55 Chevy Gasser--Week Two. Still Going.

Hello again, we are continuing to build a 55 Chevy scale model inspired by the street gassers I saw at a recent Billetproof show.



So let's get right to it. As I said last time, the floorboard of the build is a combination of the floorboard of a Henry J Gasser (Revell 85-2036)and a Revell-Monogram 55 Chevy (#85-2069--heck of a nice kit).

After joing them together with a pretty heavy dose of Tenax7R glue there was a pretty big gap between the 55 floorboard and the Henry J. I would have normally used the usual putty/sanding sort of technique to fill it, but I read online about using superglue and baking soda to fill gaps instead.

Since this was going to be the underside of a model that wasn't going to get seen much I figured it'd be a good time to experiment with this new means of filling gaps and seams.



Here is the result. There was a 1/4" or so gap in the floorboard that's gone now. In its place is a fairly rough and not great looking big heap o' CA glue.

To pull this off layed down a fairly generous pool of CA glue then dropped pinches of baking soda. It works! But there are some things to keep in mind. First I found that a small pinch of baking soda goes a (very) long way. The baking soda seems to act as an accelerator and soon as it was dropped into place the glue dried rock solid. If I put in too much I ended up with a small mountain of glue and baking soda that was rock-hard--as if the glue was sucked up into the mound--and ended up with scale ant hills.

Second, the dust that comes off the CA/baking soda when you sand or file it is super nasty. Keep this in mind when you're working with it. I was grinding down my CA glue/baking soda ant hills when I got a bit of CA dust in my eyes and it burned like no one's business. So if you're going to sand the CA/baking soda mix after applying, make sure to wear eye protection and a good respirator.




This week I was working on the 329ish Chevy engine that's going to go into the Chevy. If you've read previous posts you probably know that I am really crappy at building distributors and wiring them--I have made a huge mess out of this many times in the past. I am always looking for ways to improve and this time I bought a distributor/wiring kit from Detail Master. It wasn't cheap--about $6US, and there were are a lot of tiny parts that needed to be assembled and painstakingly epoxied together--the distributor is like a whole build all by itself....




But the results aren't bad, and this is me we're talking about building it. It's still not perfect but this is turning out to be my best distributor effort to date. So I am going to keep working with this distributor kit for awhile.


The fuel lines are next. I should have some pix in the next few days.



For reasons not entirely understood I have decided to try to mimmick the uber-detailed builds I see in hobby mags and on line for this engine. I always am fascinated the "best in the hobby" type guys who are "fierce competitors" when it comes to detailing their builds so they can win best of show at some hobby fair. These guys must have open accounts at places like Detail Master, or get free goodies in exchange for mopping the warehouse floor, or whatever, because all the superstars seem to use tons of these aftermarket parts. They are indeed expensive, and as you can see from the photo, really, really tiny. Unfortunately (?) the only thing fierce about me is my far sightedness.

Sixties Era Gasser--55 Chevy--Getting Started

I'm pretty jazzed about Sixties era gassers--I think of them as funny cars before there really were funny cars. After seeing a few at Billet Proof I decided to read more about them and see if I could build something in scale, with the eventual goal being to build this 1:1 (if I ever have the money or the space).



it's a heck of a lot cheaper to buy a few kits then the 1:1 parts....I got two Chevy kits from ModelRoundup, Revell/Monogram's '55 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop 2n1 #85-2069 and AMT/Ertl's 1955 Chevy BelAir Street Machine #31931. The AMT appears to be a reissue of a 55 Chevy kit originally tooled decades ago; the Revell kit has what the hobby mags call "modern tooling". The difference between the two is profound--the Revell kit has significantly better detail, a higher parts count, and generally (to my eyes anyway) shows how model kit manufacturing has improved over the years.



This isn't going to be a "box stock" build (nothing I do ever is) so I got some additional kits out of which I will steal gasser parts: Revell's 51 Henry J #85-2036; Revell's Big John Mazmanian 41 Willys Gasser #85-2350; and Revell's Thames Panel Truck #7609. All three kits have some really great parts; the Olds engine with Hillborn Injection in the Revell Panel Truck is especially nifty.



So which body to use of the 2 donor chevy kits? That's an easy choice. The roofline of the AMT Bel Air doesn't look right to me--it looks more like a 57 Sport Coupe's, but it's not a hardtop--I am told it's a 55 "Club Coupe" which had on the 1:1 car a different roof then the hardtop. Bottom line, to me it just doesn't look right, so I am going with the Revell body.




