OldGuy70 Posted January 19, 2013 Posted January 19, 2013 (edited) Picked up the 09 Challenger special edition kit from Revell over the holidays and decided it needed something different. Was ging to drop in an old school Hemi from an old AMT kit and do a drag car, but decided instead to build up the modern Hemi with a scratch built centrifugal supercharger, shave off the 6.1L badging and add 7.0L badging to it. I kept the engine near stock, with the addition of fuel injectors and fuel rails. fuel lines will be added once I am satisfied with the supercharger and related ductwork. I will post images of that once it all comes together. body was clean overall and needed little smoothing before it was ready for paint. All the body pieces fit rather well. hood hinges need a little shaving down to let the hood rest in place properly, but that's typical. I did however spend some quaility time with the nose of the car. I like to open up the grill along with any other front end openings that typically just get painted in black. Typically one would just buy some photo-etched pieces for a new grill, but I decided instead to carefully shave the back side of the grill area and opened up the grill that way. It came out really nice and leaves the badges in place without having to reattach them later. After the paint sat for a week, I laid down some bare metal foil on the badges and painted the grill area semigloss black, rubbing the raised letters clean after the black set up a little. picture doesn't do it justice, it's hard to get good pictures with this dark color. The under body is left fairly mod free, with only addition of more foil to the exhaust pipes for that stainless exhaust look. I may weather the exhaust and underbody a little for that used look, but I am not decided on that yet. Going to have to either make some white stripes myself or see if any of the lesser challenger kits out there have what I'm looking for, since the red stripes supplied with the kit just arn't going to cut it. More to come as the build progresses, may be a while, I'm tend to let things sit between stages, as I ponder different ways to take the build. Edited January 19, 2013 by OldGuy70
martinfan5 Posted January 19, 2013 Posted January 19, 2013 (edited) Love the new look to the grill, very nicely down, can you go into a little more detail on how you did the grill?, what color did you use? Edited January 19, 2013 by martinfan5
Platerpants Posted January 19, 2013 Posted January 19, 2013 Love the new look to the grill, very nicely down, can you go into a little more detail on how you did the grill?, what color did you use? he took an exacto and shaved the grill slowly. the grille is model master semi gloss black and the car testors plum crazy spray.
my80malibu Posted January 19, 2013 Posted January 19, 2013 I like the grille too. Cant wait to see more.
Custom Mike Posted January 20, 2013 Posted January 20, 2013 Great job on that grille Jon, it looks 100% better opened up like that!
george 53 Posted January 20, 2013 Posted January 20, 2013 Nice trick! it opened up the holes as square! VERY nice little detail! Makes a world of difference! Nice job so far!
Brizio Posted January 20, 2013 Posted January 20, 2013 I like the grille too, it make a whole difference.
ll Brandon ll Posted January 20, 2013 Posted January 20, 2013 Very nice. The color is phenomenal and the grille is gorgeous!
OldGuy70 Posted January 20, 2013 Author Posted January 20, 2013 Thanks guys, got the idea for the grill when I did a 55 chevy stepside. grill on the truck was easy to open up with the wide openings it had. As Jake from Ohio mentioned earlier (he seen me in action on this one, been training him for years), I took an X-acto blade and slowly shaved down the grill from the back side, holding the knife at a slight angle. As the plastic gets thinner, you will need to watch how much pressure you apply so that you don't punch thru the grill. eventually you will be able to see the grill clearly thru the back side and then you can try to carefully poke the thin plastic out, just don't force it. If it doesn't just pop out with the weight of the blade, shave it some more. Time is your freind here. You could even use some sand paper to do this too, but the blade will give you a flatter surface and a more even thickness as you go.
Johnny1973 Posted January 20, 2013 Posted January 20, 2013 Great paint work,nice detail to the grill.
Platerpants Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 (edited) ive been in contact with him and he says there is a possibility of working LED headlights, he has been busy so not much work has been done. Also custom made decals are going on this beast. Edited March 2, 2013 by Platerpants
Platerpants Posted July 20, 2013 Posted July 20, 2013 Get to work man! this things been sitting in its box too long, get those leds wired up and lets see this.
Platerpants Posted February 19, 2016 Posted February 19, 2016 Well my dad did finish this build all but the mirrors but he hasnt been on the forums in forever, i supplied some custom made decals for him so here are some pictures.
Ace-Garageguy Posted February 20, 2016 Posted February 20, 2016 Great work on the lights. Does it use LEDs of different brightness, or resistors to get the different intensities?
Drunken Goat Posted February 20, 2016 Posted February 20, 2016 Looks awesome. Did you make the blower?
OldGuy70 Posted February 20, 2016 Author Posted February 20, 2016 Thanks for the nice comments guys, car had been a long time in hiding. As for the supercharger, it is a complete scratch built piece using odds and ends grafted together from the spare parts bin. Started as an alternator and a small wheel from an old jet. The LED lights were from the scrap bin at the place I work. I will post some more pics of the build later, but to answer the question, they are different LEDs for the lights. 4 bright white Ones used for the headlights and fog lights, with amber ones used on the inner lights. Fine wire was run along inside of body to the trunk area where I installed the current limiting resistors and connector to connect external power. Which is a 9v battery.
Roadrunner Posted February 20, 2016 Posted February 20, 2016 Great job on that grille Jon, it looks 100% better opened up like that!Indeed it does; very nice.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now