Why didn't they make this a Fury?

[Kenmojr]

Find a 392 Hemi and pop it in.

[customline]

7 minutes ago, Kenmojr said:

Find a 392 Hemi and pop it in.

I'm fresh out of those, Ken.  I could borrow a 440 from a Revell Daytona kit but I don't think it's worth busting that kit for this build. I have too many busted kits already. Nope, that kit engine is staying.....as a rare option ?

[customline]

I found an appropriate kit to bash. The Vanishing Point Challenger. The wheels and tires and the smooth chrome rocker covers. There was a vestigial intake but no carbs and the junkyard was fresh out. I would have used the 440 too but it only has the Shaker air cleaner so I'm sticking with the kit unit. I painted it gold and removed the water outlet from the intake and painted that aluminum. You'll see. It's a phantom ?.

I have lowered the car arbitrarily so I hope that works out ☺️. I won't know till I do a mock-up. I had to do a little correction on the toe-in by replacing the center link with brass rod. Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

 

It should be noted that the working "steering" provided in the kit is a bit out of scale. I tried to reduce the spindle arms thickness but I can't do much with the rest of it. I came very close to swapping out the whole chassis and drive train with the Daytona but, again, I don't want to bust that kit for this one. But you could probably swap almost any Mopar chassis with little modification. 

Edited July 25, 2023 by customline

[customline]

Not much today. I did some black-washing on the engine and wheels. Maybe a mock-up later.  I coated the tie rod's brass center link with thick CA to make it more in line with the rest of the tie rod. It should be explained why I did what I did. The spindles wouldn't line up straight across so I had to lengthen the tie rod. I was limited on the size of the replacement link and I made it so I could adjust the spindles by sliding the brass rod in the holes drilled in the rod "ends". Now I'm working on cleaning up the tie rod with various fillers and then sanding until it looks decent. Hey, Thanks for tagging along.

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by customline

[customline]

Quick update. Got it up on all fours. Looks to me like I'm OK with the lowering; I'm happy with it (?).   

I'm thinking "Plum Crazy" now ?

Edited July 30, 2023 by customline

[customline]

Tricky. So tricky, in fact, I had to abandon the kit and go my own way on the exhaust system.

  Well, specifically the exhaust pipes; the rest of it is OK but if you follow the sequence of assembly laid out in the instructions,  it's kinda awkward and you have only one anchor point on each run and that's the exhaust manifolds. From that point back, there is nothing to anchor the system because the anchor points are on the floor pan, not the frame. I could not get the right side exhaust pipe to work no matter what I tried. The space between the bell housing and the torsion bar and the way the pipe was formed....I dunno, maybe I did something wrong. I used solder and routed it below the cross member. The left side would fit but for the sake of uniformity,  I used solder for that side too.. ? 

Edited July 31, 2023 by customline

[Supernurd]

That's looking really slick

[customline]

2 hours ago, Supernurd said:

That's looking really slick

Thanks, LM, at this point encouraging words help. I'm bogged down in details,fumbling with tiny parts like shocks and batteries and such. Dropping the same tiny thing on the floor 3 or 4 times.....oh......sorry ?....

[customline]

OK, what's up with this? Did I miss something? 

Edited August 1, 2023 by customline

[customline]

Hello. Remember me? I know, I know... it been a while ?.  Anyway, she's finally painted, polished, and getting put together. Here's a few pix to get 'er back on the front page. I'll have more after I finish the foiling. Thanks for looking.

[LennyB]

Remember you?? No actually because I wasn't here back then, maybe I'm not here now.?

 

Nice to see, you got a great paint job on this one. And those rims have always been a favorite of mine. Good job Jim...(hey, maybe I do remember)(better stop talking to myself they might lock me up again)

[customline]

3 hours ago, LennyB said:

Remember you?? No actually because I wasn't here back then, maybe I'm not here now.?

 

Nice to see, you got a great paint job on this one. And those rims have always been a favorite of mine. Good job Jim...(hey, maybe I do remember)(better stop talking to myself they might lock me up again)

 I happened to notice the low count of your posts and was surprised to find you only joined in January of this year. ?   I was also surprised to find this thread went into hibernation back in August '23 ?. Well, anyway, this is a project, among others, that got sidelined when Wifey's health became a priority and I lost all that good painting weather. I still have 3 or 4 more cars to paint but it's going to get hot and humid here soon.  I've got maybe a month now to get them painted. I'll be lucky to get one or two. Tonight( I just knocked off) I was attaching stuff to the body with 5 M.E. and flubbed the tail light bezels. So...tomorrow I gotta scrape the epoxy out of the body and off the bezels and try again.?  Final assembly is always like this for me. ?

