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‘65 Les Ritchey A/FX


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Love modification builds.  I've got a couple planned myself in the future...one of them being a '57 Ford drag wagon and either a '65 or '93 Mustang road racer.  

 

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I know what you mean about Silver Leaf being a strange paint - I used it on my XJ220 and found that the worst thing you could do is handle it as clear coating brought out a couple of fingerprints on the paint. Never had that happen with any other paint.

 

But when I was reading up on the paint, the consensus seemed to be that you either had to clear it almost immediately (like you have here) or leave it about six weeks to cure. I've tried both methods and it came out ok both times so I expect you'll be ok with the paint. The good news is that, as your Mustang shows, despite being a pain to work with it gives a great end result with barely noticeable flake size.

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So far so good on the silver leaf silver, just a few micro cracks in a few areas on the lower part of the body. 

 

Some additional progress:

Interior - I've completed most of it other than a tri-gauge set I would like to add to the center of the dash (over removed radio area), if I can't find it in my spares, it should be easy too make quickly. I decided against the fire extinguisher, I couldn't find one in my spares and didn't feel it was worth the effort for something that wouldn't be all that visible. Although not accurate, I think these red seat belts help to break up the all black monotony of this interior. Amazingly, NHRA did not require full harnesses on A/FX class in '65, only seat belts which I believe these cars were first equipped with when built.

 

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Here's some progress on the engine (headers are dry-fit in place):

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Who doesn't like the look of a Ford SOHC 427 "Cammer"? This is like the fourth 1/25 I've built and I'm still not tired of building them. Same thing with Ford-Cosworth DFV's (and that's a good thing 'cause I still have a bunch of those in my stash in the form of 1/20 F1 kits!).

 

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That Silver Leaf looks good. It brings out every line of the cars styling to perfection.

 

I'm taking notes on your application methods as I've encountered clear coating problems with Tamiya paints as well. I found that clear over gold changed the gold paint to a darker shade and somehow the grain changed as well. I think I didn't put on enough gold in the first place, and I might have been a bit to quick adding the clear. 

More experiments called for!

 

The interior is coming on a storm. Very tidy work. You are right about the seat belts, they add a lot.

 

I can't get used to seeing a distributor at the front of an engine. The most sensible place to put one, but a lifetime of Small Block Chevrolet engines has turned me a bit weird. Mind you, I have a Flathead Ford powered car here and the distributer is buried down in front of the radiator. That thing has two water pumps as well. There must be a perfect engine out there somewhere!

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Big news today, the custom decals for this car arrived in the mail! They are BEAUTIFUL!!!! Thank you Joe Curtis at Fremont Racing Specialties! You're the MAN!

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I'm pretty much done on detailing the engine, added fuel lines, throttle linkage, springs:

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I love the look of this beast in the engine bay.  Amazing that it's 4% undersized!

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I managed to mangle one of the two exhaust headers by fracturing the styrene "header header" when attempting to super glue it to the block.  Sweeping the floor a few days ago to look for my daily missing parts, I found an earlier styrene header that I lost a few weeks ago and had to replace.  I decided to save the extra styrene header header and amazingly used it to repair my disaster today.  Modeling Karma! It was like fate said " you're going to mangle this part later so we'll loose it for you on the floor so you make a replacement and then you'll mangle that replacement and then find the first one again so you'll be back where you started....!" 

 

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One last item I wanted too run by my fellow Mustang GB'er's.  I believe the 1:1 A/FX cars had these bellows-like air inlet tubes going between the front grill and the carbs:

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Revell makes a nice molded part for the '64 Thunderbolt kit but it's designed to work with the dual car air cleaner and I'm wondering if it's worth trying to scratch-build something?  I found these flexible straws that might work but the bellows portion is short so I would need to join 3-5 together:

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Any thoughts/ opinions/ someone already solved this problem before?

I can also image Ritchey removing these along with other items to try to reduce weight so I can always use that excuse if I'm not happy with the result!

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The AMT '66 Galaxie has that setup with individual carb tops, but IIRC it looks a bit skinny and probably wouldn't fit the Mustang anyway. 

 

I think the problem you'll have with corrugated materials is they won't conform, nor sag under their own weight.   It's laborious, but if I were doing it, I'd sculpt the ducting in two-part epoxy e.g. Milliput, wrap it with fine wire to replicate the wire reinforcement, then give it a few coats of paint.

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Thanks guys for the quick responses on my air conduit inquiry. Both the M-C conduits and Milliput over wire are good ideas. It sounds like another “project within a project” that will likely be a lot of work. If it ends up like my two Thunderbolt models, first thing I do when I lift the hood is remove the kit supplied molded ones to allow the engines to be seen. Think I’ll put this subject aside until after I finish the main build, can always add it later, right?

 

Yes Tony, those carbs are Fireball, Holley 4160’s. IMO, they really raise the realism of  any 60’s American car build without having to spend a lot of $, I’m kinda addicted to them (and the 60’s super stocker builds I put them on ) these days….

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This paint job that you have turned out very well. Silver, at least for me, is a very hard color to work with but looks like you nailed it. Are those Fireball carburetors on that engine? Those things look GREAT!!! 

