There's nothing like an Allison V12 if you want power

Some time ago I got my hands on MPC's Allison-powered Thunderbird, known as Allison Thunderland, or simply Big Al. Chassis and body are pretty poorly detailed, but the Allison V12 is well done and, apart from being entirely chromed, is a joy.



My interest in doing something with the Allison was revived by a tour of the Curtiss museum in Hammondsport, New York, in July this year. This is a great museum if you are a serious piston head. Apart from a number of oddball motorcycles and other odds and ends from the prewar era, they have many early aero piston engines, from a wide range of radial motors (several Curtiss motors among them, obviously) to the various V12 motors designed in the years leading up to WWII by Rolls Royce and Allison among others. The ultimate in this line was an example of the 3000 horsepower Allison Double Twelve, consisting of a pair of V12s on a common crankcase and last used in the B29. 



All this reminded me of pictures of a monster rat rod I once saw online, using a Packard V12 out of the PT boat program. So a truck-based rat rod seemed in order. Next question was what to put it in, and coincidentally AMT's White Freightliner, in the short-cab single-drive version, turned up this week. The chassis will get highjacked for the Allison, and the cab will go on my dual-drive kit in place of the sleeper cab that it came with.



First step was to dechrome the motor, so out came the Easy-Off. This left a shiny residue behind that required additional soaking in alcohol.



The Allison gearbox, visible in the photo above in the sprue on top next to valve covers, is really just a clutch housing and maybe just a reduction gear, so first step in converting this to a rat rod was to fit the gearbox from the White. Coincidence or not, this fits right on the back of the Allison, with the same 'D' shaped doweling requiring no filing or fabrication. Further coincidence, the Allison engine mounts sit perfectly inside the White chassis rails, at just about the right height to line up with the differential while sitting high enough for the exhaust pipes to clear the chassis rails. All that is needed is to tilt the motor slightly back as with the Cummins, so the driveshaft clears the middle crossmember; I'll shim up the forward mounts for this purpose. Was the White kit designed for this motor as Plan B? 



Quite the monster ... although it looks like it will be taller and shorter than I might have liked. I've got a Ford T pickup truck body that might look good on it, although a bucket would probably be more appropriate. Clearly the Freightliner radiator will be way too tall.





Note the front wheel is not attached at this point, and will sit further forward giving a lot less front overhang than the photo implies. Good progress so far; my intention will be to at least finish something in the next little while ... given I have been retired for a couple of weeks now, there should be plenty of time. Stay tuned!

Unimog, and other ugly but useful stuff

From the Cheetah to the Unimog: how's that for whiplash. For the uninitiated, the Mog is a 4X4 once built by Mercedes Benz. Actually 4X4 doesn't do it justice; it borders on the farm tractor end of the spectrum as it will go just about anywhere, just not very fast. I haven't seen one in a very long while, except about a year ago at the ferry terminal on the Vestmann Islands (an outpost off the coast of Iceland, where Iceland is an outpost off the coast of Norway, but I digress), which is where I took this picture. As you might imagine, there is quite the cult following out there for these ugly, go-anywhere ducklings, and afficionados work hard at outdoing each other in competitions for the most bizarre accessory. Hay-baler, anyone? Tall and narrow, Mog owners look down, literally, on Land Rovers.



Way back when, I did my apprenticeship at a Mercedes dealer, and they had a Mog for clearing snow and dragging cars back and forth from the mechanical shop to the body shop, a distance of a couple of blocks. It was an old one, similar to the one in the picture above but with two doors and a little pickup box, with a little 4 cylinder Diesel making something like 50 hp at its 1800 RPM redline, a gear box with six forward speeds and two reverse gears (eliminating the need for a transfer case), permanent full-time 4WD, mechanical PTOs at both ends, and, most impressively, reduction gear cases in the wheel hubs which, combined with the huge rims, allowed the differentials to be mounted substantially higher than the wheel center-line. The resulting ground clearance needs to be seen to be believed. On the flip side, all those reduction gearboxes, combined with the 1800 RPM redline, made for a maximum speed of something like 35 mph.



