Ed's timeless masterpiece

[Alyn]

I have a respect for history. Ed, "Big Daddy" Roth put everything he had into an idea. His vision of a 23 T changed the concept of what a show rod should be. When I was about 12 or 13, I built Revell's Outlaw kit. No paint, glue joints without scraping off the chrome. What did I know. More than any model out there, this one can actually be built without paint and end up as a pretty decent shelf model. The original car was white, the plastic is white; throw on the decals and there ya go, your own version of one of the most recognizable hot rods in history. Talk about delicate, this kit has the smallest, most breakable parts of any I've seen.

So, I've already built it as it's suppose to be. This time, a few changes are allowed. Nothing serious mind you. Stare at this car for a few minutes and and you realize it is one of the most perfect renditions of the T bucket ever created. No changes necessary. But for this version, the color is going to be gold to show off the curves. The engine will get wiring and that's about it.

Starting off, the frame sucks. I hate frames that have to be assembled. It's too difficult to keep everything square. I'll take a 1-piece frame anyday. The upside is the added detail, but once assembled, it won't be seen anyway. Note how low the radiator sets in the frame.

I'm also going to use this build to experiment with resin casting. You can see that my first effort didn't come out to well. That's suppose to be a '49 Caddy engine.

[Alyn]

Round 2 on the resin casting was a major improvement. Same mold, but I took more time pouring the resin to achieve better mold saturation. Although the parts look pretty decent, the two sides of the block(top of the picture) are suppose to include the upper half of the bell housing. The resin would not flow down into this part of the mold, so I had to add this detail to the resin casting using some scrap styrene. There are a few air bubble voids, but nothing a little glazing putty can't cure.

[Foxer]

That looks really good for a second casting, especially considering the complexity of the block with the crankshaft! Nice job.

The first casting also looks realistic.. like many Caddys after their first run down the dragstrip ..

[Alyn]

Doh! I should have kept those parts for a diorama.

This motor has some nice detail. I may cast up another one just to throw in the back of a truck bed or something. Here's the basic frame completed too. The Micky Mouse ears are the upper frame mounts for a coil spring suspended tubular beam axle. Ed was pushing the envelope.

A lotta gold going on here. I hope I can afford it!

[Alyn]

For anyone not familiar with Big Daddy's Outlaw, here's a picture of what I'm building. I'm staying true to form, but mine's going to be painted gold. This thing looks as cool today as it did 40 years ago.

The nose comes as two parts, so it has this nasty seam on each side. Normally, this would be a problem to fix, as the chrome grill is suppose to be sandwiched between the two halves of the nose when they're glued together. This means you'd have to work around the chrome part during the putty/prime/sand/repeat and final color coat phases. I went ahead and glued the halves together without the grill and then filed open some slots underneath to snap it in place afterwards.

The result is a much cleaner looking nose. Here's the two main body parts in primer, ready for final wet sanding.

[MADmodelDOCTOR]

Wow! This is looking really nice. The gold should look awesome.

Keep it up.

later,

[Alyn]

Thanks, Ken.

After a session of wet sanding, I shot the gold on the body parts. Normally, I squirt the color coat over Tamiya fine white primer, but this time I shot right over the gray in the hope that it would slightly darken the gold. The picture of the nose is pretty close to the true color; 4 coats of Tamiya TS-21 gold with 2 more coats of TS-13 clear. This was wet sanded and followed with 4 more coats of TS-13.

The picture of the body and nose together was shot on a light blue back ground which totally threw off the color balance. I tried to adjust for it, but there's a definite orange hue to the picture. In real life, the body matches the nose and looks quite nice. Revell was kind enough to put their mold parting lines right next to those ribs on the rear of the body tub. They were a bear to sand off.

The dash had the gauges molded into the plastic, so I sand them off and drilled some holes to add my own later on. I'll need to scrounge up some decals to fit the aluminum bezels, but I think decals look way better that trying to hand paint the molded in style of panel gauges. A silver Sharpie helps, but I'll take the decals any day. The original car had a large speedo & tach, plus 5 smaller gauges. This car will only have 3 which will be that much easier to scratch build and should look just fine. Nice and simple.

[Modellpularn]

The gold does look awesome! Are you going to keep it clean, or..... use the kit decals?

[Guest Mustang3.8]

Beautiful work, Alyn! Your skills never cease to amaze me.

