In a nutshell, 3 cars were built for "Two Lane Blacktop". After that was wrapped, 2 of the 3 were modified for American Graffiti.
Guide to the three Two-Lane Blacktop/American Graffiti '55 Chevrolets
Main Car 1 - Equipped with a 427 crate motor, M-22 Muncie, 4.88 Olds rear, fiberglass front end, doors, and trunk lid, straight axle front suspension when built. Used for exterior shots in Two-Lane Blacktop, modified for American Graffiti.
Main Car 2 - Equipped with a 454 crate motor, M-22 Muncie, 4.88 Olds rear, fiberglass front end, doors, and trunk lid, straight axle front suspension when built. Used only in Two-Lane Blacktop for interior scenes.
Stunt Car - All steel-bodied car equipped with a 454 crate motor, TH 400 automatic, Olds rear of unknown gearing. Used Two-Lane Blacktop, modified for American Graffiti. Crushed in the late 1970s.
This is where the "fun" begins. There are plenty of models out there of '55's, even some with tube-axles - but none with a tilt front end - or they're coupe's... not 210's.
The kit I'm starting with is AMT/ERTL's '55 BelAir 2-door sedan. It is out of production, so I had to find one on EvilBay without paying ridiculous vintage, un-opened kit price. I finally found one at a reasonable price. I chose this particular kit because it is a higher-end kit with much more inclusive detail (to build as stock) than the "hot rod" versions. I'll have to sand off all the wonderful BelAir molding detail... but it's a 210. I'm planning to build the tilt front-end, the tube axle setup, and do the tunnel ram BB.
I've gotten started marking off what'll need to be cut out for the tilt conversion. The hard part will be building the finishing pieces to wrap the firewall around and complete the cowl/footwells (exposed with the front end tilted), and the fronts of the doors & hinges (also exposed). Luckily the prototype had a "smoothed" firewall with no accessories, so I can just use sheet-stock. The problem is that in model kits, the interior "tub" is usually used to complete part of the tunnel & floor - as is the case in this kit. I may have to section the tub and make it part of the frame.
The other bytch is the dang molded-in single exhaust & muffler. It's hollow, so if I carve it off, there'll be a slot down the length of the floorpan .
I think maybe doing the real one on my 64 was easier. What a lot of fabricating.
John D said
Feb 18, 2017
Some progress on the '55 build.
Glued the hood into position on the fenders, then proceeded to cut the fenders free from the body along the door-gap line. Using the hood/fender assembly, some soft foam, and a piece of paper, I pressed the "clip" into the paper to make a template. The template was transferred to plastic sheet stock and the new firewall and cowl/footboxes were started.
Very cool !!! I'll know who to get to help if I make my 54 a flip front...
John D said
Feb 22, 2017
Next phase of the firewall build-up...
I originally tried this in sheet-brass. No... at .003" every-single-ding-dent-crease showed up and couldn't be removed - soldering was a bytch, yeah... NO. I wound up using the brass parts as cutting templates for the plastic sheet stock. It really was a blessing in disguise. The failure of the brass parts really helped in plastic. The plastic actually worked better with the adhesives and the DDSSAPSPMBF (Dr. Duck's Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce & Plastic Model Body Filler).
You can see in the final shots how well DDSSAPSPMBF works. It fills huge gaps, and sands down to a surface equal to the parent plastic.
The firewall's about as done as it can be until final assembly. On to the tilt front end.
The hood was already glued to the body before cutting the front end off. I carefully Dremel'd the original molded "ledge" for the hood off, then reinforced the joint (inside & out) with more DDSSAPSPMBF. When that was hardened, more Dremel work to smooth the inside surface to plan out a frame for the tilt front end. Using the archive photo's as a guide, I pretty much duplicated what was built originally, using 1/16" brass tubing. (scaled out it comes to a little over 1" dia) Using some temporary plastic locating blocks glued in place (for repeatability) I tweaked/bent and final soldered the hood frame. The vehicle frame was marked, then drilled for a cross-tube. Once the cross-tube was in place, the hood/fenders were set in place and the frame horns marked for cutting. I have to keep the frame horns poking out from the body for the bumper attachment points. The horns were cut, re-glued to the hood/fenders, and the stubs rounded/contoured for hinges to work. Made the hinges from more tube and rod stock, reassembled everything and soldered the hinge rods to the framework in the final location.
