AMT custom 1949 Ford

 

When I saw the picture below in the Belgian magazine Chroom en Vlammen (Chrome and Flames), I knew I wanted to try to model this custom car. It is (was?) an 1950 Ford, widened, sectioned (taking a horizontal piece from the body) and chopped. I'm generally not a fan of custom cars, but this one I definitely liked a lot. I found out that AMT had a model of a 1949 Ford, which was close enough for me. Later I found out that the 1949-1951 bodies are basically the same. It then took a while before I found this kit in a shop.

Preparation

Since it was my first custom conversion, I carefully studied how to cut the kit. I decided I needed drawings first. I photographed the model with the longest lens I had to minimize perspective problems. I then projected the slides on a piece of paper, and drew the car in four views.  
  With copies of these drawings I devised where to cut the kit. I cut up one drawing to see where I best could make sawcuts. The sketching is visible in the scan.

Construction

It was time for some serious sawing! In contrast to careful the preparations, I immediately cut the kit in 10 pieces. I then had quite a problem getting all the parts properly aligned again ..

The picture on the right shows the cut in body sides (6 millimeters), still visible as a vague black line. I also cut off the lower rear part of the rear fenders. The top chop is some 5 millimeters. Like the real car, I bent the A-pillars backwards, so the windshield would be at a 'cooler' angle. This was achieved by making '80% percent through' saw cuts, bending, and then fixing it with plastic card and superglue. The B-pillars were used as reference points for this, since these were only shortened. The C-pillars were not so easy. Prime concern here was to get rear window right again; the upper side of the rear side windows would be destroyed anyway. The complete C-pillar was cut out, modified and glued back as best as possible. A lot of sanding was needed to get about right again.  
  Since I wanted to build a flip-top hood, I decided to cut off the front end. The front end consisted of the engine bay and the front fenders. The result of the cut is clearly visible in the first photo. The photo on the left shows the repairs to the firewall. These were made with plastic card and lots of superglue. The picture also shows the strip of 8 millimeters used to widen the car.
The next picture shows the widening of the car with a plastic card strip. It also shows the front fenders glued to the hood. The nose of the car still shows traces of the blue Tamiya putty. I started to smooth out the joints with ordinary Tamiya filler. It took me a while to learn that this doesn't work. The putty is softer than the plastic, and sanding keeps creating shallow dents where the putty is. I then switched to super glue, my favorite filler since some time. This improved things a lot! It has been quite a drag to get the body smooth again, but I'm slowly getting there. I sprayed the roof purple at one time, to check the smoothness.  

And that's the stage in which the kit was returned to its box. In the mean time I found out that I need to stretch the boot 12 millimeters to match the real car. Not an easy job, since the rear of the car tapers quite strongly. Let's first finish the current modifications.



Kit history

I compiled an overview of all boxings that I could find on Ebay and Google. They are roughly in chronological order. After having seen all the versions in this kit's history, and their instruction sheets, I finally understand the purpose of many of the extra parts included in my AMT-Ertl #6580 edition. The Plastic model kit instructions site has a ton of old instruction sheets.

   
AMT T149-149 AMT 2249-170 (1966-67)


       
AMT T444-300 AMT T261 AMT T290 (~1975 ?)


       
AMT 2255 (1980) AMT-Ertl 6580 (~1985) AMT-Ertl 6805 (1991)


       
AMT-Ertl RC2-AMT 6805 Round2-AMT AMT601 (2008)


Modeling links

Concluding this page, some links:



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