 

I've got an idea on the spark plug wire boots if you want to give it a try on down the line. I hope you'll take this in the helpful way that it is intended.

 

When I built my Maverick, I built it with a 427 Cammer engine as well and used the heads of pins to replicate the snap on boots like so.

 

First I chucked the needles up in a drill and spun the heads up against a file as to reduce the circumference of the pin heads

 

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Then I then cut them to length.

 

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Then drilled the holes where they were to be inserted and fit them into place so I could attain the correct height ......

 

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Once I got the height right I painted them black and ran the wires...

 

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T

Edited by mustang1989
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Hey Mustang89,

Thanks for posting the suggestion on the plug boots. Your cammer build is beautiful!

 

Yeh, I went a little crazy tall on my boots and should know better. I actually did flat SOHC type boots on the last cammer I built and posted on that other model car forum using the crude AMT “Mustang Funny Car” kit :

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There were no molded-in raised spark plug tips on the AMT valve covers and I needed to add something between the valve cover and wires. I made these flat boots using sanded discs cut from drilled out styrene rod and then painted black, pretty easy to do.

 

I haven’t bonded the engine to chassis in this Ritchey build yet and will take a look at fixing this inaccuracy before I mount engine to chassis. I may have to tear out the distributor and wiring and start over but it wouldn’t be the first time 😫!

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Okay, here's my attempt at replacing the tall spark plug boots with more accurate lower profile boots, it was actually easier than I anticipated:

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I masked the window trim, then airbrushed Testors black gloss enamel and then, after two days too dry, airbrushed it with Alclad chrome:

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Bonded the front and rear windows to the body:

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Scratch-built and installed a three-gage instruments to the center of the dash per reference photos:

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To be continued....

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Readable instruments! I've had real cars with harder to read dials. Very impressive. There's some very tidy and precise work going on here.

 

I've followed up on your recommendation for Fremont Racing Specialities. Wow!

The catalog runs to nine pages of amazing items. Heaven if you like '60 drag racing subjects. Joe seems like a good guy to deal with.

 

[email protected]

 

Tony.

 

 

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Great looking engine and the window trim looks good too.

For your intake conduits, Use thin wire wrapped around a former, or small springs, Electric motor brush springs or from a ballpoint for instance.

Form them into length/shape. Then wrap with PTFE plumbers tape. When painted (two coats at least) they should look to scale.

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Getting close to the finish on this one and oh-boy has it fought me last few days.  Here are some progress shots showing the body/ chassis/ wheels assembled along with side windows cut from .005" clear styrene and front and rear bumpers/ lights added:

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I installed front shocks between the upper A arms and the inside top of the fender wells which I believe based on vague references was were the actual shocks were mounted in this modified car:

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Getting the wheels centered in the modified wheel wells/ wheel based proved very problematic when bonding the body to chassis.  Earlier test fits looked fine (see past postings) but when I went to do the final assembly, something hidden and microscopic changed such that the chassis seemed to be biased forward relative too the body.  This final assembly above is about the best I can do after fighting it for a number of hours.

 

I also had to sand down the resin hood and repaint and clear coat it, my original paint job was very bumpy probably due to an excessively heavy coat of  the Tamiya silver leaf (not my favorite paint).  In the process of this redo, I lost the raised "F-O-R-D" markings at the front of this resin hood but I think the trade-off was worth it.  

 

All I have left is to touch-up some of the under-hood black where I bonded the radiator to the front of the chassis and body and add the decals.  I may still add a double brake master cylinder to the rear of the chassis behind the differential and take a crack at making the carburetor air conduits using the excellent ideas you guys have suggested above.

 

The other two super stockers I have been building simultaneous to this Mustang are completed.  Much easier kits, mostly OOB.

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Edited by nearsightedjohn
spelling errors
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That rear three quarter view is the cream of the crop. A beautiful looking build.

 

It looks like there will be parcels from Fireball Modelworks in my future, as those carbs add so much to that big motor.

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Added the excellent Fremont Racing Specialties decals:

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OOPS! Look's like my right tail light got a little tipsy last night! Always something (that's never noticed until one posts photos on a public forum!). 

 

I started too play with Pete in Linc's excellent idea for making the air intake conduits:

 

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I used a 1/4-20 bolt as a pattern to form the 0.4 mm solder into a helix.

 

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Problem is the finished adapter/ conduit profile is too high to allow the hood to close.  I need to rethink this, maybe a squashed cylinder conduit?

 

Edited by nearsightedjohn
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Thank you Stef N.! Thank you Six97s for the link!  I like the look of the grey conduit, if I succeed at this enhancement, I need something other than more black under the hood and I don't like the orange conduits I've seen on reference pics of Gas Ronda's A/FXer.  

 

I'm going to take a break on this for a while.  My wife's been bugging me to build her a red XKE roadster model to replace the one I built for her years ago using the original ancient Revell kit and lost during a home renovation project. I just received the new tooled Revell kit (look's really nice!!!) so now I have an excuse to take a break.  How often does one's spouse ask you to do a chore involving building a model kit???

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