1/32 Revell/Monogram ‘55 Chevy Kustom

[Joe Handley]

Found this old build I started 15+ years ago along with that flat black VolksRod R/C while I was looking for a set of tires I had pit together for my E-Revo a couple weeks back, was going to make it a Kustom then and had shaved the chrome off, cut down the blower with the intention of filling in the hole in the hood, and that was all the farther I got on it. My club has build nights on the 3 summer meetings, so I decided to bring this and tinker with it again.

Here is how it looked just snapped together right out of what was left of the box

Not only was the he stance all wrong, but the seats were too tall for my liking, so while I was there, I cut those down to the same height as the door tops.

I also went through and cleaned up the gaps on the doors, hood, and deck lid, accidentally knocked the center of the front bumper out and haven’t figured out if I’m going to cement it back in place or fabricate something from Styrene stock yet.

 I also decided to take a more radical approach to the quarters and completely reshape them and move away from the stock tail lights all together. Filed off the wheel opening lips as I am currently filling those and the hole in the hood with sheet styrene and will be smoothing both out once the cement is cured.

The next few are where the car was by the time the meeting is over

 

These next 4 are from tonight, put some time into lowering the car, still have some tinkering to make sure it is level, but I’m much happier with this stance vs box stock, which almost looked jacked up in comparison.

Last thing I did was clean up the sprue tabs and slight flashing on the tires as well, which weren’t bad considering the age of this little snapper!

[OldNYJim]

I never even saw one of these kits before - but it looks fun!  I want one!

Great start!

[Joe Handley]

1 hour ago, CabDriver said:

I never even saw one of these kits before - but it looks fun!  I want one!

Great start!

These started out as a Monogram kit, pre-Revell-Monogram merger, in the 70’s or 80’s and have been Reissued off and on for decades now, kinda wonder if Revell still has these or if Atlantis picked up the tooling for them. They had a bunch of kits in this scale too, like the Malibu Cop Car, there should have been a rubber bumper late 70’s Camaro, late 50’s C1 Corvette and others that are slipping my mind right now.

 

I just googled it, looks like this dates back to ‘79 and apparently there are people looking to get $45+ out of theirs on eBay……….it’s not worth that price, to be blunt.

Edited June 12, 2024 by Joe Handley

[TNT]

55 is my favorite of the tri 5s. That looks like a cool kit.  Funny thing. My daughter n her boyfriend bought me a few models for my birthday and one was the pink t bird. I picked up some pink paint the other day and was wondering what else i could paint pink. And one of my 55 kits came to mind. Might be pink n black

Edited June 12, 2024 by TNT

[OldNYJim]

22 hours ago, Joe Handley said:

I just googled it, looks like this dates back to ‘79 and apparently there are people looking to get $45+ out of theirs on eBay……….it’s not worth that price, to be blunt.

I was thinking 4-5 bucks would be fair ?. Thanks for the info - I’ll definitely be watching for these at the shows this year!

[Joe Handley]

14 minutes ago, CabDriver said:

I was thinking 4-5 bucks would be fair ?. Thanks for the info - I’ll definitely be watching for these at the shows this year!

I think this one may have been about that price, about 20 years ago!

[Joe Handley]

Between work, going to the gym, wrenching on R/Cs, then getting a 24hr bug and Recuperating from that,   I haven’t had a chance to work on this until tonight.

Since the kit kindey bean wheels weren’t going to cut it for a sled and the choices are limited in 1/32 scale, I ran to Hobby Lobby Saturday and picked up this container of wiggley eyes in an assortment of sized for $5 to use for this and any additional kits. I these would work great for a custom van builds too, as there’s a pretty good range of diameters as well as oval eyes too!

Found that the 10mm eyes were the right size to fit the kit wheels. Put my caliper to them, here’s what I’m using in both Metric and in Inches with a decimal point.

Since the plastic these are made from us really thin, I decided to fill them in with UV resin to give them some solidity.  Not worried about the opacity since I’m going to paint or foil them anyway.

This was my easy way of holding the little UV light to cure those, just taped it to a big roll of tape over the dome.

Then I used some more of the resin to help fill in the quarters and hood where I was going to get rid of the blower and fully skirt the quarters, used this UV nail polish curing thing to help there. 

and here’s how it sits for now, only needed to make 2 hub caps since the rears would be fully covered, but these should give a good idea of how the car is going to look.

[OldNYJim]

Looking GREAT!  Those google-eyes make good lenses for gauges too!

[Joe Handley]

Didn’t think about gauge lenses too, that’s a great idea!

[Tabbysdaddy]

I like a lot of the 1/32 kits. Yours looks like the same issue I have, I have all six in the series. I guess I must have gotten it at least 15 years ago. I like how yours is coming along. 

[Joe Handley]

Thanks, I still find it hysterical that the older versions of this kit are now going for $45 or more, they have to be higher than their asking prices!

[Joe Handley]

Did a bit more work on this last night, planning on modifying the eyebrow portions over the headlights and smoothed over the areas that I had filled in.