Three 34s and a blown deuce coupe!

Lookin good there Bryce, you even got the stance right rather than the rear wheels tucked up under the fenders.

I'm liking it a lot.

These are very slick...

Missed a fair bit of this one, I think the thread must have been renamed and I didn't notice :/
Making good progress though, love what you've done so far.

Love it, but don't forget the tailshaft otherwise you won't be going anywhere.

Some seriously nice work there Bryce.

Thanks for all the nice words guys. I was a bit disappointed to find that the epoxy holding one of my fenders in place let go yesterday, so I have suffered a minor set back that will need to be rectified...for some reason they sit about 3mm higher than the chassis rails in the front.

Kane wrote:Love it, but don't forget the tailshaft otherwise you won't be going anywhere.

Yeah, yeah smart arse...I couldn't work out the new length until I had the engine glued in place - it's done now!

Nice work Bryce
Is there a reason for not running the splash pan/stone tray on the front under the grille?

Chris

cdansie wrote:
Is there a reason for not running the splash pan/stone tray on the front under the grille?

Chris

Yeah I saw it on this car at the Kustom Nats along with the bobbed rear fenders and really liked the look.

Fantastic work Bryce!
Adam

I’ve made some good progress on the chopped coupe lately – hopefully be finished by next week. Had a couple of distractions along the way. I wasn’t happy with the look of the black wheels in black tyres so I cast up some resin copies that I could paint gray in order to get a bit of contrast. I also found that the nose of these cars is out of scale (too long) and hangs way too far over the front axle. This isn’t as noticeable with fenders, but as soon as you take them off the profile looks horrible, so I had to move the front crossmember forward about 10mm.

In this pic you can see where the wishbone was mounting in the original crossmember and how far forward I had to move it to get the axle in the right spot:


Here’s the resin wheels I cast up:


Interior is done. Just brown leather tuck ‘n’ roll out of the box plus a column mounted tacho from my spares:



Engine is done. ’62 Bel Air 409 with blower, dual fours and magneto cobbled together from spares:



Here’s a chassis and body mock up with the new front axle location:

This is looking great! You have a good eye regard that overhang...it looks just right now. Can't wait to see it finished.

Absolutely spectacular and every other big word I can think of. Excellent is another.

ProBee wrote:Absolutely spectacular and every other big word I can think of. Excellent is another

Ditto! That's looking sweet as!

looking great Bryce, thats some bloody slick work.... one dumb question though, is a magneto something they use instead of a dizzy? or are they completely different? :S

those wheels look fantastic!!!

slowlylearning wrote:one dumb question though, is a magneto something they use instead of a dizzy? or are they completely different?

No such thing as dumb questions - only impatient people...

As I understand it (and I'm by no means an expert when it comes to mechanical things) a magneto has some kind of internal generator that develops it's own spark so has no need for a battery or coil. I think it came from WW2 plane engines. The problem is they are not really adjustable so are only really appropriate for full blown race engines.

Thanks for all the nice words guys - glad you like my hot rod!

In a modern car a generator or alternator is used to create electricity which is either stored in a battery or used immediately to run the engine by creating a spark that ignites the fuel air mixture and to operate various accessories. Electricity is also stored in the car's battery so it can be used to power the electric starting motor when the engine is stopped and no electricity is being generated.

In the early days of motoring, cars often did not come equipped with a storage battery, indeed they did not have electric starting systems and were started by hand cranking. To generate and deliver the electricity required for creating the spark inside the combustion chamber they used a simple but highly reliable device called a magneto.

A magneto is basically a generator that is configured to create and distribute a high-voltage pulse rather than continuous current. In operation a magneto is basically the opposite of an electromagnet which uses a coil of wire around an iron bar (the armature) to create a magnetic field. When electrical current is applied to the electromagnet's coil the coil creates a magnetic field in the armature. In a magneto the process is reversed and the magnet is moved past the armature to create an electric current in the coil.

