3D printed and resin cast 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme

[MrObsessive]

I posted this on my FB page...........us lunatic fringers will LOVE this one!

I was having a rough day today as I was trying to get the 3D printer to put out a set of decent wire wheels. My day was made MUCH brighter when I could hear the mailman come up near my driveway, and put something on my porch.

 

What I got was the three bodies I ordered from Robert Burns, and I was tickled PINK! I'm going to do separate posts on the three, and the first of these is probably my favorite. A 1977 Olds Cutlass Supreme, which was the exact car I had when I took Driver's Ed way back when this was new.

I have to say that this is THE BEST rendition of this car I've seen to date! Proportions to my eyes are spot on, although I'm not a real big fan of the T-Top option on these cars. When the time comes for me to build this, I'd go with the solid roof, with the half vinyl top option.

 

Here are some pics of what you get............it's interesting that Johan never kitted this car. They stopped with the '75 and that was the car I had intended to convert to a '76-'77 had I not seen this one by Robert.

 

This saves me a whole lotta work!

 

On with the pics............

 

 

I ABSOLUTELY could NOT resist mocking this up!

 

These are geared naturally for the serious hobbyist. At the moment Robert offers no interiors or glass....I can come up with that for this one among other things. I know some of you don't like FB, but I have to say, you can come up with some real terrific stuff on there! At times, that's the only place where items like this can be had.

 

Stay tuned for a couple more............

Edited February 17, 2022 by MrObsessive

[Dodge Driver]

Call me a lunatic all day.  I love these cars! I had a VERY tough time ordering one body only from Robert. 

[Mark]

Not my father's Oldsmobile, but my mom's...without the T-roofs, but with a set of Appliance Wire Mag wheels.  On the pokey side (had a 260; Mom thought the 350 would burn a lot more gas) but it had a nice ride.

[1972coronet]

Nicely executed example of the last of the Colonnades! 

Quite the impressive list of vehicles available on his site -- that 1971 Satellite Sedan sounds tempting (MPC's 1977-78 Monaco CHP [et al.] could contribute its interior for it, and be close to correct).

[sfhess]

No glass but Robert provides bucks to help form front and rear windows from clear styrene or acetate.  That's what is in Bill's hand.

[peteski]

Wow!  This one (and the Rivera) look amazing!

You mentioned these are resin casts of the 3D printed masters.  I seem to detect some striation (3D printing artifacts) in the photos.  Does that men that Robert did not do any smoothing of the master, and just cast it raw?

[MrObsessive]

14 hours ago, peteski said:

Wow!  This one (and the Rivera) look amazing!

You mentioned these are resin casts of the 3D printed masters.  I seem to detect some striation (3D printing artifacts) in the photos.  Does that men that Robert did not do any smoothing of the master, and just cast it raw?

Peter, he mentions two types of castings..........the brown resin as I have, and a white resin. He describes the white resin as needing more work and the brown as "smoother". I take it that he tries to get the masters as clean as he can, but he does say they'll need further cleaning up. The white resin ones are cheaper (and more work to clean up), but the main thrust for me in getting these is the body lines are DEAD ON accurate. 

Judging by the response he's getting on his FB page, he's going to be shipping out quite a few bodies in the next couple months. I've been following him for maybe two/three years now, and his notoriety in the stuff he offers has simply EXPLODED.

I think somewhere down the road, he's going to offer complete kits as he had a post asking for requests specifically for show and concept cars. I thought he said he'd need to sell at least eight or more to make it worth his while as complete kits. Well, needless to say, he got quite a few requests on that also, including a couple from me.

[Hondamatic]

22 hours ago, peteski said:

Wow!  This one (and the Rivera) look amazing!

You mentioned these are resin casts of the 3D printed masters.  I seem to detect some striation (3D printing artifacts) in the photos.  Does that men that Robert did not do any smoothing of the master, and just cast it raw?

From what I see, they're 3d printed bodies. He has a YouTube channel ( "too many projects") so you can take a closer look at some of them 

[peteski]

Thanks for the info Hien. Very helpful as I'm not on FB.  So there is no master and urethane resin castings. At least for now.  Those are all printed directly on a 3D printer.  Interesting.  That explains the slight surface texturing.  I'm surprised that the shells are rather thick. I wonder if they could probably be printed thinner? Still, they do look like very accurate representations of the 1:1 cars and the derails on the surface are really well done.

[sak]

It looks great but they should've molded a lip at least around the windscreen openings. Would need to glue the windshield in like a butt joint. 

[MrObsessive]

3 hours ago, sak said:

It looks great but they should've molded a lip at least around the windscreen openings. Would need to glue the windshield in like a butt joint. 

He's made it so that you put in the windshield from the outside of the car. That's no problem since more than likely I'll be vacuforming the glass for this among other cars. I can glue in some sort of instep for the glass to lay on. Cars of this era had near flush glass, so this would be the way to get it to look realistic, and for the glass to not have that "tunneled" appearance.

