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So I stumbled upon this a while ago, and knew I had to use it for inspiration for a build.. Today is the day I started to make that happen. Wont be an exact replica, but I am taking major cues from it, I debated between a few bodies, but the 41 won in the end (mostly cause it has a straight 6 and its ugly) Started with a slice off the bottom then started on a mild chop, I didn't do nearly as much as I initially marked.

What do you get when take the frame and front suspension from the AMT L'il Hot Dogger, the engine block/trans, intake maniold, carb and rear end from the Raiders Coach, the AMT 23 T Racing body, rims from the Monogram 31 Ford A, some parts bin tires, a can of Rustoleum Gloss Seaside paint, and a couple of plastic spoons? Well, here's the first dry mockup. Haven't picked any of the interior components yet, or most of the engine detail, but I do see a couple surf boards getting involved in this one. Thanks for looking!

So here is a project that I'm working on its Mike Partyka's Rat Rod - I chose this particular rat rod as I thought trying my had at drawing rust would be fun and challenging - So far the rust is looking pretty good - here is a question - its getting a rusted look on a model challenging ? With colour pencils its a definate learning process, starting with the light browns and oranges and going darker where needed. But I'm happy - below are the rust details

I am going to call it now, but I think the next big phase will be 1970's Resto Rods and Fad T's. I have seen a bunch of 1970's rod and custom barn finds show up in popular magazines and on Facebook. I have bee following the large scale Carl Casper Phone booth T on this site and the late 60's and early seventies are getting a lot of attention. I dug out of my stash my Tognotti King T and did some research that a lot of the Fad T's were based on the 1915 glass body. The King T is a supposedly stock bodied 1915 T... Wit a little bit of mold making magic I made the cab and turtle deck. I then proceeded to chop up the body to follow the famous Leg Show T. I cut behind the doors straight down. I cut the top of the body off front of the cut. I removed an additional 6 scale inches and re glued the cowl on. I made a template of the new curved sides and matched the back to the new, lower body sides. I shot a picture of a casting of the Tognotti T and my work. I am glad it took the pictures. This showed me two things, firstly the body sides were spreading out which I quickly straightened out. The second thing I noticed was the body leading edge sloped upward on the passenger side. Both the original body and my project body had it so i adjusted the body to even things out. I had to remove the body reveals and replace all of them.

I have been looking at doing some cars based on 50's to '60's style Hot Rods lately. I found a cool looking '30 Model A chopped coupe in a recent issue of from fall 2014 Rod & Culture that is a funky but rich green color. After reading and re-reading the article gleaning as much as possible about the build, I realized the car was from a car building TV show on cable. I haven't had cable TV in over five years now so I missed it. So Google being my friend and I found pictures and some more info about the car online. At first I was going to build a sorta, kinda looks like the car but now that I know it has some Hollywood glitz to it I may try to do as accurate as I can (within reason) replica of a '60's style rod. I have in my stash an R&D Unique chassis that I wasn't sure what to do with since all of the cool 1/25th scale kits of '32 Fords have been out by Revell stuffing it under a Monogram 30 Model A will do. I also have been having a bit of a parts problem since I liquidated 80% or more of my stash and most 1/24th scale went out the door. I kept some '40 Ford Pickups and '37 Sedans and the "lil Coffin kit. That's it. I sold off my Model A parts and my '32 Monogram Ford Roadster. Fast forward to the March Toledo show last week I went with my shopping list of kits and parts I wanted. I scored the Monogram '30 Model A Phaeton. I will be stealing the engine out of this model and the headlights bar for some other yet not thought up build for the cool custom headlight bar (It was mentioned in the new Revell Model A Roadster kit that these headlights are great '50's parts). So This kit wasn't just bought for a headlight bar assembly, lol. Now for an engine and headlight bar! ( when I got home and opened up the kit I may build a Rat Rod out of the tub with the custom flathead out of the '40 Ford Pickup kit and wheels I traded from a Danbury Mint Classic car. I am trying to be as economical with my cash as possible with the price of kits these days. I couldn't find the Model A kit at Toledo except for one air box for 5 bucks - no thanks. A friend from my local model car club came to the rescue. He has a spare coupe body and some interior parts - Score! I was going to use the wheels and tires from the 'Lil Coffin as well as the engine, but now that I am considering going more Replica I will use just the tires and grab a set of Radirs from my T Bolt kit that were the custom rims from that kit. Now I need to see if there was ever any finned Corvette scripted valve covers on a Monogram kit, and I may need to get the Monogram 1/24th scale Deuce roadster for the grill, grill shell and some of the front suspension components. I think it had a dropped axle and split wishbone suspension and the mid '80's version might of had the Corvette script finned valve covers? I would have to scratch build the air cleaners, chop the body, make a diamond tuft roof insert as well as make the interior upholstery match. The article mentioned they used House of Color Lime Green and I am set. I didn't watch the show, saw online during my research about the "drama" about the show. I am not concerned about the "Reality" TV side of things, just a cool car.

