Chrysler 300: Wheels are a critical choice

The 300 always was a bit of a brute. Charming, sleek and handsome, but still a brute. Sort of a Klingon warbird to the Ford Starliner's feel-good Enterprise. With this in mind I started looking for alternatives to the tall, skinny 7.5" cross-plies in the kit.

I found a set of Goodyear Eagle P255/45 ZR17 tires in the parts bin. These are nice and wide, and are also a bit smaller in terms of overall diameter than the unlabeled tires in the Jo-Han kit. As a result they lower the car a bit more (about another inch at scale).



Stance and height are both good -- it all looks to be a bit of a tail-dragger which is fine. Next is to choose between mags and NASCAR steel rims. (Note the colour still comes across as slate green in the photos, although it is really more of a neutral grey.)



So: black steel rims to emphasise the brute qualities; classy mags for a brute overlaid with a charming veneer. Decisions, decisions.

Chrysler 300: on to the chassis

These old kits sure are fast builds if you don't spend hours sanding and polishing the body. Here I lowered the chassis by the simple expedient of cutting the spacers (beige blocks in the photo) through which the axle shafts fit, so that they sit as high as possible in the frame. I seem to recall that some older AMT kits offered a couple of axle locating blocks corresponding to different ride heights-- a very simple way to proceed, if not entirely replicating what you might do at 1:1.



The result is a decent stance, taking advantage of the ample room inside the fenders.



On the other hand, the narrow track is no good. The stock tires, barely 7.5 inches wide at scale, give the car something of the look of a pregnant skateboard. Significantly wider tires will be needed. I've got some 11 inch NASCAR rims that just need the right tires; Plan B is a nice set of 15" Cragar mags, with 10 to 12 inch wide, 60 or 70 series tires. The parts bin and the aftermarket will come in handy here.

Finally the body got a mix of bare metal foil and dry-brushed chrome paint on the various emblems, followed by a coat of clear. (The basic Tamiya paint is meant for military use and is relatively flat.) It's all looking pretty good at this point. Ready for launch, Captain!



Speaking of launches, I assembled the 440 cubic inch motor with the optional dual-carb setup. The 375 horsepower mill was more than adequate to motivate the 4200+ lb curb weight by dint of huge amounts of torque -- 480 foot pounds to be exact. I can only imagine what a decent set of headers and a free-flow exhaust would accomplish.



Unfortunately the kit does not offer an air cleaner for this dual-carb set up, leaving the poorly detailed carbs out in the open for all to see. I'll have a look into the parts bin where I expect to find an oval air cleaner from a Thunderbird 390 TriPower setup. A Ford component on a Mopar? You are right to proclaim this as heretic, but I haven't built a lot of Mopar kits, and the parts bin is thus lacking. Anyone have a spare air cleaner from a Cuda?

Overall a pretty simple kit under the skin, but the body is very well done. Highly recommended if you can find one for a decent price.

Chrysler 300: Paint

While the 240 Z is not stalled, I found a decent copy of Jo-Han's 1968 Chrysler 300 on eBay, which is proving to be a distraction.

I've always liked the looks of the various full-sized late-60's coupes, such as the Ford Starliner, Pontiac Parisienne and Chrysler 300. They are probably the most wasteful use of a couple of tonnes of steel one could imagine in terms of use of space, but the shapes are hard to ignore, and while there is a lot of chrome at either end, there is not a lot on the flanks. So I have been watching for some time, and the opportunity to grab one of these big brutes in decent shape turned up recently.



The '65-'66 models were also good looking, especially compared to the phenomenally ugly '63-'65 editions, but the unusual C-pillar in the '67-'68 makes it stand out.



Typically for kits of the period, detail is low, with rear suspension and exhaust molded into one piece with the chassis, but the body is straight and there is very little damage from bits rattling around in the box over the years. All it needed was cleaning up of the mold part lines and filling of two small sinkholes in the trunk lid; so far there are no obvious scratches or gouges (although the glass looks to be a bit scratched up).



The kit comes with quite nice custom front and rear roll pans as shown on the box cover art, but I suspect I'll build it stock. The only change will be to find a decent set of Cragar or similar period mags, and sit it all as low as possible. The solid axles that push through the engine block are well suited to lowering, fortunately.

As for colour, there are a lot of photos of stock versions out there, but few, apart from the wagons, have taken advantage of the opportunities available with the scalloped side panel. (Now the wagons are good-looking barges -- I wonder is there a resin body out there?) The best looking ones have vinyl roofs in a contrasting colour, for instance a white roof over dark blue or green metal. A lighter colour on the roof tends to reduce the emphasis on the C-pillar, but that is a defining feature of the car.

In the end I decided to go for a solid colour, and settled on Tamiya TS-4, German Grey, which surprisingly looks a little slate-coloured in the picture.



Next will be to highlight all the emblems and script, which are very well detailed. Perhaps I'll give Bare Metal Foil another try.

Mosquito: more cockpit details

Yes, it has been a while since I posted on this topic -- February, to be exact. I have a range of excuses which I won't bother listing because you probably won't believe me.

I got around to the instrument panel which uses an interesting approach to gauges.

The panel consists of a styrene piece full of holes, and a clear piece with little raised divots that fit snugly into the holes. The idea is that you put the decals for the different gauges on the raised divots, then insert the whole thing through the styrene piece.



The only problem is that the decals can get caught on the styrene piece as they go in, and get turned on their sides. So this all took longer than hoped for as I rescued a bunch of poorly stuck decals. The decal glue being weak, a dab of Micro Krystal Klear helped settle them all down. Miraculously, only one actually got lost, and I'll see about finding something from the parts bin.