With the glass bucks that he gives you, it's made my job that much easier. It's just a matter of smoothing and polishing 'em up, "boxing those in", filling them with Plaster of Paris, and then vacuform away.  

[Casey]

For $125 you get a nicely done body shell, both bumpers, front and rear window bucks, and two grille inserts which probably won't even be useable. Definitely something very few will ever see through to completion, which Robert more or less stated in his Futurliner comment, but if I wanted a '77 Olds Cutlass I'd buy one. There's simply no other game in town, so to speak, and therein lies the appeal IMHO.

How thick is the body, compared to say, a Revell '70 Olds Cutlass or similar?

[MrObsessive]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

For $125 you get a nicely done body shell, both bumpers, front and rear window bucks, and two grille inserts which probably won't even be useable. Definitely something very few will ever see through to completion, which Robert more or less stated in his Futurliner comment, but if I wanted a '77 Olds Cutlass I'd buy one. There's simply no other game in town, so to speak, and therein lies the appeal IMHO.

How thick is the body, compared to say, a Revell '70 Olds Cutlass or similar?

Good question about the body thickness............

I got nosy and got out my dial calipers, and measured at the front wheelwells. Now granted, those flares account for some of the thickness, but here's what I'm seeing.........

I'd say overall about 2-3mm thick. Definitely thicker than your average kit body, but then we're dealing with resin, which can be tricky and more susceptible to warping if things get a bit too warm. The thickness seems consistent throughout the entire body. I'd want to cut open the hood on this.........I better get out my Dremel. ?

I dug out the bucks for the glass while I was at it, and dry fitted those in.........

Definitely larger than the windshield and backlite openings. That's a GOOD thing as I'd rather have them too large, than too small. I can sand them down to the right size, and then there's the vacuformed glass itself which can be just a smidge larger than the buck when formed.

Your point about what's going to be done with these is a good one. I'd say probably 90% (or better) of these bought will not ever be built. I can bet that most of them are bought for the sole reason that there's nothing else out there as you said, and then there's the "nostalgia" factor as most of these are cars we either remember as little kids, or in the case of this Olds, drove these as brand new cars either for our Driver's Ed in school, or our parents bought 'em. For some, this could have been the first new car they ever bought.

I do intend to build this one, as I'd like to definitely get to GSL next year, and I want this one either done, or very much along as a WIP as I intend to take several more cars there.

[Casey]

4 hours ago, MrObsessive said:

I'd say overall about 2-3mm thick. Definitely thicker than your average kit body, but then we're dealing with resin, which can be tricky and more susceptible to warping if things get a bit too warm. The thickness seems consistent throughout the entire body. I'd want to cut open the hood on this.........I better get out my Dremel. ?

I dug out the bucks for the glass while I was at it, and dry fitted those in.........

 

Definitely larger than the windshield and backlite openings. That's a GOOD thing as I'd rather have them too large, than too small. I can sand them down to the right size, and then there's the vacuformed glass itself which can be just a smidge larger than the buck when formed.

The edges which are visible can always be thinned, and I would agree, thicker is better than too thin.

I was going to ask if the window bucks were beveled on three sides, thus not allowing them to pass through the window openings, but your pics provided a clear answer, thanks.

Love what Robert is doing, and the effort he has put into all of those overlooked subjects.

[Dodge Driver]

Robert's YouTube channel, featuring his products and customer builds. 

 

[MrObsessive]

Some (interesting) observations...........

My curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to dig out a '66 Olds 442 kit I bought some time ago as a donor for this kit. I wanted this one for various reasons-----namely the separate frame and floorpan as I suspect this will need a bit of tweaking/reshaping to fit, and it's easier to do this in plastic with separate items.

Well, as I suspected, I can see the body on this Cutlass is a bit smaller than 1/25. Assuming that AMT did their homework correctly, and the body/frame of the '66 car is correct, the '77 is coming out a bit shorter than it should be. I measured from center-line to center-line of the wheel wells as close as I could, and this is what I got below............

I'm getting 4 1/2" from mark to mark. I did the same thing for the '66 body.............

The measurements are coming out about 3/32" longer. If this is indeed true to scale, the wheelbase for a 1966 Olds Cutlass (A body) would have been coming out to 115", while in '77 the wheelbase was at 116".

Here's another pic showing the difference in size...........

Yeah.........definitely shorter. This isn't a deal breaker for me as I can deal with the shorter dimensions and make changes accordingly. But.........for those that aren't as able to do work such as that, you may want to keep this in mind when ordering any 3D printed body from a vendor.

This is no slight on Robert in the least, just a caveat for those that may have in mind "X" chassis and floorpan will work for this and that, but may not be the case at all.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Interesting, and in your capable hands, I know it'll be a fine build.

It looks like the proportions are good, even though it may be underscale somewhat.

