"Triple Threat" 57 Vette - 5-03 Update - Version 2, Show Car

[Bernard Kron]

Several years ago I acquired a Monogram 1/24th ’57 Corvette for its Rochester Fuel Injected V8 and 1/24th scale whitewall tires. The fuelie motor went into a ’32 Ford Five Window while the whitewalls found their way onto the front end of a couple of showy hot rods which used 1/24th scale rims. So, sans rolling stock and power plant the kit sat in my stash until recently. I’ve recently added vintage road racing and sports cars to my modeling diet, which up to now consisted exclusively of traditional hot rods, customs and straight line racers of various sorts. In keeping with this expansion of my palette I decided the time had come to rescue the ‘Vette and make a project out of it.

My plan was originally to do a no-nonsense Cal Club style road racer from the late 50’s and early sixties. These cars were almost literally driven off the showroom floor and raced virtually stock appearing with grills, bumpers and trim intact. While the hubcaps had to be removed for safety reasons, just about the only visible modification was the addition of a rollover bar and some racing numbers. Under the hood it was another matter, with hot cams and free breathing heads at the top of the list. Theoretically these were B-Production stockers but soon there evolved a coterie of hot shoe driver/mechanics who could really make these machine fly. The most famous were Dr. private eye Thompson and Dave McDonald, both of whom used Corvette racing as a launching pad for their professional driving careers.

As I said, basic Cal Club racers tended to leave his ‘Vette stock appearing and that had been my original intention. My plan was to paint the car in basic white, a suitable background for some homemade decals, as is my general practice. But my particular Monogram ’57 came in the dreaded Red Plastic, and try as I might could never quite completely banish bleed through to the white outer coat, despite using Duplicolor Primer Sealer followed by a couple of coats of silver lacquer. This had been effective over colored plastic for me in the past, but this was my first crack at white over red, the most difficult combination of all. I experimented with the interior bucket, and as the photo below will attest, the result was a noticeably pinkish cast to the white.

So time to check my paint stash where I encountered am untouched can of Testors Spangled Blue One Coat Lacquer, a particular nice shade of metallic blue similar to what Lance Reventlow and his Scarab crew referred to as, oddly enough, A Nice Shade Of Blue. A test shot over the aforementioned series of undercoats showed excellent coverage and not a trace of pink or red. Hurrah!

Now I had to regroup aesthetically because my thoughts of a Utilitarian White race car were done. So I decided to go with a “Triple Threat” ‘Vette – a nicely turned out show car paint job on a Cal Club racer shorn of its bumpers, windshield and trim, with an option for an annual trip to the salt flats. My plan is to paint the car the showy blue with white coves, racing stripes and rondels and a set of salt flats accessories, namely a tonneau cover, a blanking piece for the grill for streamlining, a set of Hilborn injectors, and some Moon discs over the road racer’s white steelies, all removable. The road racer will run the 270 HP dual 4-barrel 283 that was a factory option in ’57 and popular with racers at the time. The motor will be a Revell Parts Pack piece with the intake and carbs removable to swap with the Hilborn injectors for the salt flats.

Below is where I’m at so far, with a small 2-poinmt rollover bar behind the driver’s head, provision added for a cut down Plexiglas windscreen and the blanking piece for the grill and tonneau cover roughed in place. The front and rear pans have been molded in and bodywork and paint completed out to the silver base coats.

I’ll update after this weekend’s NNL West by which time I should have the chassis well along, the motor started and probably the basic color coats down.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[dogfish7]

Looking forward to watching your build B.

[fordrodnkustom]

Liking this one a lot B! Should be fun. As you can see by my MK IV I'm a big fan of road race/sports cars too. What wheel and tire combo do you plan to use on it?

[harron68]

Bless your heart for expanding your collection and our pleasure with a sports-racer! I had some of the magazines of the era where Vettes were frequent cover fotos. I wonder if they used stock or modified hedders back then. It seems if engine mods were allowed, maybe exhaust ones were also in the mix. Wish u well in the completion!

[Bernard Kron]

The basic paint is now done. So too, is the interior, done in Testors Acryl Insignia Red to avoid the bleed through problem. The cockpit edge will get foiled towards the end of the project, as will other interior details. The contrasting white trim, consisting of a pair of racing stripes down the center, white coves, and perhaps scallops along the front center tops, along with rondels for numbers, will be done with decals. With the aggressively “showy” paint I’m beginning to think of a set of more fancy wheels, perhaps Halibrand Torq-Thrusts, rather than the white steelies I had originally planned.