Once I was satisfied with the operation of the tilt (with everything held in place with tape), I used ACC (crazy-glue) and more DDSSAPS to lock the tubing in place.
Very cool vid, John. I especially like the SRV soundtrack. Yep, I have his stuff too...
John D said
Mar 9, 2017
Next installment on the Falfa '55 - the rear wheel openings.
The movie car had the rear wheel openings/1/4's opened up to nearly 1/2 circle. Time to align the brain as to how to do this thinking as a low-budget street racer. Well... break out the jigsaw and cut the 1/4's out up to nearly the edge of the inner wheelhouse, and roll the rough edge under. Slather on some "Bondo" (or polyester body filler - Karl) into a respectable shape and call it good.
(The kit is a "Bel-Air"... with all the chrome side spears and stuff. That all had to come off. There's about 1-1/2 hours of filing and sanding on each side to get rid of that molded in detail without gouging the 1/4-panel and causing more work!)
Using the inner wheelhouse as a guide/template, I used a scribe to mark the radius on the body shell. Broke out the dremel and a burr, and hogged away the body to close to the line. Some hand-work with a file and sandpaper to nudge it closer to the final line. Then some .040 brass wire was rough-formed into a semicircle, and crazy-glued to the body. This will give me a nice rounded edge to fill/sand/work to. I'll fill the void with some Dr. Duck's Sauce and contour the shape and blend it into the body.
I filled the area between the wire and the body with Dr. Duck's Sauce, and did some preliminary shaping with the Dremel and a small round-end stone. I wanted a rounded blend from body to lip, not just an angled fill. Once that was close (even a little under) I shot a guide-coat of primer, then used some "real" modelling filler to get the final shape.
("Real" model filler is very similar to glazing putty - takes forever to dry - but is very sandable and is of a consistent mix. Dr. Duck's Sauce is never exactly the same way twice, and has a habit of being very hard... more like fiberglass than filler.)
Next will be a complete wet-sanding to 1000g, then a complete prep & coating of Tamiya primer-surfacer.
Believe it or not, I've actually found some time to get back on the bench and blow the dust off the '55 Falfa car. I made this video months ago, and neglected to post it here.
I'm well into fabricating the straight axle front end, which then caused "project creep" into working on the rear axle - so I could get the stance right.
I'll apologize for the lack of photo's, as when I get "in the zone" I forget to take pictures. But I'll do what I can. Here's the part II video
John D said
Jan 13, 2018
These pieces have been done for quite awhile... just haven't gotten 'round to editing the pictures and posting.
This job really blew the dust off my old machining skills, and the little Sherline lathe/mill rig got a workout. In reality, I probably spent more time making jigs & fixtures to hold the material than actually carving the parts! The soldering skills got a refresher as well, as it's a pain to attach the next piece without DE-soldering the previous!
The bulk of the pictures are of "front axle V3.0".
The first one was just all wrong - and a learning curve. I tried using solid rod-stock, but nothing was available off the shelf in the correct scale diameter. Axle #2 was tubing, but I couldn't get correct bend without either collapsing the tube or having the radius of the kick-up too "long".
As with most things "3rd time's a charm". I used tubing again, much longer than needed and soldered one end shut. I then filled the tube with water, and crimped the other end shut. A simple jig was built and I was able to bend the tubing to a tight radius without collapsing the tube.
The kingpins and spindles were turned from rod stock. The spindle pivot piece/knuckle was a piece of brass channel shaped to fit, and the spindle soldered to it. The tie-rod is brass wire, with some rod stock ends. The coil-overs are a piece of brass wire with cross-tube sections soldered on the end(s). The spring cups are turned aluminum, and the spring itself is copper wire wound on a mandrel. The upper mounts are brass channel filed to shape, and the lowers are little brass tabs made from sheet stock, soldered to the axle.
