"Vintage" 69 Charger 500--Engine Compartment

I haven't had a lot of time to work on hobbies this week but have been thinking about this build more than I should.....it's been bugging me that the way MPC tooled the engine compartment of the 69 Charger 500 looks nothing like the reference photos I have been using.

The engine compartment out of the Revell #85-2824 Charger kit doesn't look quite right either but it's closer, so I decided to chop the engine compartment out of the latter.



I have seen this done in hobby magazines but haven't done this myself, until now. I chopped up the body of the Revell kit....



...using a razor saw and the back end of a hobby knife I cut up all the pieces I would need.....



....and using Tenax7R glued the bits into the Vintage Charger body. It fit remarkably well--no need for any sort of putty or filler, really.



The firewall from the MPC kit didn't look that good with the rest of the new engine compartment so I dropped the Revell kit's in. Fits perfectly!

This whole process was a cause for much fear and loathing throughout the week--I was afraid of screwing this up and it taking all day to transfer the engine compartment from Revell kit to MPC. Turns out it was really easy and only took a few minutes. Which makes me wonder--why ever worry or be fearful about any of this????

69 Charger 500s--Breeding Like Rabbits

On a quest to find 1:1 Charger 500 facts my brother had me contact a 1:1 Charger 500 expert. Turns out this guy doesn't build models--he wants the girls to actually date him I guess--but being a 1:1 Charger nut and apparently owning everything Charger he had the same vintage MPC kit, unbuilt, in his collection. To get myself a spare--I envisioned accidentally dropping and crunching the Coronet grill under my chair at the end of the build--I convinced him to sell his MPC kit to me. Which he did.

So now I have two MPC Charger 500's.

This same Charger expert informs me that AMT/ERTL reissued this exact same kit (not just the reissue Daytona but an exact duplicate of this Charger). So I've learned that my "Vintage" project is not as rare as I thought--in fact, it's not that rare at all.



I was going to build the MPC "box stock" but it wasn't meant to be--there were too many details missing that I couldn't fill in from my parts box and it was driving me crazy. So from Model Roundup I bought Revell's 69 Charger: kit #85-2824 "69 Dodge Charger Daytona". This is a "skill level 3" kit which means a 12 year old (as opposed to a 10 year old) has about as good a shot as me re: being able to build it. Thank goodness!



I wouldn't say building engines is getting old but it's getting easier. I am taking more time to line stuff up and am back to using Testor's red tube glue for a lot of the "normal" gluing. That seems to help. Consequently the engine is building up pretty well. Unfortunately the air cleaner isn't chrome (and it is on all the 1:1 cars I could find pictures of) so I might send it out for chroming, which would be a first for me. I am not sure what I am going to about the engine decals, like the "Hemi" sticker on the air cleaner. I will probably have to make it myself.




The interior is a combination of both kits as the MPC kit is low in the parts count department. The MPC kit has good looking seats, but molded-in seat belts which can be a pain to paint. So I tackled this a new way (for me) and it came out well. I first covered the already flat black seats with Bare Metal Foil, painted the belts with Floquil flat orange, then after the Floquil was dry, I cut around the seat belts and peeled away the BMF, leaving painted BMF just on the seat belts.

The result was 100% better than if I tried to hand paint or mask, and took about 2 minutes not including drying time. And of course the BMF over the belt buckles was left chrome as an added bonus.



Dashboards remain difficult for me. I am back to using a silver art pencil for the dials but I don't know--I just can't get that "forget 1/25th, it must be 1/8th scale" sort of look that better modelers can get out of their dashboards. I drilled out the dial backs and used a piece of brass to give the dials some "depth" which worked, sort of. The 1:1 car reference photos show a "textured" look to the instrument panel but not what surrounds it. I imitated this by painting everything with Tamiya Matt Black then offsetting the instruments with Tamiya acrylic clear. This did give me the basic look I was after.

On to the body next. I ordered "factory correct" colors from MCW paints and with my additional MPC acquisition have a decent set of decals now. I also got some 69 charger R/T photoetch from ScaleDreams, so getting some of the body details right will be a bit easier. We'll see if I can get through the airbrushing next time.

