A different approach to the AMT 41 Plymouth coupe.

[alan barton]

Hi everyone, seeing all the posts about 41 Plymouths made me decide to post one I completed recently.  I bought this one back around 1980 and did my second ever Testors metallic spay job, which was a disaster!  I then used caustic soda to do my first ever paint stripping exercise which was only partly successful so I gave it up.  I have bought and started another two versions since but decided to have a look at the 40 plus year old mess and see if I could save it.

The back story is that a kid in the fifties wanted to have a cool slammed 40 or 48 Ford coupe like all the cool kids but alas, his Dad owned the Plymouth dealership and that was never going to happen!  On the plus side, that dealership did have a panel shop and some old school auto body men who had been with his Dad since before he was born.  The trick was, how to create a cool custom out of a boring old Plymouth coupe?

So here's the body I attacked. Forty years of grime and paint residue, damaged rain gutters, yep, it's not pretty so I won't cry any tears when I get the saw out!  To my eye, 41 Plymouths are very heavy through the doors and quarter panels so my plan was to see if I could somehow section it without sectioning it. Sort of.

I wanted to see if I could remove some of the stodge without actually cutting the doors or roof. After all, those old boys at the dealership have seen their share of cars that were cut past the point of no return! I decided to start by removing some or all of the fenders.

 

Edited March 1, 2024 by alan barton

[alan barton]

As my ideas developed, I figured that if I removed the running boards so that the doors became the bottom edge of the body, like a 48 Ford, I could then move the fenders up to match.  That is pretty straight forward at the rear of the car but the front has a hood design that does not lend itself to having the engine bay messed with.  Instead, I sectioned the front fenders so that the bottom edge of the fender was level with the bottom of the door. While the fenders were off the car, I carved and sanded the triple swage lines off the fenders, again to lighten things up.

I used the piece removed from the front fender to reinforce the seam when I glued the pieces back together.  The last two photos give you some idea of how dramatically this work has affected the profile of the car.

Edited March 1, 2024 by alan barton

[alan barton]

I'm not going to pretend that this is pretty or refined bodywork - it's not.  I just let the car talk to me as I progressed and sometimes I had to go backwards to go forwards. You will see a lot of bog in the next bunch of photos ( you say Bondo, we say bog) but most of it ends up on the floor anyway!

This first overhead shot shows the beak of the hood contrasting with the absolute flatness of the front grille panel.  The other two Plymouth posts currently on this forum are spending a lot of time correcting this area and I am indebted to them for detailing their work as they go as my planned Plymouth conversion will need a much improved grille area. But our affluent teenage owner wants none of that boredom on his ride so we are going for a full custom front.

I needed to establish some integrity in the front end before getting into the styling so I glued in place the rollpan of an AMT 51 Chevy. If nothing else it gave me a solid foundation to work with. The next step would be to install frenched headlights.

I have seen this technique used before for frenched headlights but this is the first time. I have tried it and I must say it works very well. First, select the headlight lens you wish to use.  Then, find a diameter of K&S aluminium tubing that the lens will sit in snugly - this will later become your frenched headlight ring..  You then need two more sizes of tubing, one the next size larger than this tube, the other the next size smaller.  K&S tubing telescopes beautifully so we will be taking advantage of this feature.

Cut two lengths of the largest size of tubing about 12mm or 1/2 and inch long.  This will form the fender housings for your headlight. After all the sectioning work the front of the fenders are pretty fragile so I cut the opening roughly to size with a sharp X acto and then filed it to nearly  the correct diameter. Finally I used a drill bit by twisting it in my fingers to ream it out to the accurate diameter. I took this opportunity to move these holes inboard as on the kit they are way too far out to the edge of the fender even if you were going for a stock look.

Having done that I started to wonder if the custom 51 Chevy grille would work.  It is very similar to the grille in an old Valley Custom creation called the Polynesian so would suit the period but it is very flat and one thing I wanted to get rid of was the flatness. It needed somewhere to sit so I roughed up an armature of sorts out of sheet plastic and glued everything into place.  No going back now!

 

Edited March 1, 2024 by alan barton

[David G.]

Those are some pretty radical mods so far.

It should look pretty cool when it's all done.

David G.

[ColonelKrypton]

1 hour ago, David G. said:

Those are some pretty radical mods so far.

