The Mixed-Up Sixties Corvette's Mother from another Brother.

[LennyB]

Yeah, I know, that doesn't make sense, but what fun is it to follow the rules. We model builders are all about breaking the rules. Who here follows the instruction sheet, let's see a show of hands. Just as I thought. Hey wise guy put down that hand you're not fooling anyone...

Starting another build which means I must really be crazy. But this is going to be a companion piece to the Mixed-Up Vette. This is what happens when you work with a pile of junk. While collecting pieces from the junkyard for Vette number one I found I had enough left over for another Vette. The other Vette was a combination of a '62 and a '66, this one is strictly a 1962.

While this kit is still available from AMT, the original version was by SMP and virtually the same. You will know if you followed the other post that the SMP had an opening trunk, AMT eliminated that when they released it. I picked up an original SMP body off of eBay a few months back when I was shopping for something else so that is the starting point for this build. I will combine that with an AMT '62 kit to fill in the rest. This is basically going to be an OOTB build but I will take a few side trips to improve on the simplicity of the kit. I'm hoping this will be a quick and easy build, famous last words. Plan at this stage is to paint the body black with a red interior.

The body was previously stripped of paint and now we are gluing the front pan on and the fun begins.

The hood is new AMT and the trunk is original SMP

The trunk has some damage we have to repair. And yes, I am going to attach the trunk with the original metal clip. If you don't know what that means I will show you later.

We can see how poorly the front pan fits, the pan is new AMT BTW.

Before we go any further we need to fit the grill and front bumper as well as the rear bumpers. The front needed a lot of tweaking to get things to fit.

Next we got some primer on the body so we can get a proper look at things.

 

 

And here is a nice example of how simple this kit is. This is promo style at it's most primitive. And yes, I'm going to use this but no axle through the engine block, got enough oil on my hands, don't need any more.

 

 

That's all for now, we shall see what happens next, next time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2024 by LennyB

[Shark]

I have a couple of those old bodies and will definitely be watching what you do for ideas and inspiration. Any special plans for the undersized headlights?

[lordairgtar]

would the 53 Vette chassis fit under there?

[LennyB]

On 12/22/2024 at 8:45 PM, Shark said:

I have a couple of those old bodies and will definitely be watching what you do for ideas and inspiration. Any special plans for the undersized headlights?

Todd, this is the original SMP body I'm using from before they shrunk the headlights. Unfortunately I don't have any headlights for it so I will have to figure something out. Perhaps the '60 Vette headlights will work after de-chroming them.

14 hours ago, lordairgtar said:

would the 53 Vette chassis fit under there?

That's a good thought Greg. I wasn't planning on going too crazy on this as I just wasn't it as a companion piece to my other Vette to show the differences between the two. But I might try the chassis swap.

 

Here is the link to my other build if you haven't seen it already.

 

 

 

[LennyB]

This build has been giving me a hard time. Wanted this to just be a quick, simple OOTB build to go along with my other Vette build and this one has taken on a life of it's own. Already I'm into this deeper then I planned on but I guess that's just the way it goes sometimes.

 

Two obstacle right out of the gate as pointed out by Todd and Gregg above were the undersized headlights and the lame AMT chassis. Trying to line up the bits and pieces I needed for these two problems has put things on hold for the last month thanks to eBay and the USPS.  The headlights I thought would be a simple solution but my brain has over-complicated things. The headlights that came with the AMT 1960 Vette are the proper size and they fit this SMP body. Only issue with them is that they are chromed. On the '62 Vette the rings around the headlights are body color, no chrome. I obtained a set of the 60 headlights and promptly removed the chrome.  Which left us with these red headlights.

But then I got to thinking too much.  Figured before I go too far let's cast some safety copies.

So now we have tan copies as well as clear copies.

Cleaning up the clear lenses required sanding down the backside until flush which frosted the glass a bit, which actually looks pretty good, but  the backside will need to be painted silver/chrome before mounting. Have to test a few to see how that looks.

The thought process behind the clear copies is that maybe I can just paint the ring body color and leave the center clear for obvious reasons. But these things are so tiny it's hard to work with them and my big mitts. Anyhow, I put this aside for now as the body isn't yet ready for paint.

Moving on the the chassis issue I found an AMT 1955 Vette chassis on eBay for dirt cheap. Ordered, and waited a week for that to arrive. So it arrived and lo and behold the floor is not part of the chassis. Didn't catch that from the eBay pics.  So back to square one and order the interior pieces for the 60 Vette that includes the floor. Another cheap purchase but as the whole kit can be found for cheap, oh, you get the idea.

But the glorious USPS took over three weeks to get me the second parcel, I nearly forgot why I bought it. So finally we have our chassis and floor. At the top of the photo is the original '62 interior tub.

 

Now the fun begins trying to figure out how to join this all together. Since the 1955 parts have more detail I contemplated using all of the interior from the 55, but the size of the seats didn't really match the body.  Instead I cut the front part of the tunnel out of the 55 and shaved a bit off the rear. Cleaned up some of the molded in detail from the top side of the floor. Then mocked up the rear axle so I can make sure the rear wheels land in the right spot.  After some cutting and swearing and banging my head against the wall I was able to bring it all together.

And here is the mocked up chassis next to the original kit chassis.  Makes the work all worth it.

So we shall call it a day with that for now, thanks for stopping in.

[NOBLNG]

On 12/22/2024 at 7:13 PM, LennyB said:

Starting another build which means I must really be crazy. This is basically going to be an OOTB build but I will take a few side trips to improve on the simplicity of the kit.

Nice collection of parts so far Len! I enjoy a nice simple build once in a while.🙂

[LennyB]

21 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

Nice collection of parts so far Len! I enjoy a nice simple build once in a while.🙂

Yeah, I started out with a simple build but right now it's a snowball rolling down hill⛄