MPC 69 Charger--My First "Vintage Kit" Purchase

After about a year of clandestinely viewing the model car section of Ebay, I finally decided to plunk down $17 on a "Vintage" MPC kit plus something like $8 for shipping. I won the bid!!!! Joy!!!!



It's an MPC! MPC lives forever! (Well, MPC/Ertl. Close enough.) When I was a youngster I remember my brothers and me thinking MPC always had the coolest stuff. We probably built every one of their kits at one time or another.

MPC is long gone of course, and nowadays, some MPC kits, in unbuilt/new in box form have become collectable. I see kits going for $70 to $140 to $200....not the price of a collectable Gibson ES335 or a Tiffany Egg, certainly, but for a box with a bunch of dumb plastic inside it seems to me a lot of money.

I am not one for collecting anything, really, but I wanted to get my hands on an authentic MPC kit for the first time in something like 35 years, so out came the credit card. Besides, I love '69 Mopars!

A few days later kit showed up at my door.

So off came the cellophane (I am going to build this, not just put it on the shelf! Go Ebay!) and guess what? The whole thing smelled like mildew inside. I mean: make your eyes water, nasty, stinky mildew.



The decals were dirty, filthy, old looking, and probably unusable. That's a problem, really.



But the biggest issue was that the entire drivers side of the body was tweaked about 20-30 degrees off center. It's as if the body was stored incorrectly inside the box and during the 20+ odd years of sitting around (the kit is copyright 1987) the roof and driver's side caved in. I'm not sure the picture above shows the true horror of the tweak, but, as it sits now, this banana-yellow Charger body is unusable!!

Out came the hot water and attempts to bend it back. Nothing seemed to work--even after bending it a bit a few days later the body would return to its unusable state.

So what to do? Go to the Internet of course. On the Scaleautomag.com site I posted my dilemma and the general response was: you'll never be able to bend the roof back. Stop wasting time and just get the Daytona reissue of the kit.

Reissue? So I didn't need to go through any of this "vintage kit" hooey at all?



Yep. The AMT/ERTL Daytona kit #31747 is the same thing as my beloved MPC with some extra "Superbird Parts". So I didn't need to get the vintage kit at all, eh?


Well, maybe, but maybe not. There are subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the two.




The Daytona kit obviously has parts the 500 kit doesn't, such as the rear wing and front nose--so the biggest difference is the front grille. The vintage kit has the correct Charger 500 Coronet-style "lights out" and the newer kit (which I am surprised has a grill at all since it's a Daytona) has the headlights retracted, non-500 sytle. The good news is the basic "body shell" on the reissue is the same as my vintage purchase. So I will build this kit "lights out" so anyone in the know will say--wow--that's a vintage kit! (In reality, if anyone ever really said that, I'd probably fall over....)



So what does this all mean? I think for a builder, as opposed to a collector, staking your build on the condition of an unopened vintage kit may not be the best idea. There's no way of telling which kits have unforeseen damage before you buy, at least not through Ebay, and I could easily see paying a lot of money for something that can't be built--maybe ever.

Maybe it makes sense to buy vintage kits to rob parts out of them that aren't otherwise easy to come by. For me the jury is still out.

55 Chevy Gasser--Finished!!!!

After a few weeks and some time off for the holidays the 55 Chevy Gasser is finally DONE. Thank goodness! It's time to move onto something else!



It's probably been 6 months since I started reading up on 60's gassers and trying to figure out how to make something that's fairly accurate in terms of getting the right parts in there. So here it is. The finished build should have some decals I guess, as strip gassers from the 60's at the very least would have had their class (this would be a C/GS or D/GS I believe) painted on them somewhere. I couldn't bring myself to cover up the nice Tamiya paint with decals.

Even though the paint is a single solid color, right out of the rattle can, this build was a lot of work, but I am not entirely sure it shows. It makes me realize how much work some modelers put into their detailing on things like the engine compartment. I am not sure I have it in me to spend that much time on any one build.



The most frustration I had with this build, turns out, in addition to getting the glass to fit, was this: I lost an itty bitty door handle right before I was going to take the photos you see here. I looked for it for about an hour to no avail. I ended up going into my parts box and finding something pretty close. So the door handles don't quite match. How many times can I say "good enough" on one blog? Here I'll say it again: it's good enough.



