Old Skool Texas Hot Rod--Some Paint Required

Hard to believe two weeks have gone by....not too much progress on our Old Skool Texas Rod--but some.....




The wheels came out of an AMT 34 Ford Kit I think--#38405. The chome wheel centers had to be de-chromed in bleach. The whole thing was cleaned up quite a bit as there was tons of flash and other dreck on the parts. I am not sure where the tires came from--they have to be modified to accept the wheels--and they look a tad bigger than the 1:1 car's, but at this late stage, they are going to have to do (I find myself saying that more and more these days as the weeks put into this build drag on). I couldn't find any creme paint anywhere that I liked so I rolled the dice and bought online some Duplicolor Import Autospray Creme (from a Toyota body color I think) #88-01542...which turned out to be perfect--this is a real retro creme color and will find its ways to other builds I think.




The 1:1 car had a "Sun Tach" installed--I think my dad put in this upgrade--so I started with a 40 Ford dash from "Replicas and Miniatures of Maryland" and added some photoetch and decal to represent the add on tach. The instrument panel was framed in Bare Metal Foil and finished with Tamiya Gun Metal, a coat of Boyd's brush on clear (to hold everything together) and finally Some Model Master Semi Gloss Clear #4637. I know I am a Testor's basher sometimes but the Acryl line seems to be making its way into my every day paint stash more and more.....





Ah the seat. This has been the most complex scratch built part of the project so far, and the fight with it continues, but now I may have it licked. Overall I wanted the seat to look "sat in", not too new and shiny, but not too junky either. The 1:1 car was no where near show room clean, but Dad says he did try to keep it from being too ratty (hence the cardboard interior upholstry?)



After a bunch of decals for the plaid looking really wrinkled and terrible I finally learned how to use Badger's decal products by reading the instructions on the side of the bottle! The Setting Solution does just that--it helps you with setting the decal in the right place. The Softening Solution is used to help with getting decals wrapped around tough places (like the edges of this seat). I was overusing the softening solution and the decals where getting really messed up. Helps to read the directions!



The paint is the usual Duplicolor stuff I use for lots of my builds. The exception is the Rustoleum "Farm Equipment" green enamel. I have never used Rustoleum paints for anything, but it seems fitting somehow to use Farm Equipment paint on a Texas Hot Rod. My dad picked out all the colors and paints--he remembers the 1:1 car's colors, which is a good thing because no color photos of the car still exist. The John Deere green turned out to be pretty shockingly bright green but didn't look too bad with some Dullcoat sprayed over it.




The steering wheel is almost an entire build within itself! The 1:1 steering wheel was off a postwar Nash--which is a bit off the beaten path, so I didn't even trying to find a pre-cast 1:25 Nash steering wheel anywhere. I ended up combining 3 different kits' steering wheels and scratch building the center....the so called "necker knob"--the suicide handle at the top of the steering wheel--is pretty racy looking in the 1:1 car--"a baby's arm holding an apple" I think they used to call it. Not hard to knock off with some styrene bits. To match the 1:1 car it's going to get a 3-tone paint job--brown rim, chrome spokes, white center. It still needs some clean up but the basics are done.



The Duplicolor SUV brown has been shot on the body....it still needs some polishing but the body is fairly close to being finished. I really like the way the body color is coming out--a subtle metalflake brown.

Maybe I can see light at the end of the tunnel? This has been by far the most complex build I have done and I feel it has raised my skill level. If I am lucky I should be able to finish this build off in the next week or so--that is if I don't get too busy at work.