This job was simple by comparison to the front axle.
There's not a much archival pictures of the real setup, and it's pretty much buried under the car anyway. I used some "artistic license" here.
When I had the Sherline jigged up to cut the front radius rod mounts (out of a brass block), I also cut some pieces of channel to make the radius rod rear mounts, and the rear axle ladder bar brackets. The ladder bars are simple lengths of brass rod/wire stock, soldered together. Using the artistic license, I made the front cross-mount also a quasi driveshaft loop.
The axle is visible under the rear of the model, so some additional detail is needed. I made the axle U-bolts from wire, and cut/filed/drilled the mounting plates from sheet stock. The real car has disc brakes on the back. Having to make some rear rotors actually solved a few problems. The wheels & tires for the rear are from another kit - the wheels have a large axle stub hole in them. I turned new hub/rotor from aluminum to fit the wheels, with a (blind) center hole for a rod to run through the hollow plastic axle housing.
Next installment... video's (maybe), and header/exhaust fabrication.
I just ran across one of your videos a few weeks ago, and was wondering if you had made any progress lately.
Lost in the 60s said
Jan 16, 2018
Just crazy cool....
John D said
Jan 16, 2018
The rear axle detail was more "artistic license" than actual fact... I only found one archival photo and it didn't really have any details. I just kinda "winged it"... and built my own ladder bar and cross-tube/shaft-loop. The rear discs were a necessary by-product - I needed a way to mount the rear wheels. The spring plates & U-bolts were an OCD diversion.
The headers are really well documented in photos... but after they disappear under the body is another story.
Using ordinary plumbing solder (which happened to scale out to 1-7/8" !) I bent up the left and right bank of tubes. Using a scale-sized jig at the collector and cylinder head ends I made collectors and flanges from aluminum & brass. Don't ask me how 30+ linear inches of material finally turned into eight less than 2" pieces of finished product. Lets just say that the final result is a lot of scrap in the circular file. The collectors are machined aluminum, fit over the end of the pipe cluster, then a hand-burnishing tool used to coax the round into & around the 4 pipes.
The mufflers are a scrap-box item, but I machined some aluminum inlets & outlets to accept the pipes. The plastic parts are wrapped in aluminum foil. The final exhaust pipes are 3mm aluminum tube, slash cut/milled at 60 deg's.
I realized at the Bowtie Brunch that it's going on 1 year for the Falfa '55 model build! It's funny how a hobby project can come & go when there's no real deadline.
At least with me, I have to be in the right frame of mind to work in "miniature-land".There are some days when I'll go down to the Skunkworks (Dashboard's name for the basement shop) sit down, and "It just ain't happening". Other times I'll have a brainflash during the day (an idea of how to make/solve something) and I'll sit down and knock it out - get more done in a few hours than the last 2 months! You just have to be in the zone.
On my YouTube channel, one of my subscribers asked "Where do you build your models?" I never really gave it much thought, but when I started to think about it some important things came to mind.
My Dad got me started on model cars when I was about 5 or 6. On the rare nights he was home early, or on the occasional weekend we would work on a simple "Snap-Kit" together. After awhile he saw that this hobby was probably not a "flash-in-the-pan" childhood thing. I wanted to build more complicated kits, with painting involved, etc. He built a tilt-down worktable and shelves in my bedroom closet (5 year olds don't have many "hang-it-up" clothes) for projects. I guess you could say it was my 1st workbench.
One of the keys to success in any hobby is to have a dedicated workspace. A place where things can be laid out undisturbed for a length of time. Having to "pack up/put away" after every session is counter-productive. Ever since that closet workbench I have had a place to tinker - even if it was a card-table in the corner - there was a place to work.
