"The 777" Tasca Ford '63 lightweight Galaxie

[customline]

I tried to get a head start on this one before posting the WIP and I did but not as much as I wanted. I'm going to need some guidance from those of you who may have experience with the 1:25 build or with knowledge of the 1:1s, rare as they are. Below is the subject matter and there are not many good photos that I could find. I have both kits needed to build a full detail model and have begun to make the mods in order to fit the Starliner frame and floor pan to the Galaxie body. I am using the intake setup from the 427 '66 Fairlane kit on the Starliner long block and transmission. ( I unwittingly bought a 2000 Starliner kit with the black one on the box; no dual quad intake 💩.) 

[customline]

The first thing I had to do was straighten the floor pan using the Starliner body as a reference. I won't bore you with the details. Then the frame. Anyway, that all worked out okay. After that I noticed the 1:1 shows the rear spring shackles are either reversed or replaced with aftermarket parts to maybe make room for the slicks so that was the first mod. Second, I fabbed up a traction bar set-up using the thunderbolt part, loosely, as a pattern. The floor pan needed to be trimmed slightly behind the rear axle and shortened a bit. The gas tank had to be moved forward and the frame was shortened near the bumper brackets. The "screw bosses" have been shortened to ultimately get the bumper brackets to work with the bumper and to get the stance established. I observed in the photos that the 1:1 rear hub aligns with the lower character line of the body, so that was my target. It seemed wheels on the 777 were mostly reddish steelies and white wall tires appear on the front. I borrowed slicks from the AMT '62 Bel Air SS 409 and married them to the '60 kit's wheels. On the front are the '63 kit tires on the '60 inner wheels with the '63 chromies on the outside, painted. The rears needed tweaking to get the tires in a bit and I buzzed the inside of the wheel openings too for a little extra clearance. Hopefully, the photos will clarify anything I have not explained well. The help I will need is about the next thing- the radiator support. I am not sure how to go about this and any help will be greatly appreciated so....feel free!

 

[LennyB]

Jim, glad to see you're starting on this. Should be a cool build.

[bobss396]

Looks good. The AMT 1965 Ford kit has a great dual quad 427 and likely the induction you need. Did you use the 1960 Starliner chassis?

[Force]

The 60 Starliner Custom or 2 'n 1 kit has everything you need to do a period correct 427 with dual 4 bbl and long cast iron headers.

[Rod666]

Looks good, interesting project!

[falcon wagon]

Interesting project!

[customline]

4 hours ago, LennyB said:

Jim, glad to see you're starting on this. Should be a cool build.

I'm already past the point of no return, Lenny. I'm going to try to use the curbside-ish floor from the '63 under the Starliner body so as not to waste that nice kit. 

3 hours ago, bobss396 said:

Looks good. The AMT 1965 Ford kit has a great dual quad 427 and likely the induction you need. Did you use the 1960 Starliner chassis?

Yes I did, Bob, and I am using the '60 engine with a different intake (see my 1st post above).

2 hours ago, Force said:

The 60 Starliner Custom or 2 'n 1 kit has everything you need to do a period correct 427 with dual 4 bbl and long cast iron headers.

Yes it does, and I wish I had known this. I coulda saved 12 bucks. (See above, 1st post)

50 minutes ago, falcon wagon said:

Interesting project!

I saw the car run at Charleston, RI when I was a young'un. That's all I remember though 🥴.

 

[FoMoCo66]

That looks amazing. I love the specialized light weight fords from the 60s like the thunderbolt, 66 427 fairlane, the r code 63 galaxie (like your amazing build), afx mustangs, and the Lightweight 62 galaxie.

[bobss396]

11 hours ago, FoMoCo66 said:

That looks amazing. I love the specialized light weight fords from the 60s like the thunderbolt, 66 427 fairlane, the r code 63 galaxie (like your amazing build), afx mustangs, and the Lightweight 62 galaxie.

I had seen an R code '64 for sale om eBay... it was the most clapped our rusted hulk you could imagine. But... it went for crazy money, like around $7000. I guess it was good for the vin number and a few other things. There wasn't much R left in it.

[customline]

1 hour ago, bobss396 said:

I had seen an R code '64 for sale om eBay... it was the most clapped our rusted hulk you could imagine. But... it went for crazy money, like around $7000. I guess it was good for the vin number and a few other things. There wasn't much R left in it.

Like maybe the fiberglass nose, deck lid, aluminum bumpers and front seats too. That 7K was worth the aluminum bumpers alone, I would think. Where else could you get those? 🥴 I can't imagine trying to restore a car they only made 50 or so of. I wonder if the one on ebay had the '62 chassis. 🤔 This is a very interesting subject. I have the one with the styrene bumpers and the '60 chassis 🤣.

[bobss396]

1 hour ago, customline said:

Like maybe the fiberglass nose, deck lid, aluminum bumpers and front seats too. That 7K was worth the aluminum bumpers alone, I would think. Where else could you get those? 🥴 I can't imagine trying to restore a car they only made 50 or so of. I wonder if the one on ebay had the '62 chassis. 🤔 This is a very interesting subject. I have the one with the styrene bumpers and the '60 chassis 🤣.