[espo]

The paint color and finish look great. Like how you did the side chrome trim. Great looking details on the dash and interior. 

[customline]

12 hours ago, espo said:

The paint color and finish look great. Like how you did the side chrome trim. Great looking details on the dash and interior. 

Thanks, Dave, it's all foiled now and the glass is in.  I should be able to ģet some pix up tomorrow. Stay tuned.

[John M.]

"SWEET" is the only word that comes to mind. We can't wait to see when it's complete. 

[customline]

Ok....just when you think it's all going great, the AMT curse kicks in and things turn to ?.  Despite everything I did to ensure that the windshield/dash relationship was friendly, the firewall would not get any closer to contacting the underside of the cowl than about two mms. I did everything I could think of but still the gap remained. What to do, what to do....fill the gap!

Next, the chrome trim on the hood would not line up with the corresponding trim on the fenders and the gap between the top of the grille and the hood trim was horrific. The hood was resting too high. My solution: shave the underside of the hood where it contacts the fenders and shaving the top of the radiator support. You can't know this stuff until you get to this point in assembly. I'm just glad that Wifey wasn't home when all this was unfolding ?.  She doesn't approve of my fowl language. ? So, anyway, here's a few pix with the foil on. 

 

[LennyB]

The AMT curse huh, ‘A’lways ‘M’easure ‘T’wice, and then you’re still screwed?

if this was easy anybody could do it

 

BTW I don’t have to worry about fowl language with Wifey around, she’s from da Bronx and worse then I am. Could probably give you some lessons. ?

[customline]

11 hours ago, LennyB said:

The AMT curse huh, ‘A’lways ‘M’easure ‘T’wice, and then you’re still screwed?

if this was easy anybody could do it

 

BTW I don’t have to worry about fowl language with Wifey around, she’s from da Bronx and worse then I am. Could probably give you some lessons. ?

Mine came from Cedarhurst. The only fowl language from her is aimed at me ?.

[NOBLNG]

On 8/1/2023 at 6:06 PM, customline said:

OK, what's up with this? Did I miss something? 

It’s looking good Jim.? How did you solve this issue? I have one of these, but I think I will stay away from AMT Plymouths for a while.?

[Can-Con]

12 hours ago, LennyB said:

The AMT curse huh, ‘A’lways ‘M’easure ‘T’wice, and then you’re still screwed?

if this was easy anybody could do it

 

BTW I don’t have to worry about fowl language with Wifey around, she’s from da Bronx and worse then I am. Could probably give you some lessons. ?

My wife worked in the Teamsters office for the #2 guy in the union back when they were putting a pipeline through here. She has a world class mouth on her when she wants. ?

[rickcaps55]

Wow.! That is beautiful I love it so far.!!!

[customline]

55 minutes ago, Can-Con said:

My wife worked in the Teamsters office for the #2 guy in the union back when they were putting a pipeline through here. She has a world class mouth on her when she wants. ?

Oh I admire a woman that lights up a room like that. You're a lucky guy!

[customline]

26 minutes ago, rickcaps55 said:

Wow.! That is beautiful I love it so far.!!!

Thanks, Rick, I still have a bit more to do. She's gittin' there.

[espo]

If the chassis isn't already permanently attached to the body, start looking for where the interior might not be seating up into the body. Have had this happen with a few kits even in addition to AMT's. 

[customline]

1 hour ago, espo said:

If the chassis isn't already permanently attached to the body, start looking for where the interior might not be seating up into the body. Have had this happen with a few kits even in addition to AMT's. 

Yeah, I thought about that and knocked out the side glass but that wasn't it, Dave.  The dash is tight up against the bottom of the windshield (this is after removing the remains of the locating pins and grinding the bottom corners of the glass away) and it looks fine but still there's a gap so I filled it with an .040 strip. Good enough. My big concern was the huge gap between the hood trim and the grille. I couldn't let that go without a fix. It seems there are always surprises when I get to this point on every build, regardless of looking for just this sort of thing ahead of time.  Stamp collecting would have been a lot easier ?.