Another thing is tools. Accumulate them as you need (or can afford). There's a time & place for bargain/cheap tools, but on "mission-critical" stuff buy quality and take care of it! (I still use a Paasche airbrush I bought in 1976... it was a princely sum of $29.00 for a 12-year old.)
Enough rambling... Here's some pics of a dry-fit session with all the scratchbuilt parts coming together. Nothing's glued or permanent yet, it'll all have to come apart for paint.
Here's a link to the whole story about the '55 Chevy used in American Graffiti - This was the easiest to decipher, and without a lot of the nit-picky #1, #2, #3 car stuff... this is the information I'm going with for the model build. I've also gleaned a few dozen still shots from both films for reference.
In a nutshell, 3 cars were built for "Two Lane Blacktop". After that was wrapped, 2 of the 3 were modified for American Graffiti.
Guide to the three Two-Lane Blacktop/American Graffiti '55 Chevrolets
This is where the "fun" begins. There are plenty of models out there of '55's, even some with tube-axles - but none with a tilt front end - or they're coupe's... not 210's.
The kit I'm starting with is AMT/ERTL's '55 BelAir 2-door sedan. It is out of production, so I had to find one on EvilBay without paying ridiculous vintage, un-opened kit price. I finally found one at a reasonable price. I chose this particular kit because it is a higher-end kit with much more inclusive detail (to build as stock) than the "hot rod" versions. I'll have to sand off all the wonderful BelAir molding detail... but it's a 210. I'm planning to build the tilt front-end, the tube axle setup, and do the tunnel ram BB.
I've gotten started marking off what'll need to be cut out for the tilt conversion. The hard part will be building the finishing pieces to wrap the firewall around and complete the cowl/footwells (exposed with the front end tilted), and the fronts of the doors & hinges (also exposed). Luckily the prototype had a "smoothed" firewall with no accessories, so I can just use sheet-stock. The problem is that in model kits, the interior "tub" is usually used to complete part of the tunnel & floor - as is the case in this kit. I may have to section the tub and make it part of the frame.
The other bytch is the dang molded-in single exhaust & muffler. It's hollow, so if I carve it off, there'll be a slot down the length of the floorpan
.
Some progress on the '55 build.
Glued the hood into position on the fenders, then proceeded to cut the fenders free from the body along the door-gap line.
Using the hood/fender assembly, some soft foam, and a piece of paper, I pressed the "clip" into the paper to make a template.
The template was transferred to plastic sheet stock and the new firewall and cowl/footboxes were started.
Very cool !!! I'll know who to get to help if I make my 54 a flip front...
Next phase of the firewall build-up...
I originally tried this in sheet-brass. No... at .003" every-single-ding-dent-crease showed up and couldn't be removed - soldering was a bytch, yeah... NO.
I wound up using the brass parts as cutting templates for the plastic sheet stock. It really was a blessing in disguise. The failure of the brass parts really helped in plastic. The plastic actually worked better with the adhesives and the DDSSAPSPMBF (Dr. Duck's Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce & Plastic Model Body Filler).
You can see in the final shots how well DDSSAPSPMBF works. It fills huge gaps, and sands down to a surface equal to the parent plastic.
The firewall's about as done as it can be until final assembly. On to the tilt front end.
The hood was already glued to the body before cutting the front end off. I carefully Dremel'd the original molded "ledge" for the hood off, then reinforced the joint (inside & out) with more DDSSAPSPMBF. When that was hardened, more Dremel work to smooth the inside surface to plan out a frame for the tilt front end.
Using the archive photo's as a guide, I pretty much duplicated what was built originally, using 1/16" brass tubing. (scaled out it comes to a little over 1" dia) Using some temporary plastic locating blocks glued in place (for repeatability) I tweaked/bent and final soldered the hood frame.
The vehicle frame was marked, then drilled for a cross-tube. Once the cross-tube was in place, the hood/fenders were set in place and the frame horns marked for cutting. I have to keep the frame horns poking out from the body for the bumper attachment points. The horns were cut, re-glued to the hood/fenders, and the stubs rounded/contoured for hinges to work.