The Revell Bel Air kit has one of those "all in one" chassis/frames, which is beautifully detailed and molded but not what I want for a Sixties era gasser. On the right is the frame from the Henry J kit. Its wheelbase is way too short for the Chevy, and it has a lot of ejection pins and whatnot that will need cleaning up, but I figure it's easier to use the Henry J frame as a base, and extend its wheelbase, then build the whole frame from stylene tube.



I modified the interior floor from the 51 Henry J by marrying the front section of the 55 interior to it. I saw gussets on one the floorboards of a gasser at the Billet Proof show so I added them here; in general the gassers there were more about lightness and strength then looking completely clean.




On the web there are a few builders who complain loudly about what a crappy kit the 51 Henry J is. I won't know, because I will never build it, it's just a donor kit for the project. Whatever assembly issues may exist with it, it has some great parts! For instance a very cool quick change rear end and a gnarly representation of (what I think is) a big block Chevy motor. I am not sure why, but I want a Chevy motor in this and not Mopar/Hemi. Not sure if this is going to be a "GS" (supercharged) gasser or a "G" (non-supercharged) gasser yet.

Next time: I'm just out of the starting blocks on this build. Lots of work down the road!!!

What to Build Next--Report from Billetproof

I don't know what's happened to me, but I find myself dreaming of cars at night. Mind you this only started 2 years ago....what happened? What's wrong with me? I am beginning to feel like Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where he makes a scale model "Alien Mountain" or whatever they call it in movie out of potatoes.


To get my latest custom car fix my brother took me to a local hot rod show called "Billetproof". I had never heard of Billetproof--apparently the folks who put the show on don't advertise a lot. But I was assured it's a great hot rod/rat-rod show; the idea being that no "billet wheels" (ie, super expensive customizing bling a la Chip Foose or Boyd Coddington) are allowed, and all cars have to arrive under their own power.




Just standing at the entrance waiting for friends to show up was a treat! Billetproof is a really BIG show--with hundreds of hot rods on display--there were tons and tons of great cars--everywhere you looked was something unusual and interesting....










The show does indeed focus on rat rods--you know, sometimes beat up, sometimes not, old looking, highboys, low riders, drivers, big motors, 4 bangers, steelies, a lot of primer, and some flames over primer (which means it will need to stay primer, right?). I have always had mixed feelings about the "permanent primer" thing, since one of the best things about customs, I think, is the cool paint and all the creativity that goes along with it. But underneath all that there was a lot more going on.



A bevy of car journalists were standing around this pickup. They told me this pickup had it "all there"--all period correct--the right motor, the right suspension, everything on this custom worked and was perfect. They thought it was one of the finest customs they had ever seen.



But this wasn't the only really-cool-car-that-impressed-the-car-nuts at Billetproof. There were serious attempts by many of the show's participants to "get everything right"--not just make it look cool, but also make it historically accurate and capture the spirit of "old school" hot rodding.



There are great fabricators everywhere at Billetproof. We had a nice talk with the kid who built this rat rod pickup; the car has all the hydralics hidden in clever places--an incredible feat, considering how seamless it all looks. He must have spent hundreds of hours on this build.



A lot of rat rod pickups had the radiator in the pickup bed, or what's left of it. Before the show I didn't know this, but now I do. This radiator trick will probably make its way into my own builds. At Billetproof inspiration is everywhere.....






And of course I was interested in getting some detail photos to help with my own builds, and got lots, such as the pictures above. If I have any complaints about Billetproof, it's that the mottled shade everywhere made it hard to get good pictures on a bright day. But that's not much of a complaint!





I went to Billetproof looking for ideas for my next build...but there was almost too much to see, and I often felt like a kid in a candy store. By the end of the day I began thinking my next project will probably be some kind of C/G or D/G 60's era gasser that's street legal. There were a few of them at the show and they were pretty darned cool.







The final takeaway I got from Billetproof is that the "art car" you'd see at something like Burning Man and the rat rod craze are starting find some common ground. Check out the crazy frame and tie rod treatment on the rod above--wild stuff. The builder was sitting behind the car with his girlfriend, mellow as ever, answering questions about his incredible one-of-a-kind custom. The girlfriend dug it. Case closed!

Old Skool Texas Hot Rod--Finished!!!!

I started the project with pictures like this....

...and ended up with this. It's been a couple of months in the making but the old Skool Texas hot rod is finally done....

