Revell '54 Chevy Sedan Delivery-Completed-10/09

[mustang1989]

I've been building on this one for the last 6 months and have got quite a bit done on it. Instead of posting every little thing I've done to it I'll try to stick with the highlights of the build. I first built this kit 33 years ago when it came out in 1983 just like the box top shows. I purchased all six "Street Demons" kits last year and am going making my way through this series of kits and while I pay a lot of tribute to the original Street Demon theme I'm adding my own twist to them this time around.

Here's where I started. The 1983 release of Revell's 1954 Chevy in the Street Demons theme:

Folks I just couldn't bring myself to build this thing with the traditional "gasser" look. I wanted more of a real low and tough stance so I robbed some wheels from the Revell Motorcraft Thunderbird Pro Stock kit, Pre-printed rear tires from AMT's 1967 Chevelle Pro Street and the front tires from AMT's Drag Pak tire set. The chassis from the firewall back came from AMT's 66 Nova Pro Street kit and I graphed the front part of the frame from the firewall forward from the OOB Street Demons kit here.

The idea is to end up with something that looks like this test fit of tire/ wheels to the bare body here.

and the rear view:

Again I'll try to stick to just the highlights of the build to catch up to where I'm at now. Lot's of cool ideas came to mind with this build and I still am having a hard time believing that it's all going together somewhat easy. Stay tuned.................

 

Edited October 9, 2016 by mustang1989

[arni]

That looks great,better tan mine - it is back in the box.................

[mustang1989]

Thanks arni. There aint nothin' easy about this kit. That's for sure. Looks like you got quite a ways with the body.

[mustang1989]

This............had to go if I wanted the stance I was after..

So I used this from the AMT 66 Nova kit. I cut the front subframe from the chassis assy and the shaded area shown in the picture. I also cut the original flooring to work with this frame/ chassis...

I ended up with this:( I had to shorten the rear part of the chassis to get it to fit correctly into the body, re-adhere the spring mount rail back to the chassis and shorten the rear springs to get it all to work right.

Front half of original frame graphed onto the Nova chassis and fit up into the body. (Note that the Legos are there only for test fitting purposes)

[mustang1989]

Suspension setup with brake and fuel lines:

Front suspension with home made springs from copper wire:(notice that I had to notch out the frame to get the whole suspension to go up thus lowering the front end by about 3/16"

and the actual stance after the front and rear suspensions were completed. I ended up breaking a small Lego in half and gluing one in each of the rear corners of the body so the body would rest on the chassis in exactly the right spot.

Second set of stance pictures with the tires all on the axles. After some tweeking it turned out dang near perfect!

and the rear view look. Those "meats" look right at home under there.

[arni]

The stance is spot on.

[mustang1989]

Thanks Arni.

Next came my very favorite part of automotive building. It took me two months alone just to build the engine. I start with black basing the whole engine and paint in coats working from a darker shade to lighter so as to add a pre-shade effect to the base paint. All chrome parts get a coat of Tamiya Smoke to give the chrome some depth as well as a true metal look to take away from the "toy chrome" effect. I picked up a PE throttle linkage set and built the linkage from a reference I got from Jegs High Performance. The throttle return spring is light bulb filament from a 1:1 scale 3157 turn signal bulb. Just break the glass and rob the element. Headers were treated to a coat of Alclad. The engine is from AMT's 1967 Pro Street Chevelle and the carburetors are from the Revell 1970 Boss 429 Mustang kit. Braided fuel line and fuel fittings are AM items and the steel fuel lines at the carburetors are made from straight pins.

The Chevrolet Dual Quad Big Block 427

and the rolling chassis with the engine mounted:

and body test fitted:

[mustang1989]

For the interior I broke it up into two groups. The front half which is a conventional layout with bucket seats and a console. The OOB seats in this kit SUCKED so I used seats from AMT's 1988 Mustang GT as well as the center console from the same kit. For carpet I used Raspberry Red flocking material with a set of Tasmanian Devil floormats to add a little humor to the equation. PE foot pedals are from Detail Master. For the dash I coated it with Tamiya Red X-7 and BMF'd the chrome panels on the passengers side. The speedometer and other gauges were completed by using the decals from Revell's latest release of this kit with a drop of clear over the decals to simulate that glass look.

A closer look at the shifter will reveal an "8 Ball" for a shifter knob. This.......was a small model by itself!! I used a straight pin with the little ball on top, sanded the ball to a smooth finish, then bent the shifter rod into an "S" shape and painted a white dot in the middle of the ball:

after this I painted on two small black dots stacked one on top of the other and then two smaller white dots in the middle of those black dots to get the "8". Additionally I used a coat of Tamiya Smoke tint on the shifter rod for a little more realism with the chrome look.

I then cut the shifter rod and knob from the OOB Mustang GT shifter boot, drilled a hole in the boot where the and inserted the completed rod/ ball assy into the boot. I painted the shifter boot a dark gray and dulled/ shadowed it with a dry brushed coat of ground up black pastel.

[mustang1989]

Folks this gets more "do-able" by the day. As for the back half of the interior I decided way before I started building this one to turn this thing into a party wagon of sorts. I've got the bulk of it all test fitted here and so far everything is fitting and clearing where it's supposed to. I've still got some subtle details to install yet such as a Hot Rod magazine, some John Lennon sunglasses on the seat and a case of Samuel Adams beer on top of the cooler. A couple of shots:

This is where things had to be adjusted a bit. The firewall was sitting to low from the rear of the body line at the rear of the engine bay opening causing a gap between the firewall and the body. I shimmed it up a little to close the gap up. I've already test fitted the body and I'm in good shape so far.

