AMT 1967 Shelby Restomod

[81-er]

19 hours ago, Stef N. said:

That is poor quality control to say the least. Luckily they are still usable though.

They are, just!
 

I managed to get some time on the seats last night, which proved to be quite a lot of work. I started with the better of the two, which isn’t saying a lot. The black paint they were coated in mostly ended up serving partially as a guide coat (which really showed up the poor job of the castings) and partially as a very effective way of annihilating my sanding sticks. A couple of the larger lumps needed a bit of attention from the micro-chisel, but I eventually got a somewhat acceptable result:

 

 

Sanding the back highlighted lots of porosity, several scrapes, and a nice sprue mark:

 

 

The hope is a skim of filler will sort these out, as well as fill the trench of a panel line. I assume it’s meant to indicate a seam in the cover, but it’s enormous and the only one, making it look even more out of place. I doubt anyone would spot it’s missing in the finished interior either.

 

While the righthand side of that seat was alright (the only one of the four sides of these seats that actually has a decently moulded adjustment mechanism), the left side was very much not. I sanded down the side of the backrest ready for some filler, the side of the seat base will just get a touch of filler as it’ll be mostly hidden by the transmission tunnel:

 

 

Seat number two was atrocious. As well as plenty of lumps on the seat base and side bolsters, a base that is very convex (I’ll tape some sandpaper to a flat board to deal with that later), and appalling side “detail”, the biggest flaw with this one was that the harness slots were partially infilled! I nearly just filled them all on both seats, but I figured I had nothing to lose (besides the hour it took) in trying to carve them out. I’m not claiming the result is perfect, but I’m pretty impressed for my first attempt at anything like that:

 

 

 

Ignore the Sharpie residue, I used it to help me see how things were shaping up. Comparing it to the other one that came with harness slots open, I’d say it’s close enough:

 

 

The sides aren’t amazing, but better than they were:

 

 

 

I’ve done the first round of filling & sanding on the seats, next step is a coat of primer to see how much work I’ve still got to do.

 

Until next time

 

James

[TonyW]

Blimey, those seats need more work than the rest of the car!

 

Have you tried the seats in place? I doubt anything much of the sides will be seen once things are buttoned up, likewise the seat backs.

[81-er]

I have indeed. As you say, not much of the sides will be visible, hence not being too worried about the lower sides. Positioning of the seats (driver/passenger) will be decided by where they look the least awful 🤣

 

James

[81-er]

 

As a result, I have a large number of painted spoons now (and yes, my garage is a mess, but it’s full of bits for the fence I’ve got to put up this weekend):

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, not all of the tests came out as well as I’d hoped. The biggest issue I had was actually getting my hands on the type of purple I wanted (a rich Cadbury-ish purple), which meant many experiments with Tamiya clear red over their mica blue, variously over black or gunmetal bases and with limited success. There was a very fine line between not enough (resulting in a patchy appearance) and too much, which just turned brown. I tried some tests with the Ford Deep Impact Blue I bought for the choppers (which I will finish one day) and tried a 50/50 by masking half of it before spraying the clear red. Lesson learnt, scuff the spoons first or the paint comes off with the masking tape! I even tried some tests with the paint my fiancée is using to tart up some lampshades. That was close, albeit a solid shade rather than metallic. Finally, I got the result I wanted after purchasing a can of Deco Color metallic violet, with Tamiya TS14 black as the base coat:

 

 

I also hit home with the wheels, Tamiya TS38 gunmetal again over a black base:

 

 

A couple of shots of the two together, both under the lighting in my garage and another at my desk:

 

 

 

I’ve decided on Tamiya TS66 IJN grey & TS81 royal light grey for the interior colours:

 

 

The darker TS66 will be the main colour and TS81 for the seat centres and possibly some accent panels on the dash and door cards. I’ve also got some carbon fibre effect decals I’d like to try for the dash as well.

 

The colours look good together as well, making me happy I’ve made the right choices:

 

 

I do need to find a better clearcoat, however. I’ve currently got a can of Humbrol acrylic varnish, which is pretty rubbish. It’s supposed to be gloss, but mostly dries to a fairly matt and cloudy finish. So, can anyone make a better suggestion? It needs to be safe for acrylics and in an aerosol as I don’t have an airbrush.

 

Besides paint tests, I’ve also been working on the bodywork. I think I’ve finally managed to blend the front and rear panels into the rest of the bodywork, hiding the nasty joints I inherited. A final spray of primer once I’ve finished the other work I’m currently doing will confirm or deny that belief! Inspired by Vppelt68’s Cobra Jet build, I’ve decided to also slim down the vent window frames. A little fiddly, but worth it. Apparently, I only took a before shot of the driver’s side and an almost finished shot of the passenger side. Both sides have been fully fettled now though.