I didn't get all the details right--the windshield isn't high enough for instance, and the front lights (mostly scratchbuilt) aren't quite the right shape. But the stance is pretty close, and the overall "feel" of the build matches the spirit of the 1:1 car, I think.

There are lots more little details I could do, but it's time to move on--I find myself rushing on the old skool rod build since I want to move onto other things, so it's a good time to stop.



The license plates were scratch built (like many other things on this model). I used photoshop, since I couldn't find the "State O' Texas": 50's era 1:25 scale license plates anywhere.) I used the "reduce image" feature in Photoshop, which took the 3" original artwork to .375", and worked great. Another important thing I came away with from this project: enamel paints are really good for certain things, like painting metal scratchbuilt parts. I had gotten rid of almost all enamel paints, since they take a long time to dry and have other issues, but a few of them are back now.

When I think of all the work that went into this--the resin body prep, the Z'd stock frame, the kitbashed motor, the scratchbuilt seat, the plaid decal upholstry, and so on--I'm a bit surprised that I finished at all, but here it is.

This project was a challenge to my modest skills, but it taught me a lot about the early history of hot rodding and was a fun project to work on with my dad. And it got me away from work for a few hours every now and then. Overall, time well spent.

Old Skool Texas Hot Rod--Final (?) Assembly Begins

I'm into week something or other (don't remember, but it seems like a lot of weeks) building a 1:25 scale "Texas Old Skool" hot rod, based on a car my dad built in the Fifties. And it has been a lot of work so far--my dad thinks maybe I'm putting more work into the model then he put into the 1:1 car, but I have my doubts.

Let's see...between Z'ing a resin frame, putting together a seat built of 2 seats and sectioned....a scratch built intake manifold....creating a steering wheel from 3 other steering wheels....enough planning, scrounging, scratchbuilding and messing around! It's finally time to start gluing some stuff together!



The body, side panels, seat, and dash are now one. I used Devcon 5 minute epoxy to hold everything together. No real fit problems in any of it, although I did forget to paint the inside of the polymer clay interior panels and had to carefully mask the body to touch them up. Overall using Polymer clay for interior panels came out great and it's something that I will use a lot more going forward. The front chrome trim was bare metal foil--it took 3 tries to get it looking OK. As far the paint, it's several coats of Duplicolor metalflake brown lacquer, followed by a pretty aggressive sanding with 1200 grit sandpaper, and finally a coat of Future Floor Polish, brushed on with a large soft brush. No polishing has been done yet, and may not be. The end result is "shiny but not too shiny" which is how Dad says the 1:1 car looked.



In spite of using the "wrong" engine block and transmission I still had a heck of a time getting the engine glued in and sitting straight. Finally a large dose of Devcon Epoxy and weights did the trick. The front suspension on the 1:1 car was pretty busy looking and I couldn't find a tie rod that fit or looked anything like it, so, I had to scratchbuild it out of styrene rod and Tenax7R. Tenax7R and it's "work alikes" like Micromark Same Stuff are becoming my "go-to" choice for scratchbuilding pretty much anything. One interesting thing I learned about Tenax7R: it makes a great paint remover for enamel paint, whether you want it to do so or not. But that's what touch up paint is for! The whole tranny/drive shaft/differential hook up didn't come out in spite of lots of preplanning, and required to be cut off and reglued, but I doubt anyone will notice.



Speaking of enamels....just when you thought you were out, those Testors guys pull you back in....I have begun using a lot of Floquil "Engine Black" paint for my flat black needs. Marketed to the model train set (who in general have a lot more money then us poor model old car builders so I am told) it is a bit on the pricey side, but it looks great and dries quickly. It's enamel--it uses enamel thinner anyway--but it dries fast and smooth. Highly recommended.



Devcon Epoxy was used to mount the dash in the body as well. As I said in a previous post, the dash is out of a 40 Ford and came from Replicas and Miniatures of Maryland (R&M doesn't have a web site, but you can see a tiny bit of what they do at Strada Sports.)

Now I need to figure out how to get the steering wheel and its column in there. Not sure yet how that's going to work.



The stick shift was out of a Revell 32 Ford Kit. Dad said the 1:1 car had a "lengthy" stick shift with a teardrop-shaped Hudson shift knob.

After prepping the stick shift and painting it with Testors gloss black enamel, I airbrushed Alclad 2 chrome. The shift knob was scratch build out of polymer clay.