Indeed they are and the old battlewagon is already starting to look more sleek and refined. 

cheers, Graham

 

[tim boyd]

Alan....fascinating.  That last image of the new front shows big promise, and love the backstory you have created for the project.  Onward!!!!   TB 

[NOBLNG]

Great work on this one Alan! I thought I was having deja vu when read the backstory.? Your full custom approach certainly makes the kit’s drawbacks a non-issue.?

[espo]

Rasing the bottom edge of the fenders and removing the running boards has in effect channeled the body. You had mentioned the '48 Ford as a comparison, as I'm sure you know what Ford had done on the '41 thru '48 models was to widen their body slightly and the bottom of the doors and body flared out slightly. What this did was conceal the running boards and they would only be seen when you opened the door. The headlight treatment and especially the grill really change the appearance of the front end for the better. 

[LennyB]

Nice work Alan, I like where you're going. I get the feeling I'm gonna bump my head getting in and out of this one.?

[alan barton]

14 hours ago, espo said:

Rasing the bottom edge of the fenders and removing the running boards has in effect channeled the body. You had mentioned the '48 Ford as a comparison, as I'm sure you know what Ford had done on the '41 thru '48 models was to widen their body slightly and the bottom of the doors and body flared out slightly. What this did was conceal the running boards and they would only be seen when you opened the door. The headlight treatment and especially the grill really change the appearance of the front end for the better. 

Thanks David.  Funnily enough, I didn't think of the connection to the 48 Ford running boards until I was writing this post yesterday - at the time I was just trying to put the old girl on a diet! But you are absolutely correct. More on the channelling later!

After doing some rough shaping of the bodywork I decided the front was still too flat so I chose to cut the Chevy custom grille and rejoin it with a strong V shape.  It gave me the look I wanted but I am a bit disappointed about the cleanliness of the join.  I know I could cover it with a vertical strip but that is not really the look I was after so I might have to play with another grille in the future.

I then wrapped very thin sheet styrene around the V-eed grille, laminating as I went with Tamiya Extra thin liquid glue. When this had dried solid I gently cut and sanded the grille opening to shape and grafted it into the front of the Plymouth.  This took a crazy amount of bodywork but it just had to be done. In the final photo you can see just how much I had disguised the shape of the Plymouth with this work.

I think our young hero would have been pretty happy when he dropped into the dealership on his way home from college to see his coupe sitting in primer!

 

[alan barton]

Moving rearwards, it was a painless decision to remove the drip rails - they had suffered terribly in forty years.  I always feel much more comfortable removing this sort of detail from a damaged body than a nice crisp one!

The rollpan from a Monogram 53 Chevy was glued to the back and I found some fender skirts that would suit the era.  A lot of bog went into blending the fenders into the body in their new, significantly raised position. I also decked the trunk lid while I was at it.

Being at a loss for ideas for custom taillights (a shame nobody makes early Studebaker lights - they would be perfect!) I hunted through my grille and bumper box for something suitable.  I think this came from an AMT parts pack. It needed a stone tray so I made one, completely forgetting that there was something similar in the Plymouth box - dohhh!

[alan barton]

I was getting a bit sick of sanding so I looked at lowering the car some. I filed away the back of the weird spring mount to accept the rear axle in a higher position. While I was at it I used a pair of pliers to de-arch the spring - pretty easy with soft AMT plastic. With a C-notch filed into the frame rail I got the back down quite a bit. Unfortunately the pumpkin now interfered with the fuel tank so I reshaped the fuel tank to gain clearance.  The old boys at the bodyshop were beginning to get sick of this job - reworking fuel tanks is no fun and can significantly shorten your life expectancy!

I also removed the bumper brackets and filed a shipload of plastic off the bottom of the interior tub.The grey frame is the modified one.

Edited March 1, 2024 by alan barton

[stitchdup]

Nice work, theres lots of good stuff happening and your tail lights idea might just have saved a stalled project of mine (same parts used different) so thanks for that too

[David G.]

The mods you've made so far look great!

David G.

[FoMoCo66]

Very nice. The body looks very slick.

[Dirty Gringo]

Wow so much incredible work way more patience and skill than me to tackle this bad boy.  Looks amazing love where you are taking this one. 

[customline]

Great idea using the grille from the '51 Chevy kit, Alan. You are entering lead sled heaven with this one. Very cool. I'm following!

I think we're gonna need a separate category for the '41 Plymouth  ?.