 

 

 

Continuing the scope creep as the deadline has been extended, I’ve also decided I couldn’t live with the terrible panel gaps on the hood. These varied massively between the two sides and indeed even along the length of the same gap. I’ve started by gluing thin strips of plasticard to the joints, trimming and sanding them down and then adding a skim of fille. That’s now in the process of being sanded down, so this is very much a work in progress shot:

 

 

I’ve done a similar process on the back edge of the hood as that gap was enormous too. I’ve also taken the decision to remove the moulded in hood pins, partly as they were a bit clunky and not hugely lifelike, but mostly because I prefer the cleaner look without them. I did try opening up the snout vents, but after drilling a couple of test holes it became very obvious that that would be a very time consuming process to get right due to the thickness of the plastic the hood is moulded from:

 

 

The trunk lid will need the panel gaps dealt with as well. If I’m honest these are a lot worse than the front end was:

 

 

Finally, the seats are almost there. There’s been a few rounds of filling, priming, and sanding to get them here. Bar a bit of dust cleanup, the one on the right is good to go, but the one on the left needs some sanding on the filler at the back of the seat base. Getting rid of the lumps has been quite a mission. These will get a final prime in white as the main interior colour isn’t far off the grey primer:

 

 

Until next time

 

James

[mustang1989]

Lotsa hard work going on here. Looking good so far James. Those seats are going to be masterpieces in themselves.

[81-er]

Thank you. I wouldn't say they'll be masterpieces as there's a lot of dodgy bits you can't see in those photos (and hopefully won't when it's all installed either). There's only so far you can polish a turd 

 

James

[mustang1989]

49 minutes ago, 81-er said:

Thank you. I wouldn't say they'll be masterpieces as there's a lot of dodgy bits you can't see in those photos (and hopefully won't when it's all installed either). There's only so far you can polish a turd 

 

James

Man I know the feeling brother. Hang with 'er though....I have a feeling this one's gonna turn out A-OK!! 

[Spiny]

As I think you can work out for yourself, it looks as though the deadline isn't going to happen but the work here looks good. Especially brave of you to tackle those panel gaps, but it seems to be working. Keep up the good work.

 

As for paint which is safe for acrylics, I can only speak of 3 choices (and all three are reasonably safe for decals too in my experience). First up is the Humbrol you mentioned, which as you said doesn't give a particularly shiny finish (in my experience), but can be polished up to something reasonable respectable. The one below is Humbrol gloss clear over Revell matt grey after quite a bit of polishing:

 

 

The next suggestion is Revell clear, which does give a decent finish, but has two disadvantages - firstly it's not very robust when handled with bare hands so you'll want some gloves to avoid it going 'sticky' and leaving fingerprints, and secondly it seems to be particularly hard to find at the moment. The Revell clear is what I used for the Mustang in this group build.

 

Final one from me is Pledge Revive It (as Klear seems to be called over here). Not a spray, you need to brush it on, but it does level off ok and two or 3 layers should give you something to polish up. The Stratos in my signature was finished in this.

 

EDIT: If you're clearcoating over Tamiya lacquers, then my preferred is Tamiya TS-13. Haven't dared put that over acrylic paint in case it reacts though.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Spiny
Added bit about TS-13

[johnlambert]

My choices for clear in an aerosol are the Tamiya TS clear (not sure what number and I can't find my can) and Halfords clear lacquer.

[TonyW]

Tamiya TS clear for me at the moment as well.

It's another paint that doesn't like handling though as the shine noticeably drops off if you do. It does go on well although I've only used it over Tamiya colours so far.

[Fnick]

I've used ts-13 clear over both ts lacquer paint and me hobby aqueous acrylic. Both ok but I'd wait at least a week between paint and clear.

 

Here ts 13 over Mr hobby

And over ts paint

Ts-13 is soft so you have to be careful when sanding it back before polishing it as you can burn through to the paint. Yes I speak from experience! 😄

 

But it does give a very nice finish

 

Nick

[81-er]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'll get shopping

 

James

[81-er]

I’d had some success at straightening the warped interior side panels by using pegs to clamp their lower edges tightly to a butter knife, dunking them in hot water and then dunking in cold water to “set” their new shape. While this left the doorcard area flat, the rear area that fits around the wheel wells was still warped, so I bundled up a stack of butter knives to make up the level difference at the step, then pegged and elastic banded the side panel to this stack and readied it for the hot water:

 

 