[Foxer]

That is looking great! This car is the definition of a Hot Rod T in my mind and deserves to be put into various custom modifications just as the original Model T has.

[Alyn]

Thanks, guys. Nice to see you around Kevin.

Hans, I saw a simple T-bucket hod rod at a contest not too long ago that was painted gold. I thought it really looked sharp and decided I should build me a gold T some time soon. Then I ran across this Outlaw kit at another contest and remembering the one I had built as a kid, so I bought it. Later on, the two thoughts just came together; build the Outlaw in gold. I had recently sprayed a gold undercoat on a 32 Ford roadster(topped with red) and noticed how the gold really brought out the curves. The gold should really bring out the organic shapes on Big Daddy's T. And it does; I've done a mock up and it looks very nice. Better than expected. I'm looking forward to posting up the pictures, but have some other items on the car to complete first.

For a mini update, I managed to scrounge up one of the giant coins like Scott Colmer uses. The giant dimes were a bit expensive, so I settled for a penny. Anyway, I tried it out last night and came up with these wire looms for my Caddy V8. These are made out of .005" aluminum sheet, about 1mm by 4mm with .022" holes drilled to accommodate the wire-wrap wire I'll be using for plug wires.

More to come soon.

[RodneyBad]

The Gold paint looks Excellent..

The front end looks like a piece of art.

Or an arm chair.

Very Cool Show Rod..

[Alyn]

.. The front end looks like a piece of art.

or an arm chair. ...

I didn't see that, but you're right. I should have made a mold of it. Can you imagine someone looking at the seat of some far out custom, and then realizing it's this nose. That would be cool.

From what I've read, Ed Roth's original intent was to market this body to hot rodders as a commercial venture. He wasn't a master at fiberglass, but built a female mold and used it to build two bodies. One ended up as the original show rod, the other, I'm not sure. The mold still exists, and I believe the current owners are wanting to market bodies again. On the other hand, the nose was a one-off piece. It was sculpted individually, rather than being the product of a mold. Only one was ever made.

The wiring isn't done, yet, but is moving along. I drilled out the distributor and shot it with some gray primer and Tamiya Italian red. I also built some wires with plug boots. The lowest wire in the picture is the coil wire, hence the straight boot. After some anguish, red was chosen to provide some contrast to all the gold and chrome. The original Outlaw had clear insulation on the plug wires which I thought about duplicating, but couldn't think of something suitable in scale that would give the same look. The red should look ok.

[Alyn]

Hans, sorry I didn't answer your question. I'm not using the decals, just keeping it clean and simple. I think the gold does all the work. Although a little dark, these pictures are a little closer to the true color.

I mainly wanted to show the dash gauges. The bezels are made from small sections of 1/8" and 5/32" aluminum tubing. I have a heck of a time finding decals to fit them. Most are too big. I bought several NASCAR kits a while back (in crushed boxes) for the parts. Plenty of instrument panel decals, but again, the gauges are way too big.

Starting to get some of the detail parts glued together as well. This kit literally has more chrome parts than non-chrome. There's not a whole lot of parts that need paint. The tail lights were all chrome so some Taymiya clear red was used for the lenses. I love this stuff. The picture doesn't do justice to the tail lights, but they look perfect up close and under the light.

Hopefully, I'll be able to puts some gas in the tank and see if she'll fire up by the end of the week.

[Raul_Perez]

Alyn,

I really like how this one is progressing!!

The color is GREAT for a show car!!

Thanks for sharing,

[Alyn]

Thanks for taking a peek, Raul. I've seen the mock up, and I can tell ya, it only gets better.

Here's my final work on the body. When you turn this thing upside down, you can see the inverted shape of the seat insert. Not very realistic, so I wanted to cover the bottom with a false panel. I used someones business card to make a pattern, and then using that, cut out a floor panel from .030" plastic card stock. Since this tub in the 1:1 world is fiberglass, I glassed over the new floor panel and also the rear section of the tub. Finally, the new glass work was covered in a few coats of Model Masters flat fabric gray and then trimmed around the edges.

[Alyn]

Here's the aforementioned interior tub. Nothing fancy here; pretty much as it comes out of the box. The steering wheel is a 56 Chevy mounted on an aluminum tube column. I painted the gold, but left the white plastic rather than painting white.Then both gold and white were covered in several coats of clear. I figured why paint the white when the 1:1 steering wheel is white plastic. What looks more like plastic than plastic?

