mustang1989

Thanks Gary!! Say.....didn't I see you on another forum somewhere?

This whole build started last July after I saw the kit re-released by Round 2. I've had visions in my mind for years of building a 1967 Mustang Fastback model as it would have been if I had one. I've had the pleasure of owning three 67 coupes and always wanted a fastback in real life. My last Mustang was the best of the three because it was built from the first two cars and I had managed to score a 351W from a 69 Mach 1. She also had a 4spd manual transmission and 3.55 gears. The first car I had I managed to purchase from my home town. It had a 289 2bbl with an automatic tranny and 2.79 gears. It wasn't fast but it was a good lookin' car. On one of my many trips back to Ft. Hood from my home town in North Texas I hit a deer and destroyed the front end of the car. (going off into the ditch is the WRONG thing to do when dodging animals I found out). The deer was only the beginning of the damage....while dodging the deer I didn't look on the OTHER side of it and dove into a concrete drainage system. This car....was done.....and I walked away without so much as a scratch. Whew!!! Car #1: Acquired 1989-Decommissioned-1990 I found Car #2 in a wrecking yard and rescued it. Man.....that car was rough looking BUT.....it was a GT and had all the options to include tilt away steering which was a very weird option but definitly good on the cool factor. This car also had a standard transmission from the factory. No engine or tranny was in the car when I bought her for $100 but I quickly took care of that. The 289 was carried over from Car #1 and I got a close ratio 4 speed tranny for this one. Later on I bought the 351W I was talking about earlier and freshened it up and dropped it into this car and drove it for a few more years before somebody pulled out in front of me at Ft Hood. I dodged but not before I hit him with my drivers side door in a side skid. Jeez.... Car #2 before the wreck: Acquired 1990--Decommissioned 1991 and after: The tilt way column that I was talking about. This was supposed to help with driver ingress and egress. Definitely different: This is where Car #3 comes in. Acquired 1991--Sold 2002 I bought her for $600 at Fort Hood and towed her back home. I had two other parts cars now to draw parts from to make this one the best car out of the three and one that I would have for 11 years. Me and my best friend built this car over a course of 5 days from this at day one: to this at Day 3 moving under her own power. The next two days involved finish up...bumpers, trim, interior and all the cool stuff to make this car driveable. The end result: Now....all of this is where the inspiration for my build here came from. I wanted to build a fastback with all of the things that I had in this last car with the only difference being that I wanted factory style wheels on this one. And so, I set out on my venture. I purchased this kit....and went for broke. I finished her this morning. Color is Acapulco Blue from MCW Finishes, Wet Look covers the clear coat. The pad printed tires in this kit are a God send and thanks to Eric Oberhaufer at AMT the change out from the Firestone Super Stock tires that this kit came with got changed out to the Wide O Oval tires you see in the following pictures. Model Car Garage covered most of the PE items that you'll see on this car with PE kit # MCG-2032. Joel at Iceman Collections provided the Cobra air cleaner, HGW Models provided this 1/48 scale REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT tag hanging from the rearview mirror and the CPC 64F (the same tag that was on Car #3) license plate and plate frame were provided by Thomas at Speedway decals. Throttle linkage, air cleaner wingnut & washer, fuel lines and brake lines were all either fabricated or drawn from PE parts bin. Throttle return spring is an element from an automotive turn signal bulb. Plug wires are from Lex's Scale Modeling and the 650 cfm Holley Double Pumper carburetor was from Shapeways. The hood scoop is from the AMT GT-350 kit and was graphed onto the stock hood. I also cut out the area of the hood where the scoop was to allow the air cleaner to sit up inside of the scoop from proper hood closure/ seating. Outside door handles are from Fireball Modelworks, Alclad applied to both and pinned in place. A good amount of work had to be done to get the front suspension lowered achieve the stance that I wanted and the front wheels had to be moved in ......significantly... to go inside of the wheel wells where they belonged. The rear suspension had to be raised so a light re-aching of the leaf springs is all that took. This kit is a good kit overall but there are some notable areas that need mentioning. Firts off ...the good. The base engine was well represented with only a carburetor change out needed to spice things up a bit. The interior is also well represented with good detail. The aluminum plating on the dash face is a BEAR to replicate on this one as is the door panels. If anyone's interested in how I pulled that off let me know and I'll be happy to tell you how I managed to get through it. 80% of this build was pretty straight forward BUT....the fit between the nose piece and the drivers front fender on these kits is very hard to get flush. I spent all KINDS of time trying to fix the issue and STILL ended up with a slight gap. Test fit--sand-test fit--file--test fit and MORE TEST FIT is required to get this part right. The fuel cap sticks out way too far because it's thicker than it needs to be. I took sandpaper and stuck it into the contours of the tail light panel and sanded it down to what I felt like was the proper thickness. The front and rear bumpers had little braces going down on either side of the license plate area and I don't care for those so I cut those off of both bumpers, stripped the chrome from them, cleaned 'em up and worked the Alclad magic on both. I'm pretty happy with the turnout overall as it's just the look I wanted to get from the build. Thank you guys for following along, encouraging me and helping me get through this one. Finishing shots:

