'40 Ford Sedan Delivery - Raked 60's California Street Rod

[Bernard Kron]

’40 Ford Sedan Delivery Hemi Powered Street Rod
(more pictures below)

This was my final project for 2021, begun on the afternoon of December 28th with a self-imposed deadline to get it done by year’s end. I did complete it on the afternoon of December 31st, so basically a 96 hour build. My motivation was that 2021 had been a kind stale year for me with only 4 projects completed so I wanted to challenge myself to get No. 5 on the board.

Like all most of my projects this year this is a spare-parts kit bash. The basic kit was the AMT ;40 Ford Sedan Delivery, one of my favorite parts kits for doing late ‘40’s and 50’s customs because of its flipper hubcaps, baby Moons, ribbed bumpers and tubular nerf bars, and also for the tri-carb Buick Nailhead. As a result I’ve got plenty of spare bodies and chassis to work from.

I wanted to do a 60’s style raked California style street rod. I had a blown 932 Hemi from the Revell Miss Deal that I had recently gotten in a box of Miss Deal parts I won on eBay and I felt this would make the perfect exaggerated street rod statement to go with a heavy dive-bomb rake. I used the front and rear axles from the Revell ’32 Ford hot rod kits, shaving the front axle spring to get the front end in the weeds as much as possible. I radiused the rear wheel openings to clear a set of Revell Goodyear drag slicks. The slicks and the AMT Firestone blackwalls were modified to fit a set of Torq-Thrust mags from the Revell Deuce kits. The nerf bars are from the AMT ’36 Ford coupe kits and the bucket seats for the interior are from an AMT ’37 Chevy kit. Paint is Duplicolor Flame Red for the fenders and Brite Touch Black Primer for the body and hood.

Thanx for lookin’
B.

[TooOld]

Cool Sedan Delivery , I don't think I've built a model that fast since about 1966 !

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks Bob. Yeah, when I was a kid I would build a model in an afternoon if it was simple enough and didn't involve enamel paint, LOL. And sometimes even paint drying wasn't an obstacle! One day I can recall I built 2 of those Aurora Indy car curbsides - one was the Shaw Maserati but I can't recall the other. The kit body color seemed right, they came with separate rubber tires, so all that was needed was to paint the seat, gauges, steering wheel, grill and wire wheels. I remember having brown bottle paint for the steering wheel and seat, but the rest needed to be silver which turned out to be my downfall. My mother was an artsy-craftsy type who bought junk "antiques" and refinished them for furniture in our house. She also did oil paintings which she hung on our walls. She wasn't bad at all at it and much of the paintings and furniture survived in her home until her death. In any case she used a lot of gold and silver paint so I stole some of her silver to get 'em done. It turned out to be oil paint which, when applied to styrene, never seems to dry. So I got 'em done that day, alright, but landed up having to wipe off the silver and repaint it later.

What surprised me about this '40 Ford project was that it was identical in build style to virtually anything else I've been doing lately. It involved almost zero compromises and the only shortcut I used is that the motor was already built, had the right style, and happened to fit the chassis with virtually no modifications. It just needed to be wired. I must admit that the fast dry time of lacquer and modern acrylics goes a long way towards keeping the flow going. And having my eye on the calendar I did increase my bench time. As I mentioned in my write up, it probably took me as many days to decide on a candidate as I did to execute the project!