This car was just a partial body and chassis, bent and rusty. All the good stuff was long gone.

[R. Thorne]

Nice work.  Shows a lot of careful thought and attention to detail.  

[M W Elky]

On 5/9/2024 at 1:56 PM, Force said:

The 60 Starliner Custom or 2 'n 1 kit has everything you need to do a period correct 427 with dual 4 bbl and long cast iron headers.

I sure hope for round 2 to reissue that one as they are getting tougher to come by I know I could use 6 or 10 of them 

[customline]

9 hours ago, bobss396 said:

This car was just a partial body and chassis, bent and rusty. All the good stuff was long gone.

And it sold for 7K? 🤣

[customline]

6 hours ago, R. Thorne said:

Nice work.  Shows a lot of careful thought and attention to detail.  

Thank you, Ron. I try.🤓

[customline]

Got some stuff done tonight on the radiator support. I ended up removing the entire '63 screw boss partition. I found I was able to fit the '60 support along with the top piece attached with only slight tweaks on the top corners of the support. I don't know yet if I need to do anything about the way it looks but it fits just fine. I did need to move the engine back about 2 mm. due to the very slight interference with the expansion tank, which is part of that top piece.  I removed the mounting from the transmission crossmember and installed a new pin maybe 2 mm back to locate the transmission.  I am optimistic 🤓. Next thing is the firewall. Not sure how to proceed on that and I am hoping for some informed suggestions. You have all weekend; I'm back at it on Monday.  Also, I am going to need the MCW lightweight interior and they don't have it in their on-line catalog 🤨. OK, I'll check ebay 😕.

[Force]

4 hours ago, M W Elky said:

I sure hope for round 2 to reissue that one as they are getting tougher to come by I know I could use 6 or 10 of them 

I think I have 6 to 10 of them allready. 😉😁

[bobss396]

10 hours ago, customline said:

And it sold for 7K? 🤣

I forget exactly what it ended up as. The only decent parts were the chassis and vin plate. It may have been a desirable production serial number car.

[Brutalform]

Things are coming along nicely, Jim. I noticed you were able to get the radiator support to work with the 63 grill and headlights piece. I always end up removing the two curved pieces, that sits behind headlights from the Starliner radiator support in order to get my grills to fit. I suppose there is more than one way to skin a cat. 
 

Also those slicks would not be legal back in the day on this car. Speed City sells nice 7” wide Racemaster Super Stock cheater slicks with two treads going around the tire. These would fit with almost no clearance issues at all. On all the cars I’ve built with this chassis, I had to remove the wheel stops on each side of the rear end, in order to push the wheel backs further on the rear. This eliminates any tire clearance problems that I encountered. I’ve built a few that were not built to the exact rules of 1963, and used wider tires on the rear. 

Can’t wait to see more progress.

[Brutalform]

I use the Statliner supplied firewall for all of my 62, 63, and 64 Galaxie builds. 

[customline]

5 minutes ago, Brutalform said:

Things are coming along nicely, Jim. I noticed you were able to get the radiator support to work with the 63 grill and headlights piece. I always end up removing the two curved pieces, that sits behind headlights from the Starliner radiator support in order to get my grills to fit. I suppose there is more than one way to skin a cat. 
 

Also those slicks would not be legal back in the day on this car. Speed City sells nice 7” wide Racemaster Super Stock cheater slicks with two treads going around the tire. These would fit with almost no clearance issues at all. On all the cars I’ve built with this chassis, I had to remove the wheel stops on each side of the rear end, in order to push the wheel backs further on the rear. This eliminates any tire clearance problems that I encountered. I’ve built a few that were not built to the exact rules of 1963, and used wider tires on the rear. 

Can’t wait to see more progress.

All right then, here's some. I don't have much hope of obtaining an MCW interior so I have opted to modify the kit tub. I cut the floor out of it and trimmed it down a bit to work with the '60 floor.

I had to do some grinding on the top of the tunnel and the bottom of the seat (at the arrows). The plan is to remove the arm rests and most of the somewhat lackluster detail and fake in my own.  The '60 kit had some warpage that had to be dealt with earlier but I just found a new one which may turn out to be beneficial. The glass.

When I mocked up the interior using  the dash and glass, I found if I forced it into place both panels fit up into their places nicely. I may just epoxy the glass despite having to force it. The mock-up seems good with everything fitting well. The firewall looks like it may be a bit of a challenge and it's next. Thanks for checking in.

[Sledsel]

The build is looking great! I did notice an issue, the traction bars on that car are rear mount, I can see them in your photos. You can see them in these photos also. Here is a pic of installation, FYI...  I think the AWB Falcon has a set

 

Edited May 13 by Sledsel

[customline]

Andy. I do believe you are correct.  I misinterpreted what I saw in the photos. You have just ruined my day. And maybe saved it. I have some work to do. Thank you.

[Sledsel]

Honestly, I did not mean to ruin it. It was an observation that I merely wanted to point out. Every racer back then did something unique.