P.S. Just in case anybody spotted it....I am working on the front wheel center caps. There aint no way I'm going to leave those things as is!

More updates on the way..........................................

[mustang1989]

I mentioned that I was going to work on the wheel center caps for the front wheels. I just couldn't stand leaving the front wheels the way they were with no cap:

I then took the two spare rear wheels that did have a center cap and sanded the backs of the wheels down until all I had left were......well ....the center caps:

although blurry, you get the picture (pardon the pun)

I then test fitted them to the spare front wheel that still attached to sprue. This'll work is all I've gotta say:

And here's the relative pic. The front wheels are completed in regards to wheel center caps and the flooring is now installed/ adhered to the chassis:

[injidup]

Ahem.

I like your knob!

Kev.

[Thud4444]

I think you've put more work into this than I have real 54 Chevys! It looks good. Is she staying black?

[mustang1989]

Umm...........Thanks Kev. lol

Thud: Thanks for the comments. Yes sir she is going to stay black. I sent the original decals out to have re-mastered and am using those as well so as to keep inline with the original Street Demons theme.

Edited August 26, 2016 by mustang1989

[mustang1989]

<sub>.Ok I'm mostly finished with the rolling chassis and interior. I still have to build a master cylinder and power brake booster for it and add the brake lines but I figured that I'd start on the body some. To say that the body has it's fair share of problems would be an understatement.
I usually see mold lines down around the corners and "what-not" but on top of the front fender? Really????????



This is pretty bad too....



and this is just nasty!!



and then there's the fact that there's not a headlight bucket one for the headlamp lenses. That's right! There aint nothin behind the lenses 'cept atmosphere! Good grief!! I'll be Frenching in some headlight buckets later on..............</sub>

[mustang1989]

I really got a workout with my body work skills with this ride. I forgot to mention these areas too:

The seam line that looks like an upside down "L" beneath that body line there. Wow!



and this:



What's fairly surprising to me, even for Revell, is the total lack of headlight buckets for the lenses. No bucket, no bezels...just pop a lens into a hole and that's it.

I bought this guy here to rob the buckets/bezels from ...( Hey, I got it for 40% off at Hobby Lobby so it wasn't too expensive)



I frenched this one in there to show the difference this is gonna make by cutting the headlight opening back to match the headlight buckets diameter and trimming the inside of the opening so it would fit. In the following pictures you can see where I've gotten rid of a lot of the riff-raff in regards to seam/mold lines with the initial sanding. Wet sanding is to follow. I'll be taking care of the hood hinge cut-outs as well by filling those in.

Viva la difference:





I've still got a looooooooooooong way to go on the clean up just on the front end though. As tough as it's gonna be , it's far from impossible I can promise you that!

[mustang1989]

A shot where I got rid of those nasty seam lines on the top of the front fenders and started filling in those disgusting hood hinge cut outs

The upside down "L" 's are gone from the front of the fenders on the sides:

and the seam line between the headlamp opening and the hood line are now gone as well.



Still got some work to do to the hinge openings but here's little bit more clear view. I understand back in the old days about 20-30 years ago this would have been ok but that is clearly not the case these days. One would figure that this area at least could be cleaned up.

Edited September 1, 2016 by mustang1989

[MetroRacing]

Wow I thought I had a time of it with the '55 panel van but this is another league lol.

Well done so far and great job

Ashley

[mustang1989]

Believe me Ashley....this kit has got to be one of the biggest buckets of #$*% I've ever seen. I'm gearing up for continuing my Arado 234 Blitz aircraft build and I'm really looking forward to building something that's not a "sloppy seconds" (or is it thirds or fourths) kit. I have had a good time learning with this build though. I can say that.

[mustang1989]

Ok. After working with fine sanding pads, sanding sticks and clean up items and got all of the molding seams removed. I started cutting out the rear swing out door with sewing thread but got off track and cut into the door some. It'll be no problem though as I'll clean it all up.

Comparison shots:

Mold/Seam lines present:

Mold/Seam lines gone.....

I've got a little bit of sanding work to do to repair the bottom of the door and to smooth out all the edges of the door as well as the door opening but it looks like it'll work fine. It's funny about that thread trick. Never thought thread would cut this stuff.

Here's the body all washed up and ready for a primer coat to fine tune all the body work. Hood hinge openings are now filled in.

Edited September 6, 2016 by mustang1989

[MetroRacing]

Good job on opening the rear door. I like it.

I've thought about doing it the the ones on my '55 ford, but have no idea how to hinge them as the real one had external hinges lol.

Ashley

[mustang1989]

Good job on opening the rear door. I like it.

I've thought about doing it the the ones on my '55 ford, but have no idea how to hinge them as the real one had external hinges lol.

Ashley

Stay tuned. There's more on that later

[mustang1989]

Body in primer stage. Still a little clean up to do here and there but we're on the way with it.

[mustang1989]

Here's after paint and gloss coat. When I initially started spraying the gloss coat what seemed like the perfect horrorific nightmare was unfolding as I saw nothing but bubbles. I all but resolved myself to a treatment in Purple Power or brake fluid when all the sudden all of bubbles just went away and left me with this:



With the reflection of my camera and hand in the gloss finish I couldn't help but snap a couple of shots off:

[MetroRacing]

Damn that looks excellent. I just hope I can get a gloss coat like that one day lol.

Ashley

[Thud4444]

That's pretty impressive. It's hard to beat a really good glossy black finish on old cars.