Pair Of '64 Super Stocks: Ford Thunderbolt & Dodge 330 -Finished-

[W-409]

Finally the whole body is polished even though it took me a while to do that. Especially the sides were pretty difficult to polish properly because of the body shapes, but in the end it turned out pretty good. The next thing will be Bare Metal Foil for chrome trim, which never was one of my favorite steps in model building either...

[John Teresi]

Niko........Looking very good!!!!!

 

[GoatGuy]

That looks great Niko 

[W-409]

Thanks John and Dave! I highly appreciate the kind words from Masters like you.

I was able to get the hood painted so that the shade of blue is exactly the same as it is on the body. Tomorrow I will be shooting a coat of clear on it, to be able to polish it later on. Now back to finish the BMF work on this thing...

[abelaxe]

I love the paint job!  Awesome!

[W-409]

Thanks Todd!

Today I was able to get more bench time than I originally thought, so the BMF work is done. As usual, there would be plenty of room for improvement, but it's not my worst effort either. Once I can get the underiside of the body painted flat black and windows on place, I guess it'll look pretty good.

 

[afx]

Finish looks great Niko.

[W-409]

Thanks JC! I appreciate the kind words!

Some more progress with the Thunderbolt. First I painted the inside of the body with semigloss black and headliner was painted with the interior color. Then I went ahead and glued the windows on place. All windows had some fit issues, but after some fine tuning I got them installed anyway. Here is the body after gluing radiator wall, front springs and interior in place.

After a couple of small adjustments to the chassis, it was ready to be installed on place too.

The chassis fit pretty well on place. Now on to the smaller details...

[Old Coyote]

Great looking build Niko ........ I don't usually respond to builds in progress, but this one is turning out so nice I just had to comment.

[W-409]

Thanks John, glad to hear you like it!

This is the last set of WIP-pictures. The body panel that is between the grille and front bumper should be painted body color. It was molded together with the grille though, so the options were either to try and mask the whole chrome part away and try spray painting the area with the body paint, or then find a blue that is pretty close and paint by brush. I went with the brush painting idea, because if I tried to mask the whole grille off in order to spray paint, the masking would probably have leaked from somewhere... Luckily Humbrol had a metallic blue that was pretty close, so I used that and painted it by brush. The mesh screens on place of the inner headlights are the clear kit parts that I just painted silver and black washed with "The Detailer".

I also polished the hood. The mesh parts behind the scoop were painted flat black. Those hood pins are the kit parts, because I had ran out of photo etch parts for them.

The tail light panel required some detail painting as well. The area between the two chrome moldings had to be painted with silver, just the way it is in the 1:1 version too. The Fairlane 500 badge, chrome moldings and tail light bezels were black washed with "The Detailer" too.

Then it was time to do the final assembly. In the engine bay the only problem was with the air hoses that lead air to the carburetors. But with a little of sanding I was able to get the hoses past radiator hoses and valve covers. In the exterior, I stripped the chrome from the front bumper as the real cars had aluminum front bumpers and they often weren't polished to a perfect shine. The original Thunderbolts had only one windshield wiper, but that was taken off from many cars back then, so I didn't want to install that on my version. These things rarely had outside rear view mirrors either, so I didn't install one either.

Here's one picture of the finished product, I'll try to take better shots tomorrow, but in case I don't have the time to do that, then it'll be next week.

 

[afx]

Turned out great Niko.

[oldr-n-drt]

what did yall use to put the s/s on windows with?? oldr-n-drt

[W-409]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the kind words!

The class markings on the windows were painted with a tiny paint brush and Tamiya's acrylic white paint. That paint works very well for detail painting like that. Here's a picture of the paint bottle, found in Google... https://hobbyking.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/2/128870.jpg Hope this helps.

 

 

And here are some pictures of the finished product. There are mistakes and other flaws as always, but overall it looks pretty good on the shelf. As always, all kinds of comments, good or bad, are highly appreciated. I also want to say Thanks to everyone who has been watching the progress or posting comments. Thanks!

[Brutalform]

Wow.. that is one beautiful TBolt.!! The paint, foiling, and decals are perfect. That interior is the nicest TBolt interiors I ever saw. Very nice.