WOW!!!! WOW and some more WOW!!!!! This is just crazy cool!! Love the subject and really like how the build turned out!!!

Cool build on a subject not seen much.

Frickin' WOW!!! Man that's gotta be a big model!!! Beautifully done Bruce!!

Such great work and in such a small scale. Hats off to you. Nats are comin' up next year and I plan on being there for it. Can't wait!!!

Dude that's frickin' cool!!! VERY nicely done!!!

Man.....that is indeed a huge model. It DID turn out great that's for sure. Did this come with an engine/ powertrain?

LOL!!!! Hey man.....it looks just that much sweeter IMO. Great job buddy.

That's one helluva build Carlos. Love all the attention to detail and prep work that went into this track build. Exceptional work.

Sorry I didn't get back here for the finish but that looks like it turned out great!! Paint turned out awesome!!!

What a beautiful paint job. Stance is right on and details are all that AND a bag of party mix.

Thanks fellas!! I've got another aircraft in the works coming up at the latter part of the year. My biggest build yet.

Thanks Dave! Mine too....surprised I haven't built any more of these. 'Preciate that Carlos! It was a balancing act for sure. Thank you Bill. Wow! I may have to check out YOUR builds of all those!! Thanks Mark!! I thought that was interesting about Adam's take at first but I know he's glad he did it Charlie's way. That was for sure an amazing book!!!

I've been wanting to build this aircraft for a very long time and have had two in my stash. I really wished I wouldn't have gotten rid of my Dragon Me-262A-1a Nachtjager version but this Tamiya A-1 kit was a good kit to build. I had set out to build Franz Stigler's plane from JV-44 late in the war. I read Adam Makos' book , A Higher Call several years ago and he was one of the main people that the story centered around. Long story short....he was going to shoot down a severely shot up B-17 and decided to lead them out of Germany instead. Afterwards he was assigned to JV-44 (pretty much Germany's last remaining fully operational air defense unit which was made up of the very best remaining fighter pilots) where he flew this aircraft. If you haven't read this book I won't give anything away but I'll just say that is a very powerful read. The kit is one that has been around for a while from Tamiya: There are a couple of schemes that could've been his bird but this is the one here that I went with as it just looks so dang cool.... I used Vallejo acrylics to replicate the paint and went with Eagle Cals for 95% of the markings and Peddinghaus for the #3 numerals on the side. Note.....never use the Peddinhaus offerings. Other than the #3 the stencils and other markings were just way out of scale. I had some trouble with the windscreen ended up removing it, sanding the fuselage and windscreen joints to get a better fit but that was about the only problem I had out of this awesome kit. Anyhow....after 6+ months...here is the completed build: