Ford Fairlane: Complete (#8 for 2019)

I don't build a lot of Yank Tanks, but this one was meant to serve as a guinea pig in a rattle can paint tutorial posted on the Model Car How-To group on Facebook. The rest of it was done up in relatively straight-forward fashion, with minor deviations from Out-Of-Box.



The 390 got plug wires from one of the aftermarket people, and a fuel line made of 0.020" brass rod. Wires look fat at 0.018", almost half an inch at full scale. There are thinner wires out there but as you get into 0.012" or 0.014" wires, the drill becomes increasingly fragile, and the wires lack stiffness to be able to poke them through into cylinder heads or coils.Plug Wires: The Final Frontier?



The 390 sure is a tight fit in the Fairlane bay. The coil springs, located above the upper A-arms, intrude into the bay the way a MacPherson strut would. A better fit in the Galaxie, perhaps?



The interior is pretty basic. I painted according to colour schemes found in some pictures from the Interweb. The kit included no decals for dials. The molded-in door handles and window winders were left alone. 



The chassis has been lowered by about 3 scale inches, by putting blocks under the rear leaf springs and by putting the uprights in upside down. At 1:1, these mods would both require a lot of inner fender work as the tires are jammed in there pretty tight, but at 1:25, hey it's a model. No problemo.



The only other major change was to swap in a set of Cragars from the parts box.The proper Fairlane mags are distinctive but not really that good looking, in my view. Black backing plates make the Cragars stand out nicely.



Overall it looks good. The kit had a few places where you needed to simultaneously glue three or four parts together in order to be sure it all lined up (two inner fenders, firewall and radiator, for example), but it's nothing a relatively practiced builder of AMT annuals can't handle. The lack of a functional tie rod means the two front wheels steer independently of each other.



There are a couple of scratches in the hood that are deep enough to require striping and repainting, not just sanding and polishing, so I am going to let it be. Another one done! Onwards.