The seat was shot with Tamiya fine white primer for the white naugahyde and the same gold as the body for the rolled inserts. The gold was then topped with dull coat to tone it down. For a little car show pizzaz, the floor is covered in gold paint followed by gold embossing powder. The molded in drivers side seat belt was covered with fabric belts and buckles for the final touch. The real version of this car was completed in '59 back when not too many cars had seat belts at all, let alone drivers side.

[Don Banes]

Thanks for taking a peek, Raul. I've seen the mock up, and I can tell ya, it only gets better.

Here's my final work on the body. When you turn this thing upside down, you can see the inverted shape of the seat insert. Not very realistic, so I wanted to cover the bottom with a false panel. I used someones business card to make a pattern, and then using that, cut out a floor panel from .030" plastic card stock. Since this tub in the 1:1 world is fiberglass, I glassed over the new floor panel and also the rear section of the tub. Finally, the new glass work was covered in a few coats of Model Masters flat fabric gray and then trimmed around the edges.

Pretty daggone impressive! I like the idea of gold on the body, and the rest of us can't wait to see your finished model! VERY NICE!

[Foxer]

What a great idea about the fiberglass!! It's all looking fantastic!

[Eshaver]

Alyn, what a spectacular trip back in time sir ! I'm thouhoughly impressed what with the level of detail on a very delicate kit . The gold reminds me of the G M Motorama Oldsmobile Delta 88 back in the mid fifties. Ed Shaver

[Alyn]

Thanks, guys.

The gold paint is one of the few noticeable changes, here's the other one. I'm sure the skinnier rear tires were cool in their day, but I wanted to update things a bit so I dug through some other kits and came up with this tire/wheel combo for the rear. I believe they're from the 32 Ford switchers kit. They were a mess too. The wheels were attached to the spru with way too much plastic, so when they were cut off, there was a couple of nasty scabs on the wheel edges. I really liked them, though, since they had the faux spokes that matched up nicely with the front wheels.

The rough spots had to be trimmed off, sanded and then covered with BMF. The repair is pretty obvious up close, but at a glance they look ok. Way better than before the repair work. The front end is setting on a metal axle for mock up purposes. This will be replaced with the most delicate part of this model; a drop axle with split trailing arms, lateral link(track bar) and coils. The molded and chromed plastic coil springs will be replaced with wound wire.

[Modellpularn]

I like this build-up, so I'm going to be a bit of a nitpicker... The steering wheel is Chevy '58-'60. But that's the one from the kit, isn't it?

Did you know that Ed called it "Excaliber" from the start? It had the same steel wheels front and rear, and a..... handmade aluminum top! It's featured in Car Craft January 1960, and yes, I have the magazine....

I met Ed while on a vacation trip to San Diego in '99. I attended the Western Nationals NNL in San Mateo, with Darryl Gassaway. The next day we went to the Oakland Roadster Show, and there were all these cool cars, live! A lot of those old cars I'd read about in magazines as I grew up.... Wow! And I walked up to Ed's booth, talked to him, and then all of a sudden, here comes George Barris. Snapped a pic of them together. That's a cool memory to have, now that Ed is gone.

Edited July 22, 2009 by Modellpularn

[Alyn]

I like this build-up, so I'm going to be a bit of a nitpicker... The steering wheel is Chevy '58-'60. But that's the one from the kit, isn't it?

Good eye Hans. I was going from memory, which at 58 is not what it use to be.

The steering wheel from the research I've done is from a '58 Impala, and yes it's supplied in the kit. I should know it's not a '56 as I've owned several 1:1 '55 and '56 Chevy's. It's been years, but I believe they have somewhat of a bullet shape in the center, and don't have the holes in the chrome trim.

The reason I pointed out the steering wheel heritage is that I find it interesting that such a high level show rod would have an ordinary wheel. Today, custom steering wheels are a dime a dozen. Most show rods wouldn't be caught dead without a high buck, high zoot billet steering wheel. Probably a custom made one-off design at that. Yet, here's one of the most famous show rods in history with a steering wheel that could be found on the common family sedan. But it works. It really does fit this cars character well.

Nice catch. Keep me honest!

Edited July 22, 2009 by Alyn

[Guest Mustang3.8]

This is really shapeing up to be another masterpiece, Alyn.

[Flatout]

Alyn...Your work never ceases to amaze me. The bare fiberglass on the inside of the body was a cool idea! The gold looks so good I bet even Big Daddy Ed would like it!

Aloha...Pete