What I have decided to do is use one page of my website to feature a car that was built for a customer. The car I choose is not nessarily the latest, coolest or most involved build but one that maybe shows the range of things that can be done in diecast modifying.

Here is the first 1/18 scale 1955 Chevy 210 post.

What the customer has is a 55 Chevy 2 door post. 2 tone, black and teal blue. 2 tone black and teal blue interior with Eleanor style Shelby wheels. Small block with chrome valve covers and really not much more. Its a look good more than a go fast.




So boys and girls....... how do you create a stock 55 2 door post you might ask ? Well..... it starts with these 2 cars. Its hard to see but I will tell you some of the differences. 1, 55 Chevy Belair and 1, 55 Chvey American Graffiti 2 door post.

Now remember the starter car is the AG Black 55.... for its right roofline and rear quarters but that's it. I need a stock front end, working hood, stock rear wheel openings and working doors and a full interior.

The first thing that has to be done is to cut the good front end off the stock Belair but where. Well I choose to cut it at the cowl closest to the windshield and fused it at the base of the A pillar. The other cut was made at the furthest edge of the rocker where it meets the door jam at the rear quarter. This took a while to get lined up right as the AG 55 is 1/8 inch wider than the Belair body.

Once this was lined up and secured with some glue until I could get the JB weldstick applied I then cut some brass channel to mount on the underside of the body to the rocker for more support. By doing this though I has to shave a little off both sides of the chassis so it would clear the brass supports.

Now with the bodies fused I test fitted the windows and the front needed some shaving across the lower edge so it would fit flush and tight. Now that this was done I checked door fit. Remember I am using the AG door but with the Belair front clip. The hinges are no where near close so I had to do some bending and finessing to get them to fit..... this worked but the mounting posts inside the Belair clip would not fit the holes in the AG dog legs so.... I had the cut the mounting post lower so the dog leg sleeve would fit over it tightly. This part of the project alone took the better part of 4 hours. Remember if I cut too much I have to basically start over and the car had to have working doors.

So now that I have that done I then had to figure out a different way to secure the hood from the underside since I was not using the Belair dash board. See that dash is set up to be the support for the hood to work by. With that gone there was no support so I had to make a couple plastic U tabs fit over the top to allow the hood to work and still sit correctly and not flop around.

OK, you guys with me still ?? Cause were just starting with mod. Remember I'm duplicating a real car so there is no..... oh well.. I will just do this or that. See I HAD to use the AG dash board.... since it matched the customers, except for color. So now I have the hood and doors working I can move on to the body mods.

The AG 55 body has cut out rear 1/4's..... so the first thing was to fill those and make the proper wheel lips. This was done using sheet styrene and some small solid plastic rod, bondo and putty along with a bunch of sanding and priming. I then moved to the front fenders.... remember the Belair has chrome trim but the customers car does not. Once this was removed I cut and fit some sheet plastic then trimmed it and formed it as needed to duplicate what the post cars had. Again, lots of filling, sanding and priming.

The interior was a little more involved then normal...... first off the AG 55 doe not have a back seat. The front seat I used was from the AG car but if you have one you will see there are divider lines in it and the stock Belair rear seat that I cut out of the interior bucket has all the stock ribbing in it so... I had to make that go away and create a smooth stock seat. Once that was done I had to trial fit and trim some more until I would mount in the back correctly.

So...with the basic interior laid out I had to go about creating the embossed patterns on the seats and door panels. Oh ya the door panels. I had to cover those in sheet styrene to make them smooth so I could lay the pattern on it. First I use very thin sheet styrene and hand drew the cross and flames. Once done I used an X Acto to trim it out. I trial fit it then flipped it and duplicated it on another piece or plastic so I had the same pattern for both sides. This done they were coated with glue and attached to the front and rear door panels as the customers are. I then laid out and cut out the cross pattern for the front seat and attached that and did the same for the rear seat but had to add some flames off the cross.





Once this was all attached it was then all sanded to get some of the rough edges off the pattern so it would lay smother and was now ready for paint. I hand mixed the color as close to the outside as possible then mixed the Dupont interior additive in and sprayed it as you see. The black pattern you see on the seats was laid out before the color was shot. That is actually masking take cut to match his seat pattern. Once the interior was sprayed I used a satin black and a brush to paint the inserts. I also flocked the carpet and clearcoated the top of the dash as is his.

Now with the interior and body mods done it was time to paint the car and the first thing was shooting the black. Once done and dry I masked off for the teal blue and hand mixed that color. Here is something that makes this harder then your average mod.... the customer purchased this from someone else...... and now im doing the project for his wife and she has no idea what the color is or the code is. So...... I use the pictures supplied and mix until I get it as close as possible.

I then shot the teal blue..... waited until it was dry and set about the pinstriping. My original plan was to use her supplied pictures and clean up the images on my computer and create these in decals form. Well that went right out the window as her close ups were so grainy and off center they wouldn't work. Now I'm 20 hours in and can't turn back so what to do. I decide to hand pinstripe the car off the pictures supplied. As you see..... these are a very dark purple color (they do look blue though) and are just like the customers. The hood pinstriping took me almost 2 hours.... as I had to do it in sections so if I messed up, which I did a lot, LOL, I could wipe it off and start from there. The whole line around the car that seperates the 2 colors was also trimmed in purple stripe hand painted. Once completed it got 3 coats of clear and some 2000/3200 and polishing.

These shots are before the car was polished out.
Also note in the above side door pictures the additional web striping.





Lastly..... not really but I'm tired of typing and for whats it worth, might have just wasting a bunch of time as who knows how many will read this whole thing, LOL. Anyway..... I used parts and pieces from 4 engines to create whats in a sense, close to his. Its tough in this industry duplicating custom cars as they just don't make enough aftermarket goodies to make everyone on every persons vehicle. I found a set of Eleanor wheels in my tires bin, cleaned them and re shot them in aluminum and then mounted them. The front end is is mish mash of items to make it remotely stock looking as the chassis is the AG 55 and that's more of a high front end and I needed to lower it some. The wheels do not roll...... but hey....it does sit correct and that's what they paid for. Heck the wheels are the easiest part of the build and by far not the most important.

OK... so.... for those who have read this far.... here is the typical mod I do. It's way more involved then a repaint.... wheel swap or a engine change. Truth is, I really enjoy making cars that are not made, be it stock or modified. Its the letters and emails I get afterword that makes it all worth it. Heck the CD the customer sent me who had me build the 59 El Camino built for was the best, watching his son in awe of this 1/18 scale version of his real car. So I hope, for those who read the whole thing, you get a better understanding of whats involved with matching a persons real modded car.

Note the final hoses were not attached yet.

Enjoy!