Jul27

7/28..... The long weeks journey

Categories // Kits, The Diecast Bodyshop, Syndicated Blogs

So a week ago I posted some stuff on here and thought I would be back to posting daily but have been busy with little boring things to the point that I just didn't get back to it. I did however have a few people email me asked to post even the little crap I have to do so they can get a feel for that too. Well.... here we go.... this is in no certain order but this, and im sure more that I forgot, is what I have been working on in the last week.

First off I had to do some box reworking to get Pete's Red T-Bird to fit in the styrofoam sleeve so the modified car could ship back to him without breaking. This encompassed the trimming of the styrofoam in little bits and pieces then trial fitting the car for secure fit. Stupid little shit but time consuming and had to be done.

OK.... now to the rest of the stuff...

Strip and prep a 70 Challenger body for paint. This included stripping the chassis of everything for the repaint then overspray. I also had to fill the deck lid holes and since this is going to be a convertible I had to cut the roof and finish sand those areas.

I continued to do the rework on the 3 spoke wheel, this time with correct clay and thats just about ready to be mold cast again.

I decided to create a Foose type wheel that my one customer has on his Roush Mustang. This is the car I was searching for wheels for earlier this year and thought I got something close but after a month he bitched about them and sent the car back. Since there is nothing remotely close I decided that I would make something really close then have them for other peoples projects (Doug you will be forced to buy these for something, LMAO). Well this is a wheel I should charge about $200.00 to create and I probably already have 5-6 hours invested with another 5-6 to go. Since I cant go back and charge him Im chalking it up to learning, LOL. I will post more about the wheel in the future with pictures of what it started as and where its at now.

I had two more Roush Blackjacks to do for customers.... both got broken down and one is about done. The Blackjack includes a solid color interior instead of 2 tone as the stock Roush are. Then I add some gear shift handle detail, dash detail, underhood detail. Which..... I see that different Blackjacks have different underhood detail. Then I have to do some outer body badging and satin Black hood and deck lid stripes. One is almost completed the other has a few things left. They will both be finished this week.

On top of the Foose wheels I also had to do some other minor work on the same guys Roush. I replaced the rear roof vents with clear plastic styrene cut to fit then sprayed black on the inside to reflect dark window tint. Well he didn't like that either so I had to cut more pieces and now have to re tint them. I also was asked to create a little map decal for the in dash DVD type player I made for him. Ugh.... and to think he saw pictures of this car and approved it and now im dumping 10-20 hours in to it for nuttin..... oh well, such is life.

Next up is the 66 Shelby GT 350 convertible I'm doing. Not done in diecast as of yet this is a combination of a Precision 100, 64 1/2 Mustang and a 66 Shelby Collectibles Mustang. So..... I break down both cars... have to use the Shelby hood on the 64, along with the engine, trans, rear end, grill and some of the interior parts. Well... so I thought. See the 66 dash is 5/8 of an inch wider then the 64 body...... yet the Shelby hood is a 1/16th of an inch narrower. UGH !!!! I hate this parts swapping sometimes. Oh wait it gets better as you read on down below LOL. So the engine is nice and since its a 4spd and thats what I need that should cross over ok. The grill I can do by reworking the 64 body and I have already removed the Shelby side scoops and glued them to the 64. I did however forget that the 64 Mustangs are as hard to take apart as the 57 T-Birds. But hey....... thats ok.

I have to create a 95 Cobra R..... yeah.... they don't make this one either. This starts with a 94 Saleen.... then I have to cut up and add the front and rear bumpers off a 94 Joueff (piece of shit diecast car) along with..... cutting the taillight housings out of the metal body and re fitting them to the Auto Art Saleen body, simple ? HA !!!!! I also have to either section the center of the Joueff hood or rework that hood all together to use the AA hood hinges. Can't do a hood swap and not have a working hood. Well.... the Joueff body is all marked as to where the cuts need to be done but..... the front and rear bumpers are wider then the AA body so I will probably have to slice them down the middle to remove enough metal so they will fit correctly. Guess we will see when I get to that point.