The challenges notwithstanding, this seems like a nice approach and I can't help wondering why the mainstream styrene car kits don't use something like this. Even better would be a single decal with all the gauges, on a flat backing, and with a thinner overlay -- putting on 21 individual decals sure is time consuming, and getting them all to line up is a challenge.

Next: a second instrument panel needs to be completed; this one goes on the inside of the fuselage at right angles to the main panel, and has to go in before the cockpit assembly all goes in. This also has a handful of decals on a clear backing plate. It also includes a wiring harness which broke when I tried to clip it off the tree, so some superglue will likely be needed once it is time to install it.

Bonjour les Français!

(Note to English speakers: 44% of my page reads came from France in the last month. Gotta speak to the customers! More English posts will come, so sit tight.)

Bon, je regarde les statistiques, et mes lecteurs proviennent largement de France.

Figure 1: Rally and EU road cars (and an Impala)

Depuis le tout début de ce blogue en février 2014, les français représentent en moyenne 21% de mes chers lecteurs fidèles. Parmi mes autres chers lecteurs fidèles: les lecteurs des É.-U. (23%), de la Russie (!) (18%) et du Canada (17.5%).

Figure 2: Le Mans

Parfait. Je ne sais pas ce que veulent les Russes, mais bon. Je ne me plains pas.

Figure 3: Customs and hot rods

Par contre, pour le mois dernier, le pourcentage de lecteurs français remonte à 42%.

Figure 4. Trucks, Trucks, Trucks

Alors qu'est-ce que vous voulez, vous, les Français, quand vous lisez un blogue comme celui-ci? Je serais très heureuz de dédier à vos intérêts, de temps en temps, des contributions au bloque. Voitures françaises? kits de compagnies françaises (Heller, Profl 24)? kits de voitures Le Mans ou rallye? J'ouvre le dialogue: Communiquez avec moi par le truchement du bouton 'Comments' (pour des commentaires qui pourraient devenir publiques) ou par courriel pour des conversations privées: tbrowne.mtl (a) gmail.com. Je ferai de mon mieux pour vous répondre, en privé ou en publique.

Figure 5. The Japanese collection (and a couple of flat heads)

Vivement la conversation! J'attends vos commentaires.

BRE 240 Z: engine

Back in November 2016, I completed the BRE Datsun 510, which had been sitting around since February 2016. The verdict: A challenging but very detailed kit that would frustrate a beginner but reward a more experienced builder. Also back in February 2016, I completed the paint for the BRE Datsun 240 Z, which has been sitting on the shelf all this time.



I had been planning to complete both together but other projects intervened.



So time to hop to it and get the engine and chassis done. As with the 510, I decided to wire up the engine. The distributor grows out of the front cover on the left side of the engine, and is poorly positioned for any serious poking around, so I used an 8-cylinder distributor from Preston's Parts (with two wires trimmed off). Careful drilling of the front cover, after cutting off the stock distributor, is needed.



The plugs are well molded and can be used with the little boots available as part of distributor kits from Preston, Detail Master, Model Car Garage or others, but I have never had much luck with these, so I cut off the plugs and drilled through into the head instead, inserting the leads into the heads as far as necessary. If you drill clean through into the cavity inside the engine block, you don't have to worry about trimming wires to the correct length only to make them too short.

The Nissan 240Z OHC script on the cam cover can be brought out with a bit of gentle sandpaper after putting on a coat of gloss black, but is not as clear as in some other engines I have built.



The carbs come with a one-piece throttle linkage (a nice touch) and with holes predrilled for fuel lines, so I went for it.



One important point: the kit comes with bits for a street version of the 240 Z (which I don't recall seeing); so the plated reproduction of a stock exhaust manifold is not needed.

Next will be various chassis and interior bits. So far this is an excellent kit without excessive frustration if you build it straight out of the box, but offering opportunities to build in more detail if you feel like it. Stay tuned!

917 K Gulf Oil: Complete

OK, enough with the trucks, back to the good stuff. The 917 just needed final assembly.



But first I spent a fair bit of time with a polishing kit to try to get rid of the orange peel in the paint. I got a lot of it out, but it's tedious; plus I wound up going through to the primer in a couple of places. So the lesson is: avoid orange peel in the first place.



So the paint is a bit sloppy, and this is certainly an area where I could be doing better going forward. Decals went on OK, glass went in OK (the white Micro Krystal Klear glue still shows here as it hasn't completely set).



The HRM motor sits in there nicely, taking up over half the wheelbase. What a monster. I've ordered another motor to build up as a separate display unit. (The Fujimi motor is very basic and takes advantage of the fact it is all hidden once assembled.)



Comparison with the 956 is interesting. Water cooling is a big difference. The 917 managed about 100 hp per litre on air cooling alone. There is an upper limit to this, however, due to the fact that heat transfer coefficients from an aluminum head to air are at least one order of magnitude less than to a liquid. So you need huge surface area in the form of finned cylinders and liners, or you use liquid cooling and move the finned area elsewhere, such as into the door frames as seen here in the 956. The radiator surface area needed in the 956 is substantial, and this is just for the heads -- the 956 motor still had a big fan for the cylinder liners. Of course in a 956, there is something like 600 hp from substantially less than 3 litres, so more than double the specific power of the 917.



All in all a good kit, the HRM motor is an excellent addition, and I probably could have been a bit tidier with it all. Lessons learned will serve for the other four 917 kits on the shelf ... Completion ratio is now a whopping 33%.