At this point in time, having seen so many scaling and proportion mistakes, I can deal with a little scaling error if the proportions are good and the model actually looks like the subject...as this one appears to.   

 

[MrObsessive]

42 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Interesting, and in your capable hands, I know it'll be a fine build.

It looks like the proportions are good, even though it may be underscale somewhat.

At this point in time, having seen so many scaling and proportion mistakes, I can deal with a little scaling error if the proportions are good and the model actually looks like the subject...as this one appears to.   

 

Yeah, I don't get too crazed over scale. As you said....as long as it looks right, a bit underscale is no biggie. Nothing drives me crazier in this hobby than body lines that are waaaay off. 

Interesting in that the mock-up I did in my first post, that was a Johan '75 Olds Cutlass chassis underneath. The wheels line up 'bout perfect......it's just the that chassis itself will need some trimming and tweaking to fit inside the body.

So, I guess that original Johan may have been a bit undersized too, which doesn't surprise me.

[yellowsportwagon]

On 2/23/2022 at 6:22 AM, MrObsessive said:

Some (interesting) observations...........

My curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to dig out a '66 Olds 442 kit I bought some time ago as a donor for this kit. I wanted this one for various reasons-----namely the separate frame and floorpan as I suspect this will need a bit of tweaking/reshaping to fit, and it's easier to do this in plastic with separate items.

Well, as I suspected, I can see the body on this Cutlass is a bit smaller than 1/25. Assuming that AMT did their homework correctly, and the body/frame of the '66 car is correct, the '77 is coming out a bit shorter than it should be. I measured from center-line to center-line of the wheel wells as close as I could, and this is what I got below............

I'm getting 4 1/2" from mark to mark. I did the same thing for the '66 body.............

The measurements are coming out about 3/32" longer. If this is indeed true to scale, the wheelbase for a 1966 Olds Cutlass (A body) would have been coming out to 115", while in '77 the wheelbase was at 116".

Here's another pic showing the difference in size...........

Yeah.........definitely shorter. This isn't a deal breaker for me as I can deal with the shorter dimensions and make changes accordingly. But.........for those that aren't as able to do work such as that, you may want to keep this in mind when ordering any 3D printed body from a vendor.

This is no slight on Robert in the least, just a caveat for those that may have in mind "X" chassis and floorpan will work for this and that, but may not be the case at all.

Are you sure on that wheelbase? I think a cutlass was 112 for a 2 door. Monte Carlo was 116 

[yellowsportwagon]

3 minutes ago, yellowsportwagon said:

Are you sure on that wheelbase? I think a cutlass was 112 for a 2 door. Monte Carlo was 116 

Looking again some online references are incorrect. The correct wheelbase for a 73-76 2 door a body is 112. Four door is 116 along with Monte Carlo.

[MrObsessive]

9 minutes ago, yellowsportwagon said:

Looking again some online references are incorrect. The correct wheelbase for a 73-76 2 door a body is 112. Four door is 116 along with Monte Carlo.

Hmmm...........according to this here, the coupe like you mention would have had the 112" wheelbase, while the others would have been running 116". What I measured above would be correct then as 112" reduced to 1/25th scale would come out to about 4 1/2".

Weird what they did with essentially the same chassis, but mixed and matched the lengths though. I still have my work cut out for me.......the chassis I want to use for full detail will need some "shrinking and tweaking".

That's good to know what Robert is doing is measuring out to 1/25th for the bodies in this case. BUT.........those that want full interiors and such in some cases will have their work cut out for 'em.

Edited February 24, 2022 by MrObsessive
Correcting HTML link

[yellowsportwagon]

49 minutes ago, MrObsessive said:

Hmmm...........according to this here, the coupe like you mention would have had the 112" wheelbase, while the others would have been running 116". What I measured above would be correct then as 112" reduced to 1/25th scale would come out to about 4 1/2".

Weird what they did with essentially the same chassis, but mixed and matched the lengths though. I still have my work cut out for me.......the chassis I want to use for full detail will need some "shrinking and tweaking".

That's good to know what Robert is doing is measuring out to 1/25th for the bodies in this case. BUT.........those that want full interiors and such in some cases will have their work cut out for 'em.

What about using the Revell 68 Chevelle chassis or 72 cutlass 

[MrObsessive]

23 minutes ago, yellowsportwagon said:

What about using the Revell 68 Chevelle chassis or 72 cutlass 

Hey! Forgot about that one and that car rode a 112" wheelbase as well. I have that kit, but it's buried somewhere in one of the boxes where I keep my kits stored. I'll have to see about digging that one out, and IIRC, that one has a separate frame/floorpan. I suspect though because of the Cutlass's tuck under bodywork at the rockers, I still have a bit of work to do in getting that to fit the way I'd like.

[MrObsessive]

I did a quick search, and I found my review of the '68 Chevelle. It does have the separate frame/floorpan, so I'll have to check that one out further. ?

[sfhess]

AMT/MPC 69 Cutlass chassis might work too.