Jantrix Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 The AMT 49 coupe comes with two engine options. A flathead and what I'm pretty sure is a 390 V8. The radiator has two mounting points at the top for the radatior hoses from the flathead. For the 390, there is this wimpy little y-pipe that goes from the top of the waterpump/timing cover to the two ports on the radiator. With this y-pipe exactly how is coolant gonna flow as there is no lower radiator hose? I'm not a mechanic so I'm just going on common sense here. This seems wrong to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eshaver Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 Rob, uh hate to tell ya the badd newzzzzzzzzzzz but , dats the way AMT molded the kit in 1962!!!!!!!!!!!! Ed Shaver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jantrix Posted March 9, 2012 Author Share Posted March 9, 2012 So they just threw the laws of physics/mechanics out the window? Or are you just refering to the wimpy y-pipe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Johnny Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 So they just threw the laws of physics/mechanics out the window? Or are you just refering to the wimpy y-pipe? No rule of physics involved in the decision. They were just making the two openings on the radiator mate up with the Cadillac engine which only had provisions for the upper. Didn't want to have to make the extra parts to do it correctly and who really ever heard a complaint until now? I have seen the correction made on well detailed builds at contests though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Myers Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 What correction other than adding the missing lower radiator hose? If you were hot rodding back in the day you made do with what you had thus you had a modern (by the way I believe it's a Cadillac) V-8 with a single top hose setup hooking up to an older Ford dual setup.Improvise, weld up a "Y" pipe and use three smaller hoses. It was done. It worked.Many rodders of the day had rudimentary welding skills but fewer had the soldering skills that it would take to modify the radiator.Now you on the other hand can do what ever you choose with your plastic, just don't forget that lower hose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Johnny Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) Gregg sometimes my mind is way ahead of what I type and I forget to put down what I'm thinking about. The correction I meant was the lower hose other than that I was saying they didn't want to make a single outlet tank for the radiator. So they used the Y which I have seen numerous times on 1:1 cars and trucks. But have seen more that had the tank reworked for a single hose. Was the OP thinking that one upper was in and the other upper out? Just thought about that! Edited March 9, 2012 by Johnny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
62rebel Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 you know AMT...they never made anything right. Revell is the only manufacturer fit to sell models. i hope you understand sarcasm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jantrix Posted March 9, 2012 Author Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) Was the OP thinking that one upper was in and the other upper out? Just thought about that! Yes, it was my understanding with a flattie that one was in, the other out. Also the front cover does not include a port to run a lower radiator hose. However after examining pics of a 1:1 390, I'm sure I can mock up something. Edited March 9, 2012 by Jantrix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Myers Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 Nope, two on top, two on bottom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jantrix Posted March 9, 2012 Author Share Posted March 9, 2012 Oooohhhhh. Then why the blazes haven't I seen a flattie engine in a kit that includes the lower hoses? I feel like a ninny. :l Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Myers Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) This lower radiator hose is a BIG deal with some of the local contest judges here. No lower hose you lose big points. I think it is probably more prevalent in most kits than we would know. After all "Out of sight, out of mind." and, how many kits that do have lower hoses have such ambiguous locators or rather none at all. You get to figure it out on your own. Edited March 9, 2012 by Greg Myers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exotics_Builder Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) Oooohhhhh. Then why the blazes haven't I seen a flattie engine in a kit that includes the lower hoses? I feel like a ninny. :l It definitely is in the Revell 48 Ford Custom. It also is in the 40 Ford standard coupe, the 1/25 scale 32 Ford variants with the flathead (including two different radiators, one for the Small Block Ford engine and the other the Flathead) Edited March 9, 2012 by Exotics_Builder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Myers Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 But not all . . . http://public.fotki.com/drasticplasticsmcc/instruction_sheetsh/instruction_sheets/amt-8/amt-3940-ford-coupe/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMc Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) I've built 4 flatties..2 with Ardun Heads the other stock. All of mine have 4 hoses..just like they had 1:1 Of course I know these kits are from Revell and less than 5 years old! Top motor has the ardun heads..look next to the fan belt even with the motor mount(same on other side) Upper hoses fit to the front of both heads.(middle pic) Lower motor is from the Revell 32 kit, has lower hoses and mid mount top hoses (not shown here) Edited March 9, 2012 by MikeMc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Myers Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 So I think what we're seeing here is that indeed some kits have all their hoses and some don't. Also this is a learning curve , as it should be, to those that have no 1:1 experience with the real thing. When the major kit manufacturers removed all the text from their instruction sheets and went to pictures only, back in the '70's somewhere, they did a real disservice to all those that would have normally learned from the model building experience. As it was, many kits were built / bashed into things that in the 1:1 world would never run. Check out the hose placement on this Minicraft Model A V-8 : Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Island Modeler Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 Rob. Your question is excellent. I've been modeling for over 50 years, and I learned a lot from this thread that you started. I never paid much attention, and just built all the old Ford kits according to the instructions. It looks like I'll be making a few alterations from now on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMc Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 Wit thanks to Dave Lindsey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eshaver Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 Hey Mike , thats a 24 stud 59-AB Block, what are ya gonna do for us who like the 8- BA and the 8 EL blocks , huh ????? Huh Huh ???? Ed Shaver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