[FoMoCo66]

5 hours ago, customline said:

I think we're gonna need a separate category for the '41 Plymouth  ?.

Oh I definitely agree there's like 4 floating around on the WIP.

[bill-e-boy]

Kool Kustom Koupe going down here Alan

[Kenmojr]

Excellent thread...

[alan barton]

As many have commented, the interior is about as plain as can be. That had to change.  Our man about town had the financial backing to be attractive to most of the pretty young things in his town but there is no way they are going to be sitting on itchy old mohair or cold vinyl.  Nope, as Debbie would say, they love to feel of tuck and roll so tuck and roll it is.

Before sanding off the miniscule detail that AMT had provided, I  drilled through the location of the original door handles so that I would have a template for replacing them later.Next, I cut a heap of half round strips to length and began laying up the pleats on the flat panels.  I tried something here quite deliberately but I'm not sure if I would bother again.  I laid each strip of half round with a tiny gap in between it, hoping that multiple coats of primer and colour would produce a clean finish but with deep tucks.  I guess it sort of worked but not sure if it looks any better than trim jobs I had done before.

When all these strips were dry, I simply took a razor saw and sawed along the top edge to get a straight line to place another length of half round strip along .

The seat is from AMT's 53 Studebaker.  The heavy taper of the Plymouth interior tub required me to file the front corners off and I then redid the seat welting with finer Evergreen half round.

The tonneau cover was a crusty old piece from an ancient AMT kit.  I repaired the damaged front edge and trimmed it to fit the Plymouth interior.

Finally, I needed to address my signature right hand drive conversion. I drilled and cut away the glove box and files up a new rectangular hole for an instrument cluster and also cut and sanded a piece of flat plastic for a new left hand glove box door.  I also drilled some fine holes along the lower edge of the dash and fitted fitted tiny dressmaking pins for dsh knobs. The only disappointment at the end of all this work is that I couldn't finds an appropriate decal for the instrument cluster so i used a pretty lame one to fill the gap.  I probably should photoreduce a new cluster from a Google image but to be honest, it's not that easy to see in the finished model.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2024 by alan barton

[alan barton]

OK, last post before I put this up in the Under Glass section.

When I build a custom, I really don't spend a lot of time on the engine bay because I am of the opinion that customs are all about style and they should be displayed without any panels open at all. The only details I added to this engine, just for the sake of it, were a finned head, twin carbs and a split manifold.  How else was our hero going to keep up with all these flathead V8s? Truth be known he probably wouldn't but at least he would crack a nice note when he rapped his pipes! I just used scraps of styrene and some carbs from the parts box to accomplish this.

The finned head started as a custom grille from a Revell 57 Chevy - not ideal but the only one I was prepared to sacrifice at the time!  I used the stock head as a template to cut it to size and drilled some holes to spark plugs.and the upper radiator hose.  Honestly, it's pretty crude but like I said, I don't plan on removing the hood very often.

Seeing that the inner splash aprons have virtually no positive locators at all, and seeing as I had changed the height of the engine bay by semi-channelling it, I decided to simply leave them out.  Hey, the owner is 19, he don't 'need no stinkin' splash aprons!

One last thing, I have been a  Testor's enamel fan for over forty years but about ten or so years ago it disappeared from Australian hobby shops so I slowly switched to Tamiya.  It really is lovely paint but the is very translucent compared to Testors and I find it very challenging to get all the panels of a model in the same shade so I have been making funny little jigs out of sprue to make like an exploded diagram where the panels are held in the same alignment as they will be on the finished model.  It is working pretty well so far.

See you over at Model Cars Under Glass

 

Edited March 3, 2024 by alan barton

[NOBLNG]

Nice conversion on that dash Alan! I searched and searched for a good pic of the speedo. I found a couple, but the coloring and contrast of a stock Plymouth speedo is pretty bland. By the time I downsize it to 1/25, the detail is nearly obliterated.?

[LennyB]

Alan, I agree with Greg, nice job on the dash conversion. Like many cars of the era the cluster and glove box openings were the same size just for this reason. Even VW and the Mustang/Falcon did the same. Made it easy to convert the Falcon Ranchero to a Ute. There is a vendor on eBay that sells decals for the instrument cluster and radio. I bought a couple of set but haven't gotten that far yet.

 

How much horsepower you think you're getting now with that custom exhaust?

[ColonelKrypton]

Very nicely done.

cheers, Graham