The stick shift itself got a bit pitted when I tried to bend it into shape (next time I have to do that before I paint it!). And as far as the shift knob, the one I built looks a bit more like a marshmallow than a tear. Oh well!

Are we seeing the light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe! I have a few days off from work and maybe I can actually finish this build! It's getting to be about time!!

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.

Texas Old Skool Rod--Getting the Family Involved....

It's a sad couple of weeks when all I did was work--no writing, no playing, no nothing, but that's what happens when 2 of the 4 guys in your department are gone.

So no post last week, and not much done this week.

However now with work having quieted down a bit I can turn my attention back to the important things in life....family, hobbies, and getting some sleep!

My folks showed up for the weekend and one of the first topics of conversation with dad was--you guessed it--the old skool Texas hot rod. Seems he's been following each post with bated breath....





We ran right to my bench and dad started looking at each part in progress....first up: the almost scratch built seat. Good News! He says it's looking right on the money. Good news indeed, because it's been a heck of a lot of work to get it as far as I have. The old man says the 1:1 seat was out of an Anglia, but I couldn't find anything close, anywhere--you can get 1:25 Anglia Gassers on Ebay or whatever but they don't have stock seats, and that's what I needed....




I ended up building the bench seat by sectioning two 49 Merc seats (???--maybe not a Merc, but something from AMT) and putting them back to back....giving me the sort of bench seat on which I figure I was conceived. It looks a lot like the photo of the 1:1 seat anyway. I also added trim out of some styrene rod...carefully gluing it in place with Tenax7R glue but it still didn't come out quite straight. Good enough however.

The 1:1 seat had plaid covering the front--where you sit. Exactly how to pull this off has vexed me from the start of the project. I looked far and wide for scale plaid, and had surprisely little success finding it on the web. So in keeping with the family theme of this week's post, I drove to my mother in law's, who is a serious quilter, to see if she had any scale plaid she could part with.



Sure enough, she had some scale plaid, and also showed me some nifty white glue she uses to bond quilting fabric to anything and everything. It's called "Aleene's OK to Wash It". Now this sounds more like something your priest would permit, rather than something used for our hobby, but as my MIL promised, Aleene's is indeed most excellent for bonding fabric to plastic. I tested some of the scale plaid she provided by gluing to a junk-box seat and it came out looking smooth (no bubbles, no crud).



Unfortunately the fabric my mother in law provided was too "red"; the old man assures me the 1:1 car was mostly green and gold--no red. So I decided to look for plaid patterns on the web and see if I could create a decal to stick on the front of the seat.

I got some inkjet decal sheets from Micromark and prepared a 6" x 6" plaid Photoshop picture by stitching together a screensaver backround I found. The good news is that my dad signed off on this--he says the colors are close to how he remembered the plaid to be on the Texas hot rod (no color pictures survive....). I printed out the decal and sprayed it with Krylon Krystal-Klear acrylic paint. Experiments with seats I didn't care about made it look like it's going to come off OK but it's not done yet....



also I am still banging away at finishing the frame. Now, on previous builds, my exhaust headers and pipes never quite met up with the engine. To get around this I decided to build the pipes and headers into the frame and paint them as a unit.





The pipes/mufflers came out of Revell's 32 Ford 3 window coupe #85-2024; the headers from some unknown flathead ford kit, and all the rest was scratchbuilt. I built it up a bit of a time using styrene rod, super glue, and superglue accelerator. I am slowly getting better at using CA glue for meaningful things but I still have a long way to go! However I had the least incidents this time of gluing the part to my finger instead of the model--only one, and it was minor!

The old man and I discussed how to deal with the front hydraulic brakes....something I still have to figure out, and I don't yet have a clue how I'm going to pull that one off.....



The body....Dad says the hallock windshield I put in there wasn't right--that it leaned back to far--and checking the 1:1 photos he was right. At first I said I couldn't fix it--the prospect of messing around with the windshield, fragile as it is, really scared me, but after awhile it started to bug me that I didn't get this right, so I cut off the center of the windshield frame and sweated in some styrene square stock. Here I am finishing it off with a tiny bit of Tamiya light curing putty. I give it about a 50-50 chance of staying together before this build is done.



If I can pull off the mods to the windshield some of the success will be due to this new tool I picked up--riffler files. These are files that can get into tight places, and have already proved invaluable for this project. If you don't have any of these, run don't walk to your crafts or hobby store and pick some up!

OK hopefully work won't be as daunting this week--I would really like to get this project off the bench, it's taking a long time. Patience! I keep telling myself!!!