CDW

While it wasn’t from this particular kit box, trophies like the yellow one in these photos were commonly found in the 1st generation model car kit boxes of award winning show cars like the Orange Crate. This trophy comes from my spares box of car parts from decades ago.

All the old Revell kits are detail packed and tricky to assemble. Rewarding if done slowly and carefully cleaned of flash and minor fit issues. No wonder kids had a tough time with them. More adult experienced modeler oriented.

Another dry-fit mock up. We’re getting there.

Oh sure, no rush on a decision at all at this stage. The wheels can go on last.

Sitting on the right side of the box of drag slicks is the kit supplied drag slick. I’m tempted to use either the wide white wall slick from the box or the raised white letter slicks. What do you think? Both are probably not historically accurate but does it matter?

For a set of molds this old, Revell put a lot detail in their creation. One part that is very strange is the fact they molded a nicely detailed suspension and rear end, but omitted an axle housing. I’ve cut a section of styrene tubing that’s now serving as a spacer to keep the correct distance and alignment of the disk brakes while the glue sets up on the assembly. If there was a reason you never saw many of these old Revell street and drag strip rods finished, it’s because of the amount of time required to clean up the parts and then the assembly of them is very fiddly. I have no less than six hours invested in this so far, probably closer to seven.

Spectacular model Alan. I have never seen something like this done until now. It’s sure to be a conversation piece for guests at your home.

I should mention, if you ever decide to build one of these old kits, particularly the older Revell kits like this one, do yourself a big favor and cut off the locating pins and tabs. Use a flat file to sand the mating surfaces level and eyeball the parts fit rather than depend on the locating pins and tabs. Thet are way out of alignment much of the time and are a hinderance rather than help.

Invested several hours into cleaning up these parts and assembling the engine/blower components. The chassis is straight as an arrow. Only the belly pan has a twist in it but that can be straightened out. Will assemble the entire chassis before doing any painting as the whole unit is chrome. Will be using Alclad chrome this time. The blower assembly, valve covers and oil pan are chrome as well. Guess what color for the engine? Bingo! It’s orange. 😀 There’s a whole lotta’ flash on these parts!

Have you seen these cordless polishing/sanding tools marketed by Mr Hobby? They make short work of removing ejector pin marks in hard to reach places. Comes in very handy.

I was 35 when this was belly pan part was stamped. Sigh….

So much for my thoughts of using the chrome parts. There was too much flash in places, and too many sprue attachment points to deal with. It would have ended up a patched up, mixed up mixture of chrome plating and Molotov ink touchups. I believe that in the long run, carefully cleaning up all the plastic pieces, assembling, then painting the assemblies with Alclad chrome will give much better results. Here are the plastic trees all stripped down. Will begin the tedious chore of removing all the parts and cleaning them up for assembly and painting.

Are there ANY companies actually molding plastic models in the USA Today? Not that I know of.

This is what comes inside the box. Back when this kit was first issued in the ‘60’s, there was a major fit issue with the hood/engine cowling. Subsequently reissues like this one contain a corrected hood, or so they say. We’ll soon find out. I plan to build this one as it is on the box art, original colors. Maybe will try to save as much of the original chrome plating parts as possible for nostalgia’s sake. But don’t hold me to it. Just depends on how much of it I can salvage.

A Bonneville racer was a great idea. What color did you paint it?

It’s been many decades since I last built this kit. Time to give it another go.

Some months ago, my son gave me a pair of brand-new photography lamps that sit atop tripods. Aside from setting one up and turning it on, twisting the knobs to see how they worked, I did nothing with them until now. Here I have one of those lamps set up and took a few photos to test the difference it makes. Looks like there is a marked difference. Maybe if I had the pair of them set up from two directions, focusing on the object to be photographed, that may be the ticket. It looks like what I need to do is set up a dedicated location to take photos where I can keep all this menagerie set up and ready.

I believe a florescent light was causing a large part of the issue. Here are some photos with that light turned off. Here is one with the light turned on. Thanks for pointing that out. I am not very good at photography.

This wraps it up. Time to move on to a new project. Thanks for following, your likes, your comments. It's been fun as always. See you again soon with a new project.

Getting very close to finish now. As I look at it, I'm satisfied with the model as a nice addition to my model car shelf but it's definitely not a show model. Maybe if you started with the Fujimi body shell then scratch built the chassis or maybe even scavenged the chassis from another kit (not sure what all is out there), added an aftermarket engine/transmission, along with other things, you could make a show model from this. For the $30ish price tag I paid for the model, I really can't complain. Also from this experience, I would recommend using the kit supplied parts and just building this as a curbside model. Forget about wasting time with the kit supplied engine and so forth. Could have built this model in half the time.

This will be where I leave well enough alone and enjoy it as an interesting shelf model. As you said, when you pick it up and look underneath, there is no hiding the fact the collector pipes do not line up properly with the headers. In the end, I chose to make the header pipes line up with the heads, as these parts can be seen with the bonnet open, and not worry about the collector to header match. The only real way I can see to solve this deficiency is to build a custom set of headers. The model is not of sufficient quality to make that a worthwhile effort. To bring this model up to a showpiece level, a LOT of scratch building would be required and that's not something I'm interested to do with this kit. As a side note, I have looked through other builder's efforts with this model and have noticed that the better modelers such as Plasmo, don't even give any photos of the header to collector fit and that leads me to believe it's a common problem. Looking at the history of this kit, it was originally released as a curbside kit, meaning no engine detail except for a plastic insert that showed a raised detail of the bottom of the engine. The collectors were cemented to a plate on the bottom of the chassis. Somewhere along the way, Fujimi added the engine and header details without making other improvements to the chassis. My kit even came with the parts to build it as a curbside model on the sprue trees. If I had known how poor the fit was going to be, I actually would have built it as a curbside model and cut out a lot of work. Anyway, it is what it is.

I can dream....

My grandson (16 years old) is a real time, natural born horse trader. Today, he traded for this Honda CR250 dirt bike. of course, 70 year old grandpa had to try it out. My wife scolded me for it. IMG_4601.MOV

With the right space, the right layout, and a nice size scale like this, I can see where a guy could get hooked for life on model railroading. At my age, will not get into it but it’s very tempting.