Jump to content

Moebius 1953 Hudson Hornet


Recommended Posts

I know I needed to start another project like I need another hole in my head, but this guy showed up on my doorstep yesterday and I just couldn't resist.

6193472049_90368d7f68_z.jpg

All I managed to accomplish last night was getting the engine block assembled (no pics yet, sorry) and I started on some body work.

The body has some really nice, crisp detail molded in, but it also has some mold seams that need to be cleaned up too. The ones at the back aren't bad, and just needed a little work with a sanding stick. I had to break out the file for the ones up front though. It looks like they are having some mold alignment issues at the front fenders. Both sides look like they have been pushed in slightly with the mold seam being a small step. I had actually ordered two kits, so I opened the second one, and it looks exactly the same. The file made pretty short work of it however, I'll just have to wait and see how it looks once I get a primer coat on it.

6193989678_653e616499_z.jpg

-Dave

Edited by 2qwik4u
Link to post
Share on other sites

:D, Nice one 2qik4u. I love the style of cars from the mid 30s to the mid 50s and not just US makes either but from all over the world. I especially like the fastbacks for some reason. I'll be following your build with a lot of interest. A kid in my primary school class's parents had a 4 door Hudson fastback in the 1960s. My own father's first car was a 1928 Essex Super Six which was the same car as the Hudson Super Six, just the radiator flaps were vertical on one and horizontal on the other; I think it was vertical on the Hudson and horizontal on the Essex. There are some beautifully restored Hudsons and Essexes around the Hunter Valley. I wish I had the time and money to restore an old car to original.

:cheers:,

Ross.

Edited by ross blackford
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey ChippyWho, thanks for the link, I had not seen that before. Awesome!

Two Mikes, that would be cool. However, you'd have to put your conversion/resin casting hat on, because Doc was a '52...

Anyway, I made a bit of progress this weekend. The engine block was assembled and painted. It's basically just Testors 1/4 oz. gold paint. Nothing special.

6205628553_618a422171_z.jpg

After that, I started painting all the little parts that go on it. I also put the little decals on top of the air cleaners. I'm not real happy with the decals thus far. They went on really well, but the yellow in them got lost in the red paint. Nowhere near like what you see on the box top. I may take the ones out of my other kit and see if doubling them up helps.

6206161046_13dbab8c6c_z.jpg

One of the things that I really do like about the kit is the way they packaged the two chrome trees. They are in there own separate bag with a piece of paper between the two to keep them from scratching each other.

6205638785_9cb449e616_z.jpg

Another nice thing is the tampo printed whitewalls. Here is how they come right out of the bag. The only thing I had to do in this picture was snip the hubs from the sprue and paint the little red triangles in the middle of the wheel hubs.

6205642015_daa92b2b84_z.jpg

After that, just fit the hubs in the tires, and presto, the wheels are done. I fit the hubs in from behind the tires to keep from scratching the whitewalls off.

6205644929_2117034d10_z.jpg

One of the other cool things is the separate gas door with the filler cap in the recess. They did this for the stock car release, but it is still a cool option if you wanted to do a gas station diorama. I however, will be closing mine up.

6205631077_3047f1fa88_z.jpg

The front seats are two pieces (four if you count the handles on the seat backs).

6205633953_91cbd644c5_z.jpg

The fit was pretty good, I did have to take a sanding stick to the seam across the top, but overall not bad.

6205636385_54679450d1_z.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm doing the interior in a three tone brown scheme, so I painted the headliner with the lightest color. I'm using MM Sand for this. I also painted the engine bay, wheel wells, and the lower perimeter of the body with MM Black Chrome Trim. For anything that needs to be painted black, Black Chrome Trim is my goto color. It lays down really well, and is halfway between flat and semi-gloss.

6206163782_a9769bb258_z.jpg

6206166142_f837b4af37_z.jpg

So far, my overall impressions of the kit are comparible to any mid '90s AMT car release. Pretty good detail, only a couple fit problmes, slightly soft plastic that's a little on the thick side, but overall really nice. I'll have to post a photo of the instruction sheet. It's really nice to look at, with a couple color photos of a finished model for additional paint reference. My only complaint about them is that they list all of the colors at the end instead of as you build, and they don't list everything, so sometimes you have to guess.

