on the frame. So, I drilled two pin locator holes through it into the frame late last night, then sawed it off and glued in two locator pins.  I'll paint the bracket and the lever arm items black instead. All that will be needed to do afterward is assemble the whole unit permanently, and then locate the brake pedal arm up into the floorboard and finally just glue the whole unit onto the frame.

Next in the photo is the cantilevered pedestal I mentioned in my Feb 11 post. Don't quite know how the swivels at the top work, but it looks good enough for jazz for me. Easy to put together out of scrap plastic bits, with heat-stretched sprue again serving as the 4 bolts at the bottom, like I did with the adapter plate for the carbs. And at the top of the photo is a length of polished stainless steel wire for the gun barrel and some aluminum rod I turned on my mini lathe to be the end trumpet thing. Might be intended to be a muzzle flash reducer, don't quite know how those work, either.

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curious modeler sez:

  WHAT??!!

[Russell C]

Gettin' there. Color on the frame. Before gluing in the aluminum foil headlight reflectors (to get rid of the deep dark eye look of the Revell '29 roadster kit headlight buckets), I needed to temporarily locate the units on the frame to be sure the height was right for the wire brackets that go into the buckets - a touch of super glue at those points inside the buckets makes 'em permanent. The bulbs are heat-stretched clear sprue, with just a bit of extra heat waved in at their ends to make them flare out into bulb shapes.

Added bits of leftover adhesive-backed aluminum strips to the edges of the "wood" platform. That aluminum material came from the aerospace nameplate place I used to work at. Cuts with an X-Acto blade and the industry strength 3M adhesive makes it stick very well to the edges. The dotted ribs are thin strips cut out of a dimpled pattern adhesive back Triple A chrome mylar bumper sticker. Fuel tank permanently superglued in at the front of the platform. Aiming to have the roadster body in its final red color by tomorrow.

Got the final white coat on the dash, ready for the application of the "Red Skull" style gauge cluster 'decal' that I mentioned in my Feb 8 post. Sideview mirror has been rattling around in my parts box unused for a decade+. Permanent throttle linkage on the carbs, along with a two-into-one wire fuel line temporarily pinned in here. NY state license plates in their frames. Bonus points to anybody who can ID what TV show car those came from.

[Russell C]

Gettin' there. '29 roadster kit alternator with machined aluminum pulley installed, kit crankshaft pulley painted and installed, machined aluminum fan pulley installed, and they actually line up right. Never cared for all-in-one pulleys/fanbelt plastic assemblies in kits since I crave the look of more scale-appearing belts and belt grooves in the pulleys. Finally got around to using the TJ Models spark plug wire I've had forever, this color works well for the deep dark red engine color. The plug wire boots is from some electrical wire insulation, cut into teensy sections which fits really snugly over the TJ Models wire.

Also, folded my Snoopy in half and cut around the image perimeter. This worked out easier than I originally guessed.

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curious modeler sez:
 WHAT does that have to do with this project??!!

You'll see ……

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Russell C
Snoop addition

[Russell C]

Loading ramps located / bolted down on the flatbed, stop / loud pedals installed after the 'carpeting' was laid down (a skinned layer of light gray cardboard that resembles short pile carpet), dash / steering column done with shifter / turn signal levers, brake lines installed along with most of the fuel line. A fuel filter will be installed at that terminus, and then the rest of it will be installed when I have the body in place. Bare Metal Foil on the transmission flywheel cover, to resemble the aftermarket polished stainless steel ones. Counting my blessings that I managed - in advance - to create a flexible throttle cable from the carbs to the firewall that snaps in place every time.

Unfortunately, time is short, so I must concentrate on getting this project done to be ready for the Thursday morning flight up, so no more time for WIP photos 'til I return next week., and then the Under Glass separate thread.

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curious modeler sez:
 Well, I'm certainly glad you didn't make it into a 6x6 weapons carrier after all ….

Which part are certain about?

Edited May 2, 2023 by Russell C

[Russell C]

Running behind on this thread, we had a big unavoidable family function happening right after I returned from Salt Lake City which wrapped up finally yesterday.

Last of the WIP photos, which shows the muzzle flash reducer (?) at the end of the Spandau machine gun barrel that I machined out of aluminum, compared to the complete 3D printed barrels that came out of the GasPatch Models 1/48 scale kit. My barrel itself is a length of polished aluminum rod, and the gun was spray painted with a really old can of Dutch Boy chrome silver, which turned out quite shiny.

And finally, I did put in a linkage from the transmission to the steering column shifter sleeve bracket just beyond the firewall.

Under Glass link here: 

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curious modeler sez:
Lunatic.

 

Edited May 14, 2023 by Russell C
"Under Glass" link added