Hi folks. I picked up this decidedly second-hand kit from a swap meet quite a few years back for next to nothing. The box and instructions water damaged, and some sort of heat damage to the body (front right quarter panel and windscreen frame). The decals and one of the chrome rocker covers missing altogether.
One of our club members passed away after a long battle with illness, and through the club we sold off his stash and built up models to raise funds for the family. I bought his ’57 Bel Air convertible, built a few years back from the AMT boxing. Harry was a great guy and an awesome modeller, and I’m very proud to have one of his builds in my display cabinet. My plan is to build this kit as a neglected rusty wreck waiting for some TLC as a counterpoint to Harry’s beatuiful build.
I will need to carefully heat up the front RH corner of the hood and shape it to fit in with the quarter panel damage. I have already started on sub assemblies, and thinning out a couple of spots with the Dremel to make some rust holes. Hopefully some more progress reports soon.
Cheers, D
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Condolences on losing a talented modeler to your club and props for trying to help out the family.
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Yes, D, that’s the way we all have to go one day. I’ve also lost fellow modellers along the way already. From one of our former presidents we still give away his unbuild kits on our shows. That will last us still a few years … Some of his thousands (!) kits already went down the drain. Nobody wants them.
Well, of course I will follow what you can make out of this damaged kit.
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I’ve been in build mode rather than paint mode over the last couple of nights, so I started putting some sub-assemblies together and repositioning some broken parts. I put the missing pieces of the windscreen frame and quarter panel back in place. It looks like the damage may have been caused by a soldering iron resting against the quarter panel.
I used boiling water to heat up the front RH corner of the hood and gently bent it inwards to show that it had been impacted by the quarter panel.
I assembled the engine and front suspension, then did a quick test fit to see how it all looks.
Time to start thinking about how badly I want to tear up the interior, and maybe prime to exterior and underside.
Cheers, D
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I’m thinking I might do some work on the hood to represent that it has been stripped of the chrome trims, as per these reference images. It will mean some carving of the “bullet” mount points and adding supports beneath, and drilling some mounting holes for the bottom trim and badge points.
Cheers, D
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