Unfortunately, what I hadn’t made an allowance for was the hollow area behind the detail on the doorcard. As a result, the pressure from the pegs left it looking far more like a banana and badly flattened the raised door details:

 

 

 

After I’d finished exercising my knowledge of the more colourful aspects of the Anglo-Saxon language (and calmed down enough to not just launch the whole kit into the bin), I figured that my only option now was to remake the damaged panel. I can’t see any way of undoing to deformation now. As such, I used the other (undamaged) side panel to mark out the basic shape on some plasticard:

 

 

After some fettling due to the two sides not actually being identical (and not just because I’d deformed one), the cutting of an addition piece to thicken the top edge and provide the “back” of the recess for the dash, plus the making of a clear template to cut the front of that recess left me here:

 

 

A bit of TET had the two parts joined:

 

 

I butchered my clear template some more to give me a guide for scribing the door outline. It isn’t exactly the same as the kit part, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate to real life anyway, so this will do:

 

 

It was at this point I swallowed the brave pill and took a razor saw to the kit part. I’d been putting it off as long as I could as I didn’t want to destroy the master reference before I was happy I’d got a decent looking replacement:

 

 

With the new part in place it’s shaping up well:

 

 

Now comes the really tricky bit of trying to replicate the kit panel. Or not. I’ve never been 100% sure of the look of the kit details, particularly the ribbed lower detail and the upright opening lever. I know that’s how the real deal is, but this is my restomod build. Given there’s about as much likelihood of me hitting the extended deadline as there is of Satan firing up the snow plough at this point, I’m strongly considering just making a new panel for both sides with slightly altered detailing. I’ll cogitate on that one for a bit.

 

On a slightly more positive note to end things, I’m much closer with the fit of the hood now. It’s had a coat of primer and another sand to eradicate the last blemishes and I’m pretty happy with the side panel gaps. A tiny bit of work on those and a bit more attention to the rear edge and that should be done:

 

 

I’m also halfway through sanding the faces of the spokes on the wheels. They looked ok in their natural stage but the primer highlighted a ridged finish which I’m assuming is a by-product of the 3D printing process. It’s a fairly easy task to do and is a nice job to pick up and put down when I need a 5min break from the daily grind of work.

 

Until next time

 

James

[81-er]

As I’m sure will come as a shock to absolutely nobody, I missed the deadline. I even took Friday off from work to give me more time (well, once I’d got through the list of jobs as long as my arm from the mrs. Don’t you just love the way they do that?). As is very much the story of this build, things have continued to not be as sorted as I thought, and scope creep is still very much happening.

 

I managed to get the light grey onto the seat centres, although over the white primer it’s coming out as more of a mushroom colour than grey, and also shown up some additional marks that I hadn’t noticed with the white primer. So some more filler and grey primer next for those, before hitting them with the light grey again:

 

 

I realised I’ve been jumping about all over the place with this build and resolved to concentrate on one area at a time to keep things flowing smoothly in one direction. Therefore, I decided to work from the chassis up. Test fitting the wheels on the rear axel indicated that there was a clash between the back of the wheels and the inner wheel wells at my desired ride height (ie lower than a snakes belly). Only one thing for it, break out the razor saw:

 

 

That took an awful lot longer than I’d hoped. I followed the line of the chassis rails, but the plastic for the wheel wells overlapped those above, making for plastic about 8mm thick in places. I’m also going to have to work out a new way of supporting the back axel as the leaf springs also foul the wheels. I don’t exactly make things easy! I’m starting to think I should have followed the lead of Alloway and just made a new chassis and given the shell a flat floor http://www.allowaysrodshop.com/M67Mustang.html

 

While I had the razor saw out, I decided to copy an idea from a build of this kit elsewhere on the internet and cut the inner engine bay out of the shell:

 

 

With the front and rear lips still on the shell, the hood still fits:

 

 

What I have now is a chassis unit that looks like this:

 

 

 

What I’m hoping to achieve here is to be able to get a rolling chassis sorted out, that I can drop the engine in and out of to get the fit of that finalised without having to keep juggling the shell on and off each time. Hopefully after that I can get the interior finished off as well. That’s now going to have a lot of scratch-built elements to it. After wrecking one door panel last week I’d already taken the decision to make a new one for both sides to match. I have started the second panel, I just forgot to take a photo. I was always planning to have no rear seat and the back area fitted with a flat floor and a cage, but that’s a definite now due to having to tub the rear arches. Who knows, maybe I’ll 4-link it as well, it can’t be that much harder than where I am now, surely? If I’m really lucky, I might finish it before the next Mustang group build 🤣

 

Until next time

 

James