Lake Speed 1983 Flat Nose Monte Carlo

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Just finished. Well, it might not be finished, but I am finished with it! ?

Box stock Monogram Monte Carlo SS with Scale Racing Products resin flat nose. I guess I wasn't prepared for the fit issues. The nose is wider than the body and required the fenders to be angled out slightly, causing an ugly gap with the hood that I, honestly, didn't bother to fix. I can hear your gasps now! Also used the Dremel to shave and shape the nose more like my reference pictures. Couldn't do anything about the slight downturn (frown) on the driver's side of the nose, so I guess I'll say that was  the result of a "pit road incident"

Decals are actually the Slixx Kyle Petty set for numbers and major sponsors. Looks like Sometimes Lake had the Bullfrog, sometimes he didn't.

And for what it's worth, I have an extra flat nose (pictured) that I know I'll never use, so I'll put that in the Trading Post as a freebie.

Thanks for looking!

 

 

 

 

And call me crazy, but I guess I never realized how much this would like like an 85 Deville from the front:

 

 

Edited December 24, 2018 by AMC ROB

[yellowsportwagon]

I like it

[<profile removed>]

19 hours ago, yellowsportwagon said:

I like it

Thanks. If I had your skills, I could have really done something with it. Cheers!

[bbowser]

Looks good from here!  I wouldn't have seen any problems with the hood, still don't really.  Kind of a forgotten version of the Monte, all you ever see are the Aerocoupes.

[lambertjr]

This is a great looking build.

I will admit that I've always associated this number and scheme with the Hawai'ian Tropic markings.

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17 hours ago, bbowser said:

Looks good from here!  I wouldn't have seen any problems with the hood, still don't really.  Kind of a forgotten version of the Monte, all you ever see are the Aerocoupes.

Thanks, yes I built a bunch of the aerocoupes 25 to 30 years ago. Still my favorite of the early generation Monogram NASCAR kits. For this one, I wanted to try something a bit different. I know a few teams ran them and I decided to do a less common livery. 

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10 hours ago, lambertjr said:

This is a great looking build.

I will admit that I've always associated this number and scheme with the Hawai'ian Tropic markings.

Thank you! Yeah, the Hoss Ellington number is pretty iconic, especially with Hawaiian Tropic sponsorship. I have another Lake Speed/Hoss Ellington Monte SS with the Bullfrog Knits livery I built about 30 years ago. Hope to post that at some point.

[lambertjr]

Looking foward to it!

 

[MarkJ]

Great job getting that ill fitting part to work. Is that Monogram model 1/25 or 1/24?  If the caster was making the part for a 1/24 scale kit and the kit you used was 1/25 that would explain the fit issue.  Still a great job on the over all build.

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1 hour ago, MarkJ said:

Great job getting that ill fitting part to work. Is that Monogram model 1/25 or 1/24?  If the caster was making the part for a 1/24 scale kit and the kit you used was 1/25 that would explain the fit issue.  Still a great job on the over all build.

Thanks! The model is 1/24 and the nose was a tick wider and taller than that. The scale isn't listed on the packaging but I would dare say it would take a LOT of work to get the fit right on a 1/25 body. I see it listed on a couple of my favorite aftermarket companies sites (with the driver's side "frown" no less) and it's indicated for the Monogram kit. On another site, I  also see a complete resin body with the nose integrated and it still has the slight downturn on the driver's side. Also, none of these have any grille details. It's just flat and smooth so I would guess they are all from the same master.

I had a similar situation with a Pontiac 2+2 conversion where the back bubble window was just slightly too large and took a lot of patience trimming to fit.(and some oversized trim tape to mimic the window molding).  I think I read somewhere that the master for that fit perfectly to the body but the actual window was vaccuformed OVER the master buck, which would explain the size being off. Who knows if that's true. I'll post pictures of that at some point. Found the thing in my old stash.

[MarkJ]

15 hours ago, AMC ROB said:

Thanks! The model is 1/24 and the nose was a tick wider and taller than that. The scale isn't listed on the packaging but I would dare say it would take a LOT of work to get the fit right on a 1/25 body. I see it listed on a couple of my favorite aftermarket companies sites (with the driver's side "frown" no less) and it's indicated for the Monogram kit. On another site, I  also see a complete resin body with the nose integrated and it still has the slight downturn on the driver's side. Also, none of these have any grille details. It's just flat and smooth so I would guess they are all from the same master.

I had a similar situation with a Pontiac 2+2 conversion where the back bubble window was just slightly too large and took a lot of patience trimming to fit.(and some oversized trim tape to mimic the window molding).  I think I read somewhere that the master for that fit perfectly to the body but the actual window was vaccuformed OVER the master buck, which would explain the size being off. Who knows if that's true. I'll post pictures of that at some point. Found the thing in my old stash.

I wonder if they mastered it off of a diecast car. I know my diecast nascar modern 1/24 scale cars are bigger than my modern 1/24 scale revell snap kit cars. 

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4 hours ago, MarkJ said:

I wonder if they mastered it off of a diecast car. I know my diecast nascar modern 1/24 scale cars are bigger than my modern 1/24 scale revell snap kit cars. 

That would make sense! I am going to take some pictures of the Pontiac over the weekend and post them on the forum. It's not bad that bad but you'll see what I mean. I have seen some excellent builds of both the flat nose and the 2+2 so it must just be me.

[MarkJ]

No its not just you. You do excellent work. If a part doesn't fit it doesn't fit. My model king 74 Malibu Darrel Waltrip Chevelle had really bad fit issues on the nose and I never did get it right. So I just ended up gluing the hood shut to try to make it look half decent.