Next up.... the 67 Mustang Bonneville Salt Flat racer. This car was built using a Ford Indy car engine and was a FIA speed record holder. This starts with a Johnny Lightning (owned by RC2/Ertl at the time) and once broken down I realize that the whole chassis and inner fender wells are chrome plated. This is because the JL line of small scale cars are like this so they carried that thought over to the 1/18 scale ones and it was a stupid ass idea, LMAO. Well..... I started removing everything from the body for some mods including filling the wiper arm holes, the door handle holes and cutting the hood for hood pins. Chassis wise I of course had to strip the whole thing since we are not using a chrome chassis. I will have to talk with Doug further about how he wants this chassis done.

I took a AA Saleen Mustang apart thats getting a lot of little work done to it. First off is the deck spoiler. The car we are duplicating has a stepped deck spoiler. This is what they put on the 94 Saleen SR model. Along with this he (Doug) wants some engine detail done. Something I don't normally do but have in this case. This included painted the coil box.... finding a distributor (I used to have them made from spun aluminum), drilling and mounting that... the drilling out the engine block on both sides to mount the plug wires which are run in the correct firing order. There will also be some minor under hood decal work and then its off to the interior. This car gets a roll bar, no rear seat and custom racing seats painted Yellow along with the dash mounting gage cluster, oh yeah and that deck spoiler I have yet to find or create, LOL.

With this latest batch of cars from Doug I also got the parts car convertible I needed the boot off of in order to create a master for the numerous late model (99-04) Mustangs he plans on doing. I thought I had created a mold of this boot but for the life of me cannot find it. The boot, while close to correct needs various small modifications to work universally on the Mustang body. This is now done and its waiting for mold process.

I did get the inner Grey painted on the dragster body as I might have mentioned but then while reattaching the bodies mounting tabs I found out I had missed something in the long list of items the owner wanted done. See based on the pricing I thought I was JUST painting the body. Come to find out he wanted both the front and rear wings painted. Front to match the color of the body and rear a glossy, but not too glossy, LOL, Black. The rear one is done but I have to shoot the front one so that can leave. Everything else is done... ugh. Oh well... I will paint it with the next batch.

One of the projects I really wanted to do was a station wagon type conversion. Doug decided he wanted the Shelby 63 Falcon Panel Wagon done and while I haven't even written a contract for it I started breaking everything down and getting it ready for cutting. This involves the roof section of a 55 Chevy panel... that's mounted to the windshield frame of the Falcon will make it close but.... after some measuring I will be making some cuts in the top and the rear door. This will however be do able, LOL. The Falcon.... while a cheap car in diecast standards is a very well done car with only the air cleaner out of scale IMHO. The cheapo car even has all photoetched emblems, Im impressed. Anyway.. this was fun and time consuming from taking the Falcon apart to just sizing everything up. Another first coming to a customer near you.... ok , well maybe not..... how about a customer on this planet, LOL.

I did also take apart another 57 T Bird. This one is getting painted Coral Sand and will be shot with the Pink one for Pete. Ugh...... more T-Birds, LMAO.

OK ..... still with me ??? By the way, this is a very condensed version of the time spent on this little pieces of diecast art.

Here are a couple other cars I got to work on. I striped down, primed and painted 3 cars. The 70 GTO in White, 69 Chevelle in Black and a 69 Camaro in Bolero Red. Once these were dry I laid out and shot the vinyl tops on 2 of them as you see in the picture. I was going to work at getting all the decals and stripes done but decided I had done enough in the last week and decided to chill. I will however get those things done today along with the stripes on the 71 Challenger I have and hopefully get them clear coated today. Here is a shot of the 3 bodies in color. Man I love my vinyl tops..... they fricken rock ! Too bad you can't see them better in this picture though.

For the record... with shipping some 10 cars over the last week I had 10 emtly bins in the shop and I hate that so I switched to breakdown mode to keep the shop looking full. For those with projects in house already it's back to your stuff this week.

Ok , Im out !

John builds any model as a scale replica, that's right - any! Get in touch for your one-off model car