AMT A1453M/12 John Wick 1970 Chevelle SS

[Nolan]

I’m building this as sort of tribute to one of my High School buddies who bought a ’70 SS396 Chevelle his Junior year (1971), it was Cranberry Red with White Stripes.  He immediately smoked the rear tires down to the cords and put a set of Gabriel Hi-Jacker air shocks and the biggest set of tires any of us had ever seen.  I don’t have any photos of Jimmy’s car, but I’m pretty sure they were Pos-A-Traction Torque Twisters.  I remember the raised white lettering as being huge.  Like Jim, I melted several sets of the L60-15 off my big block ’67 Camaro and later ran them front and rear on my ’74 El Camino.  Next he put on a set of Cherry Bomb glass packs.  I have a very fond memory of looking in my driver side rearview mirror and seeing Jimmy turn the corner behind me and just light the tires up in a cloud of tire smoke and the big block music of those Cherry Bombs!  Ahh, good times!  I’m sure everyone in my hometown shares those fond memories of the Big Block Hooligans, me, Jimmy’s SS396, Kenny’s ’67 SS396 Chevelle, Pinky’s ’71 LS6 454 Chevelle, Jerry’s SS396 ’69 Camaro, and Mitch’s L72 427 ’69 Vette.  Our High School parking lot was a sea of big blocks.  Fortunately, we all survived more horsepower than brains, sadly, several of the cars met tragic ends. I wish I had taken photos of the parking lot, every pickup had at least one rifle or shotgun in the rear window rack.  It was a gravel lot, so we picked up lots of gravel rash from parking lot donuts.

Me on Prom night

 

 

One sad set of used up tires..

 

Back to the model, the kit has the usual problems of worn out molds, the inside of the body shows evidence of many repairs, large lumps, gashes, uneven thickness.  The ejector pins under the trunk pushed up big bumps in the trunk lid.  The A pillars were also pretty rough.

 

The engine turned out well.  I added a bracket for the alternator, painted the valve covers with Molotow, 3D printed a distributor and designed and printed wire looms and drilled out the kit ignition coil for the plug wires.  Then, added some heater hoses.

 

I modeled and printed some Cherry Bombs to replace the kit mufflers.  They probably aren’t to scale, but I just sized them so I could cut off the stock mufflers and plug the cut off ends of the exhaust into the ends of the Cherry Bombs.  Next time, I’ll add some muffler clamps to the 3D model.  I also modeled and printed some better coil springs for the rear axle.

 

I bought files for the Pos-A-Tractions Torque Twisters from ZFMW on Cults 3D and printed out all the various sizes to see what which would be the best fit, then modeled and printed some backing plates to space the tires where I wanted them.  I used the 29 x 12’s on the rear and the 28 x 10’s on the front.   I bought some tire lettering decals from Fireball Modelworks after trying to paint the raised lettering on the printed tires.  The printed lettering is to scale, but my memory ain’t, so I used the oversized lettering I remember.  To get them placed somewhat uniformly, I modeled and printed guides.

I also bought a set of Brake Boosters and Master Cylinders from 1to1ScaleLeo on Cults 3D.

The hood didn’t fit very well and was offset to the drivers side, so I added a .010 strip of Everygreen to the passenger side of the hood.  That fixed the offset issue, and now it fits evenly.  After I paint the body, I’ll narrow the hood down to allow for paint thickness before I paint the hood.  I glued some spacers into the ‘hinge’ slots to move the hood forward to match the windshield moldings.  To fix the height issues, I temporarily glued some pieces of Everygreen to the cowl ahead of the ‘hinge’ slots to raise the hood level with the fenders, then moved the spacers to the bottom of the hood and glued them in place.  I have to wait to finish the height adjustment at the front of the hood until I get the Grill and Radiator Core Supports installed.

I bought some Cranberry touch up paint, but it looks much darker than my memory suggests and the photos I see on the interwebs of '70 Chevelles, so I guess I'll have to try some other paints as well to see which matches my memory the best.

More to come.

Nolan

[BK9300]

Very good idea about the guides you made for decaling your tires - excellent idea, in fact!