1/16 Scale Army Vega Funny Car - Finished 10/14/2018

[Mooneyzs]

Niko... thank you my friend, I really appreciate the kind words. You would think that it wouldn't take much time to scribe a few lines but I have to tell you. It's been a pain in the butt...lol. I do know that the work going into will pay off when I have it done. I did get the the one panel line finished up last night and started on the forward most panel line on the frint plate. I hope to finish that one tonight and start working the rear panel line as well. Then I have a couple other things up my sleeve to try on the blower as well

Edited September 4, 2014 by Mooneyzs

[futurattraction]

Chris,

Something you might consider doing is having it etched, but do it in such a way that you leave the "M" in the full thickness of the material and have the surrounding material half-etched away. I did that when I made the "embossed" MOROSO lettering for my scratch-built 351C valve covers. The big question is how much, to scale, does the lettering need to stand above the surrounding surface. How much above the surface of the blower is the 1:1 "M"? If it's .125", for sake of argument, that's just shy of .008" in 1/16th, so to do a half-etch you'd need to start with .015"-ish thick material. The only advantage of doing this versus etching only the "M" out of material is that you'd have a larger gluing surface and with the half etch the curvature of the etch would flow the proper direction, whereas with the fully-etched "M" you'll have the back side of the etch that is undercut. I hope you follow my thought process with all this rambling. LOL Maybe a bit more food for thought...

[bobthehobbyguy]

The other argument for the photoetch is if you look at the blower is M is inside a circle and there is additional lettering. This would be hard to replicate any other way.

[Force]

Hakan.... Thank you for the information. I first thought that the M was for Mert Littlefield blowers. I appreciate the info. You are right that, that is what they have on the restored car. I have no clue what he actually ran on it back in the day but since this build is based of the replica I will go that route. I am trying to figure out how I can make the "M" and put it on my blower....lol Yes I am nuts...lol

It was unfortunate you didn't do your build in 1:24th scale because the Mooneyham blowers are available in that scale.

Monogram had Mooneyham blowers in the Don "Snake" Prudhomme Pepsi/Wendy's, Dale Pulde Miller High Life Warrior Pontiac Firebird and the Billy Meyer Chief Auto Parts/Wendy's Ford Mustang Funny Cars from 1985 and they still used the same setup with the Kenny Bernstein Ford Tempo from 1986.

The Funny Cars left Monogram and was sold under the Revell name from the late 80's and the John Force/Bruce Larson/Ed "Ace" McCulloch/Cruz Pedregon/Richard Hartman Oldsmobile Cutlass, the Kenji Okazaki/Chuck Etchells/Tom Hoover/Gary Densham/KC Spurlock/Dean Skuza Dodge Avenger and the Tom "Mongoo$e" McEwen 57 Chevrolet Bel Air Funny Car from Revell had the same blower...even the latest version of the tooling from 1997, the Cruz Pedregon/Randy Anderson/Jerry Toliver Pontiac Firebird Funny Cars still has the "M" on the front cover but the blower case in these Firebird kits wasn't plated and had a blower blanket.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Force

[Mooneyzs]

Scott... Thank you. I totally get where you are coming from and I think a half etching would be the way to go. Plus as you said you would have a much better area to glue too. you know me, I will probably try to model something up in Solidworks to get an idea...lol Here are a couple of pics I found on line:

Bob... you are right about that it would be hard to replicate. I may try to see if I can get a small piece 3D printed with what I possibly draw. I can always upload to shapeways and see if it give me a thumbs up or down on the design...lol but I think photo-etch would have a better quality.

Hakan.... Thank you. you were right about all of those having the same blower. Although I think this build would be much tougher with this amount of detail in 1//25th I am trying to replicate. I guess you can say I have been bitten by the 1/16th Scale Bug....lol

[Mooneyzs]

Ok Fellas... I have done a little work tonight and got all of the panel lines scribbed for the front and rear plates. So glad to have it done. I know its not perfect but hope it looks good once its final primered state and with paint. Here are a few shots:

Here is the front panel of the blower scribbed:

Here is a top view:

Here is the Rear panel:

[booboo60]

Chris, been following! But not said anything for awhile! FREAKING AMAZING,!!! LOST for words..wow

[Mooneyzs]

Alan... Thank you for the kind words. I know this last update wasn't very exciting but I am chipping away at the work I need to do to the blower and can't wait to have it done. I have a few things that I hope to surprise everyone with on it..... They are just subtle details is all, probably something that not many would notice and reason I am doing it is to make it as accurate as I can since I have been staring at the reference pics for the past 3 years of the Army Vega...lol

[Danno]

Nice huffer, Chris.

And that's the FIRST time I've EVER said that to a guy!

[Petetrucker07]

Very cool

[ScrappyJ]

Coming long nicely, Chris!

[Dragline]

Chris, you know I love this build and all you are putting into it but I gotta ask.

How are you going to make that blower smooth? All those nooks with imperfections would make me get another and start all over. There are some tight spots there buddy. Of course if anyone can do it it's you. I cannot wait to see it in Alclad and be amazed at the finish you achieve.

For my eyes it looks daunting.

Bob

[Mooneyzs]

Danno... Thank you. just wait til the huffer is done. I think you will be impressed...

Clayton... Thank you.

Dirk... Thank you for stopping by to check this build out.