Additionally, I’m well along with the chassis and have the motor partially built. I have Hilborn injectors and short intake stacks coming from Speed City Resin for the salt flats variant. Hopefully these will be the subject of my next update.

Thanks for lookin’,
B.

[harron68]

Halibrands would be "racier." Adding some white would be helpful too as the blue and red both look on the dark side. Or maybe the "dark side" is appropriate.

[dogfish7]

Nice color.

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks guys!

Here’s a brief but important update. I have gotten the main decals designed. I printed them out on plain paper and, using water soluble paste, mocked them up on the model. The impact of the white with red striping is quite strong against the blue. I had to fiddle with the size of the rondels to get them in proportion to the stripes and coves, but it took surprisingly little adjustment to get everything in place. I even like the look of the scallops on the fender tops. The coves were scanned from the kit decal sheet and the scallops were heavily reshaped versions of the kit scallops. All the work was done in Photoshop at 600 dpi. I will now have the actual decals printed for me using an Alps printer, rather than printing the shapes directly to white decal paper. This will allow the decals to be printed using white ink on clear decal stock which will assure me of straight, crisp edges, rather than attempting to accurately cut the edges with scissors.

I’m planning on a progression of three decal variations to reflect the 3 model variations. The first is the one you see in the mockup pictures. This is the “show car” version with the rondels left empty without numbers. The decals will be applied and then sealed under clear coat. Next up will be the road racing variant which will have numbers and class designation in the rondels. Lastly will be the Bonneville version which is still up in the air. I may add sponsorship and contingency decals and perhaps a third number which will be “added” to the left of the first two numbers since most salt flats numbering goes to 3 digits. I’ll think this through and probably add the Bonneville Option to my decal order.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[jbwelda]

looks great Bernard, I like the contrast of the paint vs the interior vs the decals. should look great when it is done and I would vote for the halibrand wheels though some white steelies would be appropriate too, just depends on the look you want...Halibrands would be more big bucks vs the more budget minded look from the steelies

jb

[fordrodnkustom]

Nice! That graphics package is perfect for this build. Looks great!

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks guys!

I’ve been plugging away at this project, but most of my energy has gone into working with a modeling friend who has an ALPS printer. I desperately want a source who can work from my Photoshop generated bitmap files and who can print white. My friend has these capabilities. So far it’s taken a bit of work to understand and successfully navigate his pre-preparation needs. But we now have that debugged. I just got my first decals sheets from him, and while the print quality, register and accuracy of size was all spot on, unfortunately he doesn’t seem to be able to generate white ink that’s opaque enough to cover the dark blue body color on this car. Even double layers of white underlayment don’t cover well enough. I’ll keep working on it...

In the meantime… (sigh), the chassis and multiple motor and wheel version setups are all done. As I mentioned earlier, the motor from the Monogram kit is now in another build so I had to make a new one. Working with a Revell Parts Pak small block Chevy I built up a basic motor with two removable intake configurations. The B/Production road racer will have the factory option Dual 4-Barrel 283 which comes in the Parts Pak while the show car and Bonneville version will share a flashy Hilborn injection setup. The Hilborn injectors are from the AMT Double Dragster kit while the nice velocity stacks are courtesy of Speed City Resin. They were cut down to about half height to clear the hood. The aluminum Corvette valve covers are also from the AMT Double Dragster kit and the distributor is from Morgan Automotive Detail. The ram horn exhaust manifolds are from B-N- Resins while the straight through exhaust running straight back under the chassis was fabricated from 1/16” butyl covered wire and finished in metalized silver paint.

The chassis is straight out of the kit, and affords me the chance to comment on what a nice kit this is. Everything fits perfectly and the chassis is highly detailed and makes a nice piece just sitting all by itself.

The wheels and tires are the other detail change across the 3 versions of the car. For the B/Production road racer I’m running steelies which came from an AMT ’40 Ford kit, while the tires were left over from the super-nice vintage Halibrand Kidney Bean mags I used on my recent ’32 Ford Tudor build. They’re classic early 60’s Goodyears and are typical of the quality one expects from Historic Racing Miniatures. They’re painted Duplicolor Wimbledon White. The Show and Bonneville versions share a set of Halibrand TorqThrusts which are the front wheels from the various Revel ’32 Ford hot rod kits. They have been narrowed to fit standard generic AMT Firestones. They’re finished in various shades of Testors Metalizer with the rim edges picked out in Molotow Chrome. For the Bonneville version only the polished rims will show because they are hidden under a tasty set of Moon discs from Parts By Parks.