62rebel Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 luckily, they all kept the lower hose/water pump/motor mount arrangement. as a former owner of a '51 shoebox, another detail overlooked is the fact that the radiators have lower tanks as well as upper. not all shoeboxes have blower motors mounted on the heater air intake tube, either... and a good many didn't even get heaters at all. i won't even address the fact that the interior slopes outward at the bottom, not inward... because that's just a limitation of the design of the kit typical of the era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMc Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 (edited) Edited March 10, 2012 by MikeMc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMc Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
62rebel Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 nice, but that picture doesn't show the lower outlets/water pumps. it does, however, show how pitiful the AMT representation of the 8BA is in their '49 and '50 Fords.... good heads and stock intake, but horrible carb and exhaust manifolds. they did a great job on the 8CM in the '49 Mercury and the 8BA in the '53 F100, both of which i have robbed engines from to do shoebox builds. the other flatheads from the Trophy prewar cars are horrible. still; it's not a lot of extra work to put some styrene stubs below the water pumps and some tube from there to the radiator. the Lindberg '53 has a great block assembly but the heads are too flat. substitute '53 F100 heads, and it looks perfect. also gives you a Fordomatic trans if you're building a '51 conversion. remember, too, that those thick belts molded into the pulleys are almost accurate for some years, as there are both narrow AND wide pulley versions. getting the flash ring off the AMT flathead air cleaner and putting the correct seam back on it will do wonders to add realism to an AMT flattie. OOB it's awful and out of scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Art Anderson Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 Comparing a model car kit first released in 1959 (design work would have happened in 1958) such as the AMT '40 Ford Coupe and its follow-on, the '39-'40 Ford Tudor Sedan with any model car kit designed and released in the late 1980's to our present day is as "apples VS oranges" as any comparison can get frankly, and for a lot of reasons. For starters, the "target" market for a model car kit (actually for just about any plastic model kit of any subject one wants to think about) 50+ years ago was kids, plain and simple. And, by "kids" I mean an average age of perhaps 14 or 15. Grownups really didn't do plastic model kits back then--in adult eyes, plastic stuff was toy stuff for kids, realmodelbuilders scratchbuilt stuff from wood, card stock, bits of metal. As such, while I am reasonably certain that designers and pattern makers may well have wanted absolute accuracy, "market" considerations surely had to come into play here, given the perception of what kids were likely to have success building (and probably the companies' decision-makers weren't far off the mark there. On the accuracy front, with the '40 Ford kit(s) that kicked off this thread, stock versions weren't exactly seen on every show grounds (in the 1950's, except for the super luxury "Classic" cars, 1930's cars were merely "used cars", almost no hobbyist interest in restoring or preserving them yet), so finding good ones for reference pics could well have been a problem, even for the likes of a young and agressive outfit such as AMT Corporation located in suburban Detroit. Even Ford Motor Company had yet to truly support the already intense interest in the Model T and the growing fascination with Model A's with archival information. As a result, the follow-on release to the AMT '40 Coupe, the '39-'40 Sedan cannot truly a '39 Ford make: In that kit, the ONLY 1939 parts are grille, headlights and taillights, that's all. EVERYTHING else in the kit is 1940 (including the hood, which is a 1940 Ford STANDARD hood, fits a '39 grille but otherwise totally different in contours and trim). Even the windshield on the body is that of 1940--1939 being the last year for a "swing-out" (for ventilation) windshield, which was shaped a good bit differently than the '40. No '39 dash, no "banjo" steering wheel, no "wide-five" wheels (with their correspondingly large hubcaps--all that stuff is 1940 Deluxe in the kit. So, lack of available research materials, even ready access to 1:1 vehicles likely played a part in the story. Last, given the anticipated age of the end-user, the model builder, I am most sure that AMT was practically obsessed with seeing their kits being built, and built successfully by kids, a finished model that a kid could show off, and even roll around on floor or tabletop at least a bit (wire axles allowed for that!). Many competitor's kits truly lacked those advantages deemed important at the time. With that in mind, I'm not at all surprised that the early model car kits from just about everybody lacked such essentials as lower radiator hoses, that is today, a "sign of the times" from the era when so many still-iconic model car kits first came out. Art Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
62rebel Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 Art, please, don't for a minute think I'm being too critical of AMT. those kits were the mainstay of the hobby and for good reason. they were visually accurate even if not actually correct, they went together like Legos in most cases, they were almost 100% interchangeable among grouped cars ('32's, 39-40's, '49-'50's) and were filled with optional parts that gave almost endless building possibilities, unlike the straight "one version" kits so common now. there's nothing that can't be corrected easily and quickly on the Cadillac engine from the AMT '49 Ford with a razor saw, a file, some sandpaper and putty. nor the flathead, for that matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jantrix Posted March 10, 2012 Author Share Posted March 10, 2012 Quite right. I've closed up the openings on the radiator top so that I can add just one upper hose, and I'll add a port to the water pump/timing cover to add a lower one. Thanks for the help everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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