So in a fit of nostalgia, I built up Revell's Unimog some number of years ago, in German fire department trim. I never got around to the actual fire department equipment, leaving it as a cab with a bare chassis. A number of years later, I picked up Italeri's truck accessory package with the chassis mounted cherry picker. This has now been mounted to the back of the Mog, where it looks good if a trifle wide.





Next step was to scratch-build a small platform on the remainder of the chassis, suitable for carrying a selection of engines or other interesting bits such as a Mini which to be fair doesn't quite fit. The side panels from Hasegawa's VW pickup fit perfectly on the deck plate from the Italeri truck accessories kit. Tail lights and license plate from the Mog finish it up. No tailgate at this time as the one from the VW was too narrow.





Overall it is a quick build with a range of minor flaws, due in part to the fact that I am upgrading an older build, but still it is something unusual. The downside: While this clears a large box off the storage shelf, it wasn't technically on the 'incomplete' list, so my completion rate remains unchanged. Actually it has dropped due to new acquisitions, but that is a story for another post.



Note Revell's fire-fighting truck box, complete with accoutrements such as the rubber dinghy that goes on the roof (these Germans are always well prepared), is now surplus to requirements. The bits are all there, although the bags have been opened; nothing has been painted. I am afraid the ratty box has gone to the recycle bin. I also have Revell's curbside Mercedes-Benz 280 GE fire chief wagon.  This one is (I believe) complete, again unpainted although the bags have all been opened and the chassis assembly has begun. Again the box is missing, but the instruction sheet is available. Both decal sheets are looking pretty tired and if I were to use them, I would scan and print a new sheet. See the pictures below; let me know if you want any of it, I'd be willing to trade for other obscure stuff. (I have outgrown my fire truck phase.)

Cheetah! and other brutal, sexy little monstrosities

Historic Racing Miniatures (HRM)  is a one-man show that makes some spectacular resin kits, mainly upgrades for other kits, but also full-detail kits. Being a one-man-show, delivery can be slow. A stack of bits ordered as far back as April from Strada Sports (here) turned up in the mail today.

The cream of the crop has to be the Cheetah. Chevrolet gave Bill Thomas, famous for his work on Corvette injection systems, some money to build a Cobra-beater; the result was the Cheetah, which was brutally fast in a straight line, and was also an exceptionally striking road racer in a period when there were a lot of striking road racers being made.



What a stunning, brutal little design! The various small block Corvette engines were exactly mid-chassis, with the driver jammed up against the back axle, and essentially no rear deck: the bodywork was stretched over the mechanicals like Lycra over an athlete, the epitome of the long hood, short deck design concept.

It had its flaws, however. Headers curved up, over the top and down the outside of the footwells, making them suitable for broiling frozen turkeys as well as driver's feet. And the chassis, although state of the art on paper, wasn't really able to take advantage of Thomas's fuel injection mods, as going around corners proved to be a significant challenge. Some drivers were spooked and refused to drive it ... in the end, Chevy didn't give Thomas anywhere near as much money as Ford gave Shelby, so there was no real competition and Thomas struggled to build a dozen cars while Shelby went off to beat Ferrari on his own.

Which leads me to the HRM kit for an upgraded motor for the Ferrari 250 GTO by Fujimi. It is a gorgeous little package of resin bits, and doing it justice will require getting plug wires, fuel lines, carburettor linkages and fan belts just right. Not that the Fujimi kit is poorly detailed to start with; in fact there are lots of highly-detailed Japanese kits that never really made it over here but that are available on eBay or Hobby 1999 (here).



Finally I got some upgraded bits (headers that fit around the frame tubes, for one) for the Accurate Miniatures model of the Corvette Grand Sport. The '60s road race stuff is coming together: Corvette GS, 250 GTO, Cheetah, plus I recently splurged on a 427 Cobra roadster (Fujimi) to go with the Daytona Coupe (Model Factory Hiro).



These are all 'mid-engine' cars, in the sense that the centre of the engine block sits well behind the front axle, but the Cheetah takes it to the extreme, with the entire engine block, and then some, entirely between the axles.



It is all high quality stuff and I will need to loosen up with some basic Tamiya kits, like the Honda S800, in preparation. In fact I should probably bite the bullet and just finish the dozen or so kits that are sitting on the shelf, incomplete.