One creative thing I did for this build is to use the hand grips from a drag steering wheel in the interior, as door pulls. Looks pretty gothic, and 1/24th and larger kits with drag type "butterfly" steering wheels are good candidates for this.





Is there a commercial kit like this--that would give me this look box-stock, and make all the kitbashing and customizing unnecessary? I remember building the Monogram "Tom Daniels Badman" kit about 10 times as a kid, which I am pretty sure has gotten rare and hard to find, which is pretty close I think if built box stock. However the big block Chevy combined with the retro interior, the huge difference between the "big and smalls" and the parts pack wheels gives this build a look of its own. But it's a subtle look and perhaps I was trying to get an "oh wow" look. It's not oh wow....oh well.....



Overall a very fun build, and I recommend any of the kits I pilfered parts out of to anyone except the Henry J kit--which is a good kit as a donor for retro gasser parts but not good for much else. I give an A++ to the 55 Chevy Revell kit that donated its body to this build--now there's a wonderfult kit. Also the Hilborn injected Olds engine in the "Simple Simon" Thames gasser is one of the coolest engines I've seen in 1:25 scale. It's now waiting in my parts box to be stuffed into a dragster that I will build before too long.



The big blower (see earlier posts for which kits were used....) is a perfect way to top off a fun build. It was extremely satisfying to glue on the Willys blower scoop and call things done.

Now I'm ready to put the hot rod thing aside for a bit....Next up: Mopar mania. Is there no end?

55 Chevy Gasser--Interior is finished

The 55 Chevy gasser project is almost finished. After taking some time off from pretty much everything for the holidays I'd like to get this build done so I can start some new things.



As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interior is actually two interiors bonded together: the interior from Revell's 51 Henry J #2036, which was extended by grafting on parts of the interior from Revell's 55 Chevy #85-2069. I liked the look of the Henry J interior--it matched the look of some of the 60's gassers I found in some research material--but wasn't long enough for the 55 Chevy, hence the mods. The whole thing was painted with a combination of Tamiya matte black--a popular paint with modelers everywhere, showing up in many magazine articles about builds, and one of my own new favorites, Floquil Engine Black along with Floquil RailRoad Colors Flat Finish. Used in different combinations throughout the build, the end result is a multi-tone flat black, which is great because on a 1:1 car all the flat blacks aren't going to look the same.




The rest of the interior parts came out of one of the Gasser donor kits for this build (The Henry J, Revell 51 Willys Gasser #85-2350, the Ertl/AMT 55 Chevy #31931, and Revell Thames #7609) or the parts box. I bought an expensive photo etched 5-part seat belt for this build, but besides not being true to the 60's era sort of look, I also found myself too rushed to take the time to build the seatbelts "just right". Instead I went to the parts box and cut up some seatbelts from a 63 Corvette that got scrapped, and reused them here. And there's only belts on the drivers side because apparently on some older gassers only the driver's seat needed them--NHRA rules said you had to have a passenger seat but of course no one wanted the weight of an extra body on the quarter mile....Good enough.....who's going to look into the "window" of the build and really study the seat belts, anyway?



One of the hardest and most frustrating parts of any build in recent memory was getting the glass into the Chevy body and then getting the dash into the glass/body without making a mess. I had everything mapped out and it should have all gone together easily but it didn't. I ended up using bare metal foil for the windshield brightwork, and the "wrapped under" part of the BMF got in the way. I ended up using the glass out of the AMT 55 Chevy Bel Air instead, which sort of fit, and ended up creating special "pinning" on the dash so the thing would stick where it should stick. Overall it didn't come out too bad, but, there was one heck of a lot of cursing trying to get it all together. Not stress relieving, and not good!



Good news is I'm almost ready to wrap up this build. I need to do an assembly of the body/interior/frame, lay in the goodies like headlights and door handles, and do a final detail pass at the engine compartment. If all goes well, I can finish this this week. I have been having dreams at night about Mopars so that's probably where I'm going next.

55 Chevy Gasser--We Have a Roller

It's the day after Christmas and I'm off work so it means a little more time to work on the 55 Chevy Gasser build. I have been told in the 1:1 world when the custom builder gets the frame/wheels/tires/axles all in order the project becomes a "roller".