Made the hinges from more tube and rod stock, reassembled everything and soldered the hinge rods to the framework in the final location.
Once I was satisfied with the operation of the tilt (with everything held in place with tape), I used ACC (crazy-glue) and more DDSSAPS to lock the tubing in place.
Next installment on the Falfa '55 - the rear wheel openings.
The movie car had the rear wheel openings/1/4's opened up to nearly 1/2 circle. Time to align the brain as to how to do this thinking as a low-budget street racer. Well... break out the jigsaw and cut the 1/4's out up to nearly the edge of the inner wheelhouse, and roll the rough edge under. Slather on some "Bondo" (or polyester body filler - Karl) into a respectable shape and call it good.
(The kit is a "Bel-Air"... with all the chrome side spears and stuff. That all had to come off. There's about 1-1/2 hours of filing and sanding on each side to get rid of that molded in detail without gouging the 1/4-panel and causing more work!)
Using the inner wheelhouse as a guide/template, I used a scribe to mark the radius on the body shell. Broke out the dremel and a burr, and hogged away the body to close to the line.
Some hand-work with a file and sandpaper to nudge it closer to the final line.
Then some .040 brass wire was rough-formed into a semicircle, and crazy-glued to the body. This will give me a nice rounded edge to fill/sand/work to. I'll fill the void with some Dr. Duck's Sauce and contour the shape and blend it into the body.
Rear Wheel Openings Pt. II
I filled the area between the wire and the body with Dr. Duck's Sauce, and did some preliminary shaping with the Dremel and a small round-end stone. I wanted a rounded blend from body to lip, not just an angled fill. Once that was close (even a little under) I shot a guide-coat of primer, then used some "real" modelling filler to get the final shape.
("Real" model filler is very similar to glazing putty - takes forever to dry - but is very sandable and is of a consistent mix. Dr. Duck's Sauce is never exactly the same way twice, and has a habit of being very hard... more like fiberglass than filler.)
Next will be a complete wet-sanding to 1000g, then a complete prep & coating of Tamiya primer-surfacer.
Believe it or not, I've actually found some time to get back on the bench and blow the dust off the '55 Falfa car. I made this video months ago, and neglected to post it here.
I'm well into fabricating the straight axle front end, which then caused "project creep" into working on the rear axle - so I could get the stance right.
I'll apologize for the lack of photo's, as when I get "in the zone" I forget to take pictures. But I'll do what I can. Here's the part II video
These pieces have been done for quite awhile... just haven't gotten 'round to editing the pictures and posting.
This job really blew the dust off my old machining skills, and the little Sherline lathe/mill rig got a workout. In reality, I probably spent more time making jigs & fixtures to hold the material than actually carving the parts! The soldering skills got a refresher as well, as it's a pain to attach the next piece without DE-soldering the previous!
The bulk of the pictures are of "front axle V3.0".
The first one was just all wrong - and a learning curve. I tried using solid rod-stock, but nothing was available off the shelf in the correct scale diameter. Axle #2 was tubing, but I couldn't get correct bend without either collapsing the tube or having the radius of the kick-up too "long".
As with most things "3rd time's a charm". I used tubing again, much longer than needed and soldered one end shut. I then filled the tube with water, and crimped the other end shut. A simple jig was built and I was able to bend the tubing to a tight radius without collapsing the tube.
The kingpins and spindles were turned from rod stock. The spindle pivot piece/knuckle was a piece of brass channel shaped to fit, and the spindle soldered to it. The tie-rod is brass wire, with some rod stock ends. The coil-overs are a piece of brass wire with cross-tube sections soldered on the end(s). The spring cups are turned aluminum, and the spring itself is copper wire wound on a mandrel. The upper mounts are brass channel filed to shape, and the lowers are little brass tabs made from sheet stock, soldered to the axle.
This job was simple by comparison to the front axle.
There's not a much archival pictures of the real setup, and it's pretty much buried under the car anyway. I used some "artistic license" here.
