Post by Bernard Kron on Aug 30, 2021 17:37:50 GMT -5
Mid-50’s style Channeled ’32 Ford Roadster Street Rod
A few weeks ago I bid on and won a huge box of spare parts from the Revell ’32 Ford series of kits, enough parts to build 9 or more complete Roadsters, 3-window and 5-window coupes, with a ton of extra parts left over. The only parts missing were from the Tudor Sedan and the Dan Fink Speedwagon (no flathead V-8’s, wire wheels or sedan bodies, for example). The original builder, however, had the odd habit of mocking up his projects using super glue which meant that several of the chassis I received, for example, had fenders bonded to them, and in one case there was a nicely channeled roadster with the main body, full hood sides and grill shell all securely glued to each other and to the chassis. While I was able to liberate the various chassis from their fenders without damage to the chassis, the channeled roadster was another matter. I did manage to pry the grill shell off but the body and hood sides were bonded quite permanently to the chassis. As I said, the original builder had done a very nice job on the channel and cutting the hood sides to drop over the frame rails, so I decided to accept the challenge and build a mid-50’s style channeled street rod, the kind often featured in the Little Pages back in the day.
With a few, although significant, exceptions the entire build is from the box-‘o-parts. The wheels and tires were assembled using ’58 Dodge Lancer hubcaps from Modelhaus with various backing plates from my parts box. The rear wide-whitewall tires are Modelhaus T-160 Commander 78’s and the front tires are of unknown origin from my parts box. The other major part substitution is the 4½ scale inch deep drop I-beam front axle from ThePartsBox.com. This is a resin re-pop of the Revell ‘40 Ford Street Rod item and features a cast-in wire reinforcement that prevents the axle from ever sagging the way un-reinforced resin axles eventually do. It is my go-to dropped axle for a real in-the-weeds stance and I highly recommend it. Otherwise the only non-Revell Deuce part is the steering wheel, an AMT ’49 Ford part and a home-made gear shift lever. The Revell Highboy Roadster windshield is chopped 2½ scale inches. Because the motor is completely hidden by the glued-in-place hood sides, I chose to use the ubiquitous Ford small block that comes in all these kits, although I sanded off the Ford Motorsports logo from the valve covers and moved the distributor to the back of the block to create a kind of generic V-8 look.
The paint is Plastikote Baby Blue lacquer over white Duplicolor primer. The interior is finished in Duplicolor Universal White lacquer with blue accents.
The original builder did the hard part, the 4 scale inch channel and adapting the hood sides. I did have to mask out the floor pan area because everything was glued in place but really this was a pretty straightforward project that went together with a minimum of drama. And because the original builder had a good eye for stance and proportion it landed up being a pretty cool representation of a classic 50’s low-boy roadster, in this case a California car because I chose to leave it fenderless.
Thanx for lookin’,
B.
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