Anyway, more progress to come, and thanks for following along!

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks Dirk, I'm glad you are enjoying it.

As I mentioned before, I'm doing a tri-brown interior. I sprayed the seats and side panels with the MM Sand, and after it was dry, I masked off the pleated centers of the seats, and the centers of the side panels. Over this, I sprayed the mid color.

6237386994_a57fb72aa3_z.jpg

After that was dry, I removed the masking and painted the details on the side panels silver.

6237387956_758475dbf2_z.jpg

After that, I turned my attention to the chassis. There are a few things to watch out for when you are putting the chassis together, as some of the assembly is a little complicated, and the instructions aren't always that clear. The first thing you need to do with the subframe is place the drive shaft and exhaust in the positions shown here. Notice I said place, not glue. Neither of these parts are actually attached to the subframe, but they do get trapped between it and a crossmember that gets installed next.

6237389052_fe26afbfcb_z.jpg

Make sure that you dryfit this to the floorpan before you commit glue to the crossmember to make sure that both pieces are oriented correctly. The center u-joint of the drive shaft isn't in the center of the entire piece. Make sure that the shorter portion of the driveshaft is at the rear of the subframe. The exhaust also snakes over and under a few crossmembers, dryfit dryfit dryfit! Once you know that everything is where it should be, you can glue the other crossmember half in place, trapping the exhaust and driveshaft.

6236866897_1ce0699a9a_z.jpg

Next up is gluing the subframe to the floorpan. An interesting note about the Hudson Hornet is that it was one of the first cars to have a unibody type construction. Unfortunately, this was one of the things that led to Hudson's demise, because they couldn't easily switch body styles from year to year like the other manufacturers could at the time with there body on frame construction. (Sound familiar?) Anyway, either my subrame, or the floorpan, or both, were slightly warped so I had to clamp them together overnight to dry. At this time I also added the rear axle and wheel assembly. You'll notice that I painted the bottom of the floor plan Euro I gray to give the underside a little contrast.

6237390890_374cc06395_z.jpg

Once that assembly was dry, I added the rear leaf springs. I also added the rear swaybar, which was one of those areas that aren't shown that well on the instructions. This is the orientation that the part will be in once it is installed. (And yes, I will go back and touch up all of the sprue attachment points later.)

6237391776_176a55b8a8_z.jpg

And here is the part installed. The left side of the part in the picture attaches to the subframe itself under the leaf spring, while the fork shaped assembly on the right side attaches to a pin on the underside of the axle (which would be the top, if it was sitting on its wheels, confused?).

6236869881_cc6be13eaa_z.jpg

This is one of the problems that I have with the instructions. All of the assembly drawings are right side up, so they show all of the parts being attached to the bottom of the frame. The problem is that I don't build that way. I lay the frame on the table and add parts to it, so you need to make sure that you keep your left and right, and up and down straight.

Enough of my rant, on to the front suspension. First, let me point out that all of the front suspension pieces are a very tight fit, almost snap together tight. Some of the holes did have some flash covering them and need to be drilled out. Be careful when you do this. I wasn't and I split both of the attachment points for the front swaybar on the lower A-arms. The nice thing about the tightness of fit is that you can assemble the entire front suspension without glue, and then adjust the parts so that you can get all four wheels on the ground at the same time. Once that is done, a little Tamiya Extra Thin cement on all of the joints and you're good to go.

6237393850_bc30e86dbe_z.jpg

And here is the frame up on its wheels, nice and level.

6237394786_594b91fde6_z.jpg

I couldn't resist dropping the body on there to see how it looks.

6237395812_8549af1790_z.jpg

Looking sweeeet!! :woot.gif:

That's all for now, thanks for following along.

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites

Despite posting on model car speicific forums on (semi) regular basis, this is the first in depth build up I've seen posted. It looks great...and I can't wait to get mine! The mold seam issues on the fender concerns me, because I'm not good at body work, but I'm better at taking parts off than putting them on! (filling the seams)

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for all of the comments guys.

Billy, the way that the body seam is, you really don't use any filler when you clean it up. You pretty much have to sand/file the one surface down to meet the other one. Otherwise, you would have to sand the filler around the body molding, and I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that task would be especially around the rocket shaped fairing.