Well I started my T bucket project after I rummaged through all of my kits in storage. I dug out the old Aurora built up glue bomb I got 20 years ago and started fixing some minor glue damage on the body. As for the chassis, my Dad gave me a started Roth Outlaw kit and it has a lot of fine parts that are usable. I really like Norm Grabowski's Kookie Kar and he used a Model A frame radically chopped down to an 88" to 90" wheelbase. The Outlaw is about the same. I have attached a pic of the instructions from the Outlaw and a picture of a 3d model someone made of the Kookie Kar Chassis. It appears the frame rails have been flipped around on the Kookie Kar compared to the Outlaw. I started the frame rail mods this weekend. I am using the frame rails and model A rear crossmember, Caddy engine and rear end for my build. I am definitely using wide whites all around, but not sure if I will use slicks or big and Littles street tires. The first construction photo shows the original rail on the bottom that is unless boxed just like the Kookie Kar. The top one I started to fill in the now incorrectly placed mounting wholes, removed the suspension brackets and radiator side mounts and removed the mounting points for the center crossmember. The second pic shows the outside of the frame rails and what was filled in. The third and fourth construction pic shows the engine block and adding the rounded front tip to the frame rail that I added. The last pic shows the rails and the front and rear crossmember. The front was made from Plastic tube and K&S brass rod. The 3d sketch shows the rear crossmember weld behind the frame, I am keeping like the Outlaw and setting it between the rails. The Outlaw used spring coils seen more frequently on later '60's show rods. I am probably going to steal the front suspension out of a Revell '29 Model A truck.

Hello Model Car Magazine members! My Name is Rod and I used to build a lot of cars back in the 1990's. I have migrated away form cars for over a decade and I decide to change things up a bit and get back into building some Rat Rods. I have seen a number of cool hard to find kits re-released and the additions to the Revel '32 Ford kits is just too much for me to be on the sidelines. I gotta build some new rod kits! I have dug through my old stash and found some old kits I have started and plan to complete. Thanks!

Well this is a project i,m working on for a while now, and i like to share it with you modelfans.

This model is over five years old, back when I decided to see what would happen if I sectioned 6 scale inches out of the body. Then I decided it would be neat to use an unexpected engine, so the Plymouth flathead six from the '41 Plymouth kit was built up. Wheels and tires were picked out, then the project died. The model sat way too high and I couldn't figure out how to get it down. I picked it up this past December, when I usually finish an old project over the holiday season. I immediately saw my issue. I had taken the height out of the body, but not the interior. So I spliced it up and got it where it should be. Then the height was just where I wanted it and I was excited to finish it. I didn't make my January 1 deadline, but kept at it, especially as I added more detail and got things right (at least for me!). She's been finished about two weeks now. Headlights came out of the old Barris Ice Cream Truck. The directionals on top are little self adhesive jewels from Michaels. Horns are from the 1950 Ford pickup. Front wheels and tires are from the kit. The six inch section was taken out right at that body line above the door handle. That left the side and rear windows full size, but reduced the windshield down like a chop. The rear wheels and tires are from the old MPC '28 LIncoln Gangbusters kit. I had an old glue bomb. Tail lights were roof lights from a big rig. I added '59 Caddy tail lights to it. I pinned the tail lights in place. The rear carrier came from the parts box but I think it was an old Johan item. The rim of it was chrome. It is sitting on the kit provided spare mount and has the actual spare tire inside it. It can be seen from behind. I had to whittle the tire down to fit it in there. The decal on the back was made on my printer. It's a bit fuzzy here but it says "For All You Know, I Might Be Dead". The graphic is an old 1920s comic postcard in my collection that I reduced. It's actually very sharp in person. And since I can't go to GSL in Salt Lake this year, I added a Utah plate. The paint job is one of my typical old and worn ones that is expected of me. It started out with Duplicolor red primer. Then I did gray primer on top, another coat of the red and then Cardinal Red paint. It was then wet sanded to reveal the layers and then a Testors Dullcote was applied. Then I did my strategic rust with my technique of Dullcote and chalk dust. I added strategic rust holes on the body and a body patch right before the back wheel. The single exhaust with a brass horn end comes out on the right side only. The cowl vent was opened and glued in place. People had told me that the kit body roof was too square so I tried to round it off a bit. Probably still not perfect, but good enuf!

I built this Revell 32 Ford around 11 years ago. One of my favorite kits ever, I should have bought ten of them. Does anyone else think that even at 1:25 scale, the Revell 32 Ford visually look larger than other 1:25 kits? I opted for the fenderless version and painted the body a sky blue color from a spray can. The interior was done with a suede paint and the frame and firewall were painted flat black. I scuffed the tires with a sanding block to give it a more authentic look.

Hey- I'm just now getting back to building model cars after about ten years. I thought someone might get a kick out of this story: Around 2002 I stopped at a yard sale and picked up this Revell '37 Ford Street Rod kit for 25 cents (I still have the round sticker that they wrote the price on). I think this kit was from 1987 or 88. It was so warped that you couldn't even sit the body over top of the chasis. I fixed it by placing the body in some very warm water, then placing the interior tub in, then placing it in cold water. That kinda "set" it to where it needed to be. It was sort of fun fixing that warp issue so I started imagining what a teenager in the 50's would have done to this car had it been an actual 1:1 car. To create this hot rod jalopy I scored the running boards with an exacto and removed them along with the front fenders. The radiator sat on a small piece of plastic attached to the front fenders so I trimmed that off and glued it in place. Then I cut the hood to fit over the radiator / grill. I gave the body a coat of red, the interior was painted suede and the engine blue (seemed like a good idea at the time). I'm a big fan of deuce coupes in any form, but the idea of other cars of that era being rodded is pretty interesting as well. When I was still going to shows, this model got some interesting looks and a few "hell yeah's" Looking at this 10 years later I realized that I needed to add the windshield wipers and paint the inside of the radiator.