Honda S800 drivetrain and chassis

I usually have no problems getting the mechanical bits to go together well and the S800 was no different.



The little four-cylinder sits in a simple ladder frame, with a well-located rear axle and convoluted exhaust manifolding leading into a pair of straight pipes. All very neat. Separately the saga of Tamiya TS 16 Yellow remains unresolved; I'll have to make up my mind whether to fix it or press on regardless at the point where the inner fenders need to go into the body.



I am glad I decided to get back into things with something fairly straightforward as I am stiff and made a few mistakes, among them tipping over a new bottle of flat aluminum paint. Fortunately nothing got soaked ... but this is an indication it is time to sit back and regroup. The Zen feeling is not there and there is no sense pushing, because I'll just make a mistake that can't easily be fixed, and bodywork usually makes me more tense than usual.

So on to eBay where the temptation to buy obscure stuff is almost irresistible ... there is material here for an entire post on its own. Stay tuned.

Icelandic trucks

Some of you may remember my post on off-road trucks commonly found in Iceland, here. These are mounted on huge high-flotation tires suitable for taking groups of people on treks over soft snow, fording glacial rivers with soft mucky riverbanks, and crossing crevasses in glaciers. Besides being exceedingly utilitarian, these look very cool indeed. I immediately thought how nice it would be to build something like this.




Seven people in the go-anywhere Expedition, or 21 in the on-road mini bus?
Note these are both 1:1 scale, no fooling around here.
Anyway I think I know which I'd want.

So the bits are now pretty much in place: I've had an AMT 1/25 Chevy Cameo and the appropriate 1953 Chevy Suburban body from Jimmy Flintstone for some time now; all that was missing was the jacked up 4X4 chassis. I recently acquired Aoshima's 1/24 Toyota Hilux club cab with so-called 'Lift-Up' suspension which appears to have the same wheelbase as the Cameo, even though the scale is not quite the same, and the tires probably have more tread than the typical Icelandic truck. However I'd say it's close enough, and not having to scratch build the suspension is a bonus. Plus it comes with fender lips I can use to carve out the Suburban body fender wells. A Pontiac 421 Tri-Power from the  bin will provide the forward motion (the Aoshima kit is curbside, and anyway the motor is probably a 4-cylinder Diesel).




If all goes well, the only bit I'll need from the Cameo is the windshield, leaving lots of bits for future kitbashing activities. For that matter there is a lot of curvature in the windshield, but it isn't a compound curve, so I ought to be able to make it from a sheet of thin clear stock.

Meanwhile back to the Honda S800 -- I do after all have to start completing stuff.

Honda S800

With retirement less than two weeks away, I thought I should warm up with something relatively easy. I was going to tackle the Datsun 510, which is almost finished, but I seem to have misplaced the instruction sheet ... maybe I am getting slower, intellectually, at a faster rate than I had anticipated. Old Age Looms Large...

Anyway I had been looking at the Lancia 037 rallye car (Hasegawa) and the Honda S800 (Tamiya). I decided to tackle the S800, which is one of those iconic little things: 800 cc motorcycle unit making 70 hp at some ridiculous RPM level, lots of aluminum bits, the original Japanese sports car. The size of a Mini of the same vintage, it must have been a real hoot -- the 850 cc Mini, which as we all know was as much fun as a barrel of monkeys, never made much more than 45 hp and probably weighed a few hundred pounds more. The issue for westerners, of course, was actually getting into the car, and managing to push the clutch in without catching our size 9 sneakers on the brake pedal. I am guessing it is a size or two smaller than the Europa which was well suited to Colin Chapman's 5' 6" frame, and which I never managed to drive well when I was in the auto repair business back in paleolithic times.



So some painting got done, and a bit of gluing. The kit is the usual Tamiya quality, which is to say everything fits well, except that some items that need to be black or grey or silver (exhaust, carburetors, front suspension bits) are molded in yellow, while others that need to be yellow (inner fenders) are molded in black. This is not the usual Tamiya approach... so anyway I am once again up against Tamiya's yellow paint (TS-16) and its tendency to pool in cracks and sharp corners, regardless of how much Tamiya primer might reside underneath. (See earlier problems, not yet solved, here, and see the photo below of the inner fenders inserted in the body.) There is a problem here with surface tension and viscosity... it is not good and any advice would be most welcome.