Not much of an update here. I tried to start painting the body, but that didn't go very well. I recently picked up a few bottles of House of Kolor Kustom Kolor paint at a hobby shop while visiting my sister. It was on sale and there were some pretty nice colors. I had decided to try it out for the first time on this kit, and I was going to go with Dark Green, which in the bottle had a nice dark evergreen look to it. It looked to be prethinned for airbrushing, so I chucked it up in the airbrush to spray the firewall and dashboard, which were body color. (See I was thinking a little bit, try it out on some smaller parts before commiting to the main body.) Anyway, here is how the color came out on the firewall.

6278335745_7368e9a3b7_z.jpg

Not the color I thought it was going to be. Believe it or not, it is actually much brighter in person than in the picture. Its almost nauseatingly green. On top of that it seemed to be too thin to airbrush. What you see here is about 5 coats of paint, and you can still see that its thin on the corners. And then to add insult to injury, as I was setting the dash down to dry, it flipped over (think dropping buttered toast on the floor) which resulted in this.

6278337379_d36d0eb462_z.jpg

So out came the Easy Off oven cleaner, and after 3 applications, we're back to square one. I still need to prime these two parts again, and then I'll go with a different color. I'm thinking of going with a two-tone scheme now. Everything from the chrome trim down and aft of the front wheel wells will be gloss white, while everything else will be MM Ice Blue Metallic. I'm hoping to tackle that this weekend.

Thanks for following along.

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey ChippyWho, thanks for the link, I had not seen that before. Awesome!

Two Mikes, that would be cool. However, you'd have to put your conversion/resin casting hat on, because Doc was a '52...

Anyway, I made a bit of progress this weekend. The engine block was assembled and painted. It's basically just Testors 1/4 oz. gold paint. Nothing special.

6205628553_618a422171_z.jpg

After that, I started painting all the little parts that go on it. I also put the little decals on top of the air cleaners. I'm not real happy with the decals thus far. They went on really well, but the yellow in them got lost in the red paint. Nowhere near like what you see on the box top. I may take the ones out of my other kit and see if doubling them up helps.

6206161046_13dbab8c6c_z.jpg

One of the things that I really do like about the kit is the way they packaged the two chrome trees. They are in there own separate bag with a piece of paper between the two to keep them from scratching each other.

6205638785_9cb449e616_z.jpg

Another nice thing is the tampo printed whitewalls. Here is how they come right out of the bag. The only thing I had to do in this picture was snip the hubs from the sprue and paint the little red triangles in the middle of the wheel hubs.

6205642015_daa92b2b84_z.jpg

After that, just fit the hubs in the tires, and presto, the wheels are done. I fit the hubs in from behind the tires to keep from scratching the whitewalls off.

6205644929_2117034d10_z.jpg

One of the other cool things is the separate gas door with the filler cap in the recess. They did this for the stock car release, but it is still a cool option if you wanted to do a gas station diorama. I however, will be closing mine up.

6205631077_3047f1fa88_z.jpg

The front seats are two pieces (four if you count the handles on the seat backs).

6205633953_91cbd644c5_z.jpg

The fit was pretty good, I did have to take a sanding stick to the seam across the top, but overall not bad.

6205636385_54679450d1_z.jpg

just a note about a Hudson with the "twin H power" option. The cylinder head was aluminum and unpainted from the factory. My dad had one when I was a kid.

gary

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks Gary. The instructions aren't very clear as far as color callouts go. I'm not doing this one factory stock anyway, so I'm just going to leave the cylinder heads as is.

I did manage to make a little progress on the body work. As I mentioned before, the dashboard and firewall have been stripped with some Easy Off oven cleaner. After that, I reprimed them flat white. I sprayed the sides of the body below the chrome trim with gloss white for a two-tone non-factory paint job. I tried getting a picture showing the gloss white, but you really can't tell the difference between the gloss and the flat. Here is a picture of the gloss white area masked off in preparation for spraying the main color.

6345500689_a98c015222_z.jpg

Once I found a bottle of the Ice Blue Metallic I was going to use, I decided it had too much of a green cast to it for my tastes on this project. Instead I opted for Model Master Arctic Blue Metallic. Here's a shot of the body after about 5 coats of paint and an overnight dry.

