AWB Fun with Seaton's Shaker

[Pierre Rivard]

Wonderful metal finishes and the seat belt kit is superb. What a great build!

[papajohn97]

I finished airbrushing the Mr. Color clear coat (nice stuff) onto the body by thinning it 1:1 with Mr Color thinner then I let it cure for a couple days before applying the decals:

 

These decals from Yesteryear are super nice and thin but oh-so delicate. I broke a few but was able to finesse them back together. I used a little white glue heavily diluted with MicroSet beneath each decal to try to reduce ghosting but I’ll not be surprised if a few don’t ghost a little after these dry. I love decaling these super stock builds, the decals really make the paint pop.

I’ll clear coat over these once dry and then apply some BMF to the window frames. 
John

Edited May 22, 2023 by papajohn97
Corrections

[papajohn97]

OMG! I put the “S-E” logo on upside down on the drivers door….senior moment? Luckily I was able to soak the decal to loosen it and then correct it. Posting WIP’s are a great way to perform public quality control inspections on a build….embarrassing but effective!

[Scott8950]

Looks fantastic! Nice job

[catpack68]

Awesome work John? Looking forward to seeing it finished up.

[deuces wild]

??

[Ian McLaren]

Great job on this one John, you are really capturing the essence of the real car, well done!

[Zippi]

Super nice looking with all the mods.  

[Straightliner59]

Looking good! Very cool project!

[papajohn97]

Lots of dry-fitting, bending, trimming, dry-fitting again in an effort to join the engine, the headers, plug wiring and chassis together with the goal of the velocity stacks to protrude out the cut-out in the hood in a somewhat centered fashion. Here’s photos of my last-dry fit with the headers bonded to the engine  but the engine/ trans not yet glued to the chassis and drive shaft:

I’m glad I didn’t yet bond the engine/ trans to the chassis as it’s unlikely that everything would have cleared and been fully asemble-able if I had. There is not much clearance between between parts and that was after a lot of trimming on the headers and chassis A arms. If I do bond the engine in, I think I’ll wait until EVERYTHING else is assembled onto/ into it first. 

Here’s a few pics of this dry-fit body + interior + chassis + engine/ trans balanced over all four wheels & tires (not snap-fit yet onto the axle posts on the chassis). I like it!

Still lots to be done on this, I’ve had to shorten my scratch-built fuel pump to clear the Moon tank, also need to make some side windows (car had all Plexiglass with no roll-down cranks), paint or BMF the window frames, make and install the fuel tank lines and water lines (which will disappear past the firewall, they would go into a 5 gal water tank/ pump in the trunk), add the brake cylinder/ reservoir, grills/ light covers/ bumpers, etc….
Still enjoying this build but it’s been a lot more work than I anticipated. Looking forward to an easy O-O-the-B build on my next one!

John

[Altered Ego]

This is a build to be proud of.  Simply immaculate.

[Tortuga Kustomz]

On 5/11/2023 at 6:23 PM, papajohn97 said:

Made a few more little parts, scratch-built a Hilborn fuel pump (probably not to scale but roughed out totally by eye, intended for mounting in front of the block) using Evergreen styrene rod and sheet:

Scratch-built a fuel line routing block using Evergreen sheet styrene and a resin fitting to hang off of the left side of the FI manifold:

Drilled out right .016” holes on the inside of each intake tube on the manifold to install fuel lines later:

I would have liked to drill out two axial holes running down the base of each of the two rows of four tower inlets on this resin manifold to allow running wire down each row for butterfly axles but I was afraid of turning this delicate resin part into Swiss cheese as well as well as the near impossibility of keeping the drill centered thru each tower. Maybe I can bond short pieces of wire between each tower later to simulate these butterfly control axles?

I primed all the little parts as well as the chassis and interior tub:

The roll bar shown above was out of my spares box but I had to widen it by .20” by splicing in some .08” Evergreen rod so that it would adequately span the interior tub.

It’s supposed to finally warm up to the 70’s to low 80’s here on the So. Cal. coast over the next few days so I hope to finally be putting some colors on these parts. This is mostly a “done by eyeball” build but so far it’s still pretty simple and fun (compared to the crazy over-engineered tank model I’ll building in parallel). Thanks for viewing my slow progress! John

I like those fittings, where did you get those

[Scott8950]

Nicely done.

[papajohn97]

3 hours ago, Tortuga Kustomz said:

I like those fittings, where did you get those

These are Top Studio Detail Master parts I ordered a few years ago from HLJ.com. Unfortunately they are getting harder to find these days, the 1.2 mm sets (the size I used here) are still availability from BNA (Australia) and a few Chinese sources, check eBay. 

[Tortuga Kustomz]

12 hours ago, papajohn97 said:

These are Top Studio Detail Master parts I ordered a few years ago from HLJ.com. Unfortunately they are getting harder to find these days, the 1.2 mm sets (the size I used here) are still availability from BNA (Australia) and a few Chinese sources, check eBay. 

Thank you, i will

[papajohn97]

Mounting the Moon tank onto the front bulkhead of the body turned into a painful trial & error/ cut & fit exercise. I had to trim a little more off the front of the fuel pump to clear the tank:

I finished applying and trimming the BMF around the window frames and side rain gutters and then installed the windows:

 

I cut .005” clear styrene shapes for the right and left front side windows and wing windows and bonded them within the body to simulate the non-roll-down-able plexiglass.

I still need to install the firewall detail/ brake cylinder, fine-tune and finalize the body-chassis assembly, add the front/ rear grills/ bumpers/ install cooling hoses and fuel lines, install door handles.  I’m hoping to wrap this build up this week, it’s become a grind….

John

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by papajohn97
Added content

[papajohn97]

I wrapped this one up today and glad it’s over! My skills and patience tends to diminish as I get near the end of a challenging build and this one really kicked my &%#$ as I tried to get everything to fit, be aligned and generally behave…Seaton’s Shaker won the last few battles but I like to think I won the war!

The biggest problems near the end were related to getting the interior tube/ chassis/ body to assemble properly, installing the front and rear grills/ fascia/ bumper to the body (not well engineered by Revell on this kit) and then installing the final detail bits in the engine bay (fuel lines, cooling lines, condenser, cooling hoses).  Theres some residual misalignment here & there but it’s about as good as I can do on this one for now.  I’ll post more pics in Under Glass - Drag.

Thanks everyone for following along, providing good suggestions and questions and passing on words of encouragement.

John

[Skip]

Great job. just be really thankful you didn't start with an AMT Chevelle, metal axle through the block, crude frame, screw bottom chassis originally. The colors, engine decals wheels & tires look spot on, like this one a lot!

[paul alflen]

A model car masterpiece!