The basic elements of a typical Magneto are:
A U shaped armature with the two ends of the U aimed at a flywheel which is attached to a driven shaft.
A pair of strong permanent magnets embedded in the flywheel.
A primary coil, made up of thick wire wrapped around one leg of the U
A secondary coil, using thinner wire than the primary coil wrapped many more times around the primary coil.
A capacitor and one or two sets of breaker points.

When the magnets fly past the ends of the U-shaped armature, they induce a magnetic field in the armature. This field creates a small amount of current in the primary and secondary coil. However, what is required is extremely high voltage, so as the magnetic field in the armature reaches its maximum, the breaker points open, stopping the flow of electricity through the primary coil. This creates a high voltage spike and with so many more turns of wire in the secondary coil, the voltage is amplified often to more than 20,000 volts, which is sent directly to the spark plug.

The entire unit is self contained and does not require a battery. This is why many race cars like top fuel dragsters and sprintcars use a magneto ignition system as it reliably generates incredibly high voltage and requires no battery. Also,the engine can be started easily by simply turning the engine over with the magneto switched on. Likewise lawnmowers, edge trimmers and small aircraft engines use magneto ignition.

Hey Bryce, nice job on a badly scaled kit, I've never understood how they got it so wrong with the fenders off yet looking OK with the fenders on.

Carps wrote:
Hey Bryce, nice job on a badly scaled kit, I've never understood how they got it so wrong with the fenders off yet looking OK with the fenders on.

Thanks Carps. From what I can work out, the grill is mounted too far forward on the fender assembly (it needs to move back about 10mm to align with the axle centreline) and they have extended the bonnet and hood sides to compensate. Not really that noticable with the fenders on as they hide the error, but once you get them off it becomes glaringly obvious. The Revell snaptite kit seems to have better proportions and I might have a crack at building another one of these with that fender assembly to see if I can get things a bit more accurate.

Sadly the revellogram Snaptite kit is abot the most accurate, but the grille on that one just plain sucks. Looks much better with the AMT grille but making it fit takes a bit of sanding and filling.

The proportions of the AMT kit with fenders installed looks just about right when most other kits are wrong and generally have the grille made too short. The relationship, crossmember to frnt axle as it comes, seems close to the real car too, it's just wrong when built fenderless.

Same thing happens at the rear, with that huge gap between chassis rails and body when the reality is that the gap is only a few inches. However, in defference to that, the body sits about the right height. Wiith fenders removed the 1/1 scale car needs lots of 'lowering' work to get the rear close to mother earth and looking cool.

Carps, being as you have a real one of these in your shed, can you measure the bonnet and hood sides and check them against the model? I think they are too long but would be curious to know if I am right.

Yup, the bonnet and sides of the real one are considerably longer than those of the model.

Carps wrote:Yup, the bonnet and sides of the real one are considerably longer than those of the model.

Smart arse...

I was curious to compare the fenders of the AMT and Revell and it confirmed my suspicions. The AMT fenders have the grill mounting almost in line with the front of the fenders, not inset as I think it should be. Here it is in a comparison with the pretty accurate Revell snap tite kit:

Acshuly, the revel kit places the grille too far back in the fenders. Likewise the headlamps are way out of place on the snap kit fenders.

Reality is that the AMT bits are close to right realatively speaking but the bonnet and chassis are simply too long by about a scale foot.

The oft maligned Revell Monogram ZZTop kit is probably closer to correctly scaled but in scale it looks wrong, which is probably why AMT stretched the bonnet, to make it 'look' rifght, because sometimes stuff that's perfectly to scale looks wrong to the nekkid eye.

The AMT 34 five window is wrong in so many ways, but when assembled with the fenders it looks more right than if it were correct to scale.

So Carps...what you are saying is that if it looks wrong then it is probably right...and to get it to look right you have to make it wrong. ...to much for my brain this morning.

I disagree Carps. The AMT front is very wrong (grill sits in line with front of fenders) and the Revell snapper is pretty close to accurate (grill inset). Unfortunately I don't have a bird's eye view pic of a real 33-34 Ford front to back up my argument...but you COULD take a photo for me if you wanted to...

These are the best I can do from my archives. They clearly show that the base of the grill is inset from the front of the fenders, as per the Revell version: