Holiday Amnesty Build - 1960 Plymouth Airport Limo - Progress 1-2-16

[Tom Geiger]

I haven't mentioned much about my annual project on this board, but on udder boards the big question on everyone's minds is "What is Tom going to build for this year's Holiday Model Car Amnesty Build???

For those unacquainted with the topic, every year for the past 15 years or so, I have had the week between Christmas and New Years off from work. Early on I discovered that there really wasn't enough time there to build a model car from start to finish, but I had many stalled projects at that 50% to 90% point and there certainly was enough time to finish off one of those. So that started a tradition of reaching up into my unfinished project shelves and pulling down some long languishing, but deserving model! I have completed my model most years. One year I gave up on the Volare (which finally got done on a rerun last year!) and I didn't do it the year I moved to PA since I was between houses.

So with a drumroll.... This year's candidate is my 1960 Plymouth airport limo!

 

This one was started many years ago... maybe 15 or so, back when it wasn't a big deal to cut up multiple copies of this kit. Still, the build involved one mint kit, and one glue bomb old junker (the black parts). It's been in the box a long time. I had it out a few years ago and that's when I spliced the interior and chassis parts together. It's been awhile because I found two dead stink bugs in the box when I opened it!

It stalled on a few counts. First my mating of bodies wasn't exactly straight and that bothered me a great deal back then when I thought every model I built had to be a show stopper. Today I don't give a hoot. Second, there were several trim lines I didn't know how to finish off, and today I have those skills of creating drip rails and such. I also accidentally sanded off a door handle on each side. Not a hard thing to add normally, but Chrysler had those darn inset handles back then. I do have an extra pair that someone donated to the project, but I'm not exactly looking forward to splicing those suckers into the side panels. Ever see how thick the plastic is on this kit? Many of the airport limos of that day only had the center doors on the passenger side. I will attempt my first splice on the right side and if it's a total pain, I'll invoke that thought on the drivers side and just sand the other one off! We will see.

Here it is against a stock body just to show the dramatically added length. The body only has one splice, cutting two bodies long to achieve the length. There are extra short parts in my junk box somewhere!

The history of this kit is that Johan/xcel had a 1960 Plymouth wagon promo but not a kit back in the day. When Johan went through their vault in creating the Oldies series in the 1980s(?) they pieced this one together as a never before issued kit. The interior is very simple, even with a flat floor, no hump! I pieced together a front seat and three back seats to make this. It fits into the body very well. I don't believe I'm going to go to much trouble in here. I did eliminate the rear facing seat so I could add some luggage there.

The chassis is fairly simple, basically a plastic promo plate. I added the length here from two units, but won't be doing any more than spraying it all flat black.

Detail wise, I will add the engine and provided accessories under the hood, but considering the overall detail level of the kit, I won't be doing much else. I will concentrate on straightening out my body work, getting a decent worn paint job on it and adding details in the theme, like a huge luggage rack with luggage on the roof.

All in all, I just want to build a decent shelf model. And that's much better than leaving it in the box!

So, everyone is welcome to join in and finish up an old project. I'm off from work now, so I may just dig into mine. Below is a link to my Annual Amnesty Project album. There's a photo of every project through the years!

http://public.fotki.com/ModelCitizen/model_cars/my_model_cars/my-finished-models/the-model-car-amnes/

Edited January 3, 2016 by Tom Geiger

[GTJUNIOR]

Interesting subject. I trust that you will be able to complete it and have a great looking model to display when you are done. 

[GaryR]

FANTASTIC BUILD! Very cool idea!

I grew up in the back of a 60 Plymouth wagon, I love it. Very creative.

[vintagercr]

Tom, that is such a cool idea!

[cobraman]

Cool project. The stink bugs died waiting for a ride in the limo.

[Ramfins59]

Glad to see that you picked such a cool project for a reprieve Tom.  Are you going to use some half round rod for the floor hump..??

[Sledsel]

Very cool and ambitious project

[Nytrozilla]

I say "Go For It" Tom, but then again, I'm insane, sooooooo........

[crazyrichard]

thats nice !!! love it

[Mopar - D]

Very interesting project and glad to see you decided to finish it. 

[Tom Geiger]

Glad to see that you picked such a cool project for a reprieve Tom.  Are you going to use some half round rod for the floor hump..??

I don't know if I'll bother Rich. I don't think a viewer will really see the floor in the finished model. Besides I'll be filling it up with interior junk and such.

A build note-  I worked on this one last evening.  I attempted to add a door handle and cracked the whole friggin body in half.  So I've taken a step back and am redoing the entire splice with new front parts.  The black body seems to be very brittle and cracks easily so I'm ditching those parts. I'm cutting up another fresh body, and this one has the door handles. Hopefully I'll do a better union this time.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Tom Geiger

[Tom Geiger]

Just a progress report, since I'm in NJ for the holidays.  Disaster struck! As I was attempting to splice in a door handle, I put a little pressure and the body shattered. The Johan black plastic had weird qualities of clear plastic. It shattered so bad that a hunk of the roof went missing. I assessed the situation and decided to that the original body splice work wasn't all that straight, so I decided to start over. I grabbed    the spare body you see in the pictures here and cut it up. The white plastic works much better and this time the splice is square and straight. So far my build time has been getting back to square one!  But sometimes you just gotta do that!

[bobthehobbyguy]

Cool project. Sometimes the models will decide to fight you. But in the end you will win.

[bobthehobbyguy]

Any more progress?

[Jonathan]

I look forward to the Amnesty builds each year!  As always, a great idea!

[disabled modeler]

Love it Tom...very cool..!