Since the last post I've pretty much finished the chassis' basics. The front "skinny" tires came from Revell/Model King's 51 Henry J #85-2036 while the rears came from Revell Thames Panel truck #7609. The wheels are from a Revell Parts pack C1142 that I got off Ebay--expensive, but worth it--these are really cool wheels!




As I said last time, the radiator was from the junk box, I think originally from a Monogram 1:24 pickup. I scratch built the radiator plumbing by bending styrene rod and "pinning" the end of it (by "pinning" I mean drilling a small hole and putting a smaller diameter rod in, then drilling a mating hole where the hose needs to attach; sort of made it like a snap-together). I ended up having to further modify the exhaust headers as the way I had it before didn't allow the front wheels to be posed. Good thing to test fit! The hose clamps were simulated with some chrome 3M tape I got from Walmart.



Speaking of test fitting here's how things are looking with the body in place. I am leaning toward not using the hood at all--since enough work has been done on the engine that I want it displayed all the time.



So the question is: what color to paint this? I was thinking about some sort of radical candy thing, but, in the end I am going to experiment with an all-Tamiya finish, which I know some other modelers swear by, and it's something I've never tried.



Over the holiday break I went with my family to the local train store and stocked up on some more Floquil paints. The more I use these the more I like them! Using a flat Floquil color and then adding more Floquil flat clear on top is a good way to get realistic finishes; the gun metal and graphite paints are a good complement to the Tamiya colors with the same name. It goes on smooth and evenly, and doesn't stink too much. It's a bit pricey but worth it. Overall Floquil paints are highly recommended.

55 Chevy--"Engineering" for a Cleaner Build

We're approaching the holidays and what better way to mentally prepare for the in-law onslaught then to get some quiet bench time. This month I'm trying to wrap up a highly customized 1:25 '55 Chevy Gasser I started a few weeks ago; I feel if I make a good push I'll be ready for final paint and assembly before too long.



I've found in the year or so since I returned to this hobby that I need to "engineer" my custom parts before paint and assembly and have a working plan to get everything to fit together before I do a lot of gluing. Once my plan is in place, only then should I do a final prep of the parts, paint, and assemble.



The fit of the exhaust headers is something I have struggled with on past builds. It's easy to mess up a good engine compartment build with headers that don't fit quite right. The 55 Chevy Gasser build is tricky in this regard because there is very little room to pass the "drag ready" headers out of the engine compartment without being blocked by a body panel, a frame rail, the front wheels, or whatever. The headers I ended up using are from the AMT/Ertl 55 Chevy kit #31931 (after many attempts to use others from different kits and my parts box). After a lot of test fitting and trial and error I decided to cut in two the headers I was going to use and reglue them to point the exhaust downward rather than out the side of the body. Looking at pictures of 60's era gassers, this look was pretty common so I am happy with this decision.



I have had serious fit issues in past customs with the radiator--this is something I don't think about until the end of the build, and then I usually make a mess trying to get something into an already-painted engine compartment. In this case, the radiators from the two primary kits I am "marrying together" for the build, Revell's 55 Chevy # 85-2069 and Revell/Model King's 51 Henry J Gasser # 85-2036, didn't give me the right look. I ended up going to the parts box and finding a radiator from a 1:24 pickup; then, I scratchbuilt the radiator tank using styrene strip. To get this to easily mount to the frame I "pinned" the part--drilled small holes in the radiator and frame and then glued in small-diameter styrene rods so the part could be installed as if it were from a snap kit.



I continue to find lots of uses for the "Samestuff" or "Tenax7R" or "Pro Weld" type glue, but I am finding limitations: you can't use it as a replacement for regular styrene glue--it works best when the glue is applied on the outside of the finished part and allowed to flow in and fill the joint you're trying to glue. Some of the rear suspension work I glued up with Tenax popped off during this photo shoot. It's back to Devcon Epoxy for this sort of thing.



Overall the build isn't looking too bad; I still have to figure out how to join the wheels/tires to the axles and what I am going to do about the front grille. The interior is going to be simple and the seats and roll bars are fitting OK. I am still not sure how to get the steering column in there, as the dash is scratchbuilt.

Painting of course is a lot of work but I look forward to it--it's one of the most relaxing parts of the hobby. Beyond that the final assembly should be fairly straightforward.