That’s it for now. The decals are definitely the Long Pole In The Tent. I may have to resort to developing a solution using white decal paper, but cutting a perfectly round set of rondels without a pinhole in the middle is a major challenge, as is laying down a perfectly parallel and properly spaced pair of white stripes. Besides which, I really would like to develop a proper decal printing resource…

Until next time…

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[TooOld]

This is looking great Bernard ! I like the idea of three different versions .
I hope you work out the decals , having the idea and making it work can be a challenge . If you resort to printing on white decal paper maybe you could try combining the rondel and cove decal into one piece ?

[dogfish7]

Looks like you have it well under control and very clean work. Can't wait to see more on this build.

[jffj]

Loving this Big B.
Classic you, all the way, and love how you aren't afraid of a challenge.

Great idea of the 3 versions.

Have you considered masking off the stripes, cove, & roundels areas, combining the latter two, as TooOld mentioned, painting those area white- and then using your buddy's decals over the white.

Wonder why nobody has developed a white ink, similar to what the old time lettering dudes used- One Shot.

I can still remember, as a kid, hearing some clown on the AM radio, talking about how much easier the (then quite new) computer would make our lives..... 😂😂. Yeah, right.

You got this B 👍

John

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks everyone. I'm glad I'm succeeding in putting across what I'm after. This build started as a casual filler, a half-gutted kit that needed to be built to make room on the shelves pf my overflowing stash. Last year sometime I decided I was in somewhat of a rut, building traditional hot rods and drag racing subjects to the exclusion of other styles that I enjoy and know about. For example, I'm a huge fan of the showroom stock modelers because of the incredible discipline required to build a realistic replica - shiny even, unlike in the railroad and military worlds. I'm pretty sure I'll never do that kind of subject, at least in that way, but it gives you an idea of the range that interests me. Many of these other styles involve techniques and build strategies that I've hardly explored.

So last year I built an AMT Ferrari 250 SWB, and it came out far better than I had expected, although it is hardly anybody's idea of flawless. Whatever my personal style as a modeler may be, it seemed to have survived this vast jump in subject matter, so I became encouraged to explore further. As a 50's/60's era style, the Corvette sort of splits the difference between the Ferrari and the hot rods. It continues my exploration of decals as an expressive medium, and features the best paint work I've done to date. I haven't been able to crack open a window in my work room to set up an airbrushing facility (I have all the parts for it except the paint booth) so I'm still stuck with rattle cans, but I seem to be getting the hang of it. Really clean, shiny paint jobs will be a critical element of some of the projects I have in mind. For example at this year's NNL West I purchased an Aoshima Pagani Huayra kit. It's several orders of magnitude ahead of where I'm at skills-wise - it's complexity and level of detail is epic - but the price was right, it's a beautiful kit, and it raises the bar and gives me a goal.

Also in my stash are a Revell of Germany Jaguar XK-E, a Revell of Germany Ferrari GTO, a Revell Ferrari Enzo, and a Hasegawa Ferrari Testa Rossa, all of which I managed to pick up ridiculously cheaply. And, believe or not, I just started an Acura RSX tuner build as a warm up since the kit engineering is classic modern Revell involving techniques that I'll need for the other kits. And it was a freebie I got at the only IPMS show I ever attended, a few years back. The Jag, the GTO and the Enzo were all thrift store purchases and among them all I may have spent $20.00! In the case of the TR, it was one of those weird cases where someone offered it far too cheaply on eBay and I discovered come close of bidding that there was a chance I would be the only one to make an offer. Such was the case, as it turned out, and it was mine for $35.00 all-in, on what is typically a model that sells for north of a C-note. It, and indeed all 5 of these kits are beautifully engineered with great detail and high parts counts. The cheap prices act as an emotional crutch for the radical change in build style they will demand. They are far more kit-builds than the kit-bashing I mainly do now.

In any case, the decal project has recently taken a turn for the better. My ALPS-owning friend and I have somehow worked are way through some setbacks and it looks like I may have a resource for these kinds of decals. They latest attempt is on its way to me and I should receive the decals later this week. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for following along,
B.