[Tom Geiger]

I did get pulled away for the holidays..  went to NJ on Christmas eve.  We were invited to my daughter's intended in-laws for a big shindig. Christmas day we went to my wife's family,  Saturday we hung out with my daughters and went to a movie with them.  Sunday we went to my sister's house.  So all food and family, no models!  I did get back to the bench yesterday, but mostly was sanding down imperfections and trying to define the extra doors. I'm not the best at this step.

I will post some progress later today.  I am working on the roof rack that will hold a ton of luggage.

[Tom Geiger]

There's been a lot more progress than these photos reveal.  I had the disaster that shattered the black plastic front half of the body. Upon assessing the situation I realized the splice between the two bodies wasn't exactly square anyway, and I was missing the door handles, so I went and cut into a clean new body!  What you see in these photos is the completely reworked body. It is a lot straighter and the splice is cleaner. It's not perfect, but much better than the last one.

I made the luggage rack and cut a bunch of luggage from wood molding scraps. The two drums on top were cut from the round handle of a cheap foam paint brush. I do need some larger drums and have been eyeing brooms and my garden tools!  The sacrifices we make for the hobby.   The luggage you see in the rack just needs to be shapes because it will have a tarp over it.  The actual suitcases and good detailed items I have will be painted nicely and will be visible in the interior.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to work a bit tomorrow and I plan on adding the missing pillars and the drip rail to complete the body conversion.  I just gave the body another shot of primer and see I still want to fill in and rescribe the door lines along the splice.  Still too big and wide for my liking.  I've gotten it this good, I might as well go for as good as I can do!

There's a lot more work to do.  The amnesty build should be done by the time I go back to work next Monday, but there is a sub-rule that as long as I keep on working on it into January, it counts.  I finished the Volare last year around January 25th,  as I decided to add a bunch more detail and I have a feeling this one will go the same way.

Happy New Year to All!   Signing off for 2015!

[DrKerry]

Kool to see Tom!!!!!

[bobthehobbyguy]

Looking good. Happy New Year.

[GTJUNIOR]

Looking good. Happy new year. 

[Tom Geiger]

Some progress...

I have been working on the interior and was thinking about Rich and Steve as I masked off that old Johan seating.  I was avoiding this step since, well, I have four rows of seats!  The base color is Duplicolor gray primer.  I've used primers for interior colors before.  I also have a bunch of grays, blacks and browns to make interiors interesting. So here we are masking for color two, a dark gray.

More than an hour's masking and five minutes of paint.  Took it all off and started again with a fresh mask. There was a step in between, there is a white strip under the bottom mask strip.  All done with Tamiya tape, great stuff with no issues.   I have the seats finished, and am now masking the side panels.  Man, it's one of those ship in the bottle things. I'm about half done masking, had to walk away.  I'll get back on it with fresh eyes tomorrow.  It will all pull together once I hit everything with Dullcote. 

And I've been making stuff!  I decided the theme of this build will be that it was originally an airport limo that was sold off and became a band bus in the 1970s. So I've been creating these visuals to sprinkle around the interior.  The green guitar is from the Rat Roaster kit, the other one is resin. The hat is from my parts box and the drums were a paint brush handle. The violin case came from the '28 Lincoln kit, as well as the liquor bottle on top of the trunk.  The black shape behind it was in my parts box, I have no idea what it was but it looks like an instrument case, once it gets a handle.  All of these still need paint and detailing.  The suitcase with the clothes sticking out is from the Johan '59 Rambler wagon. The fun stuff is the Checkers game box and trunk. I got those from a printable mini site and printed them to 1/24 scale. When you print them they have tabs to form a airbox, but I prefer to cut wood the right size and just glue it for a perfectly square look. The keyboard came from an eBay auction, scaled down and printed and glued to a few pieces of Evergreen plastic.  

I have more fun making this stuff than building the model!  So I slowed down my build to add detail.  I'm having fun and there's no sense in rushing.  

Edited January 3, 2016 by Tom Geiger

[bobthehobbyguy]

Looking good. All of the detail pieces are great. Looks like its a fun project.

[Ramfins59]

Good job so far Tom.  Making and/or accumulating the detail stuff is a lot of fun.  I've been accumulating various luggage type stuff/parts for when I eventually build my '59 Rambler wagon kit.

[Tom Geiger]

Wow! 2015!  So this stalled project stalled out a second time six years ago!  

Well it’s back on the bench for the “Bring Out Your Dead” project for stalled old projects. I was going to start a new build thread but did a Google search and found this one. That saves me a lot of explaining and typing since you can just scroll back and read this thread from the start.

Anyway, I pulled it out this week and started to fiddle a bit. I got brave and scribed the missing door lines using a tip from the board. I had a roll of the old Dymo label maker tape, which was suggested as a scribing edge since it’s self adhesive and will stick to the body contour. Worked wonderfully!

Thats when I noticed just how bad my roof seam was.  It actually dipped down, but only on one side. I decided I had to fix it.. or make it worse, however it will come out. I’m only concerned with the area from the side glass to the chrome roof strip, as the center will be covered with the roof rack.

So I cut out the offending section and held my breath. I had extra roof section pieces since I had cut up three bodies over time. 

Man, Johan kits are tough to cut! Per 1960 molding technology the roof was very thick. And having three Johan bodies from different eras, each was a different plastic. The front and back donors… one was hard plastic and hard to scribe. The other was soft and easy like a modern kit. The roof section came from a black plastic body that was hard and would shatter like kit glass instead of bending on the scribe lines. 
 

And being very careful.. cutting the roof small, the plug large and incrementally sanding until I got a snug fit, I believe it’s there!

My pack rat tendencies to save everything meant that a useless scrap roof section was in my parts box. That became our plug. See it in the foreground in last photo.. you can even see where it shattered.

So I’m done for the day!  

Edited July 10, 2021 by Tom Geiger