6345501105_439c3fc9d9_z.jpg

And here she is with the masking tape removed and sitting on the chassis. I'll let this cure for about a week, and then I'll apply Bare Metal Foil to all of the chrome work.

6346251836_f88bc1a276_z.jpg

That's all for now, thanks for following along.

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks guys.

Between sessions raking leaves this weekend I managed to get a little bit of work done.

Here's the dash all done up. Everything on the dash that is chrome was done with Baremetal Foil, and then the decals were applied. One note on the steering wheel. Apparently the horn ring is molded on the wrong side of the wheel. It should actually be on the front instead of the back. I'm just going to leave it the way it is.

6373987319_64a60c0863_z.jpg

Once that was done I could assemble the interior:

6373988413_e81f60c936_z.jpg

And install the motor:

6373989541_c5821b344a_z.jpg

I also started doing all of the chrome by applying Baremetal Foil. I managed to get one side of the car done, but that took me about 2 1/2 hours to do.

6373990989_7feefe8f8a_z.jpg

The Hornet emblem and the little trim piece on the top of the fender were a couple of the hardest pieces to do. I had to use three pieces of foil to do the little trim piece on top of the fender, and it's only about 5/8" long.

6373992619_999222b37f_z.jpg

Not much more to do. I just need to foil the other side of the car, and then it's final assembly!

Thanks for following along.

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks guys for the comments, I really do appreciate it, even though I think it's not perfect.

Lots of progress made. I finished up the Bare Metal Foil job. All in all it took me about 5 hours just to do the foil. :blink: It had been a while since I had worked with the stuff, and I had forgotten that it isn't as easy as you would think.

Moving on with assembly, I installed the firewall with the wiper motors and braces on it. This was one of the pieces that I was a little worried about with fit, but it just dropped right in with no drama.

6428847971_2c513762f6_z.jpg

When I got to the part about installing the hood ornament, I realised that I needed to open one of these holes in the hood to accept the mounting pin of the ornament.

6428848475_92b20a6844_z.jpg

Being that I had already painted the hood, I was nervous about chipping the paint trying to open up the hole. So instead I cut the mounting tab off of the ornament and glued it in place.

6428849305_dd2c4723b1_z.jpg

Continuing with the chrome work, here is the front with all of the chrome bumpers, grill, and lights installed. These parts just about snapped in place, requiring only a couple small drops of glue on the mounting pins. The lenses were installed with Micro Krystal Klear.

6428850655_dd371d4e14_z.jpg

And the same treatment to the back end.

6428852027_d3da24933b_z.jpg

The "Hornet" script in the chrome rocket on the front fenders and truck lid needed to be painted red. To do this, first I simply slapped on some red paint, making sure it got deep into the recesses. In this case, I happened to grab Model Master Insignia Red. I let that dry for a minute or two, just long enough to tack up, basically the time it took me to paint all three, and then take the picture.

6428853335_aeba10b6e2_z.jpg

At this point, I grabbed some 91% rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip. I soaked one end of the Q-tip in the rubbing alcohol, and then used a paper towel to soak some of it up. I then rubbed the Q-tip across the lettering, which removed the paint on the surface of the chrome, but left the paint in the recesses behind. I also used a toothpick with one end cut to a chisel point to clean up and spots I missed. Really easy, and I'm happy with the results. The key is working with the paint before it is fully dry.

6428854651_f5352a616c_z.jpg

6428855883_510230d65e_z.jpg

Nothing left after that but to drop the body on the chassis. The radiator was a bit of a tight fit, but everything slipped right into place. Here's a shot of the engine bay.

6428865269_24eb0a9546_z.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

And here she is all finished up.

6428865895_d06fdd004e_z.jpg

6428866997_e17d56da9c_z.jpg

6428868127_771682b91e_z.jpg

6428870353_849dd7239a_z.jpg

6428869243_0e14b42c77_z.jpg

6428871751_e034c69a49_z.jpg

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm especially happy that the green didn't work out as I had planned because I think that the blue and white look beautiful on this body.

I hope you guys enjoyed following along as much as I enjoyed building it.

-Dave

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...