When I had the Sherline jigged up to cut the front radius rod mounts (out of a brass block), I also cut some pieces of channel to make the radius rod rear mounts, and the rear axle ladder bar brackets. The ladder bars are simple lengths of brass rod/wire stock, soldered together. Using the artistic license, I made the front cross-mount also a quasi driveshaft loop.
The axle is visible under the rear of the model, so some additional detail is needed. I made the axle U-bolts from wire, and cut/filed/drilled the mounting plates from sheet stock. The real car has disc brakes on the back. Having to make some rear rotors actually solved a few problems. The wheels & tires for the rear are from another kit - the wheels have a large axle stub hole in them. I turned new hub/rotor from aluminum to fit the wheels, with a (blind) center hole for a rod to run through the hollow plastic axle housing.
Next installment... video's (maybe), and header/exhaust fabrication.
I just ran across one of your videos a few weeks ago, and was wondering if you had made any progress lately.
Just crazy cool....
The rear axle detail was more "artistic license" than actual fact... I only found one archival photo and it didn't really have any details. I just kinda "winged it"... and built my own ladder bar and cross-tube/shaft-loop. The rear discs were a necessary by-product - I needed a way to mount the rear wheels. The spring plates & U-bolts were an OCD diversion.
The headers are really well documented in photos... but after they disappear under the body is another story.
Using ordinary plumbing solder (which happened to scale out to 1-7/8" !) I bent up the left and right bank of tubes. Using a scale-sized jig at the collector and cylinder head ends I made collectors and flanges from aluminum & brass. Don't ask me how 30+ linear inches of material finally turned into eight less than 2" pieces of finished product. Lets just say that the final result is a lot of scrap in the circular file. The collectors are machined aluminum, fit over the end of the pipe cluster, then a hand-burnishing tool used to coax the round into & around the 4 pipes.
The mufflers are a scrap-box item, but I machined some aluminum inlets & outlets to accept the pipes. The plastic parts are wrapped in aluminum foil. The final exhaust pipes are 3mm aluminum tube, slash cut/milled at 60 deg's.
I realized at the Bowtie Brunch that it's going on 1 year for the Falfa '55 model build! It's funny how a hobby project can come & go when there's no real deadline.
At least with me, I have to be in the right frame of mind to work in "miniature-land".There are some days when I'll go down to the Skunkworks (Dashboard's name for the basement shop) sit down, and "It just ain't happening". Other times I'll have a brainflash during the day (an idea of how to make/solve something) and I'll sit down and knock it out - get more done in a few hours than the last 2 months! You just have to be in the zone.
On my YouTube channel, one of my subscribers asked "Where do you build your models?" I never really gave it much thought, but when I started to think about it some important things came to mind.
My Dad got me started on model cars when I was about 5 or 6. On the rare nights he was home early, or on the occasional weekend we would work on a simple "Snap-Kit" together. After awhile he saw that this hobby was probably not a "flash-in-the-pan" childhood thing. I wanted to build more complicated kits, with painting involved, etc. He built a tilt-down worktable and shelves in my bedroom closet (5 year olds don't have many "hang-it-up" clothes) for projects. I guess you could say it was my 1st workbench.
One of the keys to success in any hobby is to have a dedicated workspace. A place where things can be laid out undisturbed for a length of time. Having to "pack up/put away" after every session is counter-productive. Ever since that closet workbench I have had a place to tinker - even if it was a card-table in the corner - there was a place to work.
Another thing is tools. Accumulate them as you need (or can afford). There's a time & place for bargain/cheap tools, but on "mission-critical" stuff buy quality and take care of it! (I still use a Paasche airbrush I bought in 1976... it was a princely sum of $29.00 for a 12-year old.)
Enough rambling... Here's some pics of a dry-fit session with all the scratchbuilt parts coming together. Nothing's glued or permanent yet, it'll all have to come apart for paint.
Really cool, John.
I'd agree, this evolved beyond "flash-in-a-pan" level...
Um....you were only 12 in '76 ????