Bob.... Thank you so much for the kind comments and I appreciate you following along. I know there will be a lot of patience involved on my part because it will take a little time and a lot of elbow grease. I was planning on taking bondo to the places between the fins on the main body and I was going to cut a piece of brass or plastic little smaller than each width to get in there and sand. You are correct that there are many tight spots, I can think of the back plate isn't going to be fun to do the body work but its where I will be starting in the morning after I get up and get at this build. The rest of the weekend is pretty much going to be working on this build besides a few house chores I need to do and as well a run to my local hobby store I frequent quite a bit to pick up the newest Model Cars Magazine. stay tuned and I will have some pics to show tomorrow. I didn't get any bench time tonight because I was reorganizing my hobby room... I should just of worked on the funny car...haha

[Codi]

Chris, anyone in our hobby should take a moment and look at your thread from the very beginning (as I have of course). I've learned things from your posts along the way & your attention to detail and pure effort on this build is just incredible.

Cheers,

Tim

[bobthehobbyguy]

Any updates? When are the breather parts due?

[Mooneyzs]

Tim.... thank you for the kind words. It means a lot. Eapecially with the talent I see from you. I hope to be as good as you someday being able to machine my own parts. I am hoping to get a sherline lathe and end mill one of these days. If I am lucky maybe after the beginning of next year lol.

Bob... I have gotten a little work done. Not as much as I have hoped this past week. I will post some pics tonight. I Am actually still waiting on parts from shapeways. I got an email from them on Sept 3rd saying that my order may have a slight delay and that it should ship between sept 4th and 9th. They said they would email a tracking number when it ships. Well I still havent heard anything so I dont believe it has shipped yet. Will keep you posted though.

[Mooneyzs]

Good Morning and happy Saturday Fellas.... I am sure you have been waiting for some updates. I have had a little trick up my sleeve where I wanted to finish up a little something before posting any progress pics of it. Well I have some what got it done. Not sure if I am 100% happy with it at the moment because I still need to do some final body work but I will let you in on the little secret I have been doing. This is all work that is for the blower. I know that I am still trying to figure a way to add the M to the blower since this is a Mooneyham blower set up on this car and well while looking at the blower I noticed that the ribs on the side didn't match the the 1:1 so knowing me well I had to take a stab at making them correct. Right now I will warn you they are in a very rough state. I finished what you see here and I shot a light coat of primer on it to see what and how much body work I need to do to it now and well...... lets just say its a lot of body work.... and I mean a lot..... . I will be working on this today so I should easily have an update later today. But I will be honest I am toying with the idea of Modeling this up in SolidWorks and possibly having it printed thru shapeways. I may just do both and see which looks best in the end. Anyway I will stop rambling on and show you some progress pics.

Well I started off by filling the pin holes on the back plate and I see that I have a few areas that still need some touch up. I need not make a new bridge piece between the two bearing bores to look like the 1:1...:

Here is a Before shot:

Here I made the first cuts and no turning back now....:

Here is both sides after removing the ribs and mounting boss's:

[Mooneyzs]

I have added some Bondo to the sides for body work:

Here it is all sanded:

I have added a coat of primer to check it and then started to add the mount boss's back to the blower:

[Mooneyzs]

Here is the other side:

Here I have added some Evergreen styrene strips to the side for the ribs. I started out with some .030 x .040 strips. I rounded the outer edge so it didn't have hard corners. I swear I worked on this for probably arond 4 hours last night getting these all made and glued on with super glue which in the shots you will see with the primer that I am not so happy about:

Here is the other side:

Here it is with a few light coats of primer and as you can see It needs a lot of TLC to make it look really good. As I mentioned right now I am not 100% liking this and I think I made it look like Junk. Hopefully with some sanding, bondo and elbow grease I will be happy with it:

This side looks even worse:

I will now be back at the bench doing the body work on this. Stay tuned and I will have an update for you later

Edited September 13, 2014 by Mooneyzs

[shift13]

Either you are a very little man or you have insane talent. You are nothing short of a master

[Nitrozilla]

Didn't I just see a comment that somebody made saying something to the effect of not getting 12 to 15 models done per year?

Looks like a model unto itself to me Chris.

[Mooneyzs]

Allen... Thank you for the Kind words. It's appreciated.

Joe... Thank you. Yeah I know what you mean that I have been approaching each part as it's own model. I guess I would like to get a few kits done to see some new builds on my shelf since I have been at this one for over 3-1/2 Years now.

[Mooneyzs]

Ok Fellas.... So I sat down for the past 1-2 hours and have been sanding away at this blower. It sure is time consuming. This is the first pass after the pics I previously showed and all I have done here is sand and file areas of the blower and before I lay some bondo down on it I wanted to check it with a few coats of primer to see how its looking. I think it starting to look much better now. I have the blower under my little heat lamp (Desk Lamp with 100 watt bulb...lol) helping the paint dry so I can start adding some mud to it. You can see there are some areas that still need to be fixed. I will be back with some more later....

Here is the blower with some primer sprayed on it after sanding the super glued joints down:

[futurattraction]

Dare I say that I'm impressed? I was going to make a comment earlier today after you'd removed all the kit ribs and was going to say it was as smooth as a baby's butt. It's too late for that now. LOL I truly am impressed by how good it looks with the addition of your newly relocated ribs. As much as I totally understand where you're coming from with doing a 3D version of this, you're going to have just as much time in getting all the print marks filled and sanded to get it to basically this same point. It would be sort of sad to see you spend this much time and do this fine a job, only to "throw it away" and start over. Unless you totally foul something up on this one, I'd "vote" for keeping what you've got going... Did I mention I'm impressed???

Edited September 14, 2014 by futurattraction

[Mooneyzs]

Scott....thank you for the kind words. It means a lot from you. LOL the blower was smooth smooth as a baby's bottom.... I will have to post a pic of then mooneyham blower next to this. You are right about the time it's going to take to model, have printed and prep. That's my biggest thing right now. Althought I know I am trying to make this as accurate as possible is the resin driving me to have it 3D printed as well.i would hate to lose all of this hard work I have put into this one. I am guess you are impressed with it so far?? ... Hehe

Edited September 14, 2014 by Mooneyzs