Meanwhile I am planning to not paint the body which is well molded in yellow. The goal is a quick build that takes advantage of the strengths of the kit before moving on to more complex unbuilt stuff, of which I have more than a few examples on the shelf.

Speaking of unbuilt stuff, I figure I have about 2 years' worth of work on the shelf, at a steady 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. So it's going to be a slog ...  stay tuned!

Planning for retirement: where to start?

So I've gone and done it: told my boss I'll retire on August 31st. So what's first in the modeling world, given I've got 54 completed, a baker's dozen in progress, and a whopping 94 kits opened but unstarted? Here's the scoop, starting with those closest to completion.

Abarth OT 1300: last minute fiddling needed. This would be the first resin kit I have ever completed. I made a mess of the right side paint, and the front hood doesn't fit. On the other hand I got all the windows in OK, except for the headlamp fairings which I haven't dared try yet. Some fiddling required.



BRE Datsun 510: Ready for final assembly. I've been pretty positive about this complex but, so far, well built kit. However one little bug has surfaced. The front suspension goes in after the body has been attached to the chassis, since the upper strut mount is in the body inner fender, not the chassis inner fender. This is a problem because you are assembling suspension components to a painted body, with all the attendant probabilities of mangling the paint and/or decals.

Like I said, a challenging kit, not for beginners, but one that rewards careful assembly by a modeler with a few screw-ups under his belt.



Mazda 787B: Ready for final assembly. I decided to skip the full green and orange decal set on this Le Mans winner. Hey, it's the day after the race, the car can get out of its fancy duds and relax, right? Right. Problems will include the fact I made a mess of painting the windshield surrounds.



Mitsubishi Fuso car carrier: trailer complete, cab not started. Goal achieved: lots of storage space for Japanese cars. Not much else accomplished, and the cab won't fit on the same shelf as the carrier anyway. Revell's car carrier may move to the front of the queue if space becomes a problem again.



Aston Martin DBR1: Midway through a complex resin kit. This complex kit requires lots of trial fitting. The engine is done but suspension issues loom large. Getting doors and hoods to fit will be lots of fun. This is the second of four resin kits currently underway.



BRE Datsun 240Z: Chassis and engine assembly not started. I suspect this is going to be as complex as the 510, so it is still a long way to completion.



White Freightliner dual-drive: chassis and engine complete. Actually I am waiting for AMT's reissue of the single-drive chassis with the short cab to complete this. I'll put the short cab on this long, dual-drive chassis, and use the single drive chassis with an Allison V12 I have in the spares bin to make a 'hot rod'. I am not sure where the body will come from ... perhaps a chopped Freightliner cab made up as a monster T bucket, or something equally radical.



Mercedes 300 SL: Chassis complete but little else done. A classic, complex kit that will require lots of work around doors and other opening bits. The chassis is gorgeous and I'll probably display the body off the chassis.

Mercedes 190 SL: Paint but not much else done. This body is not a one-piece mold -- fenders are doweled into the cowling -- and I can foresee lots of tricky bits ahead. The 300 SL looks enormous in the picture, and while it was definitely bigger at 1:1, it is a Tamiya kit at 1/24, while the 190 SL is a Revell 1/25 kit.


Porsche 956: A typical Tamiya Le Mans build. About halfway on this one. No surprises expected.



Renault 40 NM Record: lots of fiddling here but once I get going, it should be quick because it's a curbside. The complex left side door needs a lot of fabrication, shimming and putty to get right. The third of four resin kits underway, it will have a Miller and a couple of late '30s GP cars as company.



Porsche 908/03: Infuriating! What a gorgeous, complex, maddening little kit. If I get it even partway right, I'll have to build a custom mahogany case to hold it.





Porsche 956 pickup truck: lots of fabrication to come but we are getting there. A real hooligan's dream! I'll park it next to the Allison-powered Freightliner chassis.





Lancia 037: kit I'd most like to start right now. This supercharged Monte Carlo racer is a lovely example of Group B excess. Status: engine halves have been glued together.



So there you have it -- at least a month's worth of work if nothing interferes, like for instance the imminent arrival of granddaughter #2. Stay tuned!