Barris Bathtub Buggy

[Modelbuilder Mark]

Box stock build from a kit my wife bought me for my birthday last month. Completed over just a few sessions at the bench, maybe 6 evenings.

The kit is fiddly to say the least. The styrene is brittle and while it looks pretty cool completed, there are a LOT of things I would do differently if you really wanted it to look great. For example, the "Amp" that make up the front of the radiator, is hollow. There is no radiator in the back, the hose that comes off the motor literally just goes into the shadow and attaches to nothing. Brass Chrome gets pretty marred up when you remove the parts (also how I learned just how brittle the parts are) and so the touch ups were done mostly with chrome silver paint with Tamiya Clear Yellow over that resulting in a decent affect in most instances. Most of the "brass" that is not chrome is Alclad brass. If I were to do this like I would a contest build, all the chrome would have had to been stripped, fix all the seems, ejector marks, etc etc, then Alclad Chrome and overcoat with the clear-yellow Tamiya. It is not in these pictures, but I did go back this morning and add heat marks to the headers with Alclad hot red and blue tints.

[Lownslow]

Wow thats a really good example of that kit.

[TooOld]

I never really understood this one , but you have done a great job building it . It looks really nice !

My LHS has a couple and I might pick one up as I see a couple of parts I'd like to have .

[Modelbuilder Mark]

Yeah, there are some usable parts in the kit for sure. The tub is actually pretty cool, and could be fit into a diorama pretty nice, the headers could be cleaned up and chromed and would look great, I like the rims, so indeed, there are some decent parts on here. If I see the kit again, at a decent price, I may pic another one up for parts as well.

Here is another shot of the heat stains, not a great picture but you can see the mild staining

[ChrisR]

Very nice. I got one about a month ago and would be happy if mine comes out as good as yours.

[Wonderbread Kustomz]

Oh man i love it

[Lunajammer]

I like what you did too. I really like the wheels. This might be a case of the sum of its parts being worth more than the whole.

[Modelbuilder Mark]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

I know the subject is certainly out there, and not for everyone, but hey, it was a Barris design, and there were a LOT of wacky "customs" for the period. One of the ones I WISH they had put into kit form was the Vox Mobile. That would have been a very cool subject, and certanily would be cool for kit bashing.

[robertw]

I look upon these wacky show rods as just a fun build and stress reliever so never worry much if all the accuracy I would want to achieve in regular model build is not achieved. I like what you've achieved with this kit.